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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of
+3), by James Anthony Froude, et al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3)
+
+
+Author: James Anthony Froude
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2005  [eBook #15537]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH,
+VOLUME 1 (OF 3)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Deirdre Menchaca, Keith Edkins, and
+the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
+
+Henry VIII · Introduction by
+W. Llewelyn Williams M.P. B.C.L.
+
+Volume One
+
+First Published 1909
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illuminated Frontispiece]
+
+CONSIDER HISTORY WITH THE BEGINNINGS OF
+IT STRETCHING DIMLY INTO THE REMOTE TIME;
+EMERGING DARKLY OVT OF THE MYSTERIOVS
+             ETERNITY:
+THE TRVE EPIC POEM AND VNIVERSAL DIVINE
+       SCRIPTVRE...--CARLYLE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illuminated Title]
+
+THE REIGN of HENRY the EIGHTH
+
+by
+
+JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+London & Toronto J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
+New York E.P. Dutton & Co
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+James Anthony Froude was born at Dartington Rectory, the youngest son of
+the Archdeacon of Totnes, on April 23, 1818. His father was a clergyman of
+the old school, as much squire as parson. In the concluding chapter to his
+_History of England_, Froude wrote that "for a hundred and forty years
+after the Revolution of 1688, the Church of England was able to fulfil with
+moderate success the wholesome functions of a religious establishment.
+Theological doctrinalism passed out of fashion; and the clergy, merged as
+they were in the body of the nation, and no longer endeavouring to elevate
+themselves into a separate order, were occupied healthily in impressing on
+their congregations the meaning of duty and moral responsibility to God."
+Of this sane and orthodox, but not over-spiritual, clergy, Archdeacon
+Froude was an excellent and altogether wholesome type. He was a stiff Tory;
+his hatred of Dissent was so uncompromising that he would not have a copy
+of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ in the rectory. A stern, self-contained,
+reticent man, he never, in word of deed, confessed his affection for his
+youngest son. He was a good horseman, and was passionately fond of open-air
+exercises and especially of hunting. His one accomplishment was drawing,
+and his sketches in after years earned the praise of Ruskin.
+
+Cast in the same mould, but fashioned by different circumstances, the
+archdeacon's eldest son, Richard Hurrell Froude, was a man of greater
+intellectual brilliance and even more masterful character. He was one of
+the pioneers of the Oxford Movement, and it was only his early death that
+deposed him from his place of equality with Newman and Keble and Pusey.
+Anthony was a sickly child, and from his earliest years lacked the loving
+care of a mother. He was brought up with Spartan severity by his father and
+his aunt. The most venial self-indulgence was regarded as criminal. From
+the age of three he was inured to hardship by being ducked every morning in
+a trough of ice-cold water. Hurrell Froude felt no tenderness for the
+ailing lad. Once, in order to rouse a manly spirit in his little brother,
+he took him by the heels, plunged him like another Achilles into a stream,
+and stirred with his head the mud at the bottom. Froude has been accused,
+and not without justice, of not feeling a proper aversion to acts of
+cruelty. The horrible Boiling Act of Henry VIII. excites neither disgust
+nor hatred in him; and he makes smooth excuses for the illegal tortures of
+the rack and the screw which were inflicted on prisoners by Elizabeth and
+her ministers. He had himself been reared in a hardy school; he had been
+trained to be indifferent to pain. It may well be that his callousness in
+speaking of Tudor cruelties is to be traced to the influences that
+surrounded his loveless childhood and youth.
+
+Hurrell Froude was the idol of his younger brothers. He was a man of
+brilliant parts, and a born leader of men. His hatred of Radicals and
+Dissenters transcended even his father's dislike of them. His conception of
+the Church differed widely from that in which the archdeacon had been
+reared. To him a clergyman was a priest who belonged to a sacerdotal caste,
+and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the
+Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the
+Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas ą Becket. He wrote a sketch
+of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His friends
+ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal ecclesiastical
+statesman of modern times was Archbishop Laud. Charles I. was a martyr, and
+the Revolution of 1688 an inglorious blunder. To the day of his death--in
+spite of the harsh discipline which he received at his hands in boyhood, in
+spite of wide divergence of opinion in later years in all matters secular
+and religious--Froude never ceased to worship at his brother's shrine. Out
+of regard for his memory, more than from any passionate personal
+conviction, he associated himself while at Oxford with the Anglican
+movement. His affectionate admiration for Newman, neither time nor change
+served to impair. If Carlyle was his prophet in later years, his influence
+happily did not affect his style. That was based on the chaste model of
+Newman. He owed his early friendship with Newman to that great man's
+association with Hurrell Froude. Many years after, when Freeman had
+venomously accused him of "dealing stabs in the dark at a brother's almost
+forgotten fame"--poor Froude's offence was that he dared to write an essay
+on Thomas ą Becket--he defended himself with rare emotion against the
+charge. "I look back upon my brother," he said, "as on the whole the most
+remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I have never seen any
+person--not one--in whom, as I now think him, the excellences of intellect
+and character were combined in fuller measure."
+
+As Froude's powers developed and matured, and as his experience of the
+world broadened, he cast away his brother's yoke, and reverted more to his
+father's school of thought. As his father was to him the ideal clergyman of
+the Church of England, so the Church before 1828 remained to him the model
+of what an established religion should be. He was a thorough Erastian, who
+believed in the subordination of the Church to the state. He detested
+theological doctrinalism of all kinds; he revolted against the idea that
+the clergy should form a separate order. The pretensions of Whitgift and
+Laud, the High Anglican school of Keble and Pusey, the whole conception of
+the Church and the priesthood which underlay the Oxford Movement, were
+things obnoxious to him. In a characteristic passage in the chapter on the
+Massacre of St. Bartholomew he reveals his hatred and distrust of
+dogmatism. "Whenever the doctrinal aspect of Christianity has been
+prominent above the practical," he wrote, "whenever the first duty of the
+believer has been held to consist in holding particular opinions on the
+functions and nature of his Master, and only the second in obeying his
+Master's commands, then always, with a uniformity more remarkable than is
+obtained in any other historical phenomena, there have followed dissension,
+animosity, and in later ages bloodshed. Christianity, as a principle of
+life, has been the most powerful check upon the passions of mankind.
+Christianity as a speculative system of opinion has converted them into
+monsters of cruelty."
+
+Holding such decided views on doctrinalism, it might have been thought that
+Froude would have visited all the warring sects of the sixteenth century
+with equal judgment. No Church was more doctrinal than that of Geneva; no
+Calvinist ever was more dogmatic than John Knox. But the men who fought the
+battle of the Reformation in England and Scotland were, in the main, the
+Calvinists; and to Froude the Reformation was the beginning of a new and
+better era, when the yoke of the priest had been finally cast away.
+"Calvinism," he said in one of his addresses at St. Andrews, "was the
+spirit which rises in revolt against untruth." John Knox was too heroic a
+figure not to rouse the artistic sense in Froude. "There lies one," said
+the Regent Morton over his coffin, "who never feared the face of mortal
+man." Froude has made this epitaph the text of the noblest eulogy ever
+delivered on Knox. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire history
+of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox." He surpassed
+Cromwell and Burghley in integrity of purpose and in purity of methods. He
+towered above the Regent Murray in intellect, and he worked on a larger
+scale than Latimer. "His was the voice that taught the peasant of the
+Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the
+proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. He was the
+one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive. He
+it was who had raised the poor commons of his country into a stern and
+rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious, and fanatical, but
+who nevertheless were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could force
+again to submit to tyranny." Yet even here, Froude could not refrain from
+quoting the sardonic comment of the English ambassador at Edinburgh: Knox
+behaved, said Randolph, "as though he were of God's privy council."
+
+It is certain, at least, that other reformers, who were not greatly
+inferior to Knox in capacity, and not at all in piety and honesty, have not
+met the same generous treatment at his hands. He sneers at Hooper because
+he had scruples about wearing episcopal robes at his consecration as Bishop
+of Worcester, though he himself in a famous passage asserts the anomalous
+position of bishops in the Church of England. Hooper, as a Calvinist, was
+in the right in objecting, and though the point upon which he took his
+stand was nominally one of form, there lay behind it a protest against the
+Anglican conception of a bishop. He speaks slightingly of Ridley and
+Ferrars, though he makes ample amends to them and to Hooper, when he comes
+to describe the manner of their death. To the reformers who fled from the
+Marian persecution, including men like Jewel and Grindal, he refers with
+scornful contempt, though he has no word of criticism to apply to Knox for
+retiring to England and to the continent when the flame of persecution was
+certainly not more fierce. Latimer is one of his favourites,--a plain,
+practical man, not given to abstract speculation or theological subtleties,
+but one who was content to do his duty day by day without the fear of man
+before his eyes. Latimer, though he was looked upon as a Protestant in the
+earliest years of the English Reformation, believed in the Real Presence up
+to a short time before his death. But of all English ecclesiastics Thomas
+Cranmer was perhaps most to Froude's liking. Cranmer was, like Froude
+himself, an artist in words. The English liturgy owes its charm and beauty
+to his sense of style, his grace of expression, and his cultured piety.
+That he was a great man few will be found in these days to maintain; fewer
+still will believe that he deserved the scathing invective of Macaulay. But
+no one can read the account given by Froude of his last years without
+feeling that the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury was neither
+saint nor martyr. If ever there was one, he was a timeserver. He pronounced
+the divorce of Catherine of Arragon, though he had sworn fealty to the
+Pope. He never raised a protest against any of the political murders of
+Henry VIII.--with the notable exception of his courageous attempt to save
+his friend, Thomas Cromwell. Even in that case, however, he lies under the
+suspicion of having interfered through fear that his own fate was involved
+in that of the _malleus monachorum_. In the days of Edward VI. he aimed at
+the liberty, if not at the life, of Bonner and Gardiner, without semblance
+of legal right: He recanted in the reign of Mary when he thought he could
+purchase his miserable life. It was only when all hope of pardon was past
+that he re-affirmed his belief in the reformed faith. Indeed, he waited
+until the day of his execution before withdrawing his recantation, and
+confounded his enemies on the way to the stake. To a master of dramatic
+narrative the last scene of Cranmer's life came as a relief and an
+inspiration. "So perished Cranmer," wrote Froude, in a memorable passage:
+"he was brought out, with the eyes of his soul blinded, to make sport for
+his enemies, and in his death he brought upon them a wider destruction than
+he had effected by his teaching while alive. Pole was appointed the next
+day to the See of Canterbury; but in other respects the court had
+over-reached themselves by their cruelty. Had they been contented to accept
+the recantation, they would have left the archbishop to die broken-hearted,
+pointed at by the finger of pitying scorn; and the Reformation would have
+been disgraced in its champion. They were tempted, by an evil spirit of
+revenge, into an act unsanctioned even by their own bloody laws; and they
+gave him an opportunity of writing his name in the roll of martyrs. The
+worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a
+single and peculiar peril. The Apostle, though forewarned, denied his
+Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his nature
+in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which he would
+build his Church."
+
+With this conscious and avowed bias in favour of undogmatic Christianity,
+Froude came to write the story of the transition of England from a Catholic
+to a Protestant country. He was not without sympathy with the old order of
+things. We cannot but feel a thrill as we read his incomparable description
+of the change which was effected in men's thoughts and ideas by the
+translation of the medięval into the modern world? "For, indeed, a change
+was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is
+hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths trodden by the
+footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the
+faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry
+was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into
+ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions, of the old world
+were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the
+western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an
+infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed
+from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness
+of the universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built
+for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all
+gone--like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old
+English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will
+never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagination can
+but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the cathedral, only
+as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some faint
+conceptions float before us of what these men were when they were alive;
+and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation of
+medięval age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world."
+Froude was once asked what was the greatest and most essential quality of
+an historian. He replied that it was imagination. It was a true and a just
+saying, and Froude himself possessed the faculty in abundance.
+
+It was not only with the old order that Froude showed his sympathy. He is
+seldom ungenerous in his references to individual Catholics, however
+mistaken in his sight their opinions may have been. With Wolsey and Warham,
+Fisher and More, even with Gardiner and Bonner he deals fairly and with
+some amount of real sympathy. The heroic death of Campian moves him to pity
+just as much as the death of Latimer; the strenuous labours of Father
+Parsons to overthrow Elizabeth and Protestantism failed to remove him
+beyond the pale of Froude's charitable judgment. One English Catholic alone
+was reserved for the historian's harsh and sometimes petulant criticism.
+For Cardinal Pole Froude felt the angriest contempt. He was descended from
+the blood royal, both of England and of Wales. On his father's side he was
+descended in direct line from the ancient princes of Powis; on his mother's
+from the Plantagenets and the Nevilles. He was the most learned and
+illustrious Englishman of his age. He had stood high in King Henry's
+favour; he was destined for the greatest offices in the state. He was not
+without natural ambition. Yet he forfeited all that he had--the favour of
+his prince, the society of his mother whom he loved, and the kindred who
+were proud of him, the hope of promotion and of power, his friends, his
+home, and his country, for conscience' sake. He remained true to the
+ancient faith in which he was reared. With unerring instinct he foresaw
+that, once England was severed from the Papacy, it would be impossible for
+king or parliament to stem the flood of the Reformation. For twenty years
+he remained an exile on the continent. He returned an old and broken man,
+to witness the overthrow of his cherished plans. He was repudiated by the
+Pope whose authority he had sacrificed everything to maintain, and in his
+old age he suffered the humiliation of being accused of heresy in the court
+of Rome. He died the same day as Mary died, with the knowledge that all his
+life's labours and sacrifices were come to naught, and that the dominion of
+the Roman Church in England was gone for ever. Froude saw none of the
+pathos or tragedy of Pole's life. To him the cardinal was a renegade, a
+traitor to his country, a mercenary of the Pope, a foreign potentate, a
+"hysterical dreamer," who vainly imagined that he was "the champion of
+heaven, and the destroyer of heresy."
+
+Froude was, above all, an Englishman. His strongest sympathies went out to
+the "God's Englishmen" of Elizabeth's reign, who broke the power of Rome
+and Spain, and who made England supreme in Europe. In his first chapter he
+describes the qualities of Englishmen with a zest and gusto that drew the
+comment from Carlyle that "this seems to me exaggerated: what we call John
+Bullish." He described them as "a sturdy, high-hearted race, sound in body
+and fierce in spirit which, under the stimulus of those great shins of
+beef, their common diet, were the wonder of the age." Carlyle's advice when
+he read this passage in proof was characteristic:--"Modify a little:
+Frederick the Great was brought up on beer-sops; Robert Burns on oatmeal
+porridge; and Mahomet and the Caliphs conquered the world on barley meal."
+But the passage stood unmodified, in spite of Froude's regard for his
+master.
+
+How this fierce and turbulent people fought their way to world-wide empire
+was a problem which Froude thought he was able to solve. It was, in the
+main, because they broke down the power of the priests, and insisted on the
+supremacy of state over Church. Therefore all his filial affection, his
+patriotism, and his ecclesiastical prejudices were arrayed on the same
+side. If history be an exact science, then Froude can lay no claim to the
+title of historian. He was a brilliant advocate, a man of letters endowed
+with a matchless style, writing of matters which interested him deeply, and
+in the investigation of which he spent twenty years of his life. Froude
+himself would have been the first to repudiate the idea that history is
+philosophy teaching by examples, or that an historian has necessarily a
+greater insight into the problems of the present than any other observant
+student of affairs. "Gibbon," he once wrote, "believed that the era of
+conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of man, he would
+have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed
+the world had grown too civilised for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde
+Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles, bloody as
+Napoleon's, are now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have
+made the greatest progress are the arts of destruction."
+
+It is absurd to attack Froude on the ground that he was biassed. No man has
+ever yet written a living history without being biassed. Thucydides
+detested the radicalism of Cleon as heartily as Gibbon hated the
+Christianity of Rome. It was once the fashion of the Oxford school to decry
+Froude as being unworthy of the name of historian. Stubbs, indeed, did pay
+public tribute to Froude's "great work," but he stood almost alone of his
+school. Freeman for many years pursued and persecuted Froude with a
+persistent malevolence which happily has no parallel in the story of
+English scholarship. It is not necessary in this place to do more than
+refer to that unpleasant episode. Since the publication of the brilliant
+vindication of Froude in Mr. Herbert Paul's _Life_, it would be superfluous
+to go into the details of that unhappy controversy. The only difference
+between Froude and other historians is that Froude's partisanship is always
+obvious. He was not more favourable to Henry VIII. than Stubbs was to
+Thomas ą Becket. But Froude openly avowed his preferences and his dislikes.
+Catholicism was to him "a dying superstition," Protestantism "a living
+truth." Freeman went further, and charged Froude with having written a
+history which was not "_un livre de bonne joy._" It is only necessary to
+recall the circumstances under which the _History_ was written to dispose
+of that odious charge. In order to obtain material for his _History_,
+Froude spent years of his life in the little Spanish village of Simancas.
+"I have worked in all," he said in his Apologia, "through nine hundred
+volumes of letters, notes, and other papers, private and official, in five
+languages and in different handwritings. I am not rash enough to say that I
+have never misread a word, or overlooked a passage of importance. I profess
+only to have dealt with my materials honestly to the best of my ability."
+Few, indeed, have had to encounter such difficulties as met Froude in his
+exploration of the archives at Simancas. "Often at the end of a page," he
+wrote many years after, "I have felt as after descending a precipice, and
+have wondered how I got down. I had to cut my way through a jungle, for no
+one had opened the road for me. I have been turned into rooms piled to the
+window-sill with bundles of dust-coloured despatches, and told to make the
+best of it. Often have I found the sand glistening on the ink where it had
+been sprinkled when a page was turned. There the letter had lain, never
+looked at again since it was read and put away." Of these difficulties not
+a trace is discoverable in Froude's easy and effortless narrative. When he
+was approaching the completion of his _History_, he vowed that his account
+of the Armada should be as interesting as a novel. He succeeded not only
+with that portion of his task, but with all the stirring story that he set
+out to narrate. But the ease of his style only concealed the real pains
+which he had taken. Of Freeman's charge Froude has long been honourably
+acquitted. The Simancas MSS. have since been published in the Rolls Series,
+and Mr. Martin Hume, in his Introduction, has paid his tribute to the care,
+accuracy, and good faith of their first transcriber. Long before this
+testimony could be given, Scottish historians who disagreed with Froude's
+conclusions on many points,--men such as Skelton and Burton--had been
+profoundly impressed with the care, skill, and conscientiousness with which
+Froude handled the mass of tangled materials relating to the history of
+Scotland.
+
+This does not mean that Froude is free from minor inaccuracies, or that he
+is innocent of graver faults which flowed from his abundant quality of
+imagination. He constantly quotes a sentence inaccurately in his text,
+while it is accurately transcribed in a footnote. He is careless in matters
+which are important to students of Debrett, as for instance, he
+indiscriminately describes Lord Howard as Lord William Howard and Lord
+Howard. But Froude was sometimes guilty of something worse than these
+trivial "howlers." Lecky exposed, with calm ruthlessness, some of Froude's
+exaggerations--to call them by no worse name--in his _Story of the English
+in Ireland_. When his _Erasmus_ was translated into Dutch, the countrymen
+of Erasmus accused him of constant, if not deliberate, inaccuracy. Lord
+Carnarvon once sent Froude to South Africa as an informal special
+commissioner. When he returned to this country he wrote an article on the
+South African problem in the _Quarterly Review_. Sir Bartle Frere, who knew
+South Africa as few men did, said of it that it was an "essay in which for
+whole pages a truth expressed in brilliant epigrams alternates with
+mistakes or misstatements which would scarcely be pardoned in a special war
+correspondent hurriedly writing against time." So dangerous is the quality
+of imagination in a writer!
+
+Truth to tell, Froude was a literary man with a fondness for historical
+investigation, and an artist's passion for the dramatic in life and story.
+He wrote with a purpose--that purpose being to defend the English
+Reformation against the attacks of the neo-Catholic-Anglicans, under whose
+influence he had himself been for a time in his youth. To him, therefore,
+Henry VIII. was "the majestic lord who broke the bonds of Rome." This is
+not the occasion, nor is the present writer the man, to analyse that
+complex and masterful personality. Froude started to defend the English
+Reformation against the vile charge that it was the outcome of kingly lust.
+That charge he has finally dispelled. Henry VIII. was not the monster that
+Lingard painted. He beheaded two queens, but few will be found to assert
+to-day that either Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard were innocent martyrs.
+People must agree to differ to the crack of doom as to the justice of
+Catherine's divorce. It is one of those questions which different men will
+continue to answer in different ways. But one thing is abundantly clear. If
+Henry was actuated merely by passion for Anne Boleyn, he would scarcely
+have waited for years before putting Queen Catherine away. Henry divorced
+Anne of Cleves, but Anne, who survived the dissolution of her marriage and
+remained in England for twenty years, made no complaint of her treatment,
+and she has had no champions either among Catholic or Protestant writers.
+Her divorce is only remembered as the occasion of the downfall of the
+greatest statesman of his age, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. But in his
+eagerness to proclaim the truth, Froude went on to defend a paradox. Once
+free from the charge of lust,--and compared with Francis of France or
+Charles V., Henry was a continent man--Henry became to Froude the ideal
+monarch.
+
+Some one has said that Henry VIII. was the greatest king that ever lived,
+because he always got his own way. If that be the test, then Henry was
+indeed "every inch a king." He broke with Rome; he deposed the Pope from
+his supremacy over England; he dissolved the monasteries; he sent the
+noblest and wisest in England to the scaffold; he reduced Wales to law and
+order and gave her a constitution; he married and unmarried as he liked; he
+disposed of the succession to the throne of England by his will; and his
+people never murmured. Only once, when the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out,
+was his throne in any danger, and that insurrection he easily suppressed.
+He made war with France; he invaded Scotland more than once, and every time
+with striking success. He played his vigorous part in European politics,
+and at his death he left his realm inviolate. It is an amazing record,
+which might well dazzle a writer of Froude's temperament and training. But
+there are dark shades in the picture, which Froude was content to make
+little of, if not to ignore. He is fond of contrasting Henry's way with
+conspirators with that of his daughter Elizabeth. He sneers at her
+"tenderness" towards high-born traitors, and never ceases to reproach her
+with her one act of repression after the Yorkshire rising. But he had not a
+word to say against the tyrannical murders of Henry VIII. Elizabeth truly
+boasted that she never punished opinion: Henry sent to the scaffold better
+men than himself for holding academical opinions contrary to his own.
+Cardinal Fisher may have been--after the publication of Chappuys's letters
+it is not possible to deny that he was--technically guilty of treason. But
+he was a saint and an old man past eighty, and "the earth on the edge of
+the grave was already crumbling under his feet." The king spared neither
+age nor worth nor innocence. He had been the familiar friend of More; he
+had walked through his gardens at Chelsea leaning on his arm; More had been
+his chancellor; he was still the greatest of his subjects; while frankly
+admitting that he differed in opinion from the king on the question of the
+royal supremacy, he promised that he would not try to influence others.
+Henry was inexorable. He not only condemned him to die a traitor's
+death,--he added a callous message, which still rouses the indignation of
+every generous soul, that he should "not use many words on the scaffold."
+Thomas Cromwell had served him as few ministers have served a king; to him
+was due--or, at least, he was the capable instrument of--the policy which
+has given distinction to Henry's reign; but he was delivered over to his
+enemies when the king's caprice had shifted to another quarter. Even Froude
+finds it difficult to excuse the execution of More and Cromwell. But,
+having once made up his mind to make a hero of Henry, he goes on with it
+bravely to the end. He hides nothing, he excuses nothing, he extenuates
+nothing. Neither the death of the aged Countess of Salisbury or of the
+gallant Earl of Surrey, nor the illegal imprisonment of the aged Norfolk,
+the hero of Flodden, shakes his faith in his hero-king. He even relates,
+with minute detail, how a few days before the king's death, four poor
+persons, one of whom was a tailor, were burnt at the stake for denying the
+Real Presence. But his final comment on it all was: "His personal faults
+were great, and he shared, besides them, in the errors of his age; but far
+deeper blemishes would be but scars upon the features of a sovereign who in
+trying times sustained nobly the honour of the English name, and carried
+the commonwealth securely through the hardest crisis in its history."
+
+When a young man Froude had been elected Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
+This entailed his taking holy orders, though he does not seem to have
+regularly performed the duties of a clergyman. In 1849 he published his
+first book, _The Nemesis of Faith_, now happily forgotten. It raised an
+immediate commotion. It was denounced as heretical, and the senior tutor of
+Exeter burnt it during a lecture in the College Hall. Froude resigned his
+Fellowship, and his connection with the university was severed for
+thirty-three years. He was one of the first to take advantage of the
+alteration of the law which enabled a clergyman to resign his orders. In
+1892 he went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of Modern History. "The
+temptation of going back to Oxford in a respectable way," he said, "was too
+much for me." He died on October 20, 1894, and on his tombstone he is
+simply described, by his own wish, as Professor of Modern History in the
+University of Oxford.
+
+The writer is indebted for information with regard to Froude's life to Mr.
+Pollard's article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and to Mr.
+Herbert Paul's admirable _Life of Froude_ (Pitman).
+
+W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS.
+
+_November_ 16, 1908.
+
+The following is a list of the published works of J.A. Froude:
+
+    Life of St. Neot (Lives of the English Saints, edited by J.H. Newman),
+    1844; Shadows of the Clouds (Tales), by Zeta (_pseud._), 1847; A Sermon
+    (on 2 Cor. vii. 10) preached at St. Mary's Church on the Death of the
+    Rev. George May Coleridge, 1847; Article on Spinoza (_Oxford and
+    Cambridge Review_), 1847; The Nemesis of Faith (Tale), 1849; England's
+    Forgotten Worthies (_Westminster Review_), 1852; Book of Job
+    (_Westminster Review)_, 1853; Poems of Matthew Arnold (_Westminster
+    Review_), 1854; Suggestions on the Best Means of Teaching English
+    History (Oxford Essays, etc.), 1855; History of England, 12 vols.,
+    1856-70; The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character,
+    1865; Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrews,
+    March 19, 1869, 1869; Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1867, 2 vols.,
+    series 2-4, 1871-83 (articles from _Fraser's Magazine, Westminster
+    Review_, etc.); The Cat's Pilgrimage, 1870; Calvinism: Address at St.
+    Andrews, 1871; The English in Ireland, 3 vols., 1872-74; Bunyan
+    (English Men of Letters), 1878; Cęsar: a Sketch, 1879; Two Lectures on
+    South Africa, 1880; Thomas Carlyle (a history of the first forty years
+    of his life, etc.), 2 vols., 1882; Luther: a Short Biography, 1883;
+    Thomas Carlyle (a history of his life in London, 1834-81), 2 vols.,
+    1884; Oceana, 1886; The English in the West Indies, 1888; Liberty and
+    Property: an Address [1888]; The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, 1889; Lord
+    Beaconsfield (a Biography), 1890; The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon,
+    1891; The Spanish Story of the Armada, 1892; Life and Letters of
+    Erasmus, 1894; English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, 1895; Lectures
+    on the Council of Trent, 1896; My Relations with Carlyle, 1903.
+
+    EDITED:--Carlyle's Reminiscences, 1881; Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   CHAPTER
+
+      I. SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+     II. THE LAST YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSEY.
+
+    III. THE PARLIAMENT OF 1529.
+
+     IV. CHURCH AND STATE.
+
+      V. MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN.
+
+     VI. THE PROTESTANTS.
+
+    VII. THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY.
+
+         NOTES.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY VIII
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+In periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending, and the
+habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the influence
+of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back into a
+time in which for centuries the European world grew upon a single type, in
+which the forms of the father's thoughts were the forms of the son's, and
+the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the footprints of
+his distant ancestors. So absolutely has change become the law of our
+present condition, that it is identified with energy and moral health; to
+cease to change is to lose place in the great race; and to pass away from
+off the earth with the same convictions which we found when we entered it,
+is to have missed the best object for which we now seem to exist.
+
+It has been, however, with the race of men as it has been with the planet
+which they inhabit. As we look back over history, we see times of change
+and progress alternating with other times when life and thought have
+settled into permanent forms; when mankind, as if by common consent, have
+ceased to seek for increase of knowledge, and, contented with what they
+possess, have endeavoured to make use of it for purposes of moral
+cultivation. Such was the condition of the Greeks through many ages before
+the Persian war; such was that of the Romans till the world revenged itself
+upon its conquerors by the introduction among them of the habits of the
+conquered; and such again became the condition of Europe when the Northern
+nations grafted the religion and the laws of the Western empire on their
+own hardy natures, and shaped out that wonderful spiritual and political
+organisation which remained unshaken for a thousand years.
+
+The aspirant after sanctity in the fifteenth century of the Christian era
+found a model which he could imitate in detail in the saint of the fifth.
+The gentleman at the court of Edward IV. or Charles of Burgundy could
+imagine no nobler type of heroism than he found in the stories of King
+Arthur's knights. The forms of life had become more elaborate--the surface
+of it more polished--but the life itself remained essentially the same; it
+was the development of the same conception of human excellence; just as the
+last orders of Gothic architecture were the development of the first, from
+which the idea had worked its way till the force of it was exhausted.
+
+A condition of things differing alike both outwardly and inwardly from that
+into which a happier fortune has introduced ourselves, is necessarily
+obscure to us. In the alteration of our own character, we have lost the key
+which would interpret the characters of our fathers, and the great men even
+of our own English history before the Reformation seem to us almost like
+the fossil skeletons of another order of beings. Some broad conclusions as
+to what they were are at least possible to us, however; and we are able to
+determine, with tolerable certainty, the social condition of the people of
+this country, such as it was before the movements of the sixteenth century,
+and during the process of those movements.
+
+The extent of the population can only be rudely conjectured. A rough census
+was taken at the time of the Armada, when it was found to be something
+under five millions; but anterior to this I can find no authority on which
+I can rely with any sort of confidence. It is my impression, however, from
+a number of reasons--each in itself insignificant, but which taken together
+leave little doubt upon my mind--that it had attained that number by a
+growth so slow as to be scarcely perceptible, and had nearly approached to
+it many generations before. Simon Fish, in _The Supplication of
+Beggars_,[1] says that the number of households in England in 1531 was
+520,000. His calculation is of the most random kind; for he rates the
+number of parishes at 52,000, with ten households on an average in each
+parish. A mistake so preposterous respecting the number of parishes shows
+the great ignorance of educated men upon the subject. The ten households in
+each parish may, probably (in some parts of the country), have been a
+correct computation; but this tells us little with respect to the aggregate
+numbers, for the households were very large--the farmers, and the gentlemen
+also, usually having all the persons whom they employed residing under
+their own roof. Neither from this, therefore, nor from any other positive
+statement which I have seen, can I gather any conclusion that may be
+depended upon. But when we remember the exceeding slowness with which the
+population multiplied in a time in which we can accurately measure it--that
+is to say, from 1588 to the opening of the last century--under
+circumstances in every way more favourable to an increase, I think we may
+assume that the increase was not so great between 1500 and 1588, and that,
+previous to 1500, it did not more than keep pace with the waste from civil
+and foreign war. The causes, indeed, were wholly wanting which lead to a
+rapid growth of numbers. Numbers now increase with the increase of
+employment and with the facilities which are provided by the modern system
+of labour for the establishment of independent households. At present, any
+able-bodied unskilled labourer earns, as soon as he has arrived at man's
+estate, as large an amount of wages as he will earn at any subsequent time;
+and having no connection with his employer beyond the receiving the due
+amount of weekly money from him, and thinking himself as well able to marry
+as he is likely to be, he takes a wife, and is usually the father of a
+family before he is thirty. Before the Reformation, not only were early
+marriages determinately discouraged, but the opportunity for them did not
+exist. A labourer living in a cottage by himself was a rare exception to
+the rule; and the work of the field was performed generally, as it now is
+in the large farms in America and Australia, by servants who lived in the
+families of the squire or the farmer, and who, while in that position,
+commonly remained single, and married only when by prudence they had saved
+a sufficient sum to enable them to enter some other position.
+
+Checked by circumstances of this kind, population would necessarily remain
+almost stationary, and a tendency to an increase was not of itself regarded
+by the statesmen of the day as any matter for congratulation or as any
+evidence of national prosperity. Not an increase of population, which would
+facilitate production and beat down wages by competition, but the increase
+of the commonwealth, the sound and healthy maintenance of the population
+already existing, were the chief objects which the government proposed to
+itself; and although Henry VIII. carefully nursed his manufactures, there
+is sufficient proof in the grounds alleged for the measures to which he
+resorted, that there was little redundancy of occupation.
+
+In a statute, for instance, for the encouragement of the linen
+manufactures, it is said[2] that--"The King's Highness, calling to his most
+blessed remembrance the great number of idle people daily increasing
+throughout this his Realm, supposeth that one great cause thereof is by the
+continued bringing into the same the great number of wares and merchandise
+made, and brought out and from, the parts beyond the sea into this his
+Realm, ready wrought by manual occupation; amongst the which wares one kind
+of merchandise in great quantity, which is linen cloth of divers sorts made
+in divers countries beyond the sea, is daily conveyed into this Realm;
+which great quantity of linen cloth so brought is consumed and spent within
+the same; by reason whereof not only the said strange countries where the
+said linen cloth is made, by the policy and industry of making and vending
+the same are greatly enriched; and a marvellous great number of their
+people, men, women, and children, are set on work and occupation, and kept
+from idleness, to the great furtherance and advancement of their
+commonwealth; but also contrariwise the inhabitants and subjects of this
+Realm, for lack of like policy and industry, are compelled to buy all or
+most part of the linen cloth consumed in the same, amounting to inestimable
+sums of money. And also the people of this Realm, as well men as women,
+which should and might be set on work, by exercise of like policy and craft
+of spinning, weaving, and making of cloth, lies now in idleness and
+otiosity, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, great diminution of the
+King's people, and extreme ruin, decay, and impoverishment of this Realm.
+Therefore, for reformation of these things, the King's most Royal Majesty
+intending, like a most virtuous Prince, to provide remedy in the premises;
+nothing so much coveting as the increase of the Commonwealth of this his
+Realm, with also the virtuous exercise of his most loving subjects and
+people, and to avoid that most abominable sin of idleness out of the Realm,
+hath, by the advice and consent of his Lords and Commons in Parliament
+assembled, ordained and enacted that every person occupying land for
+tillage, shall for every sixty acres which he hath under the plough, sow
+one quarter of an acre in flax or hemp."
+
+This Act was designed immediately to keep the wives and children of the
+poor in work in their own houses;[3] but it leaves no doubt that
+manufactures in England had not of themselves that tendency to
+self-development which would encourage an enlarging population. The woollen
+manufactures similarly appear, from the many statutes upon them, to have
+been vigorous at a fixed level, but to have shown no tendency to rise
+beyond that level. With a fixed market and a fixed demand, production
+continued uniform.
+
+A few years subsequent, indeed, to the passing of the Act which I have
+quoted, a very curious complaint is entered in the statute book, from the
+surface of which we should gather, that so far from increasing,
+manufactures had alarmingly declined. The fact mentioned may bear another
+meaning, and a meaning far more favourable to the state of the country;
+although, if such a phenomenon were to occur at the present time, it could
+admit of but one interpretation. In the 18th and 19th of the 32nd of Henry
+VIII., all the important towns in England, from the Tweed to the Land's
+End, are stated, one by one, to have fallen into serious decay. Usually
+when we meet with language of this kind, we suppose it to mean nothing more
+than an awakening to the consciousness of evils which had long existed, and
+which had escaped notice only because no one was alive to them. In the
+present instance, however, the language was too strong and too detailed to
+allow of this explanation; and the great body of the English towns
+undoubtedly were declining in wealth and in the number of their
+inhabitants. "Divers and many beautiful houses of habitation," these
+statutes say, "built in tyme past within their walls and liberties, now are
+fallen down and decayed, and at this day remain unre-edified, and do lie as
+desolate and vacant grounds, many of them nigh adjoining to the
+High-streets, replenished with much uncleanness and filth, with pits,
+sellers, and vaults lying open and uncovered, to the great perill and
+danger of the inhabitants and other the King's subjects passing by the
+same; and some houses be very weak and feeble, ready to fall down, and
+therefore dangerous to pass by, to the great decay and hinderance of the
+said boroughs and towns."[4]
+
+At present, the decay of a town implies the decay of the trade of the town;
+and the decay of all towns simultaneously would imply a general collapse of
+the trade of the whole country. Walled towns, however, before the
+Reformation, existed for other purposes than as the centre points of
+industry: they existed for the protection of property and life: and
+although it is not unlikely that the agitation of the Reformation itself
+did to some degree interrupt the occupation of the people, yet I believe
+that the true account of the phenomenon which then so much disturbed the
+parliament, is, that one of their purposes was no longer required; the
+towns flagged for a time because the country had become secure. The woollen
+manufacture in Worcestershire was spreading into the open country,[5] and,
+doubtless, in other counties as well; and the "beautiful houses" which had
+fallen into decay, were those which, in the old times of insecurity, had
+been occupied by wealthy merchants and tradesmen, who were now enabled, by
+a strong and settled government, to dispense with the shelter of locked
+gates and fortified walls, and remove their residences to more convenient
+situations. It was, in fact, the first symptom of the impending social
+revolution. Two years before the passing of this Act, the magnificent
+Hengrave Hall, in Suffolk, had been completed by Sir Thomas Kitson, "mercer
+of London,"[6] and Sir Thomas Kitson was but one of many of the rising
+merchants who were now able to root themselves on the land by the side of
+the Norman nobility, first to rival, and then slowly to displace them.
+
+This mighty change, however, was long in silent progress before it began to
+tell on the institutions of the country. When city burghers bought estates,
+the law insisted jealously on their accepting with them all the feudal
+obligations. Attempts to use the land as "a commodity" were, as we shall
+presently see, angrily repressed; while, again, in the majority of
+instances, such persons endeavoured, as they do at present, to cover the
+recent origin of their families by adopting the manners of the nobles,
+instead of transferring the habits of the towns to the parks and chases of
+the English counties. The old English organisation maintained its full
+activity; and the duties of property continued to be for another century
+more considered than its rights.
+
+Turning, then, to the tenure of land--for if we would understand the
+condition of the people, it is to this point that our first attention must
+be directed--we find that through the many complicated varieties of it
+there was one broad principle which bore equally upon every class, that the
+land of England must provide for the defence of England. The feudal system,
+though practically modified, was still the organising principle of the
+nation, and the owner of land was bound to military service for his country
+whenever occasion required. Further, the land was to be so administered,
+that the accustomed number of families supported by it should not be
+diminished, and that the State should suffer no injury from the
+carelessness or selfishness of the owners.[7] Land never was private
+property in that personal sense of property in which we speak of a thing as
+our own, with which we may do as we please; and in the administration of
+estates, as indeed in the administration of all property whatsoever, duty
+to the State was at all times supposed to override private interest or
+inclination. Even tradesmen, who took advantage of the fluctuations of the
+market, were rebuked by parliament for "their greedy and covetous minds,"
+"as more regarding their own singular lucre and profit than the commonweal
+of the Realm;"[8] and although in an altered world, neither industry nor
+enterprise will thrive except under the stimulus of self-interest, we may
+admire the confidence which in another age expected every man to prefer the
+advantage of the community to his own. All land was held upon a strictly
+military principle. It was the representative of authority, and the holder
+or the owner took rank in the army of the State according to the nature of
+his connection with it. It was first broadly divided among the great
+nobility holding immediately under the crown, who, above and beyond the
+ownership of their private estates, were the Lords of the Fee throughout
+their presidency, and possessed in right of it the services of knights and
+gentlemen who held their manors under them, and who followed their standard
+in war. Under the lords of manors, again, small freeholds and copyholds
+were held of various extent, often forty shilling and twenty shilling
+value, tenanted by peasant occupiers, who thus, on their own land, lived as
+free Englishmen, maintaining by their own free labour themselves and their
+families. There was thus a descending scale of owners, each of whom
+possessed his separate right, which the law guarded and none might violate;
+yet no one of whom, again, was independent of an authority higher than
+himself; and the entire body of the English free possessors of the soil was
+interpenetrated by a coherent organisation which converted them into a
+perpetually subsisting army of soldiers. The extent of land which was held
+by the petty freeholders was very large, and the possession of it was
+jealously treasured; the private estates of the nobles and gentlemen were
+either cultivated by their own servants, or let out, as at present, to free
+tenants; or (in earlier times) were occupied by villains, a class who,
+without being bondmen, were expected to furnish further services than those
+of the field, services which were limited by the law, and recognised by an
+outward ceremony, a solemn oath and promise from the villain to his lord.
+Villanage, in the reign of Henry VIII., had practically ceased. The name of
+it last appears upon the statute book in the early years of the reign of
+Richard II., when the disputes between villains and their liege lords on
+their relative rights had furnished matter for cumbrous lawsuits, and by
+general consent the relation had merged of itself into a more liberal form.
+Thus serfdom had merged or was rapidly merging into free servitude; but it
+did not so merge that labouring men, if they pleased, were allowed to live
+in idleness. Every man was regimented somewhere; and although the
+peasantry, when at full age, were allowed, under restrictions, their own
+choice of masters, yet the restrictions both on masters and servants were
+so severe as to prevent either from taking advantage of the necessities of
+the other, or from terminating through caprice or levity, or for any
+insufficient reason, a connection presumed to be permanent.[9]
+
+Through all these arrangements a single aim is visible, that every man in
+England should have his definite place and definite duty assigned to him,
+and that no human being should be at liberty to lead at his own pleasure an
+unaccountable existence. The discipline of an army was transferred to the
+details of social life, and it issued in a chivalrous perception of the
+meaning of the word duty, and in the old characteristic spirit of English
+loyalty.
+
+From the regulations with respect to land, a coarser advantage was also
+derived, of a kind which at the present time will be effectively
+appreciated. It is a common matter of dispute whether landed estates should
+be large or small; whether it is better that the land should be divided
+among small proprietors, cultivating their own ground, or that it should
+follow its present tendency, and be shared by a limited and constantly
+diminishing number of wealthy landlords. The advocates for a peasant
+proprietary tell us truly, that a landed monopoly is dangerous; that the
+possession of a spot of ground, though it be but a few acres, is the best
+security for loyalty, giving the state a pledge for its owner, and creating
+in the body of the nation a free, vigorous, and manly spirit. The advocates
+for the large estates tell us, that the masses are too ill-educated to be
+trusted with independence; that without authority over them, these small
+proprietors become wasteful, careless, improvident; that the free spirit
+becomes a democratic and dangerous spirit; and finally, that the resources
+of the land cannot properly be brought out by men without capital to
+cultivate it. Either theory is plausible. The advocates of both can support
+their arguments with an appeal to experience; and the verdict of fact has
+not as yet been pronounced emphatically.
+
+The problem will be resolved in the future history of this country. It was
+also nobly and skilfully resolved in the past. The knights and nobles
+retained the authority and power which was attached to the lordships of the
+fees. They retained extensive estates in their own hands or in the
+occupation of their immediate tenants; but the large proportion of the
+lands was granted out by them to smaller owners, and the expenditure of
+their own incomes in the wages and maintenance of their vast retinues left
+but a small margin for indulgence in luxuries. The necessities of their
+position obliged them to regard their property rather as a revenue to be
+administered in trust, than as "a fortune" to be expended in indulgence.
+Before the Reformation, while the differences of social degree were
+enormous, the differences in habits of life were comparatively slight, and
+the practice of men in these things was curiously the reverse of our own.
+Dress, which now scarcely suffices to distinguish the master from his
+servant, was then the symbol of rank, prescribed by statute to the various
+orders of society as strictly as the regimental uniform to officers and
+privates; diet also was prescribed, and with equal strictness; but the diet
+of the nobleman was ordered down to a level which was then within the reach
+of the poorest labourer. In 1336, the following law was enacted by the
+Parliament of Edward III.:[10] "Whereas, heretofore through the excessive
+and over-many sorts of costly meats which the people of this Realm have
+used more than elsewhere, many mischiefs have happened to the people of
+this Realm--for the great men by these excesses have been sore grieved; and
+the lesser people, who only endeavour to imitate the great ones in such
+sort of meats, are much impoverished, whereby they are not able to aid
+themselves, nor their liege lord, in time of need, as they ought; and many
+other evils have happened, as well to their souls as their bodies--our Lord
+the King, desiring the common profit as well of the great men as the common
+people of his Realm, and considering the evils, grievances, and mischiefs
+aforesaid, by the common assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and other
+nobles of his said Realm, and of the commons of the same Realm, hath
+ordained and established that no man, of what estate or condition soever he
+be, shall cause himself to be served, in his house or elsewhere, at dinner,
+meal, or supper, or at any other time, with more than two courses, and each
+mess of two sorts of victuals at the utmost, be it of flesh or fish, with
+the common sorts of pottage, without sauce or any other sorts of victuals.
+And if any man choose to have sauce for his mess, he may, provided it be
+not made at great cost; and if fish or flesh be to be mixed therein, it
+shall be of two sorts only at the utmost, either fish or flesh, and shall
+stand instead of a mess, except only on the principal feasts of the year,
+on which days every man may be served with three courses at the utmost,
+after the manner aforesaid."
+
+Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies which we have outgrown, and
+we smile at the unwisdom which could expect to regulate private habits and
+manners by statute. Yet some statutes may be of moral authority when they
+cannot be actually enforced, and may have been regarded, even at the time
+at which they were issued, rather as an authoritative declaration of what
+wise and good men considered to be right, than as laws to which obedience
+could be compelled. This act, at any rate, witnesses to what was then
+thought to be right by "the great persons" of the English realm; and when
+great persons will submit themselves of their free will to regulations
+which restrict their private indulgence, they are in little danger of
+disloyalty from those whom fortune has placed below them.
+
+Such is one aspect of these old arrangements; it is unnecessary to say that
+with these, as with all other institutions created and worked by human
+beings, the picture admits of being reversed. When by the accident of birth
+men are placed in a position of authority, no care in their training will
+prevent it from falling often to singularly unfit persons. The command of a
+permanent military force was a temptation to ambition, to avarice, or
+hatred, to the indulgence of private piques and jealousies, to political
+discontent on private and personal grounds. A combination of three or four
+of the leading nobles was sufficient, when an incapable prince sate on the
+throne, to effect a revolution; and the rival claims of the houses of York
+and Lancaster to the crown, took the form of a war unequalled in history
+for its fierce and determined malignancy, the whole nation tearing itself
+in pieces in a quarrel in which no principle was at stake, and no national
+object was to be gained. A more terrible misfortune never befel either this
+or any other country, and it was made possible only in virtue of that
+loyalty with which the people followed the standard, through good and evil,
+of their feudal superiors. It is still a question, however, whether the
+good or the evil of the system predominated; and the answer to such
+question is the more difficult because we have no criterion by which, in
+these matters, degrees of good and evil admit of being measured. Arising
+out of the character of the nation, it reflected this character in all its
+peculiarities; and there is something truly noble in the coherence of
+society upon principles of fidelity. Fidelity of man to man is among the
+rarest excellences of humanity, and we can tolerate large evils which arise
+out of such a cause. Under the feudal system men were held together by
+oaths, free acknowledgments, and reciprocal obligations, entered into by
+all ranks, high and low, binding servants to their masters, as well as
+nobles to their kings; and in the frequent forms of the language in which
+the oaths were sworn we cannot choose but see that we have lost something
+in exchanging these ties for the harsher connecting links of mutual
+self-interest.
+
+"When a freeman shall do fealty to his lord," the statute says, "he shall
+hold his right hand upon the book, and shall say thus:--Hear you, my lord,
+that I shall be to you both faithful and true, and shall owe my faith to
+you for the land that I hold, and lawfully shall do such customs and
+services as my duty is to you, at the times assigned, so help me God and
+all his saints."
+
+"The villain," also, "when he shall do fealty to his lord, shall hold his
+right hand over the book, and shall say:--Hear you, my lord, that I from
+this day forth unto you shall be true and faithful, and shall owe you
+fealty for the land which I hold of you in villanage; and that no evil or
+damage will I see concerning you, but I will defend and warn you to my
+power. So help me God and all his saints."[11]
+
+Again, in the distribution of the produce of land, men dealt fairly and
+justly with each other; and in the material condition of the bulk of the
+people there is a fair evidence that the system worked efficiently and
+well. It worked well for the support of a sturdy high-hearted race, sound
+in body and fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews and sinews which,
+under the stimulus of those "great shins of beef,"[12] their common diet,
+were the wonder of the age. "What comyn folke in all this world," says a
+state paper in 1515[13] "may compare with the comyns of England in riches,
+freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn folke is so
+mighty, so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?" The relative
+numbers of the French and English armies which fought at Cressy and
+Agincourt may have been exaggerated, but no allowance for exaggeration will
+effect the greatness of those exploits; and in stories of authentic actions
+under Henry VIII., where the accuracy of the account is undeniable, no
+disparity of force made Englishmen shrink from enemies wherever they could
+meet them. Again and again a few thousands of them carried dismay into the
+heart of France. Four hundred adventurers, vagabond apprentices, from
+London,[14] who formed a volunteer corps in the Calais garrison, were for
+years the terror of Normandy. In the very frolic of conscious power they
+fought and plundered, without pay, without reward, except what they could
+win for themselves; and when they fell at last they fell only when
+surrounded by six times their number, and were cut to pieces in careless
+desperation. Invariably, by friend and enemy alike, the English are
+described as the fiercest people in all Europe (the English wild beasts,
+Benvenuto Cellini calls them); and this great physical power they owed to
+the profuse abundance in which they lived, and to the soldier's training in
+which every man of them was bred from childhood. The state of the working
+classes can, however, be more certainly determined by a comparison of their
+wages with the prices of food. Both were regulated, so far as regulation
+was possible, by act of parliament, and we have therefore data of the
+clearest kind by which to judge. The majority of agricultural labourers
+lived, as I have said, in the houses of their employers; this, however, was
+not the case with all, and if we can satisfy ourselves as to the rate at
+which those among the poor were able to live who had cottages of their own,
+we may be assured that the rest did not live worse at their masters'
+tables.
+
+Wheat, the price of which necessarily varied, averaged in the middle of the
+fourteenth century tenpence the bushel;[15] barley averaging at the same
+time three shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuation was excessive;
+a table of its possible variations describes it as ranging from
+eighteenpence the quarter to twenty shillings; the average, however, being
+six and eightpence.[16] When the price was above this sum, the merchants
+might import to bring it down;[17] when it was below this price the farmers
+were allowed to export to the foreign markets.[18] The same scale, with a
+scarcely appreciable tendency to rise, continued to hold until the
+disturbance in the value of the currency. In the twelve years from 1551 to
+1562, although once before harvest wheat rose to the extraordinary price of
+forty-five shillings a quarter, it fell immediately after to five shillings
+and four.[19] Six and eightpence continued to be considered in parliament
+as the average; [20] and on the whole it seems to have been maintained for
+that time with little variation.[21]
+
+Beef and pork were a halfpenny a pound--mutton was three farthings. They
+were fixed at these prices by the 3rd of the 24th of Hen. VIII. But the act
+was unpopular both with buyers and with sellers. The old practice had been
+to sell in the gross, and under that arrangement the rates had been
+generally lower. Stow says,[22] "It was this year enacted that butchers
+should sell their beef and mutton by weight--beef for a halfpenny the
+pound, and mutton for three farthings; which being devised for the great
+commodity of the realm (as it was thought), hath proved far otherwise: for
+at that time fat oxen were sold for six and twenty shillings and eightpence
+the piece; fat wethers for three shillings and fourpence the piece; fat
+calves at a like price; and fat lambs for twelvepence. The butchers of
+London sold penny pieces of beef for the relief of the poor--every piece
+two pound and a half, sometimes three pound for a penny; and thirteen and
+sometimes fourteen of these pieces for twelvepence; mutton eightpence the
+quarter, and an hundred weight of beef for four shillings and eightpence."
+The act was repealed in consequence of the complaints against it,[23] but
+the prices never fell again to what they had been, although beef sold in
+the gross could still be had for a halfpenny a pound in 1570.[24] Other
+articles of food were in the same proportion. The best pig or goose in a
+country market could be bought for fourpence; a good capon for threepence
+or fourpence; a chicken for a penny; a hen for twopence.[25]
+
+Strong beer, such as we now buy for eighteenpence a gallon, was then a
+penny a gallon;[26] and table-beer less than a halfpenny. French and German
+wines were eightpence the gallon. Spanish and Portuguese wines a shilling.
+This was the highest price at which the best wines might be sold; and if
+there was any fault in quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four
+times the amount.[27] Rent, another important consideration, cannot be
+fixed so accurately, for parliament did not interfere with it. Here,
+however, we are not without very tolerable information. "My father," says
+Latimer,[28] "was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own; only he had a
+_farm of three or four pounds by the year_ at the uttermost, and hereupon
+he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred
+sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king
+a harness with himself and his horse. I remember that I buckled on his
+harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I
+had not been able to have preached before the King's Majesty now. He
+married my sisters with five pounds, or twenty nobles, each, having brought
+them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor
+neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor; and all this he did of the
+said farm." If "three or four pounds at the uttermost" was the rent of a
+farm yielding such results, the rent of labourers' cottages is not likely
+to have been considerable.[29]
+
+Some uncertainty is unavoidable in all calculations of the present nature;
+yet, after making the utmost allowances for errors, we may conclude from
+such a table of prices that a penny, in terms of the labourer's
+necessities, must have been nearly equal in the reign of Henry VIII. to the
+present shilling. For a penny, at the time of which I write, the labourer
+could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine--he could do as much towards
+finding lodging for himself and his family--as the labourer of the
+nineteenth century can for a shilling. I do not see that this admits of
+question. Turning, then, to the table of wages, it will be easy to
+ascertain his position. By the 3rd of the 6th of Henry VIII. it was enacted
+that master carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers, plumbers, glaziers,
+joiners, and other employers of such skilled workmen, should give to each
+of their journeymen, if no meat or drink was allowed, sixpence a day for
+the half year, fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence-halfpenny
+for the yearly average. The common labourers were to receive fourpence a
+day for half the year, for the remaining half, threepence.[30] In the
+harvest months they were allowed to work by the piece, and might earn
+considerably more;[31] so that, in fact (and this was the rate at which
+their wages were usually estimated), the day labourer, if in full
+employment, received on an average fourpence a day for the whole year.
+Allowing a deduction of one day in a fortnight for a saint's day or a
+holiday, he received, therefore, steadily and regularly, if well conducted,
+an equivalent of something near to twenty shillings a week, the wages at
+present paid in English colonies: and this is far from being a full account
+of his advantages. Except in rare instances, the agricultural labourer held
+land in connection with his house, while in most parishes, if not in all,
+there were large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land, which
+furnished his fuel to him gratis, where pigs might range, and ducks and
+geese; where, if he could afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable
+to feed it; and so important was this privilege considered, that when the
+commons began to be largely enclosed, parliament insisted that the working
+man should not be without some piece of ground on which he could employ his
+own and his family's industry.[32] By the 7th of the 31st of Elizabeth, it
+was ordered that no cottage should be built for residence without four
+acres of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the
+occupants of such cottage.
+
+It will, perhaps, be supposed that such comparative prosperity of labour
+was the result of the condition of the market in which it was sold, that
+the demand for labour was large and the supply limited, and that the state
+of England in the sixteenth century was analogous to that of Australia or
+Canada at the present time. And so long as we confine our view to the
+question of wages alone, it is undoubted that legislation was in favour of
+the employer. The Wages Act of Henry VIII. was unpopular with the
+labourers, and was held to deprive them of an opportunity of making better
+terms for themselves.[33] But we shall fall into extreme error if we
+translate into the language of modern political economy the social features
+of a state of things which in no way correspond to our own. There was this
+essential difference, that labour was not looked upon as a market
+commodity; the government (whether wisely or not, I do not presume to
+determine) attempting to portion out the rights of the various classes of
+society by the rule, not of economy, but of equity. Statesmen did not care
+for the accumulation of capital; they desired to see the physical
+well-being of all classes of the commonwealth maintained at the highest
+degree which the producing power of the country admitted; and population
+and production remaining stationary, they were able to do it. This was
+their object, and they were supported in it by a powerful and efficient
+majority of the nation. On the one side parliament interfered to protect
+employers against their labourers; but it was equally determined that
+employers should not be allowed to abuse their opportunities; and this
+directly appears from the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth, by which, on the
+most trifling appearance of a depreciation in the currency, it was declared
+that the labouring man could no longer live on the wages assigned to him by
+the act of Henry; and a sliding scale was instituted by which, for the
+future, wages should be adjusted to the price of food.[34]
+
+The same conclusion may be gathered also, indirectly, from other acts,
+interfering imperiously with the rights of property where a disposition
+showed itself to exercise them selfishly. The city merchants, as I have
+said, were becoming landowners; and some of them attempted to apply the
+rules of trade to the management of landed estates. While wages were ruled
+so high, it answered better as a speculation to convert arable land into
+pasture; but the law immediately stepped in to prevent a proceeding which
+it regarded as petty treason to the commonwealth. Self-protection is the
+first law of life; and the country relying for its defence on an
+able-bodied population, evenly distributed, ready at any moment to be
+called into action, either against foreign invasion or civil disturbance,
+it could not permit the owners of land to pursue for their own benefit a
+course of action which threatened to weaken its garrisons. It is not often
+that we are able to test the wisdom of legislation by specific results so
+clearly as in the present instance. The first attempts of the kind which I
+have described were made in the Isle of Wight, early in the reign of Henry
+VII. Lying so directly exposed to attacks from France, the Isle of Wight
+was a place which it was peculiarly important to keep in a state of
+defence, and the following act was therefore the consequence:--
+
+"Forasmuch as it is to the surety of the Realm of England that the Isle of
+Wight, in the county of Southampton, be well inhabited with English people,
+for the defence as well of our antient enemies of the Realm of France as of
+other parties; the which Isle is late decayed of people by reason that many
+towns and villages have been let down, and the fields dyked and made
+pasture for beasts and cattle, and also many dwelling-places, farms, and
+farmholds have of late time been used to be taken into one man's hold and
+hands, that of old time were wont to be in many several persons' holds and
+hands, and many several households kept in them; and thereby much people
+multiplied, and the same Isle thereby well inhabited, which now, by the
+occasion aforesaid, is desolate and not inhabited, but occupied with beasts
+and cattle, so that if hasty remedy be not provided, that Isle cannot long
+be kept and defended, but open and ready to the hands of the king's
+enemies, which God forbid. For remedy hereof, it is ordained and enacted
+that no manner of person, of what estate, degree, or condition soever,
+shall take any several farms more than one, whereof the yearly value shall
+not exceed the sum of ten marks; and if any several leases afore this time
+have been made to any person or persons of divers and sundry farmholds,
+whereof the yearly value shall exceed that sum, then the said person or
+persons shall choose one farmhold at his pleasure, and the remnant of his
+leases shall be utterly void."[35]
+
+An act, tyrannical in form, was singularly justified by its consequences.
+The farms were rebuilt, the lands reploughed, the island repeopled; and in
+1546, when a French army of sixty thousand men attempted to effect a
+landing at St. Helen's, they were defeated and driven off by the militia of
+the island and a few levies transported from Hampshire and the adjoining
+counties.[36] The money-making spirit, however, lay too deep to be checked
+so readily. The trading classes were growing rich under the strong rule of
+the Tudors. Increasing numbers of them were buying or renting land; and the
+symptoms complained of broke out in the following reign in many parts of
+England. They could not choose but break out indeed; for they were the
+outward marks of a vital change, which was undermining the feudal
+constitution, and would by and bye revolutionise and destroy it. Such
+symptoms it was impossible to extinguish; but the government wrestled long
+and powerfully to hold down the new spirit; and they fought against it
+successfully, till the old order of things had finished its work, and the
+time was come for it to depart. By the 1st of the 7th of Henry VIII., the
+laws of feudal tenure were put in force against the landed traders.
+Wherever lands were converted from tillage to pasture, the lords of the fee
+had authority to seize half of all profits until the farm-buildings were
+reconstructed. If the immediate lord did not do his duty, the lord next
+above him was to do it; and the evil still increasing, the act, twenty
+years later, was extended further, and the king had power to seize.[37] Nor
+was this all. Sheep-farming had become an integral branch of business; and
+falling into the hands of men who understood each other, it had been made a
+monopoly, affecting seriously the prices of wool and mutton.[38] Stronger
+measures were therefore now taken, and the class to which the offenders
+belonged was especially pointed out by parliament.
+
+"Whereas," says the 13th of the 25th of Henry VIII., "divers and sundry
+persons of the king's subjects of this Realm, to whom God of his goodness
+hath disposed great plenty and abundance of moveable substance, now of
+late, within few years, have daily studied, practised, and invented ways
+and means how they might accumulate and gather together into few hands, as
+well great multitude of farms as great plenty of cattle, and in especial,
+sheep, putting such lands as they can get to pasture and not to tillage;
+whereby they have not only pulled down churches and towns and enhanced the
+old rates of the rents of the possessions of this Realm, or else brought it
+to such excessive fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it, but
+also have raised and enhanced the prices of all manner of corn, cattle,
+wool, pigs, geese, hens, chickens, eggs, and such other commodities, almost
+double above the prices which hath been accustomed, by reason whereof a
+marvellous multitude of the poor people of this realm be not able to
+provide meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, and
+children, but be so discouraged with misery and poverty, that they fall
+daily to theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for
+hunger and cold; and it is thought by the king's humble and loving
+subjects, that one of the greatest occasions that moveth those greedy and
+covetous people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great
+portions and parts of the lands of this Realm from the occupying of the
+poor husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the
+great profit that cometh of sheep which be now come into a few persons'
+hands, in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects; it is hereby
+enacted, that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own
+inheritance more than 2000 sheep; that no person shall occupy more than two
+farms; and that the 19th of the 4th of Henry VII., and those other acts
+obliging the lords of the fees to do their duty, shall be re-enacted and
+enforced."[39]
+
+By these measures the money-making spirit was for a time driven back, and
+the country resumed its natural course. I am not concerned to defend the
+economic wisdom of such proceedings; but they prove, I think, conclusively,
+that the labouring classes owed their advantages not to the condition of
+the labour market, but to the care of the state; and that when the state
+relaxed its supervision, or failed to enforce its regulations, the
+labourers being left to the market chances, sank instantly in the unequal
+struggle with capital.
+
+The government, however, remained strong enough to hold its ground (except
+during the discreditable interlude of the reign of Edward VI.) for the
+first three quarters of the century; and until that time the working
+classes of this country remained in a condition more than prosperous. They
+enjoyed an abundance far beyond what in general falls to the lot of that
+order in long-settled countries; incomparably beyond what the same class
+were enjoying at that very time in Germany or France. The laws secured
+them; and that the laws were put in force we have the direct evidence of
+successive acts of the legislature justifying the general policy by its
+success: and we have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of
+the great body of the people at a time when, if they had been discontented,
+they held in their own hands the means of asserting what the law
+acknowledged to be their right. The government had no power to compel
+submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a
+"benevolence" by force, in 1525. The people resisted with a determination
+against which the crown commissioners were unable to contend, and the
+scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a
+good grace from an impossible position. If the peasantry had been suffering
+under any real grievances we should not have failed to have heard of them
+when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to press
+those grievances forward. Complaint was loud enough when complaint was
+just, under the Somerset protectorate. [40]
+
+The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, for they varied
+probably as much as they vary now. Under Henry IV. the average income of an
+earl was estimated at £2000 a year.[41] Under Henry VIII. the great Duke of
+Buckingham, the wealthiest English peer, had £6000.[42] And the income of
+the Archbishop of Canterbury was rated at the same amount.[43] But the
+establishments of such men were enormous; their ordinary retinues in time
+of peace consisting of many hundred persons; and in war, when the duties of
+a nobleman called him to the field, although in theory his followers were
+paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament were on so small a scale
+that the theory was seldom converted into fact, and a large share of the
+expenses was paid often out of private purses. The Duke of Norfolk, in the
+Scotch war of 1523, declared (not complaining of it, but merely as a reason
+why he should receive support) that he had spent all his private means upon
+the army; and in the sequel of this history we shall find repeated
+instances of knights and gentlemen voluntarily ruining themselves in the
+service of their country. The people, not universally, but generally, were
+animated by a true spirit of sacrifice; by a true conviction that they were
+bound to think first of England, and only next of themselves; and unless we
+can bring ourselves to understand this, we shall never understand what
+England was under the reigns of the Plantagenets and Tudors. The expenses
+of the court under Henry VII. were a little over £14,000 a year, out of
+which were defrayed the whole cost of the king's establishment, the
+expenses of entertaining foreign ambassadors, the wages and maintenance of
+the yeomen of the guard, the retinues of servants, and all necessary outlay
+not incurred for public business. Under Henry VIII., of whose extravagance
+we have heard so much, and whose court was the most magnificent in the
+world, these expenses were £19,894 16s. 8d.,[44] a small sum when compared
+with the present cost of the royal establishment, even if we adopt the
+relative estimate of twelve to one, and suppose it equal to £240,000 a year
+of our money. But indeed it was not equal to £240,000; for, although the
+proportion held in articles of common consumption, articles of luxury were
+very dear indeed.[45]
+
+Passing down from the king and his nobles, to the body of the people, we
+find that the income qualifying a country gentleman to be justice of the
+peace was £20 a year, [46] and if he did his duty, his office was no
+sinecure. We remember Justice Shallow and his clerk Davy, with his novel
+theory of magisterial law; and Shallow's broad features have so English a
+cast about them, that we may believe there were many such, and that the
+duty was not always very excellently done. But the Justice Shallows were
+not allowed to repose upon their dignity. The justice of the peace was
+required not only to take cognisance of open offences, but to keep
+surveillance over all persons within his district, and over himself in his
+own turn there was a surveillance no less sharp, and penalties for neglect
+prompt and peremptory.[47] Four times a year he was to make proclamation of
+his duty, and exhort all persons to complain against him who had occasion.
+
+Twenty pounds a year, and heavy duties to do for it, represented the
+condition of the squire of the parish.[48] By the 2nd of the 2nd of Henry
+V., "the wages" of a parish priest were limited to £5 6s. 8d., except in
+cases where there was special licence from the bishop, when they might be
+raised as high as £6. Priests were probably something better off under
+Henry VIII., but the statute remained in force, and marks an approach at
+least to their ordinary salary.[49] The priest had enough, being unmarried,
+to supply him in comfort with the necessaries of life. The squire had
+enough to provide moderate abundance for himself and his family. Neither
+priest nor squire was able to establish any steep difference in outward
+advantages between himself and the commons among whom he lived.
+
+The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are two
+expressions corresponding one to the other, which we frequently meet with
+in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether the
+condition of things was or was not what it ought to be. We read of "merry
+England;"--when England was not merry, things were not going well with it.
+We hear of "the glory of hospitality," England's pre-eminent boast,-by the
+rules of which all tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder
+to the table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the
+dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked:[50]
+to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it there was
+free fee and free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for his dinner; for his
+lodging, perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall, with
+a billet of wood for a pillow,[51] but freely offered and freely taken, the
+guest probably faring much as his host fared, neither worse nor better.
+There was little fear of an abuse of such licence, for suspicious
+characters had no leave to wander at pleasure; and for any man found at
+large and unable to give a sufficient account of himself, there were the
+ever-ready parish stocks or town gaol. The "glory of hospitality" lasted
+far down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, "came in great
+bravery of building, to the marvellous beautifying of the realm, but to the
+decay" of what he valued more.
+
+In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all their
+hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest carrying their
+hearts high, and having their hands full. The[52] hour of rising, winter
+and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the
+labourers went to work and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no
+little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and examined--if
+the account given was insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if
+the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made
+"unhonest" shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be looked
+to by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with him.
+At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his farm or to what
+he pleased.[53] It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but coloured with a
+broad, rosy, English health.
+
+Of the education of noblemen and gentlemen we have contradictory accounts,
+as might be expected. The universities were well filled, by the sons of
+yeomen chiefly. The cost of supporting them at the colleges was little, and
+wealthy men took a pride in helping forward any boys of promise.[54] It
+seems clear also, as the Reformation drew nearer, while the clergy were
+sinking lower and lower, a marked change for the better became perceptible
+in a portion at least of the laity. The more old-fashioned of the higher
+ranks were slow in moving; for as late as the reign of Edward VI.[55] there
+were peers of parliament unable to read; but on the whole, the invention of
+printing, and the general ferment which was commencing all over the world,
+had produced marked effects in all classes. Henry VIII. himself spoke four
+languages, and was well read in theology and history; and the high
+accomplishments of More and Sir T. Elliott, of Wyatt and Cromwell, were but
+the extreme expression of a temper which was rapidly spreading, and which
+gave occasion, among other things to the following reflection in Erasmus.
+"Oh, strange vicissitudes of human things," exclaims he. "Heretofore the
+heart of learning was among such as professed religion. Now, while they for
+the most part give themselves up, _ventri luxui pecunięque_, the love of
+learning is gone from them to secular princes, the court and the nobility.
+May we not justly be ashamed of ourselves? The feasts of priests and
+divines are drowned in wine, are filled with scurrilous jests, sound with
+intemperate noise and tumult, flow with spiteful slanders and defamation of
+others; while at princes' tables modest disputations are held concerning
+things which make for learning and piety."
+
+A letter to Thomas Cromwell from his son's tutor will not be without
+interest on this subject; Cromwell was likely to have been unusually
+careful in his children's training, and we need not suppose that all boys
+were brought up as prudently. Sir Peter Carew, for instance, being a boy at
+about the same time, and giving trouble at the High School at Exeter, was
+led home to his father's house at Ottery, coupled between two
+foxhounds.[56] Yet the education of Gregory Cromwell is probably not far
+above what many young men of the middle and higher ranks were beginning to
+receive. Henry Dowes was the tutor's name, beyond which fact I know nothing
+of him. His letter is as follows:--
+
+"After that it pleased your mastership to give me in charge, not only to
+give diligent attendance upon Master Gregory, but also to instruct him with
+good letters, honest manners, pastyme of instruments, and such other
+qualities as should be for him meet and convenient, pleaseth it you to
+understand that for the accomplishment thereof I have endeavoured myself by
+all ways possible to excogitate how I might most profit him. In which
+behalf, through his diligence, the success is such as I trust shall be to
+your good contentation and pleasure, and to his no small profit. But for
+cause the summer was spent in the service of the wild gods, [and] it is so
+much to be regarded after what fashion youth is brought up, in which time
+that that is learned for the most part will not be wholly forgotten in the
+older years, I think it my duty to acertain your mastership how he spendeth
+his time. And first after he hath heard mass he taketh a lecture of a
+dialogue of Erasmus' _Colloquies_, called _Pietas Puerilis_, wherein is
+described a very picture of one that should be virtuously brought up; and
+for cause it is so necessary for him, I do not only cause him to read it
+over, but also to practise the precepts of the same. After this he
+exerciseth his hand in writing one or two hours, and readeth upon Fabyan's
+_Chronicle_ as long. The residue of the day he doth spend upon the lute and
+virginals. When he rideth, as he doth very oft, I tell him by the way some
+history of the Romans or the Greeks, which I cause him to rehearse again in
+a tale. For his recreation he useth to hawk and hunt and shoot in his long
+bow, which frameth and succeedeth so well with him that he seemeth to be
+thereunto given by nature."[57]
+
+I have spoken of the organisation of the country population, I have now to
+speak of that of the towns, of the trading classes and manufacturing
+classes, the regulations respecting which are no less remarkable and no
+less illustrative of the national character. If the tendency of trade to
+assume at last a form of mere self-interest be irresistible, if political
+economy represent the laws to which in the end it is forced to submit
+itself, the nation spared no efforts, either of art or policy, to defer to
+the last moment the unwelcome conclusion.
+
+The names and shadows linger about London of certain ancient societies, the
+members of which may still occasionally be seen in quaint gilt barges
+pursuing their own difficult way among the swarming steamers; when on
+certain days, the traditions concerning which are fast dying out of memory,
+the Fishmongers' Company, the Goldsmiths' Company, the Mercers' Company,
+make procession down the river for civic feastings at Greenwich or
+Blackwall. The stately tokens of ancient honour still belong to them, and
+the remnants of ancient wealth and patronage and power. Their charters may
+be read by curious antiquaries, and the bills of fare of their ancient
+entertainments. But for what purpose they were called into being, what
+there was in these associations of common trades to surround with gilded
+insignia, and how they came to be possessed of broad lands and church
+preferments, few people now care to think or to inquire. Trade and traders
+have no dignity any more in the eyes of any one, except what money lends to
+them; and these outward symbols scarcely rouse even a passing feeling of
+curiosity. And yet these companies were once something more than names.
+They are all which now remain of a vast organisation which once penetrated
+the entire trading life of England--an organisation set on foot to realise
+that most necessary, if most difficult, condition of commercial excellence
+under which man should deal faithfully with his brother, and all wares
+offered for sale, of whatever kind, should honestly be what they pretend to
+be.[58] I spoke of the military principle which directed the distribution
+and the arrangements of land. The analogy will best explain a state of
+things in which every occupation was treated as the division of an army;
+regiments being quartered in every town, each with its own self-elected
+officers, whose duty was to exercise authority over all persons professing
+the business to which they belonged; who were to see that no person
+undertook to supply articles which he had not been educated to manufacture;
+who were to determine the prices at which such articles ought justly to be
+sold; above all, who were to take care that the common people really bought
+at shops and stalls what they supposed themselves to be buying; that cloth
+put up for sale was true cloth, of true texture and full weight: that
+leather was sound and well tanned; wine pure, measures honest; flour
+unmixed with devil's dust;--who were generally to look to it that in all
+contracts between man and man for the supply of man's necessities, what we
+call honesty of dealing should be truly and faithfully observed.[59] An
+organisation for this purpose did once really exist in England,[60] really
+trying to do the work which it was intended to do, as half the pages of our
+early statutes witness. In London, as the metropolis, a central council
+sate for every branch of trade, and this council was in communication with
+the Chancellor and the Crown. It was composed of the highest and most
+respectable members of the profession, and its office was to determine
+prices, fix wages, arrange the rules of apprenticeship, and discuss all
+details connected with the business on which legislation might be required.
+Further, this council received the reports of the searchers--high officers
+taken from their own body, whose business was to inspect, in company with
+the lord mayor or some other city dignitary, the shops of the respective
+traders; to receive complaints, and to examine into them. In each
+provincial town local councils sate in connection with the municipal
+authorities, who fulfilled in these places the same duties; and their
+reports being forwarded to the central body, and considered by them,
+representations on all necessary matters were then made to the privy
+council; and by the privy council, if requisite, were submitted to
+parliament. If these representations were judged to require legislative
+interference, the statutes which were passed in consequence were returned
+through the Chancellor to the mayors of the various towns and cities, by
+whom they were proclaimed as law. No person was allowed to open a trade or
+to commence a manufacture, either in London or the provinces, unless he had
+first served his apprenticeship; unless he could prove to the satisfaction
+of the authorities that he was competent in his craft; and unless he
+submitted as a matter of course to their supervision. The legislature had
+undertaken not to let that indispensable task go wholly unattempted, of
+distributing the various functions of society by the rule of capacity; of
+compelling every man to do his duty in an honest following of his proper
+calling, securing to him that he in his turn should not be injured by his
+neighbour's misdoings.
+
+The state further promising for itself that all able-bodied men should be
+found in work,[61] and not allowing any man to work at a business for which
+he was unfit, insisted as its natural right that children should not be
+allowed to grow up in idleness, to be returned at mature age upon its
+hands. Every child, so far as possible, was to be trained up in some
+business or calling,[62] idleness "being the mother of all sin," and the
+essential duty of every man being to provide honestly for himself and his
+family. The educative theory, for such it was, was simple but effective: it
+was based on the single principle that, next to the knowledge of a man's
+duty to God, and as a means towards doing that duty, the first condition of
+a worthy life was the ability to maintain it in independence. Varieties of
+inapplicable knowledge might be good, but they were not essential; such
+knowledge might be left to the leisure of after years, or it might be
+dispensed with without vital injury. Ability to labour could not be
+dispensed with, and this, therefore, the state felt it to be its own duty
+to see provided; so reaching, I cannot but think, the heart of the whole
+matter. The children of those who could afford the small entrance fees were
+apprenticed to trades, the rest were apprenticed to agriculture; and if
+children were found growing up idle, and their fathers or their friends
+failed to prove that they were able to secure them an ultimate maintenance,
+the mayors in towns and the magistrates in the country had authority to
+take possession of such children, and apprentice them as they saw fit, that
+when they grew up "they might not be driven" by want or incapacity "to
+dishonest courses."[63]
+
+Such is an outline of the organisation of English society under the
+Plantagenets and Tudors. A detail of the working of the trade laws would be
+beyond my present purpose. It is obvious that such laws could be enforced
+only under circumstances when production and population remained (as I said
+before) nearly stationary; and it would be madness to attempt to apply them
+to the changed condition of the present. It would be well if some competent
+person would make these laws the subject of a special treatise. I will run
+the risk, however, of wearying the reader with two or three illustrative
+statutes, which I have chosen, not as being more significant than many
+others, but as specimens merely of the discipline under which, for
+centuries, the trade and manufactures of England contrived to move; showing
+on one side the good which the system effected, on the other the inevitable
+evils under which it finally sank.
+
+The first which I shall quote concerns simply the sale of specific goods
+and the means by which tradesmen were prevented from enhancing prices. The
+Act is the 6th of the 24th of Henry VIII., and concerns the sale of wines,
+the statute prices of which I have already mentioned.
+
+"Because," says this Act, "that divers merchants inhabiting within the city
+of London have of late not only presumed to bargain and sell in gross to
+divers of the king's subjects great quantities of wines of Gascony,
+Guienne, and French wines, some for five pounds per tonne, some for more
+and some for less, and so after the rate of excessive prices contrary to
+the effect of a good and laudable statute lately made in this present
+parliament; that is to say, contrary to and above the prices thereof set by
+the Right Honourable Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Lord President of the
+King's most honourable Council, Lord Privy Seal, and the two Chief Justices
+of either bench, whereby they be fallen into the penalties limited by the
+said statute; as by due proof made by examination taken is well known--but
+also having in their hands great abundance of wine, by them acquired and
+bought to be sold, obstinately and maliciously, since their said attemptate
+and defaults proved, have refused to bargain and sell to many of the king's
+subjects any of their said wines remaining and being in their hands;
+purposing and intending thereby their own singular and unreasonable lucres
+and profits, to have larger and higher prices of their said wines, to be
+set according to their insatiable appetites and minds; it is therefore
+ordained and enacted, by authority of this present parliament, that every
+merchant now having, or which shall hereafter have, wines to be sold, and
+refusing to sell or deliver, or not selling and delivering any of the said
+wines for ready money therefore to be paid, according to the price or
+prices thereof being set, shall forfeit and lose the value of the wine so
+required to be bought.... For due execution of which provision, and for the
+relief of the king's subjects, it shall be lawful to all and singular
+justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head officers in shires,
+cities, boroughs, towns, etc., at the request of any person to whom the
+said merchant or merchants have refused to sell, to enter into the cellars
+and other places where such wines shall lie or be, and to sell and deliver
+the same wine or wines desired to be bought to the person or persons
+requiring to buy the same; taking of the buyer of the wine so sold to the
+use and satisfaction of the proprietor aforesaid, according to the prices
+determined by the law."
+
+The next which I select is the eleventh of the second and third of Philip
+and Mary; and falling in the midst of the smoke of the Smithfield fires,
+and the cruelties of that melancholy time, it shines like a fair gleam of
+humanity, which will not lose anything of its lustre because the evils
+against which it contends have in our times, also, furnished matter for
+sorrow and calamity--calamity which we unhappily have been unable even to
+attempt to remedy. It is termed "An Act touching Weavers," and runs:
+
+"Forasmuch as the weavers of this realm have, as well at this present
+parliament as at divers other times, complained that the rich and wealthy
+clothiers do in many ways oppress them--some by setting up and keeping in
+their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining them by journeymen
+and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which
+were brought up in the said science of weaving, with their families and
+their households--some by engrossing of looms into their hands and
+possession, and letting them out at such unreasonable rents, as the poor
+artificers are not able to maintain themselves, much less maintain their
+wives, families, and children--some also by giving much less wages and hire
+for weaving and workmanship than in times past they did, whereby they are
+enforced utterly to forsake their art and occupation wherein they have been
+brought up; It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the
+avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it
+be not foreseen, ordained and enacted by authority of this present
+parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making, and
+dwelling out of a city, borough, market-town, or corporate town, shall
+keep, or retain, or have in his or their houses or possession, any more
+than one woollen loom at a time; nor shall by any means, directly or
+indirectly, receive or take any manner of profit, gain, or commodity, by
+letting or setting any loom, or any house wherein any loom is or shall be
+used or occupied, which shall be together by him set or let, upon pain of
+forfeiture for every week that any person shall do the contrary to the
+tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings."
+
+A provision then follows, limiting weavers living in towns to two
+looms--the plain intention being to prevent the cloth manufacture from
+falling into the power of large capitalists employing "hands;" and to
+enable as many persons as possible to earn all in their own homes their own
+separate independent living. I suppose that the parliament was aware that
+by pursuing this policy the cost of production was something increased;
+that cloth was thus made dearer than it would have been if trade had been
+left to follow its own course. It considered, however, that the loss was
+compensated to the nation by retaining its people in the condition not of
+"hands," but of men; by rendering them independent of masters, who only
+sought to make their own advantage at the expense of labour; and enabling
+them to continue to maintain themselves in manly freedom. The weak point of
+all such provisions did not lie, I think, in the economic aspect of them,
+but in a far deeper difficulty. The details of trade legislation, it is
+obvious, could only be determined by persons professionally conversant with
+those details; and the indispensable condition of success with such
+legislation is, that it be conducted under the highest sense of the
+obligations of honesty. No laws are of any service which are above the
+working level of public morality; and the deeper they are carried down into
+life, the larger become the opportunities of evasion. That the system
+succeeded for centuries is evident from the organisation of the companies
+remaining so long in its vitality; but the efficiency of this organisation
+for the maintenance of fair dealing could exist only so long as the
+companies themselves--their wardens and their other officials, who alone,
+_quisque in suā arte_, were competent to judge what was right and what was
+wrong--could be trusted, at the same time being interested parties, to give
+a disinterested judgment. The largeness of the power inevitably committed
+to the councils was at once a temptation and an opportunity to abuse those
+powers; and slowly through the statute book we find the traces of the
+poison as it crept in and in. Already in the 24th of Henry VIII., we meet
+with complaints in the leather trade of the fraudulent conduct of the
+searchers, whose duty was to affix their seal upon leather ascertained to
+be sound, before it was exposed for sale, "which mark or print, for
+corruption and lucre, is commonly set and put by such as take upon them the
+search and sealing, as well upon leather insufficiently tanned, as upon
+leather well tanned, to the great deceit of the buyers thereof." About the
+same time, the "craft wardens" of the various fellowships, "out of sinister
+mind and purpose," were levying excessive fees on the admission of
+apprentices; and when parliament interfered to bring them to order, they
+"compassed and practised by cautill and subtle means to delude the good and
+wholesome statutes passed for remedy."[64] The old proverb, _Quis custodiat
+custodes_, had begun to verify itself, and the symptom was a fatal one.
+These evils, for the first half of the century, remained within compass;
+but as we pass on we find them increasing steadily. In the 7th and the 8th
+of Elizabeth, there are indications of the truck system; and towards her
+later years, the multiplying statutes and growing complaints and
+difficulties show plainly that the companies had lost their healthy
+vitality, and, with other relics of feudalism, were fast taking themselves
+away. There were no longer tradesmen to be found in sufficient numbers who
+were possessed of the necessary probity; and it is impossible not to
+connect such a phenomenon with the deep melancholy which in those years
+settled down on Elizabeth herself.
+
+For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction
+of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths
+trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing
+away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a
+dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to
+crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the
+old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up
+beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk
+back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth
+itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in
+the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit in which they
+had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer.
+
+And now it is all gone--like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us
+and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the
+historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our
+imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the
+cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their
+tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of what these men were when
+they were alive; and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that peculiar
+creation of medięval age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a
+vanished world.
+
+The transition out of this old state is what in this book I have undertaken
+to relate. As yet there were uneasy workings below the surface; but the
+crust was unbroken, and the nation remained outwardly unchanged as it had
+been for centuries. I have still some few features to add to my
+description.
+
+Nothing, I think, proves more surely the mutual confidence which held
+together the government and the people, than the fact that all classes were
+armed. Every man, as I have already said, was a soldier; and every man was
+ready equipped at all times with the arms which corresponded to his rank.
+By the great statute of Winchester,[65] which was repeated and expanded on
+many occasions in the after reigns, it was enacted, "That every man have
+harness in his house to keep the peace after the antient assise--that is to
+say, every man between fifteen years of age and sixty years shall be
+assessed and sworn to armour according to the quantity of his lands and
+goods--that is, to wit, for fifteen pounds lands and forty marks goods, a
+hauberke, a helmet of iron, a sword, a dagger, and a horse. For ten pounds
+of lands and twenty marks goods, a hauberke, a helmet, a sword, and a
+dagger. For five pounds lands, a doublet, a helmet of iron, a sword, and a
+dagger. For forty shillings lands, a sword, a bow and arrows, and a dagger.
+And all others that may shall have bows and arrows. Review of armour shall
+be made every year two times, by two constables for every hundred and
+franchise thereunto appointed; and the constables shall present, to
+justices assigned for that purpose, such defaults as they do find."
+
+As the archery was more developed, and the bow became the peculiar weapon
+of the English, regular practice was ordered, and shooting became at once
+the drill and the amusement of the people. Every hamlet had its pair of
+butts; and on Sundays and holidays[66] all able-bodied men were required to
+appear in the field, to employ their leisure hours "as valyant Englishmen
+ought to do," "utterly leaving the play at the bowls, quoits, dice, kails,
+and other unthrifty games;" magistrates, mayors, and bailiffs being
+responsible for their obedience, under penalty, if these officers neglected
+their duty, of a fine of twenty shillings for each offence. On the same
+days, the tilt-yard at the Hall or Castle was thrown open, and the young
+men of rank amused themselves with similar exercises. Fighting, or mock
+fighting--and the imitation was not unlike the reality--was at once the
+highest enjoyment and the noblest accomplishment of all ranks in the state;
+and over that most terrible of human occupations they had flung the
+enchanted halo of chivalry, decorating it with all the fairest graces, and
+consecrating it with the most heroic aspirations.
+
+The chivalry, with much else, was often perhaps something ideal. In the
+wars of the Roses it had turned into mere savage ferocity; and in forty
+years of carnage the fighting propensities had glutted themselves. A
+reaction followed, and in the early years of Henry VIII. the statutes were
+growing obsolete, and the "unlawful games" rising again into favour. The
+younger nobles, or some among them, were shrinking from the tilt-yard, and
+were backward on occasions even when required for war. Lord Surrey, when
+waiting on the Border, expecting the Duke of Albany to invade the northern
+counties, in 1523, complained of the growing "slowness" of the young lords
+"to be at such journeys,"[67] and of their "inclination to dancing,
+carding, and dicing." The people had followed the example, and were falling
+out of archery practice, exchanging it for similar amusements. Henry VIII.,
+in his earlier days an Englishman after the old type, set himself
+resolutely to oppose these downward tendencies, and to brace again the
+slackened sinews of the nation. In his own person he was the best rider,
+the best lance, and the best archer in England; and while a boy he was
+dreaming of fresh Agincourts, and even of fresh crusades. In 1511, when he
+had been king only three years, parliament re-enacted the Winchester
+statute, with new and remarkable provisions; and twice subsequently in the
+course of his reign he returned back upon the subject, insisting upon it
+with increasing stringency. The language of the Act of 1511 is not a little
+striking. "The King's Highness," so the words run, "calling to his gracious
+remembrance that by the feats and exercise of the subjects of his realm in
+shooting in long bows, there had continually grown and been within the same
+great numbers and multitudes of good archers, which hath not only defended
+the realm and the subjects thereof against the cruel malice and dangers of
+their enemies in times heretofore past, but also, with little numbers and
+puissance in regard of their opposites, have done many notable acts and
+discomfitures of war against the infidels and others; and furthermore
+reduced divers regions and countries to their due obeysance, to the great
+honour, fame, and surety of this realm and subjects, and to the terrible
+dread and fear of all strange nations, anything to attempt or do to the
+hurt or damage of them: Yet nevertheless that archery and shooting in long
+bows is but little used, but daily does minish and decay, and abate more
+and more; for that much part of the commonalty and poor people of this
+realm, whereby of old time the great number and substance of archers had
+grown and multiplied, be not of power nor ability to buy them long bows of
+yew to exercise shooting in the same, and to sustain the continual charge
+thereof; and also because, by means and occasions of customable usage of
+tennis play, bowles, claish and other unlawful games, prohibited by many
+good and beneficent statutes, much impoverishment hath ensued: Wherefore,
+the King's Highness, of his great wisdom and providence, and also for zeal
+to the public weal, surety, and defence of this his realm, and the antient
+fame in this behalf to be revived, by the assent of his Lords Spiritual and
+Temporal, and his Commons in this present parliament assembled, hath
+enacted and established that the statute of Winchester for archers be put
+in due execution; and over that, that every man being the king's subject,
+not lame, decrepit, or maimed, being within the age of sixty years, except
+spiritual men, justices of the one bench and of the other, justices of the
+assize, and barons of the exchequer, do use and exercise shooting in long
+bows, and also do have a bow and arrows ready continually in his house, to
+use himself in shooting. And that every man having a man child or men
+children in his house, shall provide for all such, being of the age of
+seven years and above, and till they shall come to the age of seventeen
+years, a bow and two shafts, to learn them and bring them up in shooting;
+and after such young men shall come to the age of seventeen years, every of
+them shall provide and have a bow and four arrows continually for himself,
+at his proper costs and charges, or else of the gift and provision of his
+friends, and shall use the same as afore is rehearsed." Other provisions
+are added, designed to suppress the games complained of, and to place the
+bows more within the reach of the poor, by cheapening the prices of them.
+
+The same statute[68] (and if this be a proof that it had imperfectly
+succeeded, it is a proof also of Henry's confidence in the general
+attachment of his subjects) was re-enacted thirty years later, at the
+crisis of the Reformation, when the northern counties were fermenting in a
+half-suppressed rebellion, and the catholics at home and abroad were
+intriguing to bring about a revolution. In this subsequent edition of
+it[69] some particulars are added which demand notice. In the directions to
+the villages for the maintaining each "a pair of buttes," it is ordered
+that no person above the age of twenty-four shall shoot with the light
+flight arrow at a distance under two hundred and twenty yards. Up to two
+hundred and twenty yards, therefore, the heavy war arrow was used, and this
+is to be taken as the effective range for fighting purposes of the old
+archery.[70] No measures could have been invented more effective than this
+vigorous arming to repress the self-seeking tendencies in the mercantile
+classes which I have mentioned as beginning to show themselves. Capital
+supported by force may make its own terms with labour; but capital lying
+between a king on one side resolved to prevent oppression, and a people on
+the other side in full condition to resist, felt even prudence dictate
+moderation, and reserved itself for a more convenient season.
+
+Looking, therefore, at the state of England as a whole, I cannot doubt that
+under Henry the body of the people were prosperous, well-fed, loyal, and
+contented. In all points of material comfort they were as well off as they
+had ever been before; better off than they have ever been in later times.
+
+Their amusements, as prescribed by statute, consisted in training
+themselves as soldiers. In the prohibitions of the statutes we see also
+what their amusements were inclined to be. But besides "the bowles and the
+claish," field sports, fishing, shooting, hunting, were the delight of
+every one, and although the forest laws were terrible, they served only to
+enhance the excitement by danger. Then, as now, no English peasant could be
+convinced that there was any moral crime in appropriating the wild game. It
+was an offence against statute law, but no offence against natural law; and
+it was rather a trial of skill between the noble who sought to monopolise a
+right which seemed to be common to all, and those who would succeed, if
+they could, in securing their own share of it. The Robin Hood ballads
+reflect the popular feeling and breathe the warm genial spirit of the old
+greenwood adventurers. If deer-stealing was a sin, it was more than
+compensated by the risk of the penalty to which those who failed submitted,
+when no other choice was left. They did not always submit, as the old
+northern poem shows of _Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of
+Cloudislee_, with its most immoral moral; yet I suppose there was never
+pedant who could resist the spell of those ringing lines, or refuse with
+all his heart to wish the rogues success, and confusion to the honest men.
+
+But the English peasantry had pleasures of less ambiguous propriety, and
+less likely to mislead our sympathies. The chroniclers have given us many
+accounts of the masques and plays which were acted in the court, or in the
+castles of the noblemen. Such pageants were but the most splendid
+expression of a taste which was national and universal. As in ancient
+Greece, generations before the rise of the great dramas of Athens,
+itinerant companies wandered from village to village, carrying their stage
+furniture in their little carts, and acted in their booths and tents the
+grand stories of the mythology; so in England the mystery players haunted
+the wakes and fairs, and in barns or taverns, taprooms, or in the farmhouse
+kitchen, played at saints and angels, and transacted on their petty stage
+the drama of the Christian faith. To us, who can measure the effect of such
+scenes only by the impression which they would now produce upon ourselves,
+these exhibitions can seem but unspeakably profane; they were not profane
+when tendered in simplicity, and received as they were given. They were no
+more profane than those quaint monastic illuminations which formed the germ
+of Italian art; and as out of the illuminations arose those paintings which
+remain unapproached and unapproachable in their excellence, so out of the
+mystery plays arose the English drama, represented in its final
+completeness by the creations of a poet who, it now begins to be supposed,
+stands alone among mankind. We allow ourselves to think of Shakspeare or of
+Raphael or of Phidias, as having accomplished their work by the power of
+their own individual genius; but greatness like theirs is never more than
+the highest degree of an excellence which prevails widely round it, and
+forms the environment in which it grows. No single mind in single contact
+with the facts of nature could have created out of itself a Pallas, a
+Madonna, or a Lear; such vast conceptions are the growth of ages, the
+creations of a nation's spirit; and artist and poet, filled full with the
+power of that spirit, have but given them form, and nothing more than form.
+Nor would the form itself have been attainable by any isolated talent. No
+genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power, unguided or
+ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and life is not long
+enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble conceptions already
+existing, and a noble school of execution which will launch mind and hand
+at once upon their true courses, are indispensable to transcendent
+excellence; and Shakspeare's plays were as much the offspring of the long
+generations who had pioneered his road for him, as the discoveries of
+Newton were the offspring of those of Copernicus.
+
+No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman
+or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out of a nation of
+materialists; no great dramatist except when the drama was the passion of
+the people. Acting was the especial amusement of the English, from the
+palace to the village green. It was the result and expression of their
+power over themselves, and power over circumstances. They were troubled
+with no subjective speculations; no social problems vexed them with which
+they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance of vigour and spirits they
+were able, in the strict and literal sense of the word, to play with the
+materials of life. The mystery plays came first; next the popular legends;
+and then the great figures of English history came out upon the stage, or
+stories from Greek and Roman writers; or sometimes it was an extemporised
+allegory. Shakspeare himself has left us many pictures of the village
+drama. Doubtless he had seen many a Bottom in the old Warwickshire hamlets;
+many a Sir Nathaniel playing "Alissander," and finding himself "a little
+o'erparted." He had been with Snug the joiner, Quince the carpenter, and
+Flute the bellows-mender, when a boy we will not question, and acted with
+them, and written their parts for them; had gone up with them in the
+winter's evenings to the Lucy's Hall before the sad trouble with the
+deer-stealing; and afterwards, when he came to London and found his way
+into great society, he had not failed to see Polonius burlesquing Cęsar on
+the stage, as in his proper person Polonius burlesqued Sir William Cecil.
+The strolling players in _Hamlet_ might be met at every country wake or
+festival; it was the direction in which the especial genius of the people
+delighted to revel. As I desire in this chapter not only to relate what
+were the habits of the people, but to illustrate them also, within such
+compass as I can allow myself, I shall transcribe out of Hall[71] a
+description of a play which was acted by the boys of St. Paul's School, in
+1527, at Greenwich, adding some particulars, not mentioned by Hall, from
+another source.[72] It is a good instance of the fantastic splendour with
+which exhibitions of this kind were got up, and it possesses also a
+melancholy interest of another kind, as showing how little the wisest among
+us can foresee our own actions, or assure ourselves that the convictions of
+to-day will alike be the convictions of to-morrow. The occasion was the
+despatch of a French embassy to England, when Europe was outraged by the
+Duke of Bourbon's capture of Rome, when the children of Francis I. were
+prisoners in Spain, and Henry, with the full energy of his fiery nature,
+was flinging himself into a quarrel with Charles V. as the champion of the
+Holy See.
+
+At the conclusion of a magnificent supper "the king led the ambassadors
+into the great chamber of disguisings; and in the end of the same chamber
+was a fountain, and on one side was a hawthorne tree, all of silk, with
+white flowers, and on the other side was a mulberry tree full of fair
+berries, all of silk. On the top of the hawthorne were the arms of England,
+compassed with the collar of the order[73] of St. Michael, and in the top
+of the mulberry tree stood the arms of France within a garter. The fountain
+was all of white marble, graven and chased; the bases of the same were
+balls of gold, supported by ramping beasts wound in leaves of gold. In the
+first work were gargoylles of gold, fiercely faced with spouts running. The
+second receit of this fountain was environed with winged serpents, all of
+gold, which griped it; and on the summit of the same was a fair lady, out
+of whose breasts ran abundantly water of marvellous delicious savour. About
+this fountain were benches of rosemary, fretted in braydes laid on gold,
+all the sides set with roses, on branches as they were growing about this
+fountain. On the benches sate eight fair ladies in strange attire, and so
+richly apparelled in cloth of gold, embroidered and cut over silver, that I
+cannot express the cunning workmanship thereof. Then when the king and
+queen were set, there was played before them, by children, in the Latin
+tongue, a manner of tragedy, the effect whereof was that the pope was in
+captivity and the church brought under foot. Whereupon St. Peter appeared
+and put the cardinal (Wolsey) in authority to bring the pope to his
+liberty, and to set up the church again. And so the cardinal made
+intercession with the kings of England and France that they took part
+together, and by their means the pope was delivered. Then in came the
+French king's children, and complained to the cardinal how the emperour
+kept them as hostages, and would not come to reasonable point with their
+father, whereupon they desired the cardinal to help for their deliverance;
+which wrought so with the king his master and the French king that he
+brought the emperour to a peace, and caused the two young princes to be
+delivered." So far Hall relates the scene, but there was more in the play
+than he remembered or cared to notice, and I am able to complete this
+curious picture of a pageant once really and truly a living spectacle in
+the old palace at Greenwich, by an inventory of the dresses worn by the
+boys and a list of the _dramatis personę_.
+
+The school-boys of St. Paul's were taken down the river with the master in
+six boats, at the cost of a shilling a boat--the cost of the dresses and
+the other expenses amounting in all to sixty-one shillings.
+
+The characters were--
+
+An orator in apparel of cloth of gold.
+
+Religio, Ecclesia, Veritas, like three widows, in garments of silk, and
+suits of lawn and Cyprus.
+
+Heresy and False Interpretation, like sisters of Bohemia, apparelled in
+silk of divers colours.
+
+The heretic Luther, like a party friar, in russet damask and black taffety.
+
+Luther's wife, like a frow of Spiers in Almayn, in red silk.
+
+Peter, Paul, and James, in habits of white sarsnet, and three red mantles,
+and lace of silver and damask, and pelisses of scarlet.
+
+A Cardinal in his apparel.
+
+Two Sergeants in rich apparel.
+
+The Dolphin and his brother in coats of velvet embroidered with gold, and
+capes of satin bound with velvet.
+
+A Messenger in tinsel satin.
+
+Six men in gowns of grey sarsnet.
+
+Six women in gowns of crimson velvet.
+
+War, in rich cloth of gold and feathers, armed.
+
+Three Almeyns, in apparel all cut and holed in silk.
+
+Lady Peace in lady's apparel white and rich.
+
+Lady Quietness and Dame Tranquillity richly beseen in lady's apparel.
+
+It is a strange world. This was in November, 1527. In November, 1530, but
+three brief years after, Wolsey lay dying in misery, a disgraced man, at
+Leicester Abbey; "the Pope's Holiness" was fast becoming in English eyes
+plain Bishop of Rome, held guilty towards this realm of unnumbered
+enormities, and all England was sweeping with immeasurable velocity towards
+the heretic Luther. So history repeats the lesson to us, not to boast
+ourselves of the morrow, for we know not what a day may bring forth.
+
+Before I conclude this survey, it remains for me to say something of the
+position of the poor, and of the measures which were taken for the solution
+of that most difficult of all problems, the distinguishing the truly
+deserving from the worthless and the vagabond. The subject is one to which
+in the progress of this work I shall have more than one occasion to return;
+but inasmuch as a sentimental opinion prevails that an increase of poverty
+and the consequent enactment of poor-laws was the result of the suppression
+of the religious houses, and that adequate relief had been previously
+furnished by these establishments, it is necessary to say a few words for
+the removal of an impression which is as near as possible the reverse of
+the truth. I do not doubt that for many centuries these houses fulfilled
+honestly the intentions with which they were established; but as early as
+the reign of Richard II. it was found necessary to provide some other means
+for the support of the aged and impotent; the monasteries not only having
+then begun to neglect their duty; but by the appropriation of benefices
+having actually deprived the parishes of their local and independent means
+of charity.[74] Licences to beg were at that time granted to deserving
+persons; and it is noticeable that this measure was in a few years followed
+by the petition to Henry IV. for the secularisation of ecclesiastical
+property.[75] Thus early in our history had the regular clergy forgotten
+the nature of their mission, and the object for which the administration of
+the nation's charities had been committed to them. Thus early, while their
+houses were the nurseries of dishonest mendicancy,[76] they had surrendered
+to lay compassion, those who ought to have been their especial care. I
+shall unhappily have occasion hereafter to illustrate these matters in
+detail. I mention them in this place only in order to dissipate at once a
+foolish dream. At the opening of the sixteenth century, before the
+suppression of the monasteries had suggested itself in a practical form,
+pauperism was a state question of great difficulty, and as such I have at
+present to consider it.
+
+For the able-bodied vagrant, it is well known that the old English laws had
+no mercy. When wages are low, and population has outgrown the work which
+can be provided for it, idleness may be involuntary and innocent; at a time
+when all industrious men could maintain themselves in comfort and
+prosperity, "when a fair day's wages for a fair day's work" was really and
+truly the law of the land, it was presumed that if strong capable men
+preferred to wander about the country, and live upon the labour of others,
+mendicancy was not the only crime of which they were likely to be guilty;
+while idleness itself was justly looked upon as a high offence, and
+misdemeanour. The penalty of God's laws against idleness, as expressed in
+the system of nature, was starvation; and it was held intolerable that any
+man should be allowed to escape a divine judgment by begging under false
+pretences, and robbing others of their honest earnings.
+
+In a country also the boast of which was its open-handed hospitality, it
+was necessary to take care that hospitality was not brought to discredit by
+abuse; and when every door was freely opened to a request for a meal or a
+night's lodging, there was an imperative duty to keep a strict eye on
+whatever persons were on the move. We shall therefore be prepared to find
+"sturdy and valiant beggars" treated with summary justice as criminals of a
+high order; the right of a government so to treat them being proportioned
+to the facilities with which the honestly disposed can maintain themselves.
+
+It might have been expected, on the other hand, that when wages were so
+high, and work so constant, labourers would have been left to themselves to
+make provision against sickness and old age. To modern ways of thinking on
+these subjects, there would have seemed no hardship in so leaving them; and
+their sufferings, if they had suffered, would have appeared but as a
+deserved retribution. This, however, was not the temper of earlier times.
+Charity has ever been the especial virtue of Catholic States, and the aged
+and the impotent were always held to be the legitimate objects of it. Men
+who had worked hard while they were able to work were treated like decayed
+soldiers, as the discharged pensionaries of society; they were held
+entitled to wear out their age (under restrictions) at the expense of
+others; and so readily did society acquiesce in this aspect of its
+obligations, that on the failure of the monasteries to do their duty, it
+was still sufficient to leave such persons to voluntary liberality, and
+legislation had to interfere only to direct such liberality into its
+legitimate channels. In the 23rd of Edw. III. cap. 7, a prohibition was
+issued against giving alms to "valiant beggars," and this proving
+inadequate, and charity being still given indiscriminately, in the twelfth
+year of Richard II. the system of licences was introduced, and a pair of
+stocks was erected by order in every town or village, to "justify" persons
+begging unpermitted. The monasteries growing more and more careless, the
+number of paupers continued to multiply, and this method received
+successive expansions, till at length, when the Reformation was concluded,
+it terminated, after many changes of form, in the famous Act of Elizabeth.
+We can thus trace our poor law in the whole course of its growth, and into
+two stages through which it passed I must enter with some minuteness. The
+12th of the 22nd of Henry VIII., and the 25th of the 27th, are so
+remarkable in their tone, and so rich in their detail, as to furnish a
+complete exposition of English thought at that time upon the subject; while
+the second of these two acts, and probably the first also, has a further
+interest for us, as being the composition of Henry himself, and the most
+finished which he has left to us.[77]
+
+"Whereas," says the former of these two Acts, "in all places throughout
+this realm of England, vagabonds and beggars have of long time increased,
+and daily do increase in great and excessive numbers, by the occasion of
+idleness, mother and root of all vices; whereby hath insurged and sprung,
+and daily insurgeth and springeth, continual thefts, murders, and other
+heinous offences and great enormities, to the high displeasure of God, the
+inquietation and damage of the king's people, and to the marvellous
+disturbance of the common weal of this realm; and whereas, strait statutes
+and ordinances have been before this time devised and made, as well by the
+king our sovereign lord, as also by divers his most noble progenitors,
+kings of England, for the most necessary and due reformation of the
+premises; yet that notwithstanding, the said number of vagabonds and
+beggars be not seen in any part to be diminished, but rather daily
+augmented and increased into great routs or companies, as evidently and
+manifestly it doth and may appear: Be it therefore enacted by the king our
+sovereign lord, and by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons,
+in this present parliament assembled, that the justices of the peace of all
+and singular the shires of England within the limits of their commission,
+and all other justices of the peace, mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, and other
+officers of every city, borough, or franchise, shall from time to time, as
+often as need shall require, make diligent search and inquiry of all aged,
+poor, and impotent persons, which live, or of necessity be compelled to
+live by alms of the charity of the people; and such search made, the said
+officers, every of them within the limits of their authorities, shall have
+power, at their discretions, to enable to beg within such limits as they
+shall appoint, such of the said impotent persons as they shall think
+convenient; and to give in commandment to every such impotent beggar (by
+them enabled) that none of them shall beg without the limits so appointed
+to them. And further, they shall deliver to every such person so enabled a
+letter containing the name of that person, witnessing that he is authorised
+to beg, and the limits within which he is appointed to beg, the same letter
+to be sealed with the seal of the hundred, rape, wapentake, city, or
+borough, and subscribed with the name of one of the said justices or
+officers aforesaid. And if any such impotent person do beg in any other
+place than within such limits, then the justices of the peace, and all
+other the king's officers and ministers, shall by their discretions punish
+all such persons by imprisonment in the stocks, by the space of two days
+and two nights, giving them only bread and water."
+
+Further, "If any such impotent person be found begging without a licence,
+at the discretion of the justices of the peace, he shall be stripped naked
+from the middle upwards, and whipped within the town in which he be found,
+or within some other town, as it shall seem good. Or if it be not
+convenient so to punish him, he shall be set in the stocks by the space of
+three days and three nights."
+
+Such were the restrictions under which impotency was allowed support.
+Though not in itself treated as an offence, and though its right to
+maintenance by society was not denied, it was not indulged, as we may see,
+with unnecessary encouragement. The Act then proceeds to deal with the
+genuine vagrant.
+
+"And be it further enacted, that if any person or persons, being whole and
+mighty in body and able to labour, be taken in begging in any part of this
+realm; and if any man or woman, being whole and mighty in body, having no
+land, nor master, nor using any lawful merchandry, craft, or mystery
+whereby he might get his living, be vagrant, and can give none account how
+he doth lawfully get his living, then it shall, be lawful to the constables
+and all other king's officers, ministers, and subjects of every town,
+parish, and hamlet, to arrest the said vagabonds and idle persons, and
+bring them to any justice of the peace of the same shire or liberty, or
+else to the high constable of the hundred; and the justice of the peace,
+high constable, or other officer, shall cause such idle person so to him
+brought, to be had to the next market town or other place, and there to be
+tied to the end of a cart, naked, and be beaten with whips throughout the
+same town till his body be bloody by reason of such whipping; and after
+such punishment of whipping had, the person so punished shall be enjoined
+upon his oath to return forthwith without delay, in the next and straight
+way, to the place where he was born, or where he last dwelled before the
+same punishment, by the space of three years; and then put himself to
+labour like a true man ought to do; and after that done, every such person
+so punished and ordered shall have a letter, sealed with the seal of the
+hundred, rape, or wapentake, witnessing that he hath been punished
+according to this estatute, and containing the day and place of his
+punishment, and the place where unto he is limited to go, and by what time
+he is limited to come thither: for that within that time, showing the said
+letter, he may lawfully beg by the way, and otherwise not; and if he do not
+accomplish the order to him appointed by the said letter, then to be
+eftsoons taken and whipped; and so often as there be fault found in him, to
+be whipped till he has his body put to labour for his living, or otherwise
+truly get his living, so long as he is able to do so."
+
+Then follow the penalties against the justices of the peace, constables,
+and all officers who neglect to arrest such persons; and a singularly
+curious catalogue is added of certain forms of "sturdy mendicancy," which,
+if unspecified, might have been passed over as exempt, but to which Henry
+had no intention of conceding further licence. It seems as if, in framing
+the Act, he had Simon Fish's petition before him, and was commencing at
+last the rough remedy of the cart's-tail, which Fish had dared to recommend
+for a very obdurate evil.[78] The friars of the mendicant orders were
+tolerated for a few years longer; but many other spiritual persons may have
+suffered seriously under the provisions of the present statute.
+
+"Be it further enacted," the Act continues, "that scholars of the
+Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, that go about begging, not being
+authorised under the seal of the said universities, by the commissary,
+chancellor, or vice-chancellor of the same; and that all and singular
+shipmen pretending losses of their ships and goods, going about the country
+begging without sufficient authority, shall be punished and ordered in
+manner and form as is above rehearsed of strong beggars; and that all
+proctors and pardoners, and all other idle persons going about in counties
+or abiding in any town, city, or borough, some of them using divers subtle,
+crafty, and unlawful games and plays, and some of them feigning themselves
+to have knowledge in physick, physnamye, and palmistry, or other crafty
+science, whereby they bear the people in hand that they can tell their
+destinies, dreams, and fortunes, and such other like fantastical
+imaginations, to the great deceit of the king's subjects, shall, upon
+examination had before two justices of the peace, if by provable witness
+they be found guilty of such deceits, be punished by whipping at two days
+together, after the manner before rehearsed. And if they eftsoons offend in
+the same or any like offence, to be scourged two days, and the third day to
+be put upon the pillory, from nine o'clock till eleven the forenoon of the
+same day, and to have the right ear cut off; and if they offend the third
+time, to have like punishment with whipping and the pillory, and to have
+the other ear cut off."
+
+It would scarcely have been expected that this Act would have failed for
+want of severity in its penalties; yet five years later, for this and for
+some other reasons, it was thought desirable to expand the provisions of
+it, enhancing the penalties at the same time to a degree which has given a
+bloody name in the history of English law to the statutes of Henry VIII. Of
+this expanded statute[79] we have positive evidence, as I said, that Henry
+was himself the author. The merit of it, or the guilt of it--if guilt there
+be--originated with him alone. The early clauses contain practical
+amendments of an undoubtedly salutary kind. The Act of 1531 had been
+defective in that no specified means had been assigned for finding vagrants
+in labour, which, with men of broken character, was not immediately easy.
+The smaller monasteries having been suppressed in the interval, and
+sufficient funds being thus placed at the disposal of the government,
+public works[80] were set on foot throughout the kingdom, and this
+difficulty was obviated.
+
+Another important alteration was a restriction upon private charity.
+Private persons were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to give money to
+beggars, whether deserving or undeserving. The poor of each parish might
+call at houses within the boundaries for broken meats; but this was the
+limit of personal almsgiving; and the money which men might be disposed to
+offer was to be collected by the churchwardens on Sundays and holidays in
+the churches. The parish priest was to keep an account of receipts and of
+expenditure, and relief was administered with some approach to modern
+formalities. A further excellent but severe enactment empowered the parish
+officers to take up all idle children above the age of five years, "and
+appoint them to masters of husbandry or other craft or labour to be
+taught;" and if any child should refuse the service to which he was
+appointed, or run away "without cause reasonable being shown for it," he
+might be publicly whipped with rods, at the discretion of the justice of
+the peace before whom he was brought.
+
+So far, no complaint can be urged against these provisions: they display
+only that severe but true humanity, which, in offering fair and liberal
+maintenance for all who will consent to be honest, insists, not unjustly,
+that its offer shall be accepted, and that the resources of charity shall
+not be trifled away. On the clause, however, which gave to the Act its
+especial and distinguishing character, there will be large difference of
+opinion. "The sturdy vagabond," who by the earlier statute was condemned on
+his second offence to lose the whole or a part of his right ear, was
+condemned by the amended Act, if found a third time offending, with the
+mark upon him of his mutilation, "to suffer pains and execution of death,
+as a felon and as an enemy of the commonwealth." So the letter stands. For
+an able-bodied man to be caught a third time begging was held a crime
+deserving death, and the sentence was intended, on fit occasions, to be
+executed. The poor man's advantages, which I have estimated at so high a
+rate, were not purchased without drawbacks. He might not change his master
+at his will, or wander from place to place. He might not keep his children
+at his home unless he could answer for their time. If out of employment,
+preferring to be idle, he might be demanded for work by any master of the
+"craft" to which he belonged, and compelled to work whether he would or no.
+If caught begging once, being neither aged nor infirm, he was whipped at
+the cart's tail. If caught a second time, his ear was slit, or bored
+through with a hot iron. If caught a third time, being thereby proved to be
+of no use upon this earth, but to live upon it only to his own hurt and to
+that of others, he suffered death as a felon. So the law of England
+remained for sixty years. First drawn by Henry, it continued unrepealed
+through the reigns of Edward and of Mary, subsisting, therefore, with the
+deliberate approval of both the great parties between whom the country was
+divided. Reconsidered under Elizabeth, the same law was again formally
+passed; and it was, therefore, the expressed conviction of the English
+nation, that it was better for a man not to live at all than to live a
+profitless and worthless life. The vagabond was a sore spot upon the
+commonwealth, to be healed by wholesome discipline if the gangrene was not
+incurable; to be cut away with the knife if the milder treatment of the
+cart-whip failed to be of profit.[81]
+
+A measure so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy. The
+state of the country was critical; and the danger from questionable persons
+traversing it unexamined and uncontrolled was greater than at ordinary
+times. But in point of justice, as well as of prudence, it harmonised with
+the iron temper of the age, and it answered well for the government of a
+fierce and powerful people, in whose hearts lay an intense hatred of
+rascality, and among whom no one need have lapsed into evil courses except
+by deliberate preference for them. The moral substance of the English must
+have been strong indeed when it admitted of such hardy treatment; but on
+the whole, the people were ruled as they preferred to be ruled; and if
+wisdom may be tested by success, the manner in which they passed the great
+crisis of the Reformation is the best justification of their princes.
+
+The era was great throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of Michael
+Angelo; the Spaniards who were the contemporaries of Cortez; the Germans
+who shook off the pope at the call of Luther; and the splendid chivalry of
+Francis I. of France, were no common men. But they were all brought face to
+face with the same trials, and none met them as the English met them. The
+English alone never lost their self-possession; and if they owed something
+to fortune in their escape from anarchy, they owed more to the strong hand
+and steady purpose of their rulers.
+
+To conclude this chapter then.
+
+In the brief review of the system under which England was governed, we have
+seen a state of things in which the principles of political economy were,
+consciously or unconsciously, contradicted; where an attempt, more or less
+successful, was made to bring the production and distribution of wealth
+under the moral rule of right and wrong; and where those laws of supply and
+demand, which we are now taught to regard as immutable ordinances of
+nature, were absorbed or superseded by a higher code. It is necessary for
+me to repeat that I am not holding up the sixteenth century as a model
+which the nineteenth might safely follow. The population has become too
+large, employment has become too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of
+external control; while, in default of control, the relapse upon
+self-interest as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, and when it
+ensues is absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called
+ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty to
+his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive of action than
+the advantages which he may gain in an enemy's market; so it is not
+uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in a normal
+condition of militancy against social injustice; when the government was
+enabled by happy circumstances to pursue into detail a single and serious
+aim at the well-being--well-being in its widest sense--of all members of
+the commonwealth. The world, indeed, was not made particularly pleasant. Of
+liberty, in the modern sense of the word, of the supposed right of every
+man "to do what he will with his own" or with himself, there was no idea.
+To the question, if ever it was asked, May I not do what I will with my
+own? there was the brief answer, No man may do what is wrong, either with
+that which is his own or with that which is another's. Workmen were not
+allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labour market to exact
+extravagant wages. Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from
+their holdings, and destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of
+interests was absorbed into a relation of which equity was something more
+than the theoretic principle, and employers and employed were alike
+amenable to a law which both were compelled to obey. The working man of
+modern times has bought the extension of his liberty at the price of his
+material comfort. The higher classes have gained in luxury what they have
+lost in power. It is not for the historian to balance advantages. His duty
+is with the facts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE LAST YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSEY
+
+Times were changed in England since the second Henry walked barefoot
+through the streets of Canterbury, and knelt while the monks flogged him on
+the pavement in the Chapter-house, doing penance for Becket's murder. The
+clergy had won the battle in the twelfth century because they deserved to
+win it. They were not free from fault and weakness, but they felt the
+meaning of their profession. Their hearts were in their vows, their
+authority was exercised more justly, more nobly, than the authority of the
+crown; and therefore, with inevitable justice, the crown was compelled to
+stoop before them. The victory was great; but, like many victories, it was
+fatal to the conquerors. It filled them full with the vanity of power; they
+forgot their duties in their privileges; and when, a century later, the
+conflict recommenced, the altering issue proved the altering nature of the
+conditions under which it was fought. The laity were sustained in vigour by
+the practical obligations of life; the clergy sunk under the influence of a
+waning religion, the administration of the forms of which had become their
+sole occupation; and as character forsook them, the Mortmain Act,[82] the
+Acts of Premunire, and the repeatedly recurring Statutes of Provisors mark
+the successive defeats that drove them back from the high post of command
+which character alone had earned for them. If the Black Prince had lived,
+or if Richard II. had inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the
+ecclesiastical system would have been spared the misfortune of a longer
+reprieve. Its worst abuses would have then terminated, and the reformation
+of _doctrine_ in the sixteenth century would have been left to fight its
+independent way unsupported by the moral corruption of the church from
+which it received its most powerful impetus. The nation was ready for
+sweeping remedies. The people felt little loyalty to the pope, as the
+language of the Statutes of Provisors[83] conclusively proves, and they
+were prepared to risk the sacrilege of confiscating the estates of the
+religious houses--a complete measure of secularisation being then, as I
+have already said,[84] the expressed desire of the House of Commons.[85]
+With an Edward III. on the throne such a measure would very likely have
+been executed, and the course of English history would have been changed.
+It was ordered otherwise, and doubtless wisely. The church was allowed a
+hundred and fifty more years to fill full the measure of her offences, that
+she might fall only when time had laid bare the root of her degeneracy, and
+that faith and manners might be changed together.
+
+The history of the time is too imperfect to justify a positive conclusion.
+It is possible, however, that the success of the revolution effected by
+Henry IV. was due in part to a reaction in the church's favour; and it is
+certain that this prince, if he did not owe his crown to the support of the
+church, determined to conciliate it. He confirmed the Statutes of
+Provisors,[86] but he allowed them to sink into disuse. He forbade the
+further mooting of the confiscation project; and to him is due the first
+permission of the bishops to send heretics to the stake.[87] If English
+tradition is to be trusted, the clergy still felt insecure; and the French
+wars of Henry V. are said to have been undertaken, as we all know from
+Shakspeare, at the persuasion of Archbishop Chichele, who desired to
+distract his attention from reverting to dangerous subjects. Whether this
+be true or not, no prince of the house of Lancaster betrayed a wish to
+renew the quarrel with the church. The battle of Agincourt, the conquest
+and re-conquest of France, called off the attention of the people; while
+the rise of the Lollards, and the intrusion of speculative questions, the
+agitation of which has ever been the chief aversion of English statesmen,
+contributed to change the current; and the reforming spirit must have
+lulled before the outbreak of the wars of the Roses, or one of the two
+parties in so desperate a struggle would have scarcely failed to have
+availed themselves of it. Edward IV. is said to have been lenient towards
+heresy; but his toleration, if it was more than imaginary, was tacit only;
+he never ventured to avow it. It is more likely that in the inveterate
+frenzy of those years men had no leisure to remember that heresy existed.
+
+The clergy were thus left undisturbed to go their own course to its natural
+end. The storm had passed over them without breaking; and they did not
+dream that it would again gather. The immunity which they enjoyed from the
+general sufferings of the civil war contributed to deceive them; and
+without anxiety for the consequences, and forgetting the significant
+warning which they had received, they sank steadily into that condition
+which is inevitable from the constitution of human nature, among men
+without faith, wealthy, powerful, and luxuriously fed, yet condemned to
+celibacy, and cut off from the common duties and common pleasures of
+ordinary life. On the return of a settled government, they were startled
+for a moment in their security; the conduct of some among them had become
+so unbearable, that even Henry VII., who inherited the Lancastrian
+sympathies, was compelled to notice it; and the following brief act was
+passed by his first parliament, proving by the very terms in which it is
+couched the existing nature of church discipline. "For the more sure and
+likely reformation," it runs, "of priests, clerks, and religious men,
+culpable, or by their demerits openly noised of incontinent living in their
+bodies, contrary to their order, be it enacted, ordained, and established,
+that it be lawful to all archbishops and bishops, and other ordinaries
+having episcopal jurisdiction, to punish and chastise such religious men,
+being within the bounds of their jurisdiction, as shall be convict before
+them, by lawful proof, of adultery, fornication, incest, or other fleshly
+incontinency, by committing them to ward and prison, there to remain for
+such time as shall be thought convenient for the quality of their
+trespasses."[88]
+
+Previous to the passing of this act, therefore, the bishops, who had power
+to arrest laymen on suspicion of heresy, and detain them in prison
+untried,[89] had no power to imprison priests, even though convicted of
+adultery or incest. The legislature were supported by the Archbishop of
+Canterbury. Cardinal Morton procured authority from the pope to visit the
+religious houses, the abominations of which had become notorious;[90] and
+in a provincial synod held on the 24th of February, 1486, he laid the
+condition of the secular clergy before the assembled prelates. Many
+priests, it was stated, spent their time in hawking or hunting, in lounging
+at taverns, in the dissolute enjoyment of the world. They wore their hair
+long like laymen; they were to be seen lounging in the streets with cloak
+and doublet, sword and dagger. By the scandal of their lives they
+imperilled the stability of their order.[91] A number of the worst
+offenders, in London especially, were summoned before the synod and
+admonished;[92] certain of the more zealous among the learned (_complures
+docti_) who had preached against clerical abuses were advised to be more
+cautious, for the avoiding of scandal;[93] but the archbishop, taking the
+duty upon himself, sent round a circular among the clergy of his province,
+exhorting them to general amendment.[94]
+
+Yet this little cloud again disappeared. Henry VII. sat too insecurely on
+his throne to venture on a resolute reform, even if his feelings had
+inclined him towards it, which they did not. Morton durst not resolutely
+grapple with the evil. He rebuked and remonstrated; but punishment would
+have caused a public scandal. He would not invite the inspection of the
+laity into a disease which, without their assistance, he had not the
+strength to encounter; and his incipient reformation died away
+ineffectually in words. The church, to outward appearance, stood more
+securely than ever. The obnoxious statutes of the Plantagenets were in
+abeyance, their very existence, as it seemed, was forgotten; and Thomas ą
+Becket never desired more absolute independence for the ecclesiastical
+order than Archbishop Warham found established when he succeeded to the
+primacy. He, too, ventured to repeat the experiment of his predecessor. In
+1511 he attempted a second visitation of the monasteries, and again
+exhorted a reform; but his efforts were even slighter than Morton's, and in
+their results equally without fruit. The maintenance of his order in its
+political supremacy was of greater moment to him than its moral purity: a
+decent veil was cast over the clerical infirmities, and their vices were
+forgotten as soon as they ceased to be proclaimed.[95] Henry VIII., a mere
+boy on his accession, was borne away with the prevailing stream; and
+trained from his childhood by theologians, he entered upon his reign
+saturated with theological prepossessions. The intensity of his nature
+recognising no half measures, he was prepared to make them the law of his
+life; and so zealous was he, that it seemed as if the church had found in
+him a new Alfred or a Charlemagne. Unfortunately for the church,
+institutions may be restored in theory; but theory, be it never so perfect,
+will not give them back their life; and Henry discovered, at length, that
+the church of the sixteenth century as little resembled the church of the
+eleventh, as Leo X. resembled Hildebrand, or Warham resembled St. Anselm.
+
+If, however, there were no longer saints among the clergy, there could
+still arise among them a remarkable man; and in Cardinal Wolsey the king
+found an adviser who was able to retain him longer than would otherwise
+have been possible in the course which he had entered upon; who, holding a
+middle place between an English statesman and a catholic of the old order,
+was essentially a transition minister; and who was qualified, above all men
+then living, by a combination of talent, honesty, and arrogance, to open
+questions which could not again be closed when they had escaped the grasp
+of their originator. Under Wolsey's influence Henry made war with Louis of
+France, in the pope's quarrel, entered the polemic lists with Luther, and
+persecuted the English protestants. But Wolsey could not blind himself to
+the true condition of the church. He was too wise to be deceived with
+outward prosperity; he knew well that there lay before it, in Europe and at
+home, the alternative of ruin or amendment; and therefore he familiarised
+Henry with the sense that a reformation was inevitable, and dreaming that
+it could be effected from within, by the church itself inspired with a
+wiser spirit, he himself fell first victim of a convulsion which he had
+assisted to create, and which he attempted too late to stay.
+
+His intended measures were approaching maturity, when all Europe was
+startled by the news that Rome had been stormed by the Imperial army, that
+the pope was imprisoned, the churches pillaged, the cardinals insulted, and
+all holiest things polluted and profaned. A spectator, judging only by
+outward symptoms, would have seen at that strange crisis in Charles V. the
+worst patron of heresy, and the most dangerous enemy of the Holy See; while
+the indignation with which the news of these outrages was received at the
+English court, would have taught him to look on Henry as the one sovereign
+in Europe on whom that See might calculate most surely for support in its
+hour of danger. If he could have pierced below the surface, he would have
+found that the pope's best friend was the prince who held him prisoner;
+that Henry was but doubtfully acquiescing in the policy of an unpopular
+minister; and that the English nation would have looked on with stoical
+resignation if pope and papacy had been wrecked together. They were not
+inclined to heresy; but the ecclesiastical system was not the catholic
+faith; and this system, ruined by prosperity, was fast pressing its
+excesses to the extreme limit, beyond which it could not be endured. Wolsey
+talked of reformation, but delayed its coming; and in the mean time, the
+persons to be reformed showed no fear that it would come at all. The
+monasteries grew worse and worse. The people were taught only what they
+could teach themselves. The consistory courts became more oppressive.
+Pluralities multiplied, and non-residence and profligacy. Favoured parish
+clergy held as many as eight benefices.[96] Bishops accumulated sees, and,
+unable to attend to all, attended to none. Wolsey himself, the church
+reformer (so little did he really know what a reformation meant), was at
+once Archbishop of York, Bishop of Winchester, of Bath, and of Durham, and
+Abbot of St. Alban's. In Latimer's opinion, even twenty years later, and
+after no little reform in such matters, there was but one bishop in all
+England who was ever at his work and ever in his diocese. "I would ask a
+strange question," he said, in an audacious sermon at Paul's Cross, "Who is
+the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the
+rest in doing of his office?[97] I can tell, for I know him who it is; I
+know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I
+should name him. There is one that passeth all the others, and is the most
+diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I
+will tell you. It is the devil. Among all the pack of them that have cure,
+the devil shall go for my money, for he applieth his business. Therefore,
+ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil to be diligent in your office.
+If ye will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil."[98]
+
+Under such circumstances, we need not be surprised to find the clergy sunk
+low in the respect of the English people. Sternly intolerant of each
+other's faults, the laity were not likely to be indulgent to the vices of
+men who ought to have set an example of purity; and from time to time,
+during the first quarter of the century, there were explosions of temper
+which might have served as a warning if any sense or judgment had been left
+to profit by it.
+
+In 1514 a London merchant was committed to the Lollards' Tower for refusing
+to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary;[99] and a few days after was
+found dead in his cell. An inquest was held upon the body, when a verdict
+of wilful murder was returned against the chancellor of the Bishop of
+London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the bishop applied
+to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial. "For assured I am,"
+he said, "that if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they
+be so maliciously set _in favorem hęreticę pravitatis_, that they will cast
+and condemn any clerk, though he were as innocent as Abel."[100] Fish's
+famous pamphlet also shows the spirit which was seething; and though we may
+make some allowance for angry rhetoric, his words have the clear ring of
+honesty in them; and he spoke of what he had seen and knew. The monks, he
+tells the king, "be they that have made a hundred thousand idle dissolute
+women in your realm, who would have gotten their living honestly in the
+sweat of their faces had not their superfluous riches allured them to lust
+and idleness. These be they that when they have drawn men's wives to such
+incontinency, spend away their husbands' goods, make the women to run away
+from their husbands, bringing both man, wife, and children to idleness,
+theft, and beggary. Yea, who is able to number the great broad bottomless
+ocean sea full of evils that this mischievous generation may bring upon us
+if unpunished?"[101]
+
+Copies of this book were strewed about the London streets; Wolsey issued a
+prohibition against it, with the effect which such prohibitions usually
+have. Means were found to bring it under the eyes of Henry himself; and the
+manner in which it was received by him is full of significance, and betrays
+that the facts of the age were already telling on his understanding. He was
+always easy of access and easy of manner; and the story, although it rests
+on Foxe's authority, has internal marks of authenticity.
+
+"One Master Edmund Moddis, being with the king in talk of religion, and of
+the new books that were come from beyond the seas, said that if it might
+please his Highness to pardon him, and such as he would bring to his Grace,
+he should see such a book as it was a marvel to hear of. The king demanded
+who they were? He said 'Two of your merchants--George Elliot and George
+Robinson.' The king appointed a time to speak with them. When they came
+before his presence in a privy closet, he demanded what they had to say or
+to shew him. One of them said that there was a book come to their hands
+which they had there to shew his Grace. When he saw it he demanded if any
+of them could read it. 'Yea,' said George Elliot, 'if it please your Grace
+to hear it.' 'I thought so,' said the king; 'if need were, thou couldst say
+it without book.'
+
+"The whole book being read out, the king made a long pause, and then said,
+'If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and should begin at the lower
+part, the upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his head.' Then he
+took the book, and put it in his desk, and commanded them, on their
+allegiance, that they should not tell any man that he had seen it."[102]
+
+Symptoms such as these boded ill for a self-reform of the church, and it
+was further imperilled by the difficulty which it is not easy to believe
+that Wolsey had forgotten. No measures would be of efficacy which spared
+the religious houses, and they would be equally useless unless the bishops,
+as well as the inferior clergy, were comprehended in the scheme of
+amendment. But neither with monks nor bishops could Wolsey interfere except
+by a commission from the pope, and the laws were unrepealed which forbade
+English subjects, under the severest penalties, to accept or exercise
+within the realm an authority which they had received from the Holy See.
+Morton had gone beyond the limits of the statute of provisors in receiving
+powers from Pope Innocent to visit the monasteries. But Morton had stopped
+short with inquiry and admonition. Wolsey, who was in earnest with the
+work, had desired and obtained a full commission as legate, but he could
+only make use of it at his peril. The statute slumbered, but it still
+existed.[103] He was exposing not himself only, but all persons, lay and
+clerical, who might recognise his legacy to a Premunire; and he knew well
+that Henry's connivance, or even expressed permission, could not avail him
+if his conduct was challenged. He could not venture to appeal to
+parliament. Parliament was the last authority whose jurisdiction a
+churchman would acknowledge in the concerns of the clergy; and his project
+must sooner or later have sunk, like those of his two predecessors, under
+its own internal difficulties, even if the accident had not arisen which
+brought the dispute to a special issue in its most vital point, and which,
+fostered by Wolsey for his own purposes, precipitated his ruin.
+
+It is never more difficult to judge equitably the actions of public men
+than when private as well as general motives have been allowed to influence
+them, or when their actions may admit of being represented as resulting
+from personal inclination, as well as from national policy. In life, as we
+actually experience it, motives slide one into the other, and the most
+careful analysis will fail adequately to sift them. In history, from the
+effort to make our conceptions distinct, we pronounce upon these intricate
+matters with unhesitating certainty, and we lose sight of truth in the
+desire to make it truer than itself. The difficulty is further complicated
+by the different points of view which are chosen by contemporaries and by
+posterity. Where motives are mixed, men all naturally dwell most on those
+which approach nearest to themselves: contemporaries whose interests are at
+stake overlook what is personal in consideration of what is to them of
+broader moment; posterity, unable to realise political embarrassments which
+have ceased to concern them, concentrate their attention on such features
+of the story as touch their own sympathies, and attend exclusively to the
+private and personal passions of the men and women whose character they are
+considering.
+
+These natural, and to some extent inevitable tendencies, explain the
+difference with which the divorce between Henry VIII. and Catherine of
+Arragon has been regarded by the English nation in the sixteenth and in the
+nineteenth centuries. In the former, not only did the parliament profess to
+desire it, urge it, and further it, but we are told by a contemporary[104]
+that "all indifferent and discreet persons" judged that it was right and
+necessary. In the latter, perhaps, there is not one of ourselves who has
+not been taught to look upon it as an act of enormous wickedness. In the
+sixteenth century, Queen Catherine was an obstacle to the establishment of
+the kingdom, an incentive to treasonable hopes. In the nineteenth, she is
+an outraged and injured wife, the victim of a false husband's fickle
+appetite. The story is a long and painful one, and on its personal side
+need not concern us here further than as it illustrates the private
+character of Henry. Into the public bearing of it I must enter at some
+length, in order to explain the interest with which the nation threw itself
+into the question, and to remove the scandal with which, had nothing been
+at stake beyond the inclinations of a profligate monarch, weary of his
+queen, the complaisance on such a subject of the lords and commons of
+England would have coloured the entire complexion of the Reformation.
+
+The succession to the throne, although determined in theory by the ordinary
+law of primogeniture, was nevertheless, subject to repeated arbitrary
+changes. The uncertainty of the rule was acknowledged and deplored by the
+parliament,[105] and there was no order of which the nation, with any unity
+of sentiment, compelled the observance. An opinion prevailed--not, I
+believe, traceable to statute, but admitted by custom, and having the force
+of statute in the prejudices of the nation--that no stranger born out of
+the realm could inherit.[106] Although the descent in the female line was
+not formally denied, no female sovereign had ever, in fact, sat upon the
+throne.[107] Even Henry VII. refused to strengthen his title by advancing
+the claims of his wife: and the uncertainty of the laws of marriage, and
+the innumerable refinements of the Romish canon law, which affected the
+legitimacy of children,[108] furnished, in connection with the further
+ambiguities of clerical dispensations, perpetual pretexts, whenever
+pretexts were needed, for a breach of allegiance. So long, indeed, as the
+character of the nation remained essentially military, it could as little
+tolerate an incapable king as an army in a dangerous campaign can bear with
+an inefficient commander; and whatever might be the theory of the title,
+when the sceptre was held by the infirm hand of an Edward II., a Richard
+II., or a Henry VI., the difficulty resolved itself by force, and it was
+wrenched by a stronger arm from a grasp too feeble to retain it. The
+consent of the nation was avowed, even in the authoritative language of a
+statute,[109] as essential to the legitimacy of a sovereign's title; and
+Sir Thomas More, on examination by the Solicitor-General, declared as his
+opinion that parliament had power to depose kings if it so pleased.[110] So
+many uncertainties on a point so vital had occasioned fearful episodes in
+English history; the most fearful of them, which had traced its character
+in blood in the private records of every English family, having been the
+long struggle of the preceding century, from which the nation was still
+suffering, and had but recovered sufficiently to be conscious of what it
+had endured. It had decimated itself for a question which involved no
+principle and led to no result, and perhaps the history of the world may be
+searched in vain for any parallel to a quarrel at once so desperate and so
+unmeaning.
+
+This very unmeaning character of the dispute increased the difficulty of
+ending it. In wars of conquest or of principle, when something definite is
+at stake, the victory is either won, or it is lost; the conduct of
+individual men, at all events, is overruled by considerations external to
+themselves which admit of being weighed and calculated. In a war of
+succession, where the great families were divided in their allegiance, and
+supported the rival claimants in evenly balanced numbers, the inveteracy of
+the conflict increased with its duration, and propagated itself from
+generation to generation. Every family was in blood feud with its
+neighbour; and children, as they grew to manhood, inherited the duty of
+revenging their fathers' deaths.
+
+No effort of imagination can reproduce to us the state of this country in
+the fatal years which intervened between the first rising of the Duke of
+York and the battle of Bosworth; and experience too truly convinced Henry
+VII. that the war had ceased only from general exhaustion, and not because
+there was no will to continue it. The first Tudor breathed an atmosphere of
+suspended insurrection, and only when we remember the probable effect upon
+his mind of the constant dread of an explosion, can we excuse or
+understand, in a prince not generally cruel, the execution of the Earl of
+Warwick. The danger of a bloody revolution may present an act of arbitrary
+or cowardly tyranny in the light of a public duty.
+
+Fifty years of settled government, however, had not been without their
+effects. The country had collected itself; the feuds of the families had
+been chastened, if they had not been subdued; while the increase of wealth
+and material prosperity had brought out into obvious prominence those
+advantages of peace which a hot-spirited people, antecedent to experience,
+had not anticipated, and had not been able to appreciate. They were better
+fed, better cared for, more justly governed than they had ever been before;
+and though abundance of unruly tempers remained, yet the wiser portion of
+the nation, looking back from their new vantage-ground, were able to
+recognise the past in its true hatefulness. Thenceforward a war of
+succession was the predominating terror with English statesmen, and the
+safe establishment of the reigning family bore a degree of importance which
+it is possible that their fears exaggerated, yet which in fact was the
+determining principle of their action.
+
+It was therefore with no little anxiety that the council of Henry VIII.
+perceived his male children, on whom their hopes were centred, either born
+dead, or dying one after another within a few days of their birth, as if
+his family were under a blight. When the queen had advanced to an age which
+precluded hope of further offspring, and the heir presumptive was an infirm
+girl, the unpromising prospect became yet more alarming. The life of the
+Princess Mary was precarious, for her health was weak from her childhood.
+If she lived, her accession would be a temptation to insurrection; if she
+did not live, and the king had no other children, a civil war was
+inevitable. At present such a difficulty would be disposed of by an
+immediate and simple reference to the collateral branches of the royal
+family; the crown would descend with even more facility than the property
+of an intestate to the next of kin. At that time, if the rule had been
+recognised, it would only have increased the difficulty, for the next heir
+in blood was James of Scotland; and, gravely as statesmen desired the union
+of the two countries, in the existing mood of the people, the very stones
+in London streets, it was said,[111] would rise up against a king of
+Scotland who claimed to enter England as sovereign. Even the parliament
+itself declared in formal language that they would resist any attempt on
+the part of the Scottish king "to the uttermost of their power."[112]
+
+As little, however, as the English would have admitted James's claims,
+would James himself have acknowledged their right to reject them. He would
+have pleaded the sacred right of inheritance, refusing utterly the
+imaginary law which disentitled him: he would have pressed his title with
+all Scotland to back him, and probably with the open support of France.
+Centuries of humiliation remained unrevenged, which both France and
+Scotland had endured at English hands. It was not likely that they would
+waste an opportunity thrust upon them by Providence. The country might, it
+is true, have encountered this danger, serious as it would have been, if
+there had been hope that it would itself have agreed to any other choice.
+England had many times fought successfully against the same odds, and would
+have cared little for a renewal of the struggle, if united in itself: but
+the prospect on this side, also, was fatally discouraging. The elements of
+the old factions were dormant, but still smouldering. Throughout Henry's
+reign a White Rose agitation had been secretly fermenting; without open
+success, and without chance of success so long as Henry lived, but
+formidable in a high degree if opportunity to strike should offer itself.
+Richard de la Pole, the representative of this party, had been killed at
+Pavia, but his loss had rather strengthened their cause than weakened it,
+for by his long exile he was unknown in England; his personal character was
+without energy; while he made place for the leadership of a far more
+powerful spirit in the sister of the murdered Earl of Warwick, the Countess
+of Salisbury, mother of Reginald Pole. This lady had inherited, in no
+common degree, the fierce nature of the Plantagenets; born to command, she
+had rallied round her the Courtenays, the Nevilles, and all the powerful
+kindred of Richard the King Maker, her grandfather. Her Plantagenet descent
+was purer than the king's; and if Mary died and Henry left no other issue,
+half England was likely to declare either for one of her sons, or for the
+Marquis of Exeter, the grandson of Edward IV.
+
+In 1515, when Giustiniani,[113] the Venetian ambassador, was at the court,
+the Dukes of Buckingham, of Suffolk, and of Norfolk, were also mentioned to
+him as having each of them hopes of the crown. Buckingham, meddling
+prematurely in the dangerous game, had lost his life for it; but in his
+death he had strengthened the chance of Norfolk, who had married his
+daughter. Suffolk was Henry's brother-in-law;[114] chivalrous, popular, and
+the ablest soldier of his day; and Lady Margaret Lennox, also, daughter of
+the Queen of Scotland by her second marriage, would not have wanted
+supporters, and early became an object of intrigue. Indeed, as she had been
+born in England, it was held in parliament that she stood next in order to
+the Princess Mary.[115]
+
+Many of these claims were likely to be advanced if Henry died leaving a
+daughter to succeed him. They would all inevitably be advanced if he died
+childless; and no great political sagacity was required to foresee the
+probable fate of the country if such a moment was chosen for a French and
+Scottish invasion. The very worst disasters might be too surely looked for,
+and the hope of escape, precarious at the best, hung upon the frail thread
+of a single life. We may therefore imagine the dismay with which the nation
+saw this last hope failing them--and failing them even in a manner more
+dangerous than if it had failed by death; for it did but add another doubt,
+when already there were too many. In order to detach France from Scotland,
+and secure, if possible, its support for the claims of the princess, it had
+been proposed to marry the Princess Mary to a son of the French king. The
+negotiations were conducted through the Bishop of Tarbźs,[116] and at the
+first conference the Bishop raised a question in the name of his
+government, on the validity of the papal dispensation granted by Julius the
+Second, to legalise the marriage from which she was sprung. The abortive
+marriage Scheme perished in its birth, but the doubt which had been raised
+could not perish with it. Doubt on such a subject once mooted might not be
+left unresolved, even if the raising it thus publicly had not itself
+destroyed the frail chance of an undisputed succession. If the relations of
+Henry with Queen Catherine had been of a cordial kind, it is possible that
+he would have been contented with resentment; that he would have refused to
+reconsider a question which touched his honour and his conscience; and,
+united with parliament, would have endeavoured to bear down all
+difficulties with a high hand. This at least he might have himself
+attempted. Whether the parliament, with so precarious a future before them,
+would have consented, is less easy to say. Fortunately or unfortunately,
+the interests of the nation pointed out another road, which Henry had no
+unwillingness to enter.
+
+On the death of Prince Arthur, five months after his marriage, Henry VII.
+and the father of the Princess alike desired that the bond between their
+families thus broken should be re-united; and, as soon as it became clear
+that Catherine had not been left pregnant (a point which, tacitly at least,
+she allowed to be considered uncertain at the time of her husband's
+decease), it was proposed that she should be transferred, with the
+inheritance of the crown, to the new heir. A dispensation was reluctantly
+granted by the pope,[117] and reluctantly accepted by the English ministry.
+The Prince of Wales, who was no more than twelve years old at the time, was
+under the age at which he could legally sue for such an object; and a
+portion of the English council, the Archbishop of Canterbury among them,
+were unsatisfied,[118] both with the marriage itself, and with the adequacy
+of the forms observed in a matter of so dubious an import. The betrothal
+took place at the urgency of Ferdinand. In the year following Henry VII.
+became suddenly ill; Queen Elizabeth died; and superstition working on the
+previous hesitation, misfortune was construed into an indication of the
+displeasure of Heaven. The intention was renounced, and the prince, as soon
+as he had completed his fourteenth year, was invited and required to
+disown, by a formal act, the obligations contracted in his name.[119] Again
+there was a change. The king lived on, the alarm yielded to the temptations
+of covetousness. Had he restored Catherine to her father he must have
+restored with her the portion of her dowry which had been already received;
+he must have relinquished the prospect of the moiety which had yet to be
+received. The negotiation was renewed. Henry VII. lived to sign the
+receipts for the first instalment of the second payment;[120] and on his
+death, notwithstanding much general murmuring,[121] the young Henry, then a
+boy of eighteen, proceeded to carry out his father's ultimate intentions.
+The princess-dowager, notwithstanding what had passed, was still on her
+side willing;--and the difference of age (she was six years older than
+Henry) seeming of little moment when both were comparatively young, they
+were married. For many years all went well; opposition was silenced by the
+success which seemed to have followed, and the original scruples were
+forgotten. Though the marriage was dictated by political convenience, Henry
+was faithful, with but one exception, to his wife's bed--no slight honour
+to him, if he is measured by the average royal standard in such matters;
+and, if his sons had lived to grow up around his throne, there is no reason
+to believe that the peace of his married life would have been interrupted,
+or that, whatever might have been his private feelings, he would have
+appeared in the world's eye other than acquiescent in his condition.
+
+But his sons had not lived; years passed on, bringing with them premature
+births, children born dead, or dying after a few days or hours,[122] and
+the disappointment was intense in proportion to the interests which were at
+issue. The especial penalty denounced against the marriage with a brother's
+wife[123] had been all but literally enforced; and the king found himself
+growing to middle life and his queen passing beyond it with his prayers
+unheard, and no hope any longer that they might be heard. The disparity of
+age also was more perceptible as time went by, while Catherine's
+constitution was affected by her misfortunes, and differences arose on
+which there is no occasion to dwell in these pages--differences which in
+themselves reflected no discredit either on the husband or the wife, but
+which were sufficient to extinguish between two infirm human beings an
+affection that had rested only upon mutual esteem, but had not assumed the
+character of love.
+
+The circumstances in which Catherine was placed were of a kind which no
+sensitive woman could have endured without impatience and mortification;
+but her conduct, however natural, only widened the breach which personal
+repugnance and radical opposition of character had already made too wide.
+So far Henry and she were alike that both had imperious tempers, and both
+were indomitably obstinate; but Henry was hot and impetuous, Catherine was
+cold and self-contained--Henry saw his duty through his wishes; Catherine,
+in her strong Castilian austerity, measured her steps by the letter of the
+law; the more her husband withdrew from her, the more she insisted upon her
+relation to him as his wife; and continued with fixed purpose and immovable
+countenance[124] to share his table and his bed long after she was aware of
+his dislike for her.
+
+If the validity of so unfortunate a connection had never been questioned,
+or if no national interests had been dependent on the continuance or the
+abolition of it, these discomforts were not too great to have been endured
+in silence. They were not originally occasioned by any latent inclination
+on the part of the king for another woman. They had arisen to their worst
+dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn, and were produced by causes
+of a wholly independent kind; and even if it had not been so, when we
+remember the tenor of his early life we need not think that he would have
+been unequal to the restraint which ordinary persons in similar
+circumstances are able to impose on their caprices. The legates spoke no
+more than the truth when they wrote to the pope, saying that "it was mere
+madness to suppose that the king would act as he was doing merely out of
+dislike of the queen, or out of inclination, for another person; he was not
+a man whom harsh manners and an unpleasant disposition (_duri mores et
+injucunda consuetudo_) could so far provoke; nor could any sane man believe
+him to be so infirm of character that sensual allurements would have led
+him to dissolve a connexion in which he had passed the flower of youth
+without stain or blemish, and in which he had borne himself in his trial so
+reverently and honourably."[125] I consider this entirely true in a sense
+which no great knowledge of human nature is required to understand. The
+king's personal dissatisfaction was great: if this had been all, however,
+it would have been extinguished or endured; but the interests of the
+nation, imperilled as they were by the maintenance of the marriage,
+entitled him to regard his position under another aspect. Even if the
+marriage in itself had never been questioned, he might justly have desired
+the dissolution of it; and when he recalled the circumstances under which
+it was contracted, the hesitation of the council, the reluctance of the
+pope, the alarms and vacillation of his father, we may readily perceive how
+scruples of conscience must have arisen in a soil well prepared to receive
+them--how the loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial
+sentence on a violation of the Divine law. The divorce presented itself to
+him as a moral obligation, when national advantage combined with
+superstition to encourage what he secretly desired; and if he persuaded
+himself that those public reasons, without which, in truth and fact, he
+would not have stirred, were those that alone were influencing him, the
+self-deceit was of a kind with which the experience of most men will
+probably have made them too familiar. In those rare cases where inclination
+coincides with right, we cannot be surprised if mankind should mislead
+themselves with the belief that the disinterested motives weigh more with
+them than the personal.
+
+A remarkable and very candid account of Henry's feelings is furnished by
+himself in one of the many papers of instructions[126] which he forwarded
+to his secretary at Rome. Hypocrisy was not among his faults, and in
+detailing the arguments which were to be laid before the pope he has
+exhibited a more complete revelation of what was passing in himself--and
+indirectly of his own nature in its strength and weakness--than he perhaps
+imagined while he wrote. The despatch is long and perplexed; the style that
+of a man who saw his end clearly, and was vexed with the intricate and
+dishonest trifling with which his way was impeded, and which nevertheless
+he was struggling to tolerate. The secretary was to say, "that the King's
+Highness having above all other things his intent and mind ever founded
+upon such respect unto Almighty God as to a Christian and catholic prince
+doth appertain, knowing the fragility and uncertainty of all earthly
+things, and how displeasant unto God, how much dangerous to the soul, how
+dishonourable and damageable to the world it were to prefer vain and
+transitory things unto those that be perfect and certain, hath in this
+cause, doubt, and matter of matrimony, whereupon depend so high and
+manifold consequences of greatest importance, always cast from his conceit
+the darkness and blundering confusion of falsity, and specially hath had
+and put before his eyes the light and shining brightness of truth; upon
+which foundation as a most sure base for perpetual tranquillity of his
+conscience his Highness hath expressly resolved and determined with himself
+to build and establish all his acts, deeds, and cogitations touching this
+matter; without God did build the house, in vain they laboured that went
+about to build it; and all actions grounded upon that immovable fundament
+of truth, must needs therein be firm, sound, whole, perfect, and worthy of
+a Christian man; which if truth were put apart, they could not for the same
+reason be but evil, vain, slipper, uncertain, and in nowise permanent or
+endurable." He then laboured to urge on the pope the duty of
+straightforward dealing; and dwelt in words which have a sad interest for
+us (when we consider the manner in which the subject of them has been dealt
+with) on the judgment bar, not of God only, but of human posterity, at
+which his conduct would be ultimately tried.
+
+"The causes of private persons dark and doubtful be sometimes," the king
+said, "pretermitted and passed over as things more meet at some seasons to
+be dissimuled than by continual strife and plea to nourish controversies.
+Yet since all people have their eyes conject upon princes, whose acts and
+doings not only be observed in the mouths of them that now do live, but
+also remain in such perpetual memory to our posterity [so that] the evil,
+if any there be, cannot but appear and come to light, there is no reason
+for toleration, no place for dissimulation; but [there is reason] more
+deeply, highly, and profoundly to penetrate and search for the truth, so
+that the same may vanquish and overcome, and all guilt, craft, and
+falsehood clearly be extirpate and reject."
+
+I am anticipating the progress of the story in making these quotations; for
+the main burden of the despatch concerns a forged document which had been
+introduced by the Roman lawyers to embarrass the process, and of which I
+shall by-and-bye have to speak directly; but I have desired to illustrate
+the spirit in which Henry entered upon the general question--assuredly a
+more calm and rational one than historians have usually represented it to
+be. In dealing with the obstacle which had been raised, he displayed a most
+efficient mastery over himself, although he did not conclude without
+touching the pith of the matter with telling clearness. The secretary was
+to take some opportunity of speaking to the pope privately; and of warning
+him, "as of himself," that there was no hope that the king would give way:
+he was to "say plainly to his Holiness that the king's desire and intent
+_convolare ad secundas nuptias non patitur negativum_; and whatsoever
+should be found of bull, brief, or otherwise, his Highness found his
+conscience so inquieted, his succession in such danger, and his most royal
+person in such perplexity for things unknown and not to be spoken, that
+other remedy there was not but his Grace to come by one way or other, and
+specially at his hands, if it might be, to the desired end; and that all
+concertation to the contrary should be vain and frustrate."
+
+So peremptory a conviction and so determined a purpose were of no sudden
+growth, and had been probably maturing in his mind for years, when the
+gangrene was torn open by the Bishop of Tarbźs, and accident precipitated
+his resolution. The momentous consequences involved, and the reluctance to
+encounter a probable quarrel with the emperor, might have long kept him
+silent, except for some extraneous casualty; but the tree being thus rudely
+shaken, the ripe fruit fell. The capture of Rome occurring almost at the
+same moment, Wolsey caught the opportunity to break the Spanish alliance;
+and the prospect of a divorce was grasped at by him as a lever by which to
+throw the weight of English power and influence into the papal scale, to
+commit Henry definitely to the catholic cause. Like his acceptance of
+legatine authority, the expedient was a desperate one, and if it failed it
+was ruinous. The nation at that time was sincerely attached to Spain. The
+alliance with the house of Burgundy was of old date; the commercial
+intercourse with Flanders was enormous, Flanders, in fact, absorbing all
+the English exports; and as many as 15,000 Flemings were settled in London.
+Charles himself was personally popular; he had been the ally of England in
+the late French war; and when in his supposed character of leader of the
+anti-papal party in Europe he allowed a Lutheran army to desecrate Rome, he
+had won the sympathy of all the latent discontent which was fermenting in
+the population. France, on the other hand, was as cordially hated as Spain
+was beloved. A state of war with France was the normal condition of
+England; and the reconquest of it the universal dream from the cottage to
+the castle. Henry himself, early in his reign, had shared in this delusive
+ambition; and but three years before the sack of Rome, when the Duke of
+Suffolk led an army into Normandy, Wolsey's purposed tardiness in sending
+reinforcements had alone saved Paris.[127]
+
+There could be no doubt, therefore, that a breach with the emperor would in
+a high degree be unwelcome to the country. The king, and probably such
+members of the council as were aware of his feelings, shrank from offering
+an open affront to the Spanish people., and anxious as they were for a
+settlement of the succession, perhaps trusted that advantage might be taken
+of some political contingency for a private arrangement; that Catherine
+might be induced by Charles himself to retire privately, and sacrifice
+herself, of her free will, to the interests of the two countries. This,
+however, is no more than conjecture; I think it probable, because so many
+English statesmen were in favour at once of the divorce and of the Spanish
+alliance--two objects which, only on some such hypothesis, were compatible.
+The fact cannot be ascertained, however, because the divorce itself was not
+discussed at the council table until Wolsey had induced the king to change
+his policy by the hope of immediate relief.
+
+Wolsey has revealed to us fully his own objects in a letter to Sir Gregory
+Cassalis, his agent at Rome. He shared with half Europe in an impression
+that the emperor's Italian campaigns were designed to further the
+Reformation; and of this central delusion he formed the keystone of his
+conduct. "First condoling with his Holiness," he wrote, "on the unhappy
+position in which, with the college of the most reverend cardinals, he is
+placed,[128] you shall tell him how, day and night, I am revolving by what
+means or contrivance I may bring comfort to the church of Christ, and raise
+the fallen state of our most Holy Lord. I care not whit it may cost me,
+whether of expense or trouble; nay, though I have to shed my blood, or give
+my life for it, assuredly so long as life remains to me for this I will
+labour. And how let me mention the great and marvellous effects which have
+been wrought by my instrumentality on the mind of my most excellent master
+the king, whom I have persuaded to unite himself with his Holiness in heart
+and soul. I urged innumerable reasons to induce him to part him from the
+emperor, to whom he clung with much tenacity. The most effective of them
+all was the constancy with which I assured him of the good-will and
+affection which were felt for him by his Holiness, and the certainty that
+his Holiness would furnish proof of his friendship in conceding his said
+Majesty's requests, in such form as the church's treasure and the authority
+of the Vicar of Christ shall permit, or so far as that authority extends or
+may extend. I have undertaken, moreover, for all these things in their
+utmost latitude, pledging my salvation, my faith, my honour and soul upon
+them. I have said that his demands shall be granted amply and fully,
+without scruple, without room or occasion being left for
+after-retractation; and the King's Majesty, in consequence, believing on
+these my solemn asseverations that the Pope's Holiness is really and indeed
+well inclined towards him, accepting what is spoken by me as spoken by the
+legate of the Apostolic See, and therefore, as in the name of his Holiness,
+has determined to run the risk which I have pressed upon him; he will spare
+no labour or expense, he will disregard the wishes of his subjects, and the
+private interest of his Realm, to attach himself cordially and constantly
+to the Holy See."[129]
+
+These were the words of a man who loved England well, but who loved Rome
+better; and Wolsey has received but scanty justice from catholic writers,
+since he sacrificed himself for the catholic cause. His scheme was bold and
+well laid, being weak only in that it was confessedly in contradiction to
+the instincts and genius of the nation, by which, and by which alone, in
+the long run, either this or any other country has been successfully
+governed. And yet he might well be forgiven if he ventured on an unpopular
+course in the belief that the event would justify him; and that, in uniting
+with France to support the pope, he was not only consulting the true
+interest of England, but was doing what England actually desired, although
+blindly aiming at her object by other means. The French wars, however
+traditionally popular, were fertile only in glory. The rivalry of the two
+countries was a splendid folly, wasting the best blood of both countries
+for an impracticable chimera; and though there was impatience of
+ecclesiastical misrule, though there was jealousy of foreign interference,
+and general irritation with the state of the church, yet the mass of the
+people hated protestantism even worse than they hated the pope, the clergy,
+and the consistory courts. They believed--and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only
+leading member of the privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not
+under the same delusion--that it was possible for a national church to
+separate itself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to
+crush or prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental
+system could still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those
+mysteries were dispensed should minister in gilded chains. This was the
+English historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the second Henry,
+and the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a thing of words and
+paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew well that an
+ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation of doctrine; that
+plain men could not and would not continue to reverence the office of the
+priesthood, when the priests were treated as the paid officials of an
+earthly authority higher than their own. He was not to be blamed if he took
+the people at their word; if he believed that, in their doctrinal
+conservatism, they knew and meant what they were saying: and the reaction
+which took place under Queen Mary, when the Anglican system had been tried
+and failed, and the alternative was seen to be absolute between a union
+with Rome or a forfeiture of catholic orthodoxy, prove after all that he
+was wiser than in the immediate event he seemed to be; that if his policy
+had succeeded, and if, strengthened by success, he had introduced into the
+church those reforms which he had promised and desired,[130] he would have
+satisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the nation.
+
+Like other men of genius, Wolsey also combined practical sagacity with an
+unmeasured power of hoping. As difficulties gathered round him, he
+encountered them with the increasing magnificence of his schemes; and after
+thirty years' experience of public life, he was as sanguine as a boy. Armed
+with this little lever of the divorce, he saw himself, in imagination, the
+rebuilder of the catholic faith and the deliverer of Europe. The king being
+remarried, and the succession settled, he would purge the Church of
+England, and convert the monasteries into intellectual garrisons of pious
+and learned men, occupying the land from end to end. The feuds with France
+should cease for ever, and, united in a holy cause, the two countries
+should restore the papacy, put down the German heresies, depose the
+emperor, and establish in his place some faithful servant of the church.
+Then Europe once more at peace, the hordes of the Crescent, which were
+threatening to settle the quarrels of Christians in the West as they had
+settled them in the East--by the extinction of Christianity itself,--were
+to be hurled back into their proper barbarism.[131] These magnificent
+visions fell from him in conversations with the Bishop of Bayonne, and may
+be gathered from hints and fragments of his correspondence. Extravagant as
+they seem, the prospect of realising them was, humanly speaking, neither
+chimerical nor even improbable. He had but made the common mistake of men
+of the world who are the representatives of an old order of things at the
+time when that order is doomed and dying. He could not read the signs of
+the times; and confounded the barrenness of death with the barrenness of a
+winter which might be followed by a new spring and summer; he believed that
+the old life-tree of Catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering the
+ground, might bloom again in its old beauty. The thing which he called
+heresy was the fire of Almighty God, which no politic congregation of
+princes, no state machinery, though it were never so active, could trample
+out; and as in the early years of Christianity the meanest slave who was
+thrown to the wild beasts for his presence at the forbidden mysteries of
+the gospel, saw deeper, in the divine power of his faith, into the future
+even of this earthly world than the sagest of his imperial persecutors, so
+a truer political prophet than Wolsey would have been found in the most
+ignorant of those poor men, for whom his myrmidons were searching in the
+purlieus of London, who were risking death and torture in disseminating the
+pernicious volumes of the English Testament.
+
+If we look at the matter, however, from a more earthly point of view, the
+causes which immediately defeated Wolsey's policy were not such as human
+foresight could have anticipated. We ourselves, surveying the various
+parties in Europe with the light of our knowledge of the actual sequel, are
+perhaps able to understand their real relations; but if in 1527 a political
+astrologer had foretold that within two years of that time the pope and the
+emperor who had imprisoned him would be cordial allies, that the positions
+of England and Spain toward the papacy would be diametrically reversed, and
+that the two countries were on the point of taking their posts, which they
+would ever afterwards maintain, as the champions respectively of the
+opposite principles to those which at that time they seemed to represent,
+the prophecy would have been held scarcely less insane than a prophecy six
+or even three years before the event, that in the year 1854 England would
+be united with an Emperor Napoleon for the preservation of European order.
+
+Henry, then, in the spring of the year 1527, definitively breaking the
+Spanish alliance, formed a league with Francis I., the avowed object of
+which was the expulsion of the Imperialists from Italy; with a further
+intention--if it could be carried into effect--of avenging the outrage
+offered to Europe in the pope's imprisonment, by declaring vacant the
+imperial throne. Simultaneously with the congress at Amiens where the terms
+of the alliance were arranged, confidential persons were despatched into
+Italy to obtain an interview--if possible--with the pope, and formally
+laying before him the circumstances of the king's position, to request him
+to make use of his powers to provide a remedy. It is noticeable that at the
+outset of the negotiation the king did not fully trust Wolsey. The latter
+had suggested, as the simplest method of proceeding, that the pope should
+extend his authority as legate, granting him plenary power to act as
+English vicegerent so long as Rome was occupied by the Emperor's troops.
+Henry, not wholly satisfied that he was acquainted with his minister's full
+intentions in desiring so large a capacity, sent his own secretary, unknown
+to Wolsey, with his own private propositions--requesting simply a
+dispensation to take a second wife, his former marriage being allowed to
+stand with no definite sentence passed upon it; or, if that were
+impossible, leaving the pope to choose his own method, and settle the
+question in the manner least difficult and least offensive.[132]
+
+Wolsey, however, soon satisfied the king that he had no sinister
+intentions. By the middle of the winter we find the private messenger
+associated openly with Sir Gregory Cassalis, the agent of the minister's
+communications;[133] and a series of formal demands were presented jointly
+by these two persons in the names of Henry and the legate; which, though
+taking many forms, resolved themselves substantially into one. The pope was
+required to make use of his dispensing power to enable the King of England
+to marry a wife who could bear him children, and thus provide some better
+security than already existed for the succession to the throne. This demand
+could not be considered as in itself unreasonable; and if personal feeling
+was combined with other motives to induce Henry to press it, personal
+feeling did not affect the general bearing of the question. The king's
+desire was publicly urged on public grounds, and thus, and thus only, the
+pope was at liberty to consider it. The marriages of princes have ever been
+affected by other considerations than those which influence such relations
+between private persons. Princes may not, as "unvalued persons" may, "carve
+for themselves;" they pay the penalty of their high place, in submitting
+their affections to the welfare of the state; and the same causes which
+regulate the formation of these ties must be allowed to influence the
+continuance of them. The case which was submitted to the pope was one of
+those for which his very power of dispensing had been vested in him; and
+being, as he called himself, the Father of Christendom, the nation thought
+themselves entitled to call upon him to make use of that power. A resource
+of the kind must exist somewhere--the relation between princes and subjects
+indispensably requiring it. It had been vested in the Bishop of Rome,
+because it had been presumed that the sanctity of his office would secure
+an impartial exercise of his authority. And unless he could have shown
+(which he never attempted to show) that the circumstances of the succession
+were not so precarious as to call for his interference, it would seem that
+the express contingency had arisen which was contemplated in the
+constitution of the canon law;[134] and that where a provision had been
+made by the church of which he was the earthly head, for difficulties of
+this precise description, the pope was under an obligation either to make
+the required concessions in virtue of his faculty, or, if he found himself
+unable to make those concessions, to offer some distinct explanation of his
+refusal. I speak of the question as nakedly political. I am not considering
+the private injuries of which Catherine had so deep a right to complain,
+nor the complications subsequently raised on the original validity of the
+first marriage. A political difficulty, on which alone he was bound to give
+sentence, was laid before the pope in his judicial capacity, in the name of
+the nation; and the painful features which the process afterwards assumed
+are due wholly to his original weakness and vacillation.
+
+Deeply, however, as we must all deplore the scandal and suffering which
+were occasioned by the dispute, it was in a high degree fortunate, that at
+the crisis of public dissatisfaction in England with the condition of the
+church, especially in the conduct of its courts of justice, a cause should
+have arisen which tested the whole question of church authority in its
+highest form; where the dispute between the laity and the ecclesiastics was
+represented in a process in which the pope sat as judge; in which the king
+was the appellant, and the most vital interests of the nation were at stake
+upon the issue. It was no accident which connected a suit for divorce with
+the reformation of religion. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction was upon its
+trial, and the future relations of church and state depended upon the
+pope's conduct in a matter which no technical skill was required to decide,
+but only the moral virtues of probity and courage. The time had been when
+the clergy feared only to be unjust, and when the functions of judges might
+safely be entrusted to them. The small iniquities of the consistory courts
+had shaken the popular faith in the continued operation of such a fear; and
+the experience of an Alexander VI., a Julius II., and a Leo X. had induced
+a suspicion that even in the highest quarters justice had ceased to be much
+considered. It remained for Clement VII. to disabuse men of their alarms,
+or by confirming them to forfeit for ever the supremacy of his order in
+England. Nor can it be said for him that the case was one in which it was
+unusually difficult to be virtuous. Justice, wounded dignity, and the
+interests of the See pointed alike to the same course. Queen Catherine's
+relationship to the emperor could not have recommended her to the
+tenderness of the pope, and the policy of assenting to an act which would
+infallibly alienate Henry from Charles, and therefore attach him to the
+Roman interests, did not require the eloquence of Wolsey to make it
+intelligible. If, because he was in the emperor's power, he therefore
+feared the personal consequences to himself, his cowardice of itself
+disqualified him to sit as a judge.
+
+It does not fall within my present purpose to detail the first stages of
+the proceedings which followed. In substance they are well known to all
+readers of English history, and may be understood without difficulty as
+soon as we possess the clue to the conduct of Wolsey. I shall, however, in
+a few pages briefly epitomise what passed.
+
+At the outset of the negotiation, the pope, although he would take no
+positive steps, was all, in words, which he was expected to be. Neither he
+nor the cardinals refused to acknowledge the dangers which threatened the
+country. He discussed freely the position of the different parties, the
+probabilities of a disputed succession, and the various claimants who would
+present themselves, if the king died without an heir of undisputed
+legitimacy.[135] Gardiner writes to Wolsey,[136] "We did even more
+inculcate what speed and celerity the thing required, and what danger it
+was to the realm to have this matter hang in suspense. His Holiness
+confessed the same, and thereupon began to reckon what divers titles might
+be pretended by the King of Scots and others, and granted that, without an
+heir male, with provision to be made by consent of the state for his
+succession, and unless that what shall be done herein be established in
+such fashion as nothing may hereafter be objected thereto, the realm was
+like to come to dissolution."
+
+In stronger language the Cardinal-Governor of Bologna declared that "he
+knew the gyze of England as well as few men did, and if the king should die
+without heirs male, he was sure it would cost two hundred thousand men's
+lives. Wherefore he thought, supposing his Grace should have no more
+children by the queen, and that by taking of another wife he might have
+heirs male, the bringing to pass that matter, and by that to avoid the
+mischiefs afore written, he thought would deserve Heaven."[137] Whatever
+doubt their might be, therefore, whether the original marriage with
+Catherine was legal, it was universally admitted that there was none about
+the national desirableness of the dissolution of it; and if the pope had
+been free to judge only by the merits of the case, it is impossible to
+doubt that he would have cut the knot, either by granting a dispensation to
+Henry to marry a second wife--his first being formally, though not
+judicially, separated from him--or in some other way.[138] But the emperor
+was "a lion in his path;" the question of strength between the French and
+the Spaniards remained undecided, and Clement would come to no decision
+until he was assured of the power of the allies to protect him from the
+consequences. Accordingly he said and unsaid, sighed, sobbed, beat his
+breast, shuffled, implored, threatened;[139] in all ways he endeavoured to
+escape from his dilemma, to say yes and to say no, to do nothing, to offend
+no one, and above all to gain time, with the weak man's hope that
+"something might happen" to extricate him. Embassy followed embassy from
+England, each using language more threatening than its predecessor. The
+thing, it was said, must be done, and should be done. If it was not done by
+the pope it would be done at home in some other way, and the pope must take
+the consequences.[140] Wolsey warned him passionately of the rising
+storm,[141] a storm which would be so terrible when it burst "that it would
+be better to die than to live." The pope was strangely unable to believe
+that the danger could be real, being misled perhaps by other information
+from the friends of Queen Catherine, and by an over-confidence in the
+attachment of the people to the emperor. He acted throughout in a manner
+natural to a timid amiable man, who found himself in circumstances to which
+he was unequal; and as long as we look at him merely as a man we can pity
+his embarrassment. He forgot, however, that only because he was supposed to
+be more than a man had kings and emperors consented to plead at his
+judgment seat--a fact of which Stephen Gardiner, then Wolsey's secretary,
+thought it well to remind him in the following striking language:--
+
+"Unless," said the future Bishop of Winchester in the council, at the close
+of a weary day of unprofitable debating, "unless some other resolution be
+taken than I perceive you intend to make, hereupon shall be gathered a
+marvellous opinion of your Holiness, of the college of cardinals, and of
+the authority of this See. The King's Highness, and the nobles of the realm
+who shall be made privy to this, shall needs think that your Holiness and
+these most reverend and learned councillors either will not answer in this
+cause, or cannot answer. If you will not, if you do not choose to point out
+the way to an erring man, the care of whom is by God committed to you, they
+will say, 'Oh race of men most ungrateful, and of your proper office most
+oblivious! You who should be simple as doves are full of all deceit, and
+craft, and dissembling. If the king's cause be good, we require that you
+pronounce it good. If it be bad, why will you not say that it is bad, so to
+hinder a prince to whom you are so much bounden from longer continuing with
+it? We ask nothing of you but justice, which the king so loves and values,
+that whatever sinister things others may say or think of him, he will
+follow that with all his heart; that, and nothing else, whether it be for
+the marriage or against the marriage.'
+
+"But if the King's Majesty," continued Gardiner, hitting the very point of
+the difficulty, "if the King's Majesty and the nobility of England, being
+persuaded of your good will to answer if you can do so, shall be brought to
+doubt of your ability, they will be forced to a harder conclusion
+respecting this See--namely, that God has taken from it the key of
+knowledge; and they will begin to give better ear to that opinion of some
+persons to which they have as yet refused to listen, that those papal laws
+which neither the pope himself nor his council can interpret, deserve only
+to be committed to the flames." "I desired his Holiness," he adds, "to
+ponder well this matter."[142]
+
+Clement was no hero, but in his worst embarrassments his wit never failed
+him. He answered that he was not learned, and "to speak truth, albeit there
+was a saying in the canon law, that _Pontifex habet omnia jura in scrinio
+pectoris_ (the pope has all laws locked within his breast), yet God had
+never given him the key to open that lock." He was but "seeking pretexts"
+for delay, as Gardiner saw, till the issue of the Italian campaign of the
+French in the summer of 1528 was decided. He had been liberated, or had
+been allowed to escape from Rome, in the fear that if detained longer he
+might nominate a vicegerent; and was residing at an old ruined castle at
+Orvieto, waiting upon events, leaving the Holy City still occupied by the
+Prince of Orange. In the preceding autumn, immediately after the congress
+at Amiens, M. de Lautrec, accompanied by several English noblemen, had led
+an army across the Alps. He had defeated the Imperialists in the north of
+Italy in several minor engagements; and in January his success appeared so
+probable, that the pope took better heart, and told Sir Gregory Cassalis,
+that if the French would only approach near enough to enable him to plead
+compulsion, he would grant a commission to Wolsey, with plenary power to
+conclude the cause.[143] De Lautrec, however, foiled in his desire to bring
+the Imperialists to a decisive engagement, wasted his time and strength in
+ineffectual petty sieges; and finally, in the summer, on the unhealthy
+plains of Naples, a disaster more fatal in its consequences than the battle
+of Pavia, closed the prospects of the French to the south of the Alps; and
+with them all Wolsey's hopes of realising his dream. Struck down, not by a
+visible enemy, but by the silent hand of fever, the French general himself,
+his English friends, and all his army melted away from off the earth. The
+pope had been wise in time. He had committed himself in words and
+intentions; but he had done nothing which he could not recall. He obtained
+his pardon from the emperor by promising to offend no more; and from that
+moment never again entertained any real thought of concession. Acting under
+explicit directions, he made it his object thenceforward to delay and to
+procrastinate. Charles had no desire to press matters to extremities. War
+had not yet been declared[144] against him by Henry; nor was he anxious
+himself to precipitate a quarrel from which, if possible, he would gladly
+escape. He had a powerful party in England, which it was unwise to alienate
+by hasty, injudicious measures; and he could gain all which he himself
+desired by a simple policy of obstruction. His object was merely to
+protract the negotiation and prevent a decision, in the hope either that
+Henry would be wearied into acquiescence, or that Catherine herself would
+retire of her own accord, or, finally, that some happy accident might occur
+to terminate the difficulty. It is, indeed, much to the honour of Charles
+V. that he resolved to support the queen. She had thrown herself on his
+protection; but princes in such matters consider prudence more than
+feeling, and he could gain nothing by defending her: while, both for
+himself and for the church he risked the loss of much. He over-rated the
+strength of his English connection, and mistook the English character; but
+he was not blind to the hazard which he was incurring, and would have
+welcomed an escape from the dilemma perhaps as warmly as Henry would have
+welcomed it himself. The pope, who well knew his feelings, told Gardiner,
+"It would be for the wealth of Christendom if the queen were in her
+grave; and he thought the emperor would be thereof most glad of all;"
+saying, also, "that he thought like as the emperor had destroyed the
+temporalities of the church, so should she be the destruction of the
+spiritualities."[145]
+
+In the summer of 1528, before the disaster at Naples, Cardinal Campeggio
+had left Rome on his way to England, where he was to hear the cause in
+conjunction with Wolsey. An initial measure of this obvious kind it had
+been impossible to refuse; and the pretexts under which it was for many
+months delayed, were exhausted before the pope's ultimate course had been
+made clear to him. But Campeggio was instructed to protract his journey to
+its utmost length, giving time for the campaign to decide itself. He
+loitered into the autumn, under the excuse of gout and other convenient
+accidents, until the news reached him of De Lautrec's death, which took
+place on the 21st of August; and then at length proceeding, he betrayed to
+Francis I., on passing through Paris, that he had no intention of allowing
+judgment to be passed upon the cause.[146] Even Wolsey was beginning to
+tremble at what he had attempted, and was doubtful of success.[147] The
+seeming relief came in time, for Henry's patience was fast running out. He
+had been over-persuaded into a course which he had never cordially
+approved. The majority of the council, especially the Duke of Norfolk and
+the Duke of Suffolk, were traditionally imperial, and he himself might well
+doubt whether he might not have found a nearer road out of his difficulties
+by adhering to Charles. Charles, after all, was not ruining the papacy, and
+had no intention of ruining it; and his lightest word weighed more at the
+court of Rome than the dubious threats and prayers of France. The Bishop of
+Bayonne, resident French ambassador in London, whose remarkable letters
+transport us back into the very midst of that unquiet and stormy scene,
+tells us plainly that the French alliance was hated by the country, that
+the nobility were all for the emperor, and that among the commons the
+loudest discontent was openly expressed against Wolsey from the danger of
+the interruption of the trade with Flanders. Flemish ships had been
+detained in London, and English ships in retaliation had been arrested in
+the Zealand ports; corn was unusually dear, and the expected supplies from
+Spain and Germany were cut off;[148] while the derangement of the woollen
+trade, from the reluctance of the merchants to venture purchases, was
+causing distress all over the country, and Wolsey had been driven to the
+most arbitrary measures to prevent open disturbance.[149] He had set his
+hopes upon the chance of a single cast which he would not believe could
+fail him, but on each fresh delay he was compelled to feel his declining
+credit, and the Bishop of Bayonne wrote, on the 20th of August, 1528, that
+the cardinal was in bad spirits, and had told him in confidence, that "if
+he could only see the divorce arranged, the king remarried, the succession
+settled, and the laws and the manners and customs of the country reformed,
+he would retire from the world and would serve God the remainder of his
+days."[150] To these few trifles he would be contented to confine
+himself--only to these; he was past sixty, he was weary of the world, and
+his health was breaking, and he would limit his hopes to the execution of a
+work for which centuries imperfectly sufficed. It seemed as if he measured
+his stature by the lengthening shadow, as his sun made haste to its
+setting. Symptoms of misgiving may be observed in the many anxious letters
+which he wrote while Campeggio was so long upon his road; and the Bishop of
+Bayonne, whose less interested eyes could see more deeply into the game,
+warned him throughout that the pope was playing him false.[151] Only in a
+revulsion from violent despondency could such a man as Wolsey have allowed
+himself, on the mere arrival of the legate, and after a few soft words from
+him, to write in the following strain to Sir Gregory Cassalis:--
+
+"You cannot believe the exultation with which at length I find myself
+successful in the object for which these many years, with all my industry,
+I have laboured. At length I have found means to bind my most excellent
+sovereign and this glorious realm to the holy Roman see in faith and
+obedience for ever. Henceforth will this people become the most sure pillar
+of support to bear up the sacred fabric of the church. Henceforth, in
+recompense for that enduring felicity which he has secured to it, our most
+Holy Lord has all England at his devotion. In brief time will this noble
+land make its grateful acknowledgments to his clemency at once for the
+preservation of the most just, most wise, most excellent of princes, and
+for the secure establishment of the realm and the protection of the royal
+succession."[152]
+
+This letter was dated on the fourth of October, and was written in the hope
+that the pope had collected his courage, and that the legate had brought
+powers to proceed to judgment. In a few days the prospect was again
+clouded, and Wolsey was once more in despair.[153] Campeggio had brought
+with him instructions if possible to arrange a compromise,--if a compromise
+was impossible, to make the best use of his ingenuity, and do nothing and
+allow nothing to be done. In one of two ways, however, it was hoped that he
+might effect a peaceful solution. He urged the king to give way and to
+proceed no further; and this failing, as he was prepared to find, he urged
+the same thing upon the queen.[154] He invited Catherine, or he was
+directed to invite her, in the pope's name,[155] for the sake of the
+general interests of Christendom, to take the vows and enter what was
+called _religio laxa_, a state in which she might live unincumbered by
+obligations except the easy one of chastity, and free from all other
+restrictions either of habit, diet, or order. The proposal was Wolsey's,
+and was formed when he found the limited nature of Campeggio's
+instructions;[156] but it was adopted by the latter; and I cannot but think
+(though I have no proof of it) that it was not adopted without the
+knowledge of the emperor. Whatever were his own interests, Charles V. gave
+Catherine his unwavering support: he made it his duty to maintain her in
+the ignominious position in which she was placed, and submitted his own
+conduct to be guided by her wishes. It cannot be doubted, however, from the
+pope's words, and also from the circumstances of the case, that if she
+could have prevailed upon herself to yield, it would have relieved him from
+a painful embarrassment. As a prince, he must have felt the substantial
+justice of Henry's demand, and in refusing to allow the pope to pass a
+judicial sentence of divorce, he could not but have known that he was
+compromising the position of the Holy See: while Catherine herself, on the
+other hand, if she had yielded, would have retired without a stain; no
+opinion would have been pronounced upon her marriage; the legitimacy of the
+Princess Mary would have been left without impeachment; and her right to
+the succession, in the event of no male heir following from any new
+connection which the king might form, would have been readily secured to
+her by act of parliament. It may be asked why she did not yield, and it is
+difficult to answer the question. She was not a person who would have been
+disturbed by the loss of a few court vanities. Her situation as Henry's
+wife could not have had many charms for her, nor can it be thought that she
+retained a personal affection for him. If she had loved him, she would have
+suffered too deeply in the struggle to have continued to resist, and the
+cloister would have seemed a paradise. Or if the cloister had appeared too
+sad a shelter for her, she might have gone back to the gardens of the
+Alhambra, where she had played as a child, carrying with her the
+affectionate remembrance of every English heart, and welcomed by her own
+people as an injured saint. Nor again can we suppose that the possible
+injury of her daughter's prospects from the birth of a prince by another
+marriage could have seemed of so vast moment to her. Those prospects were
+already more than endangered, and would have been rather improved than
+brought into further peril.
+
+It is not for us to dictate the conduct which a woman smarting under
+injuries so cruel ought to have pursued. She had a right to choose the
+course which seemed the best to herself, and England especially could not
+claim of a stranger that readiness to sacrifice herself which it might have
+demanded and exacted of one of its own children. We may regret, however,
+what we are unable to censure; and the most refined ingenuity could
+scarcely have invented a more unfortunate answer than that which the Queen
+returned to the legate's request. She seems to have said that she was ready
+to take vows of chastity if the king would do the same. It does not appear
+whether the request was _formally_ made, or whether it was merely suggested
+to her in private conversation. That she told the legates, however, what
+her answer would be, appears certain from the following passage, sadly
+indicating the "devices of policy" to which in this unhappy business
+honourable men allowed themselves to be driven:--
+
+"Forasmuch as it is like that the queen shall make marvellous difficulty,
+and in nowise be conformable to enter religion[157] or take vows of
+chastity, but that to induce her thereunto, there must be ways and means of
+high policy used, and all things possible devised to encourage her to the
+same; wherein percase she shall resolve that she in no wise will condescend
+so to do, unless that the King's Highness also do the semblable for his
+part; the king's said orators shall therefore in like wise ripe and
+instruct themselves by their secret learned council in the court of Rome,
+if, for so great a benefit to ensue unto the king's succession, realm, and
+subjects, with the quiet of his conscience, his Grace should promise so to
+enter religion on vows of chastity for his part, only thereby to conduce
+the queen thereunto, whether in that case the Pope's Holiness may dispense
+with the King's Highness for the same promise, oath, or vow, discharging
+his Grace clearly of the same."[158]
+
+The explanation of the queen's conduct lies probably in regions into which
+it is neither easy nor well to penetrate; in regions of outraged delicacy
+and wounded pride, in a vast drama of passion which had been enacted behind
+the scenes. From the significant hints which are let fall of the original
+cause of the estrangement, it was of a kind more difficult to endure than
+the ordinary trial of married women, the transfer of a husband's affection
+to some fairer face; and a wife whom so painful a misfortune had failed to
+crush would be likely to have been moved by it to a deeper and more bitter
+indignation even, because while she could not blame herself, she knew not
+whom she might rightly allow herself to blame. And if this were so, the
+king is not likely to have allayed the storm when at length, putting faith
+in Wolsey's promises, he allowed himself openly to regard another person as
+his future wife, establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same
+roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position
+openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy
+dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival.
+Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile
+would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be
+surprised if policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Catherine in the
+bitterness of the draught which was forced upon her, and if her own
+personal wrongs outweighed the interests of the world. Henry had proceeded
+to the last unjustifiable extremity as soon as the character of Campeggio's
+mission had been made clear to him, as if to demonstrate to all the world
+that he was determined to persevere at all costs and hazards.[160] Taking
+the management of the negotiation into his own keeping, he sent Sir Francis
+Bryan, the cousin of Anne Boleyn, to the pope, to announce that what he
+required must be done, and to declare peremptorily, no more with covert
+hints, but with open menace, that in default of help from Rome, he would
+lay the matter before parliament, to be settled at home by the laws of his
+own country.
+
+Meanwhile, the emperor, who had hitherto conducted himself with the
+greatest address, had fallen into his first error. He had retreated
+skilfully out of the embarrassment in which the pope's imprisonment
+involved him, and mingling authority and dictation with kindness and
+deference, he had won over the Holy See to his devotion, and neutralised
+the danger to which the alliance of France and England threatened to expose
+him. His correspondence with the latter country assured him of the
+unpopularity of the course which had been pursued by the cardinal; he was
+aware of the obstruction of trade which it had caused, and of the general
+displeasure felt by the people at the breach of an old friendship; while
+the league with France in behalf of the Roman church had been barren of
+results, and was made ridiculous by the obvious preference of the pope for
+the enemy from whom it was formed to deliver him. If Charles had understood
+the English temper, therefore, and had known how to avail himself of the
+opportunity, events might have run in a very different channel. But he was
+not aware of the earnestness with which the people were bent upon securing
+the succession, nor of their loyal attachment to Henry. He supposed that
+disapproval of the course followed by Wolsey to obtain the divorce implied
+an aversion to it altogether; and trusting to his interest in the privy
+council, and to his commercial connection with the city, he had attempted
+to meet menace with menace; he had replied to the language addressed by
+Henry to the pope with an attempt to feel the pulse of English
+disaffection, and he opened a correspondence with the Earl of Desmond for
+an Irish revolt.[161]
+
+The opportunity for a movement of this kind had not yet arrived. There was,
+in England at least, as yet no wide disaffection; but there was a chance of
+serious outbreaks; and Henry instantly threw himself upon the nation. He
+summoned the peers by circular to London, and calling a general meeting,
+composed of the nobility, the privy council, the lord mayor, and the great
+merchants of the city, he laid before them a specific detail of his objects
+in desiring the divorce;[162] and informed them of the nature of the
+measures which had been taken.[163] This, the French ambassador informs us,
+gave wide satisfaction and served much to allay the disquiet; but so great
+was the indignation against Wolsey, that disturbances in London were every
+day anticipated; and at one time the danger appeared so threatening, that
+an order of council was issued, commanding all strangers to leave the city,
+and a general search was instituted for arms.[164] The strangers aimed at
+were the Flemings, whose numbers made them formidable, and who were,
+perhaps, supposed to be ready to act under instruction from abroad. The
+cloud, however, cleared away; the order was not enforced; and the
+propitious moment for treason had not yet arrived. The emperor had felt so
+confident that, in the autumn of 1528, he had boasted that, "before the
+winter was over, he would fling Henry from his throne by the hands of his
+own Subjects." The words had been repeated to Wolsey, who mentioned them
+openly at his table before more than a hundred gentlemen. A person present
+exclaimed, "That speech has lost the emperor more than a hundred thousand
+hearts among us;"[165] an expression which reveals at once the strength and
+the weakness of the imperial party. England might have its own opinions of
+the policy of the government, but it was in no humour to tolerate treason,
+and the first hint of revolt was followed by an instant recoil. The
+discovery of more successful intrigues in Scotland and Ireland completed
+the destruction of Charles's influence;[166] and the result of these
+ill-judged and premature efforts was merely to unite the nation in their
+determination to prosecute the divorce.
+
+Thus were the various parties in the vast struggle which was about to
+commence gravitating into their places; and mistake combined with policy to
+place them in their true positions. Wolsey, in submitting "the king's
+matter" to the pope, had brought to issue the question whether the papal
+authority should be any longer recognised in England; and he had secured
+the ruin of that authority by the steps through which he hoped to establish
+it; while Charles, by his unwise endeavours to foment a rebellion, severed
+with his own hand the links of a friendship which would have been seriously
+embarrassing if it had continued. By him, also, was dealt the concluding
+stroke in this first act of the drama; and though we may grant him credit
+for the ingenuity of his contrivance, he can claim it only at the expense
+of his probity. The pope, when the commission was appointed for the trial
+of the cause in England, had given a promise in writing that the commission
+should not be revoked. It seemed, therefore, that the legates would be
+compelled, in spite of themselves, to pronounce sentence; and that the
+settlement of the question, in one form or other, could not long be
+delayed. At the pressure of the crisis in the winter of 1528-9, a document
+was produced alleged to have been found in Spain, which furnished a pretext
+for a recall of the engagement, and opening now questions, indefinite and
+inexhaustible, rendered the passing of a sentence in England impossible.
+Unhappily, the weight of the king's claim (however it had been rested on
+its true merits in conversation and in letters) had, by the perverse
+ingenuity of the lawyers, been laid on certain informalities and defects in
+the original bull of dispensation, which had been granted by Julius II. for
+the marriage of Henry and Catherine. At the moment when the legates' court
+was about to be opened, a copy of a brief was brought forward, bearing the
+same date as the bull, exactly meeting the objection. The authenticity of
+this brief was open, on its own merits, to grave doubt; and suspicion
+becomes certainty when we find it was dropped out of the controversy so
+soon as the immediate object was gained for which it was produced. But the
+legates' hands were instantly tied by it. The "previous question" of
+authenticity had necessarily to be tried before they could take another
+step; and the "original" of the brief being in the hands of the emperor,
+who refused to send it into England, but offered to send it to Rome, the
+cause was virtually transferred to Rome, where Henry, as he knew, was
+unlikely to consent to plead, or where he could himself rule the decision.
+He had made a stroke of political finesse, which answered not only the
+purpose that he immediately intended, but answered, also, the purpose that
+he did not intend--of dealing the hardest blow which it had yet received to
+the supremacy of the Holy See.
+
+The spring of 1529 was wasted in fruitless efforts to obtain the brief. At
+length, in May, the proceedings were commenced; but they were commenced
+only in form, and were never more than an illusion. Catherine had been
+instructed in the course which she was to pursue. She appealed from the
+judgment of the legates to that of the pope; and the pope, with the plea of
+the new feature which had arisen in the case, declared that he could not
+refuse to revoke his promise. Having consented to the production of the
+brief, he had in fact no alternative; nor does it appear what he could have
+urged in excuse of himself. He may have suspected the forgery; nay, it is
+certain that in England he was believed to be privy to it; but he could not
+ignore an important feature of necessary evidence, especially when pressed
+upon him by the emperor; and it was in fact no more than an absurdity to
+admit the authority of a papal commission, and to refuse to permit an
+appeal from it to the pope in person. We may thank Clement for dispelling a
+chimera by a simple act of consistency. The power of the See of Rome in
+England was a constitutional fiction, acknowledged only on condition that
+it would consent to be inert. So long as a legate's court sat in London,
+men were able to conceal from themselves the fact of a foreign
+jurisdiction, and to feel that, substantially, their national independence
+was respected; when the fiction aspired to become a reality, but one
+consequence was possible. If Henry himself would have stooped to plead at a
+foreign tribunal, the spirit of the nation would not have permitted him to
+inflict so great a dishonour on the free majesty of England.
+
+So fell Wolsey's great scheme, and with it fell the last real chance of
+maintaining the pope's authority in England under any form. The people were
+smarting under the long humiliation of the delay, and ill-endured to see
+the interests of England submitted, as they virtually were, to the
+arbitration of a foreign prince. The emperor, not the pope, was the true
+judge who sat to decide the quarrel; and their angry jealousy refused to
+tolerate longer a national dishonour.
+
+"The great men of the realm," wrote the legates, "are storming in bitter
+wrath at our procrastination. Lords and commons alike complain that they
+are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital moment to
+themselves and their fortunes. And many persons here who would desire to
+see the pope's authority in this country diminished or annulled, are
+speaking in language which we cannot repeat without horror."[167]
+
+And when, being in such a mood, they were mocked, after two weary years of
+negotiation, by the opening of a fresh vista of difficulties, when they
+were informed that the further hearing of the cause was transferred to
+Italy, even Wolsey, with certain ruin before him, rose in protest before
+such a dream of shame. He was no more the Roman legate, but the English
+minister.
+
+"If the advocation be passed," he wrote to Cassalis,[168] "or shall now at
+any time hereafter pass, with citation of the king in person, or by
+proctor, to the court of Rome, or with any clause of interdiction or
+excommunication, _vel cum invocatione brachii sęcularis_, whereby the king
+should be precluded from taking his advantage otherwise, the dignity and
+prerogative royal of the king's crown, whereunto all the nobles and
+subjects of this realm will adhere and stick unto the death, may not
+tolerate nor suffer that the same be obeyed. And to say the truth, in so
+doing the pope should not only show himself the king's enemy, but also as
+much as in him is, provoke all other princes and people to be the
+semblable. Nor shall it ever be seen that the king's cause shall be
+ventilated or decided in any place out of his own realm; _but that if his
+Grace should come at any time to the Court of Rome, he would do the same
+with such a main and army royal as should be formidable to the pope and all
+Italy_."[169]
+
+Wolsey, however, failed in his protest; the advocation was passed,
+Campeggio left England, and he was lost. A crisis had arrived, and a
+revolution of policy was inevitable. From the accession of Henry VII., the
+country had been governed by a succession of ecclesiastical ministers, who
+being priests as well as statesmen, were essentially conservative; and
+whose efforts in a position of constantly increasing difficulty had been
+directed towards resisting the changing tendencies of the age, and either
+evading a reformation of the church while they admitted its necessity, or
+retaining the conduct of it in their own hands, while they were giving
+evidence of their inability to accomplish the work. It was now over; the
+ablest representative of this party, in a last desperate effort to retain
+power, had decisively failed. Writs were issued for a parliament when the
+legate's departure was determined, and the consequences were inevitable.
+Wolsey had known too well the unpopularity of his foreign policy, to
+venture on calling a parliament himself. He relied on success as an
+ultimate justification; and inasmuch as success had not followed, he was
+obliged to bear the necessary fate of a minister who, in a free country,
+had thwarted the popular will and whom fortune deserted in the struggle.
+The barriers which his single hand had upheld suddenly gave way, the
+torrent had free course, and he himself was the first to be swept away. In
+modern language, we should describe what took place as a change of
+ministry, the government being transferred to an opposition, who had been
+irritated by long depression under the hands of men whom they despised, and
+who were borne into power by an irresistible force in a moment of
+excitement and danger. The king, who had been persuaded against his better
+judgment to accept Wolsey's schemes, admitted the rising spirit without
+reluctance, contented to moderate its action, but no longer obstructing or
+permitting it to be obstructed. Like all great English statesmen, he was
+constitutionally conservative, but he had the tact to perceive the
+conditions under which, in critical times, conservatism is possible; and
+although he continued to endure for himself the trifling of the papacy, he
+would not, for the sake of the pope's interest, delay further the
+investigation of the complaints of the people against the church; while in
+the future prosecution of his own cause, he resolved to take no steps
+except with the consent of the legislature, and in a question of national
+moment, to consult only the nation's wishes.
+
+The new ministry held a middle place between the moving party in the
+commons and the expelled ecclesiastics, the principal members of it being
+the chief representatives of the old aristocracy, who had been Wolsey's
+fiercest opponents, but who were disinclined by constitution and sympathy
+from sweeping measures. An attempt was made, indeed, to conciliate the more
+old-fashioned of the churchmen, by an offer of the seals to Warham,
+Archbishop of Canterbury, probably because he originally opposed the
+marriage between the king and his sister-in-law, and because it was hoped
+that his objections remained unaltered. Warham, however, as we shall see,
+had changed his mind: he declined, on the plea of age, and the office of
+chancellor was given to Sir Thomas More, perhaps the person least
+disaffected to the clergy who could have been found among the leading
+laymen. The substance of power was vested in the Dukes of Norfolk and
+Suffolk, the great soldier-nobles of the age, and Sir William Fitz-William,
+lord admiral; to all of whom the ecclesiastical domination had been most
+intolerable, while they had each of them brilliantly distinguished
+themselves in the wars with France and Scotland. According to the French
+ambassador, we must add one more minister, supreme, if we may trust him,
+above them all. "The Duke of Norfolk," he writes, "is made president of the
+council, the Duke of Suffolk vice-president, and above them both is
+Mistress Anne;"[170] this last addition to the council being one which
+boded little good to the interests of the See that had so long detained her
+in expectation. So confident were the destructive party of the temper of
+the approaching parliament, and of the irresistible pressure of the times,
+that the general burden of conversation of the dinner-tables in the great
+houses in London was an exulting expectation of a dissolution of the church
+establishment, and a confiscation of ecclesiastical property; the king
+himself being the only obstacle which was feared by them. "These noble
+lords imagine," continues the same writer, "that the cardinal once dead of
+ruined, they will incontinently plunder the church, and strip it of all its
+wealth," adding that there was no occasion for him to write this in cipher,
+for it was everywhere openly spoken of.[171]
+
+Movements, nevertheless, which are pregnant with vital change, are slow in
+assuming their essential direction, even after the stir has commenced.
+Circumstances do not immediately open themselves; the point of vision
+alters gradually; and fragments of old opinions, and prepossessions, and
+prejudices remain interfused with the new, even in the clearest minds, and
+cannot at a moment be shaken off. Only the unwise change suddenly; and we
+can never too often remind ourselves, when we see men stepping forward with
+uncertainty and hesitation over a road, where to us, we know the actual
+future, all seems so plain, that the road looked different to the actors
+themselves, who were beset with imaginations of the past, and to whom the
+gloom of the future appeared thronged with phantoms of possible
+contingencies. The hasty expectations of the noble lords were checked by
+Henry's prudence; and though parties were rapidly arranging themselves,
+there was still confusion. The city, though disinclined to the pope and the
+church, continued to retain an inclination for the emperor; and the pope
+had friends among Wolsey's enemies, who, by his overthrow, were pressed
+forward into prominence, and divided the victory with the reformers. The
+presence of Sir Thomas More in the council was a guarantee that no
+exaggerated measures against the church would be permitted so long as he
+held the seals; and Henry, perhaps, was anxious to leave room for
+conciliation, which he hoped that the pope would desire as much as himself,
+so soon as the meeting of parliament had convinced him that the mutinous
+disposition of the nation had not been overstated by his own and Wolsey's
+letters.
+
+The impression conceived two years before of the hostile relations between
+the pope and Charles had not yet been wholly effaced; and even as late as
+September, 1529, after the closing of the legates' court, in the very heat
+of the public irritation, there were persons who believed that when Clement
+met his imperial captor face to face, and the interview had taken place
+which had been arranged for the ensuing January, his eyes would be opened,
+and that he would fall back upon England.[172] At the same time, the
+incongruities in the constitution of the council became so early apparent,
+that their agreement was thought impossible, and Wolsey's return to power
+was discussed openly as a probability[173]--a result which Anne Boleyn,
+who, better than any other person, knew the king's feelings, never ceased
+to fear, till, a year after his disgrace, the welcome news were brought to
+her that he had sunk into his long rest, where the sick load of office and
+of obloquy would gall his back no more.
+
+There was a third party in the country, unconsidered as yet, who had a part
+to play in the historical drama: a party which, indeed, if any one had
+known it, was the most important of all; the only one which, in a true,
+high sense, was of importance at all; and for the sake of which, little as
+it then appeared to be so, the whole work was to be done--composed at that
+time merely of poor men, poor cobblers, weavers, carpenters, trade
+apprentices, and humble artisans, men of low birth and low estate, who
+might be seen at night stealing along the lanes and alleys of London,
+carrying with them some precious load of books which it was death to
+possess; and giving their lives gladly, if it must be so, for the brief
+tenure of so dear a treasure. These men, for the present, were likely to
+fare ill from the new ministry. They were the disturbers of order, the
+anarchists, the men disfigured _pravitate hereticā_, by monstrous
+doctrines, and consequently by monstrous lives--who railed at authorities,
+and dared to read New Testaments with their own eyes--who, consequently, by
+their excesses and extravagances, brought discredit upon liberal opinions,
+and whom moderate liberals (as they always have done, and always will do
+while human nature remains itself) held it necessary for their credit's
+sake to persecute, that a censorious world might learn to make no confusion
+between true wisdom and the folly which seemed to resemble it. The
+Protestants had not loved Wolsey, and they had no reason to love him; but
+it was better to bear a fagot of dry sticks in a procession when the
+punishment was symbolic, than, lashed fast to a stake in Smithfield, amidst
+piles of the same fagots kindled into actual flames, to sink into a heap of
+blackened dust and ashes; and before a year had passed, they would gladly
+have accepted again the hated cardinal, to escape from the philosophic
+mercies of Sir Thomas More. The number of English Protestants at this time
+it is difficult to conjecture. The importance of such men is not to be
+measured by counting heads. In 1526, they were organised into a society,
+calling themselves "the Christian brotherhood,"[174] with a central
+committee sitting in London; with subscribed funds, regularly audited, for
+the purchase of Testaments and tracts; and with paid agents, who travelled
+up and down the country to distribute them. Some of the poorer clergy
+belonged to the society;[175] and among the city merchants there were many
+well inclined to it, and who, perhaps, attended its meetings "by night,
+secretly, for fear of the Jews." But, as a rule, "property and influence"
+continued to hold aloof in the usual haughty style, and the pioneers of the
+new opinions had yet to win their way along a scorched and blackened path
+of suffering, before the State would consent to acknowledge them. We think
+bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is
+inevitable from the constitution of the world. New doctrines ever gain
+readiest hearing among the common people; not only because the interests of
+the higher classes are usually in some degree connected with the
+maintenance of existing institutions; but because ignorance is itself a
+protection against the many considerations which embarrass the judgment of
+the educated. The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own
+apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms;
+while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories
+which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and one there
+which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality,
+where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage
+and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which,
+by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who entertain
+them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not any more
+believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is necessarily
+fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were supposed to be
+attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to rise among us,
+making murder a religious service; if they gained proselytes, and the
+proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again
+to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to ourselves,
+the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas More, only being as
+much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul is more terrible than
+the single and momentary separation of it from the body. There is, I think,
+no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of
+persecution, except only this: that as we are now convinced of the
+injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be
+just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human
+feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of
+harder nature and more narrow sympathies enforced them without reluctance,
+and even with exultation. The heart, when it is rightly constituted,
+corrects the folly of the head; and wise good men, even though they
+entertain no conscious misgiving as to the soundness of their theories, may
+be delivered from the worst consequences of those theories, by trusting
+their more genial instincts. And thus, and thus only, are we justified in
+censuring those whose names figure largely in the persecuting lists. Their
+defence is impregnable to logic. We blame them for the absence of that
+humanity which is deeper than logic, and which should have taught them to
+refuse the conclusions of their speculative creed.
+
+Such, then, was the state of parties in the autumn of 1529. The old
+conservatives, the political ecclesiastics, had ceased to exist, and the
+clergy as a body were paralysed by corruption. There remained--
+
+The English party who had succeeded to power, and who were bent upon a
+secular revolt.
+
+The papal party, composed of theoretic theologians, like Fisher, Bishop of
+Rochester, and represented on the council by Sir Thomas More.
+
+And both of these were united in their aversion to the third party, that of
+the doctrinal Protestants, who were still called heretics.
+
+These three substantially divided what was sound in England; the first
+composed of the mass of the people, representing the principles of
+prudence, justice, good sense, and the working faculties of social life:
+the two last sharing between them the higher qualities of nobleness,
+enthusiasm, self-devotion; but in their faith being without discretion, and
+in their piety without understanding. The problem of the Reformation was to
+reunite virtues which could be separated only to their mutual confusion;
+and to work out among them such inadequate reconciliation as the wilfulness
+of human nature would allow.
+
+Before I close this chapter, which is intended as a general introduction, I
+have to say something of two prominent persons whose character antecedent
+to the actions in which we are to find them engaged it is desirable that we
+should understand; I mean Henry VIII. himself, and the lady whom he had
+selected to fill the place from which Catherine of Arragon was to be
+deposed.
+
+If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his
+loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had
+ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have
+taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black Prince or of
+the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character
+unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination,
+and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his
+senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore
+through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had
+been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have
+resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in
+Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of
+his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match
+him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk: he drew with ease as
+strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were
+sustained in unfailing vigour by a temperate habit and by constant
+exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not left to judge from the
+suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His state papers and letters
+may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they lose
+nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the
+perception is equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they
+breathe throughout an irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this
+he had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in
+four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of other subjects, with
+which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the
+reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of his
+age; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and new
+constructions in ship-building; and this not with the condescending
+incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding.
+His reading was vast, especially in theology, which has been ridiculously
+ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father's intention of educating him for the
+Archbishopric of Canterbury; as if the scientific mastery of such a subject
+could have been acquired by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no
+more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have studied theology with the
+full maturity of his intellect; and he had a fixed and perhaps unfortunate
+interest in the subject itself.[176]
+
+In all directions of human activity Henry displayed natural powers of the
+highest order, at the highest stretch of industrious culture. He was
+"attentive," as it is called, "to his religious duties," being present at
+the services in chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity,
+and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in
+the energy and purity of his life. In private he was good-humoured and
+good-natured. His letters to his secretaries, though never undignified, are
+simple, easy, and unrestrained; and the letters written by them to him are
+similarly plain and businesslike, as if the writers knew that the person
+whom they were addressing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as
+a man. Again, from their correspondence with one another, when they
+describe interviews with him, we gather the same pleasant impression. He
+seems to have been always kind, always considerate; inquiring into their
+private concerns with genuine interest, and winning, as a consequence,
+their warm and unaffected attachment.
+
+As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been successful.
+He had the splendid tastes in which the English people most delighted, and
+he had substantially acted out his own theory of his duty which was
+expressed in the following words:--
+
+"Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and nurses to their
+subjects, and by Scripture it appeareth that it appertaineth unto the
+office of princes to see that right religion and true doctrine be
+maintained and taught, and that their subjects may be well ruled and
+governed by good and just laws; and to provide and care for them that all
+things necessary for them may be plenteous; and that the people and
+commonweal may increase; and to defend them from oppression and invasion,
+as well within the realm as without; and to see that justice be
+administered unto them indifferently; and to hear benignly all their
+complaints; and to show towards them, although they offend, fatherly pity.
+And, finally, so to correct them that be evil, that they had yet rather
+save them than lose them if it were not for respect of justice, and
+maintenance of peace and good order in the commonweal."[177]
+
+These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct in his
+earlier years. His social administration we have partially seen in the
+previous chapter. He had more than once been tried with insurrection, which
+he had soothed down without bloodshed, and extinguished in forgiveness; and
+London long recollected the great scene which followed "evil May-day,"
+1517, when the apprentices were brought down to Westminster Hall to receive
+their pardons. There had been a dangerous riot in the streets, which might
+have provoked a mild government to severity; but the king contented himself
+with punishing the five ringleaders, and four hundred other prisoners,
+after being paraded down the streets in white shirts with halters round
+their necks, were dismissed with an admonition, Wolsey weeping as he
+pronounced it.[178]
+
+It is certain that if, as I said, he had died before the divorce was
+mooted, Henry VIII., like that Roman Emperor said by Tacitus to have been
+_consensu omnium dignus imperii nisi imperasset_, would have been
+considered by posterity as formed by Providence for the conduct of the
+Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a perpetual calamity.
+We must allow him, therefore, the benefit of his past career, and be
+careful to remember it, when interpreting his later actions. Not many men
+would have borne themselves through the same trials with the same
+integrity; but the circumstances of those trials had not tested the true
+defects in his moral constitution. Like all princes of the Plantagenet
+blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses,
+in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life,
+when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with
+difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to
+contend. Education had done much for him, but his nature required more
+correction than his position had permitted, whilst unbroken prosperity and
+early independence of control had been his most serious misfortune. He had
+capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest
+of men. With all his faults about him, he was still perhaps the greatest of
+his contemporaries; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to
+govern England, had been set to do it by the conditions of his birth.
+
+The other person whose previous history we have to ascertain is one, the
+tragedy of whose fate has blotted the remembrance of her sins--if her sins
+were, indeed, and in reality, more than imaginary. Forgetting all else in
+shame and sorrow, posterity has made piteous reparation for her death in
+the tenderness with which it has touched her reputation; and with the
+general instincts of justice, we have refused to qualify our indignation at
+the wrong which she experienced, by admitting either stain or shadow on her
+fame. It has been with Anne Boleyn as it has been with Catherine of
+Arragon--both are regarded as the victims of a tyranny which catholics and
+protestants unite to remember with horror; and each has taken the place of
+a martyred saint in the hagiology of the respective creeds. Catholic
+writers have, indeed, ill repaid, in their treatment of Anne, the
+admiration with which the mother of Queen Mary has been remembered in the
+Church of England; but the invectives which they have heaped upon her have
+defeated their object by their extravagance. It has been believed that
+matter failed them to sustain a just accusation, when they condescended to
+outrageous slander. Inasmuch, however, as some natural explanation can
+usually be given of the actions of human beings in this world without
+supposing them to have been possessed by extraordinary wickedness, and if
+we are to hold Anne Boleyn entirely free from fault, we place not the king
+only, but the privy council, the judges, the Lords and Commons, and the two
+Houses of Convocation, in a position fatal to their honour and degrading to
+ordinary humanity; we cannot without inquiry acquiesce in so painful a
+conclusion. The English nation also, as well as she, deserves justice at
+our hands; and it must not be thought uncharitable if we look with some
+scrutiny at the career of a person who, except for the catastrophe with
+which it was closed, would not so readily have obtained forgiveness for
+having admitted the addresses of the king, or for having received the
+homage of the court as its future sovereign, while the king's wife, her
+mistress, as yet resided under the same roof, with the title and the
+position of queen, and while the question was still undecided of the
+validity of the first marriage. If in that alone she was to blame, her
+fault was, indeed, revenged a thousandfold,--and yet no lady of true
+delicacy would have accepted such a position; and feeling for Queen
+Catherine should have restrained her, if she was careless of respect for
+herself. It must, therefore, be permitted me, out of such few hints and
+scattered notices as remain, to collect such information as may be trusted
+respecting her early life before her appearance upon the great stage. These
+hints are but slight, since I shall not even mention the scandals of
+Sanders, any more than I shall mention the panegyrics of Foxe; stories
+which, as far as I can learn, have no support in evidence, and rest on no
+stronger foundation than the credulity of passion.
+
+Anne Boleyn was the second daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a gentleman of
+noble family, though moderate fortune;[179] who, by a marriage with the
+daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, was brought into connection with the
+highest blood in the realm. The year of her birth has not been certainly
+ascertained, but she is supposed to have been seven years old[180] in 1514,
+when she accompanied the Princess Mary into France, on the marriage of that
+lady with Louis XII. Louis dying a few months subsequently, the princess
+married Sir Charles Brandon, afterwards created Duke of Suffolk, and
+returned to England. Anne Boleyn did not return with her; she remained in
+Paris to become accomplished with the graces and elegancies, if she was not
+contaminated by the vices, of that court, which, even in those days of
+loyal licentiousness, enjoyed an undesirable pre-eminence in profligacy. In
+the French capital she could not have failed to see, to hear, and to become
+familiar with occurrences with which no young girl can be brought in
+contact with impunity, and this poisonous atmosphere she continued to
+breathe for nine years. She came back to England in 1525, to be maid of
+honour to Queen Catherine, and to be distinguished at the court, by general
+consent, for her talents, her accomplishments, and her beauty. Her
+portraits, though all professedly by Holbein, or copied from pictures by
+him, are singularly unlike each other. The profile in the picture which is
+best known is pretty, innocent, and piquant, though rather insignificant:
+there are other pictures, however, in which we see a face more powerful,
+though less prepossessing. In these the features are full and languid. The
+eyes are large; but the expression, though remarkable, is not pleasing, and
+indicates cunning more than thought, passion more than feeling; while the
+heavy lips and massive chin wear a look of sensuality which is not to be
+mistaken. Possibly all are like the original, but represented her under
+different circumstances, or at different periods of her life. Previous to
+her engagement with the king, she was the object of fleeting attentions
+from the young noblemen about the court. Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord
+Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He
+was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him
+there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be
+true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself. The story
+is not without its difficulties, since Lord Percy had been contracted,
+several years previously, to a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury,[181]
+whom he afterwards married, and by the law he could not have formed a
+second engagement so long as the first was undissolved. And again, he
+himself, when subsequently examined before the privy council, denied
+solemnly on his oath that any contract of the kind had existed.[182] At the
+same time, we cannot suppose Cavendish to have invented so circumstantial a
+narrative, and Percy would not have been examined if there had been no
+reason for suspicion. Something, therefore, probably had passed between him
+and the young maid of honour, though we cannot now conjecture of what
+nature; and we can infer only that it was not openly to her discredit, or
+she would not have obtained the position which cost her so dear. She
+herself confessed subsequently, before Archbishop Cranmer, to a connection
+of some kind into which she had entered before her acquaintance with Henry.
+No evidence survives which will explain to what she referred, for the act
+of parliament which mentions the fact furnishes no details.[183] But it was
+of a kind which made her marriage with the king illegal, and
+illegitimatised the offspring of it; and it has been supposed, therefore,
+that, in spite of Lord Percy's denial, he had really engaged himself to
+her, and was afraid to acknowledge it.[184] This supposition, however, is
+not easy to reconcile with the language of the act, which speaks of the
+circumstance, whatever it was, as only "recently known;" nor could a
+contract with Percy have invalidated her marriage with the king, when Percy
+having been pre-contracted to another person, it would have been itself
+invalid. A light is thrown upon the subject by a letter found among
+Cromwell's papers, addressed by some unknown person to a Mr. Melton, also
+unknown, but written obviously when "Mistress Anne" was a young lady about
+the court, and before she had been the object of any open attention from
+Henry.
+
+"MR. MELTON.--This shall be to advertise you that Mistress Anne is changed
+from that she was at when we three were last together. Wherefore I pray you
+that ye be no devil's sakke, but according to the truth ever justify, as ye
+shall make answer before God; and do not suffer her in my absence to be
+married to any other man. I must go to my master, wheresoever he be, for
+the Lord Privy Seal desireth much to speak with me, whom if I should speak
+with in my master's absence, it would cause me to lose my head; and yet I
+know myself as true a man to my prince as liveth, whom (as my friend
+informeth me) I have offended grievously in my words. No more to you, but
+to have me commended unto Mistress Anne, and bid her remember her promise,
+which none can loose, but God only, to whom I shall daily during my life
+commend her."[185]
+
+The letter must furnish its own interpretation; for it receives little from
+any other quarter. Being in the possession of Cromwell, however, it had
+perhaps been forwarded to him at the time of Queen Anne's trial, and may
+have thus occasioned the investigation which led to the annulling of her
+marriage.
+
+From the account which was written of her by the grandson of Sir Thomas
+Wyatt the poet, we still gather the impression (in spite of the admiring
+sympathy with which Wyatt writes) of a person with whom young men took
+liberties,[186] however she might seem to forbid them. In her diet she was
+an epicure, fond of dainty and delicate eating, and not always contented if
+she did not obtain what she desired. When the king's attentions towards her
+became first marked, Thomas Heneage, afterwards lord chamberlain, wrote to
+Wolsey, that he had one night been "commanded down with a dish for Mistress
+Anne for supper"; adding that she caused him "to sup with her, and she
+wished she had some of Wolsey's good meat, as carps, shrimps, and
+others."[187] And this was not said in jest, since Heneage related it as a
+hint to Wolsey, that he might know what to do, if he wished to please her.
+In the same letter he suggested to the cardinal that she was a little
+displeased at not having received a token or present from him; she was
+afraid she was forgotten, he said, and "the lady, her mother, desired him
+to send unto his Grace, and desire his Grace to bestow a morsel of tunny
+upon her." Wolsey made her presents also at times of a more valuable
+character, as we find her acknowledging in language of exaggerated
+gratitude;[188] and, perhaps the most painful feature in all her earlier
+history lies in the contrast between the servility with which she addressed
+the cardinal so long as he was in power, and the bitterness with which the
+Bishop of Bayonne (and, in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that
+she pressed upon his decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title
+of "the night-crow,"[189] as the person to whom he owed all which was most
+cruel in his treatment; as "the enemy that never slept, but studied and
+continually imagined, both sleeping and waking, his utter
+destruction."[190]
+
+Taking these things together, and there is nothing to be placed beside them
+of a definitely pleasing kind, except beauty and accomplishments, we form,
+with the assistance of her pictures, a tolerable conception of this lady; a
+conception of her as a woman not indeed questionable, but as one whose
+antecedents might lead consistently to a future either of evil or of good;
+and whose character removes the surprise which we might be inclined to feel
+at the position with respect to Queen Catherine in which she consented to
+be placed. A harsh critic would describe her, on this evidence, as a
+self-indulgent coquette, indifferent to the obligations of gratitude, and
+something careless of the truth. From the letter referring to her,
+preserved by Cromwell, it appears that she had broken a definite promise at
+a time when such promises were legally binding, and that she had really
+done so was confirmed by her subsequent confession. The breach of such
+promises by a woman who could not be expected to understand the grounds on
+which the law held them to be sacred, implies no more than levity, and
+levity of this kind has been found compatible with many high qualities.
+Levity, however, it does undoubtedly imply, and the symptom, if a light
+one, must be allowed the weight which is due to it.
+
+It is a miserable duty to be compelled to search for these indications of
+human infirmities; above all when they are the infirmities of a lady whose
+faults, let them have been what they would, were so fearfully and terribly
+expiated; and, if there were nothing else at issue but poor questions of
+petty scandal, it were better far that they perished in forgetfulness, and
+passed away out of mind and memory for ever. The fortunes of Anne Boleyn
+were unhappily linked with those of men to whom the greatest work ever yet
+accomplished in this country was committed; and the characters of a king of
+England, and of the three estates of the realm, are compromised in the
+treatment which she received from them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE PARLIAMENT OF 1529
+
+No Englishman can look back uninterested on the meeting of the parliament
+of 1529. The era at which it assembled is the most memorable in the history
+of this country, and the work which it accomplished before its dissolution
+was of larger moment politically and spiritually than the achievements of
+the Long Parliament itself. For nearly seven years it continued surrounded
+by intrigue, confusion, and at length conspiracy, presiding over a people
+from whom the forms and habits by which they had moved for centuries were
+falling like the shell of a chrysalis. While beset with enemies within the
+realm and without, it effected a revolution which severed England from the
+papacy, yet it preserved peace unbroken and prevented anarchy from breaking
+bounds; and although its hands are not pure from spot, and red stains rest
+on them which posterity have bitterly and long remembered; yet if we
+consider the changes which it carried through, and if we think of the price
+which was paid by other nations for victory in the same struggle, we shall
+acknowledge that the records of the world contain no instance of such a
+triumph, bought at a cost so slight and tarnished by blemishes so trifling.
+
+The letters of the French Ambassador[191] describe to us the gathering of
+the members into London, and the hum of expectation sounding louder and
+louder as the day of the opening approached. In order that we may see
+distinctly what London felt on this occasion, that we may understand in
+detail the nature of those questions with which parliament was immediately
+to deal, we will glance at some of the proceedings which had taken place in
+the Bishops' Consistory Courts during the few preceding years. The duties
+of the officials of these courts resembled in theory the duties of the
+censors under the Roman Republic. In the middle ages, a lofty effort had
+been made to overpass the common limitations of government, to introduce
+punishment for sins as well as crimes, and to visit with temporal penalties
+the breach of the moral law. The punishment best adapted for such offences
+was some outward expression of the disapproval with which good men regard
+acts of sin; some open disgrace; some spiritual censure; some suspension of
+communion with the church, accompanied by other consequences practically
+inconvenient, to be continued until the offender had made reparation, or
+had openly repented, or had given confirmed proof of amendment. The
+administration of such a discipline fell, as a matter of course, to the
+clergy. The clergy were the guardians of morality; their characters were a
+claim to confidence, their duties gave them opportunities of observation
+which no other men could possess; while their priestly office gave solemn
+weight to their sentences. Thus arose throughout Europe a system of
+spiritual surveillance over the habits and conduct of every man, extending
+from the cottage to the castle, taking note of all wrong dealing, of all
+oppression of man by man, of all licentiousness and profligacy, and
+representing upon earth, in the principles by which it was guided, the laws
+of the great tribunal of Almighty God.
+
+Such was the origin of the church courts, perhaps the greatest institutions
+ever yet devised by man. But to aim at these high ideals is as perilous as
+it is noble; and weapons which may be safely trusted in the hands of saints
+become fatal implements of mischief when saints have ceased to wield them.
+For a time, we need not doubt, the practice corresponded to the intention.
+Had it not been so, the conception would have taken no root, and would have
+been extinguished at its birth. But a system which has once established
+itself in the respect of mankind will be tolerated long after it has
+forfeited its claim to endurance, as the name of a great man remains
+honoured though borne by worthless descendants; and the Consistory courts
+had continued into the sixteenth century with unrestricted jurisdiction,
+although they had been for generations merely perennially flowing
+fountains, feeding the ecclesiastical exchequer. The moral conduct of every
+English man and woman remained subject to them. Each private person was
+liable to be called in question for every action of his life; and an
+elaborate network of canon law perpetually growing, enveloped the whole
+surface of society. But between the original design and the degenerate
+counterfeit there was this vital difference,--that the censures were no
+longer spiritual. They were commuted in various gradations for pecuniary
+fines, and each offence against morality was rated at its specific money
+value in the episcopal tables. Suspension and excommunication remained as
+ultimate penalties; but they were resorted to only to compel unwilling
+culprits to accept the alternative.
+
+The misdemeanours of which the courts took cognisance[192] were "offences
+against chastity," "heresy," or "matter sounding thereunto," "witchcraft,"
+"drunkenness," "scandal," "defamation," "impatient words," "broken
+promises," "untruth," "absence from church," "speaking evil of saints,"
+"non-payment of offerings," and other delinquencies incapable of legal
+definition; matters, all of them, on which it was well, if possible, to
+keep men from going wrong; but offering wide opportunities for injustice;
+while all charges, whether well founded or ill, met with ready acceptance
+in courts where innocence and guilt alike contributed to the revenue.[193]
+"Mortuary claims" were another fertile matter for prosecution; and probate
+duties and legacy duties; and a further lucrative occupation was the
+punishment of persons who complained against the constitutions of the
+courts themselves; to complain against the justice of the courts being to
+complain against the church, and to complain against the church being
+heresy. To answer accusations on such subjects as these, men were liable to
+be summoned, at the will of the officials, to the metropolitan courts of
+the archbishops, hundreds of miles from their homes.[194] No expenses were
+allowed; and if the charges were without foundation, it was rare that costs
+could be recovered. Innocent or guilty, the accused parties were equally
+bound to appear.[195] If they failed, they were suspended for contempt. If
+after receiving notice of their suspension, they did not appear, they were
+excommunicated; and no proof of the groundlessness of the original charge
+availed to relieve them from their sentence, till they had paid for their
+deliverance.
+
+Well did the church lawyers understand how to make their work productive.
+Excommunication seems but a light thing when there are many communions. It
+was no light thing when it was equivalent to outlawry; when the person
+excommunicated might be seized and imprisoned at the will of the ordinary;
+when he was cut off from all holy offices; when no one might speak to him,
+trade with him, or show him the most trivial courtesy; and when his
+friends, if they dared to assist him, were subject to the same penalties.
+In the _Register_ of the Bishop of London[196] there is more than one
+instance to be found of suspension and excommunication for the simple crime
+of offering shelter to an excommunicated neighbour; and thus offence begot
+offence, guilt spread like a contagion through the influence of natural
+humanity, and a single refusal of obedience to a frivolous citation might
+involve entire families in misery and ruin.
+
+The people might have endured better to submit to so enormous a tyranny, if
+the conduct of the clergy themselves had given them a title to respect, or
+if equal justice had been distributed to lay and spiritual offenders.
+"Benefit of clergy," unhappily, as at this time interpreted, was little
+else than a privilege to commit sins with impunity. The grossest moral
+profligacy in a priest was passed over with indifference; and so far from
+exacting obedience in her ministers to a higher standard than she required
+of ordinary persons, the church extended her limits under fictitious
+pretexts as a sanctuary for lettered villany. Every person who could read
+was claimed by prescriptive usage as a clerk, and shielded under her
+protecting mantle; nor was any clerk amenable for the worst crimes to the
+secular jurisdiction, until he had been first tried and degraded by the
+ecclesiastical judges. So far was this preposterous exemption carried, that
+previous to the passing of the first of the 23rd of Henry the Eighth,[197]
+those who were within the degrees might commit murder with impunity, the
+forms which it was necessary to observe in degrading a priest or deacon
+being so complicated as to amount to absolute protection.[198]
+
+Among the clergy, properly so called, however, the prevailing offence was
+not crime, but licentiousness. A doubt has recently crept in among our
+historians as to the credibility of the extreme language in which the
+contemporary writers spoke upon this painful topic. It will scarcely be
+supposed that the picture has been overdrawn in the act books of the
+Consistory courts; and as we see it there it is almost too deplorable for
+belief, as well in its own intrinsic hideousness as in the unconscious
+connivance of the authorities. Brothels were kept in London for the
+especial use of priests;[199] the "confessional" was abused in the most
+open and abominable manner.[200] Cases occurred of the same frightful
+profanity in the service of the mass, which at Rome startled Luther into
+Protestantism;[201] and acts of incest between nuns and monks were too
+frequently exposed to allow us to regard the detected instances as
+exceptions.[202] It may be said that the proceedings upon these charges
+prove at least that efforts were made to repress them. The bishops must
+have the benefit of the plea, and the two following instances will show how
+far it will avail their cause. In the Records of the London Court I find a
+certain Thomas Wyseman, priest, summoned for fornication and incontinency.
+He was enjoined for penance, that on the succeeding Sunday, while high mass
+was singing, he should offer at each of the altars in the Church of St.
+Bartholomew a candle of wax, value one penny, saying therewith five
+_Paternosters_, five _Ave Marys_, and five _Credos_. On the following
+Friday he was to offer a candle of the same price before the crucifix,
+standing barefooted, and one before the image of cur Lady of Grace. This
+penance accomplished he appeared again at the court and compounded for
+absolution, paying six shillings and eightpence.[203]
+
+An exposure too common to attract notice, and a fine of six and eightpence
+was held sufficient penalty for a mortal sin.
+
+Even this, however, was a severe sentence compared with the sentence passed
+upon another priest who confessed to incest with the prioress of Kilbourn.
+The offender was condemned to bear a cross in a procession in his parish
+church, and was excused his remaining guilt for three shillings and
+fourpence.[204]
+
+I might multiply such instances indefinitely; but there is no occasion for
+me to stain my pages with them.[205]
+
+An inactive imagination may readily picture to itself the indignation
+likely to have been felt by a high-minded people, when they were forced to
+submit their lives, their habits, their most intimate conversations and
+opinions to a censorship conducted by clergy of such a character; when the
+offences of these clergy themselves were passed over with such indifferent
+carelessness. Men began to ask themselves who and what these persons were
+who retained the privileges of saints,[206] and were incapable of the most
+ordinary duties; and for many years before the burst of the Reformation the
+coming storm was gathering. Priests were hooted, or "knocked down into the
+kennel,"[207] as they walked along the streets--women refused to receive
+the holy bread from hands which they thought polluted,[208] and the
+appearance of an apparitor of the courts to serve a process or a citation
+in a private house was a signal for instant explosion. Violent words were
+the least which these officials had to fear, and they were fortunate if
+they escaped so lightly. A stranger had died in a house in St. Dunstan's
+belonging to a certain John Fleming, and an apparitor had been sent "to
+seal his chamber and his goods" that the church might not lose her dues.
+John Fleming drove him out, saying loudly unto him, "Thou shalt seale no
+door here; go thy way, thou stynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and brybours
+everych one of you."[209] Thomas Banister, of St. Mary Wolechurch, when a
+process was served upon him, "did threaten to slay the apparitor." "Thou
+horson knave," he said to him, "without thou tell me who set thee awork to
+summon me to the court, by Goddis woundes, and by this gold, I shall brake
+thy head."[210] A "waiter, at the sign of the Cock," fell in trouble for
+saying that "the sight of a priest did make him sick," also, "that he would
+go sixty miles to indict a priest," saying also in the presence of
+many--"horsyn priests, they shall be indicted as many as come to my
+handling."[211] Often the officers found threats convert themselves into
+acts. The apparitor of the Bishop of London went with a citation into the
+shop of a mercer of St. Bride's, Henry Clitheroe by name. "Who does cite
+me?" asked the mercer. "Marry, that do I," answered the apparitor, "if thou
+wilt anything with it;" whereupon, as the apparitor deposeth, the said
+Henry Clitheroe did hurl at him from off his finger that instrument of his
+art called the "thymmelle," and he, the apparitor, drawing his sword, "the
+said Henry did snatch up his virga, Anglice, his yard, and did pursue the
+apparitor into the public streets, and after multiplying of many blows did
+break the head of the said apparitor."[212] These are light matters, but
+they were straws upon the stream; and such a scene as this which follows
+reveals the principles on which the courts awarded their judgment. One
+Richard Hunt was summoned for certain articles implying contempt, and for
+vilipending his lordship's jurisdiction. Being examined, he confessed to
+the words following: "That all false matters were bolstered and clokyd in
+this court of Paul's Cheyne; moreover he called the apparitor, William
+Middleton, false knave in the full court, and his father's dettes, said he,
+by means of his mother-in-law and master commissary, were not payd; and
+this he would abide by, that he had now in this place said no more but
+truth." Being called on to answer further, he said he would not, and his
+lordship did therefore excommunicate him.[213] From so brief an entry we
+cannot tell on which side the justice lay; but at least we can measure the
+equity of a tribunal which punished complaints against itself with
+excommunication, and dismissed the confessed incest of a priest with a fine
+of a few shillings.
+
+Such then were the English consistory courts. I have selected but a few
+instances from the proceedings of a single one of them. If we are to
+understand the weight with which the system pressed upon the people, we
+must multiply the proceedings at St. Paul's by the number of the English
+dioceses; the number of dioceses by the number of archdeaconries; we must
+remember that in proportion to the distance from London the abuse must have
+increased indefinitely from the absence of even partial surveillance; we
+must remember that appeals were permitted only from one ecclesiastical
+court to another; from the archdeacon's court to that of the bishop of the
+diocese, from that of the bishop to the Court of Arches; that any language
+of impatience or resistance furnished suspicion of heresy, and that the
+only security therefore was submission. We can then imagine what England
+must have been with an archdeacon's commissary sitting constantly in every
+town; exercising an undefined jurisdiction over general morality; and every
+court swarming with petty lawyers who lived upon the fees which they could
+extract. Such a system for the administration of justice was perhaps never
+tolerated before in any country.
+
+But the time of reckoning at length was arrived; slowly the hand had
+crawled along the dial plate; slowly as if the event would never come: and
+wrong was heaped on wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if no ear
+had heard its voice; till the measure of the circle was at length
+fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great
+hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of
+iniquity was shivered into ruins. Wolsey had dreamed that it might still
+stand, self-reformed as he hoped to see it; but in his dread lest any hands
+but those of friends should touch the work, he had "prolonged its sickly
+days," waiting for the convenient season which was not to be; he had put
+off the meeting of parliament, knowing that if parliament were once
+assembled, he would be unable to resist the pressure which would be brought
+to bear upon him; and in the impatient minds of the people he had
+identified himself with the evils which he alone for the few last years had
+hindered from falling. At length he had fallen himself, and his disgrace
+was celebrated in London with enthusiastic rejoicing as the inauguration of
+the new era. On the eighteenth of October, 1529, Wolsey delivered up the
+seals. He was ordered to retire to Esher; and, "at the taking of his
+barge," Cavendish saw no less than a thousand boats full of men and women
+of the city of London, "waffeting up and down in Thames," to see him sent,
+as they expected, to the Tower.[214] A fortnight later the same crowd was
+perhaps again assembled on a wiser occasion, and with truer reason for
+exultation, to see the king coming up in his barge from Greenwich to open
+parliament.
+
+"According to the summons," says Hall, "the King of England began his high
+court of parliament the third day of November, on which day he came by
+water to his palace of Bridewell, and there he and his nobles put on their
+robes of Parliament, and so came to the Black Friars Church, where a mass
+of the Holy Ghost was solemnly sung by the king's chaplain; and after the
+mass, the king, with all his Lords and Commons which were summoned to
+appear on that day, came into the Parliament. The king sate on his throne
+or seat royal, and Sir Thomas More, his chancellor, standing on the right
+hand of the king, made an eloquent oration, setting forth the causes why at
+that time the king so had summoned them."[215]
+
+"Like as a good shepherd," More said, "which not only keepeth and attendeth
+well his sheep, but also foreseeth and provideth for all things which
+either may be hurtful or noysome to his flock; so the king, which is the
+shepherd, ruler, and governor of his realm, vigilantly foreseeing things to
+come, considers how that divers laws, before this time made, are now, by
+long continuance of time and mutation of things, become very insufficient
+and imperfect; and also, by the frail condition of man, divers new
+enormities are sprung amongst the people, for the which no law is yet made
+to reform the same. For this cause the king at this time has summoned his
+high court of parliament; and I liken the king to a shepherd or herdsman,
+because if a prince be compared to his riches, he is but a rich man; if a
+prince be compared to his honour, he is but an honourable man; but compare
+him to the multitude of his people, and the number of his flock, then he is
+a ruler, a governor of might and puissance; so that his people maketh him a
+prince, as of the multitude of sheep cometh the name of a shepherd.
+
+"And as you see that amongst a great flock of sheep some be rotten and
+faulty, which the good shepherd sendeth from the good sheep; so the great
+wether which is of late fallen, as you all know, so craftily, so scabedly,
+yea, so untruly juggled with the king, that all men must needs guess that
+he thought in himself, either the king had no wit to perceive his crafty
+doings, or else that he would not see nor know them.
+
+"But he was deceived, for his Grace's sight was so quick and penetrable
+that he saw him; yea, and saw through him, both within and without; and
+according to his desert he hath had a gentle correction, which small
+punishment the king will not to be an example to other offenders; but
+clearly declareth that whosoever hereafter shall make like attempt, or
+shall commit like offence, shall not escape with like punishment.
+
+"And because you of the Commons House be a gross multitude, and cannot all
+speak at one time, the king's pleasure is, that you resort to the Nether
+House, and then amongst yourselves, according to the old and antient
+custom, choose an able person to be your common mouth and speaker."[216]
+
+The invective against "the great wether" was not perhaps the portion of the
+speech to which the audience listened with least interest. In the minds of
+contemporaries, principles are identified with persons, who form, as it
+were, the focus on which the passions concentrate. At present we may
+consent to forget Wolsey, and fix our attention on the more permanently
+essential matter--the reform of the laws. The world was changing; how
+swiftly, how completely, no living person knew;--but a confusion no longer
+tolerable was a patent fact to all men; and with a wise instinct it was
+resolved that the grievances of the nation, which had accumulated through
+centuries, should be submitted to a complete ventilation, without reserve,
+check, or secrecy.
+
+For this purpose it was essential that the Houses should not be interfered
+with, that they should be allowed full liberty to express their wishes and
+to act upon them. Accordingly, the practice then usual with ministers, of
+undertaking the direction of the proceedings, was clearly on this occasion
+foregone. In the House of Commons then, as much as now, there was in theory
+unrestricted liberty of discussion, and free right for any member to
+originate whatever motion he pleased. "The discussions in the English
+Parliament," wrote Henry himself to the pope, "are free and unrestricted;
+the crown has no power to limit their debates or to controul the votes of
+the members. They determine everything for themselves, as the interests of
+the commonwealth require."[217] But so long as confidence existed between
+the crown and the people, these rights were in great measure surrendered.
+The ministers prepared the business which was to be transacted; and the
+temper of the Houses was usually so well understood, that, except when
+there was a demand for money, it was rare that a measure was proposed the
+acceptance of which was doubtful, or the nature of which would provoke
+debate. So little jealousy, indeed, was in quiet times entertained of the
+power of the crown, and so little was a residence in London to the taste of
+the burgesses and the country gentlemen, that not only were their expenses
+defrayed by a considerable salary, but it was found necessary to forbid
+them absenting themselves from their duties by a positive enactment.[218]
+
+In the composition of the House of Commons, however, which had now
+assembled, no symptoms appeared of such indifference. The election had
+taken place in the midst of great and general excitement; and the members
+chosen, if we may judge from their acts and their petitions, were men of
+that broad resolved temper, who only in times of popular effervescence are
+called forward into prominence. It would have probably been unsafe for the
+crown to attempt dictation or repression at such a time, if it had desired
+to do so. Under the actual circumstances, its interest was to encourage the
+fullest expression of public feeling.
+
+The proceedings were commenced with a formal "act of accusation" against
+the clergy, which was submitted to the king in the name of the Commons of
+England, and contained a summary of the wrongs of which the people
+complained. This remarkable document must have been drawn up before the
+opening of parliament, and must have been presented in the first week of
+the session,--probably on the first day on which the House met to transact
+business.[219] There is appearance of haste in the composition, little
+order being observed in the catalogue of grievances; but inasmuch as it
+contains the germ of all the acts which were framed in the following years
+for the reform of the church, and is in fact the most complete exhibition
+which we possess of the working of the church system at the time when it
+ceased to be any more tolerable, I have thought it well to insert it
+uncurtailed. Although the fact of the presentation of this petition has
+been well known, it has not been accurately described by any of our
+historians, none of them appearing to have seen more than incorrect and
+imperfect epitomes of it.[220]
+
+"TO THE KING OUR SOVEREIGN LORD
+
+"In most humble wise show unto your Highness and your most prudent wisdom
+your faithful, loving, and most obedient servants the Commons in this your
+present parliament assembled; that of late, as well through new fantastical
+and erroneous opinions grown by occasion of frantic seditious books
+compiled, imprinted, published, and made in the English tongue, contrary
+and against the very true Catholic and Christian faith; as also by the
+extreme and uncharitable behaviour and dealing of divers ordinaries, their
+commissaries and sumners, which have heretofore had, and yet have the
+examination in and upon the said errours and heretical opinions; much
+discord, variance, and debate hath risen, and more and more daily is like
+to increase and ensue amongst the universal sort of your said subjects, as
+well spiritual as temporal, each against the other--in most uncharitable
+manner, to the great inquietation, vexation, and breach of your peace
+within this your most Catholic Realm:
+
+"The special particular griefs whereof, which most principally concern your
+Commons and lay subjects, and which are, as they undoubtedly suppose, the
+very chief fountains, occasions, and causes that daily breedeth and
+nourisheth the said seditious factions, deadly hatred, and most
+uncharitable part taking, of either part of said subjects spiritual and
+temporal against the other, followingly do ensue.--
+
+"I. First the prelates and spiritual ordinaries of this your most excellent
+Realm of England, and the clergy of the same, have in their convocations
+heretofore made or caused to be made, and also daily do make many and
+divers fashions of laws, constitutions, and ordinances; without your
+knowledge or most Royal assent, and without the assent and consent of any
+of your lay subjects; unto the which laws your said lay subjects have not
+only heretofore been and daily be constrained to obey, in their bodies,
+goods, and possessions; but have also been compelled to incur daily into
+the censures of the same, and been continually put to importable charges
+and expenses, against all equity, right, and good conscience. And yet your
+said humble subjects ne their predecessors could ever be privy to the said
+laws; ne any of the said laws have been declared unto them in the English
+tongue, or otherwise published, by knowledge whereof they might have
+eschewed the penalties, dangers, or censures of the same; which laws so
+made your said most humble and obedient servants, under the supportation of
+your Majesty, suppose to be not only to the diminution and derogation of
+your imperial jurisdiction and prerogative royal, but also to the great
+prejudice, inquietation, and damage of your said subjects.
+
+"II. Also now of late there hath been devised by the Most Reverend Father
+in God, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, that in the courts which he
+calleth his Courts of the Arches and Audience, shall only be ten proctors
+at his deputation, which be sworn to preserve and promote the only
+jurisdiction of his said courts; by reason whereof, if any of your lay
+subjects should have any lawful cause against the judges of the said
+courts, or any doctors or proctors of the same, or any of their friends
+and adherents, they can ne may in nowise have indifferent counsel: and
+also all the causes depending in any of the said courts may by the
+confederacy of the said few proctors be in such wise tracted and delayed,
+as your subjects suing in the same shall be put to importable charges,
+costs, and expense. And further, in case that any matter there being
+preferred should touch your crown, your regal jurisdiction, and
+prerogative Royal, yet the same shall not be disclosed by any of the
+said proctors for fear of the loss of their offices. Your most obedient
+subjects do therefore, under protection of your Majesty, suppose that
+your Highness should have the nomination of some convenient number of
+proctors to be always attendant upon the said Courts of Arches and
+Audience, there to be sworn to the preferment of your jurisdiction and
+prerogative, and to the expedition of the causes of your lay subjects
+repairing and suing to the same.
+
+"III. And also many of your said most humble and obedient subjects, and
+_specially those that be of the poorest sort_, within this your Realm, be
+daily convented and called before the said spiritual ordinaries, their
+commissaries and substitutes, _ex officio_; sometimes, at the pleasure of
+the said ordinaries, for malice without any cause; and sometimes at the
+only promotion and accusement of their summoners and apparitors, being
+light and undiscreet persons; without any lawful cause of accusation, or
+credible fame proved against them, and without any presentment in the
+visitation: and your said poor subjects be thus inquieted, disturbed,
+vexed, troubled, and put to excessive and importable charges for them to
+bear--and many times be suspended and excommunicate for small and light
+causes upon the only certificate of the proctors of the adversaries, made
+under a feigned seal which every proctor hath in his keeping; whereas the
+party suspended or excommunicate many times never had any warning; and yet
+when he shall be absolved, if it be out of court, he shall be compelled to
+pay to his own proctor twenty[221] _pence_; to the proctor which is against
+him other twenty pence, and twenty pence to the scribe, besides a privy
+reward that the judge shall have, to the great impoverishing of your said
+poor lay subjects.
+
+"IV. Also your said most humble and obedient servants find themselves
+grieved with the great and excessive fees taken in the said spiritual
+courts, and especially in the said Courts of the Arches and Audience; where
+they take for every citation two shillings and sixpence; for every
+inhibition six shillings and eightpence; for every proxy sixteen pence; for
+every certificate sixteen pence; for every libel three shillings and
+fourpence; for every answer for every libel three shillings and fourpence;
+for every act, if it be but two words according to the register, fourpence;
+for every personal citation or decree three shillings and fourpence; for
+every sentence or judgment, to the judge twenty-six shillings and
+eightpence; for every testament upon such sentence or judgment twenty-six
+shillings and eightpence; for every significavit twelve shillings; for
+every commission to examine witnesses twelve shillings, which charges be
+thought importable to be borne by your said subjects, and very necessary to
+be reformed.
+
+"V. And also the said prelates and ordinaries daily do permit and suffer
+the parsons, vicars, curates, parish priests, and other spiritual persons
+having cure of souls within this your Realm, to exact and take of your
+humble servants divers sums of money for the sacraments and sacramentals of
+Holy Church, sometimes denying the same without they be first paid[222] the
+said sums of money, which sacraments and sacramentals your said most humble
+and obedient subjects, under protection of your Highness, do suppose and
+think ought to be in most reverend, charitable, and godly wise freely
+ministered unto them at all times requisite, without denial, or exaction of
+any manner sums of money to be demanded or asked for the same.
+
+"VI. And also in the spiritual courts of the said prelates and ordinaries
+there be limited and appointed so many judges, scribes, apparitors,
+summoners, appraysers, and other ministers for the approbation of
+Testaments, which covet so much their own private lucres, and the
+satisfaction and appetites of the said prelates and ordinaries, that when
+any of your said loving subjects do repair to any of the said courts for
+the probate of any Testaments, they do in such wise make so long delays, or
+excessively do take of them so large fees and rewards for the same as is
+importable for them to bear, directly against all justice, law, equity, and
+good conscience. Therefore your most humble and obedient subjects do, under
+your gracious correction and supportation, suppose it were very necessary
+that the said ordinaries in their deputation of judges should be bound to
+appoint and assign such discreet, gracious, and honest persons, having
+sufficient learning, wit, discretion, and understanding; and also being
+endowed with such spiritual promotion, stipend, and salary; as they being
+judges in their said courts might and may minister to every person
+repairing to the same, justice--without taking any manner of fee or reward
+for any manner of sentence or judgment to be given before them.
+
+"VII. And also divers spiritual persons being presented as well by your
+Highness as others within this your Realm to divers benefices or other
+spiritual promotions, the said ordinaries and their ministers do not only
+take of them for their letters of institution and induction many large sums
+of money and rewards; but also do pact and covenant with the same, taking
+sure bonds for their indemnity to answer to the said ordinaries for the
+firstfruits of their said benefices after their institution--so as they,
+being once presented or promoted, as aforesaid, are by the said ordinaries
+very uncharitably handled, to their no little hindrance and impoverishment;
+which your said subjects suppose not only to be against all laws, right,
+and good conscience, but also to be simony, and contrary to the laws of
+God.
+
+"VIII. And also _the said spiritual ordinaries do daily confer and give
+sundry benefices unto certain young folks, calling them their nephews or
+kinsfolk_, being in their minority and within age, not apt ne able to serve
+the cure of any such benefice: whereby the said ordinaries do keep and
+detain the fruits and profits of the same benefices in their own hands, and
+thereby accumulate to themselves right great and large sums of money and
+yearly profits, to the most pernicious example of your said lay
+subjects--and so the cures and promotions given unto such infants be only
+employed to the enriching of the said ordinaries; and the poor silly souls
+of your people, which should be taught in the parishes given as aforesaid,
+for lack of good curates [be left] to perish without doctrine or any good
+teaching.
+
+"IX. Also, a great number of holydays now at this present time, with very
+small devotion, be solemnised and kept throughout this your Realm, upon the
+which many great, abominable, and execrable vices, idle and wanton sports,
+be used and exercised, which holydays, if it may stand with your Grace's
+pleasure, and specially such as fall in the harvest, might, by your
+Majesty, with the advice of your most honourable council, prelates, and
+ordinaries, be made fewer in number; and those that shall be hereafter
+ordained to stand and continue, might and may be the more devoutly,
+religiously, and reverendly observed, to the laud of Almighty God, and to
+the increase of your high honour and favour.
+
+"X. And furthermore the said spiritual ordinaries, their commissaries and
+substitutes, sometimes for their own pleasure, sometimes by the sinister
+procurement of other spiritual persons, use to make out process against
+divers of your said subjects, and thereby compel them to appear before
+themselves, to answer at a certain day and place to such articles as by
+them shall be, _ex officio_, then proposed; and that secretly and not in
+open places;[223] and forthwith upon their appearance, without any
+declaration made or showed, commit and send them to ward, sometimes for
+[half] a year, sometimes for a whole year or more, before they may in
+anywise know either the cause of their imprisonment or the name of their
+accuser;[224] and finally after their great costs and charges therein, when
+all is examined and nothing can be proved against them, but they clearly
+innocent for any fault or crime that can be laid unto them, they be again
+set at large without any recompence or amends in that behalf to be towards
+them adjudged.
+
+"XI. And also if percase upon the said process and appearance any party be
+upon the said matter, cause, or examination, brought forth and named,
+either as party or witness, and then upon the proof and trial thereof be
+not able to prove and verify the said accusation and testimony against the
+party accused, then the person so accused is for the more part without any
+remedy for his charges and wrongful vexation to be towards him adjudged and
+recovered.
+
+"XII. Also upon the examination of the said accusation, if heresy be
+ordinarily laid unto the charge of the parties so accused, then the said
+ordinaries or their ministers use to put to them such subtle
+interrogatories concerning the high mysteries of our faith, as are able
+quickly to trap a simple unlearned, or yet a well-witted layman without
+learning, and bring them by such sinister introductions soon to their own
+confusion. And further, if there chance any heresy to be by such subtle
+policy, by any person confessed in words, and yet never committed neither
+in thought nor deed, then put they, without further favour, the said person
+either to make his purgation, and so thereby to lose his honesty and
+credence for ever; or else as some simple silly soul [may do], the said
+person may stand precisely to the testimony of his own well-known
+conscience, rather than confess his innocent truth in that behalf [to be
+other than he knows it to be], and so be utterly destroyed. And if it
+fortune the said party so accused to deny the said accusation, and to put
+his adversaries to prove the same as being untrue, forged and imagined
+against him, then for the most part such witnesses as are brought forth for
+the same, be they but two in number, never so sore diffamed, of little
+truth or credence, they shall be allowed and enabled, only by discretion of
+the said ordinaries, their commissaries or substitutes; and thereupon
+sufficient cause be found to proceed to judgment, to deliver the party so
+accused either to secular hands, after abjuration,[225] without remedy; or
+afore if he submit himself, as best happeneth, he shall have to make his
+purgation and bear a faggot, to his extreme shame and undoing.
+
+"In consideration of all these things, most gracious Sovereign Lord, and
+forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a few years past hath
+been outrageous violence on the one part and much default and lack of
+patient sufferance, charity, and good will on the other part; and
+consequently a marvellous disorder [hath ensued] of the godly quiet, peace,
+and tranquillity in which this your Realm heretofore, ever hitherto, has
+been through your politic wisdom, most honourable fame, and catholic faith
+inviolably preserved; it may therefore, most benign Sovereign Lord, like
+your excellent goodness for the tender and universally indifferent zeal,
+benign love and favour which your Highness beareth towards both the said
+parties, that the said articles (if they shall be by your most clear and
+perfect judgment, thought any instrument of the said disorders and
+factions), being deeply and weightily, after your accustomed ways and
+manner, searched and considered; graciously to provide (all violence on
+both sides utterly and clearly set apart) some such necessary and behoveful
+remedies as may effectually reconcile and bring in perpetual unity, your
+said subjects, spiritual and temporal; and for the establishment thereof,
+to make and ordain on both sides such strait laws against transgressors and
+offenders as shall be too heavy, dangerous, and weighty for them, or any of
+them, to bear, suffer, and sustain.
+
+"Whereunto your said Commons most humbly and entirely beseech your Grace,
+as the only Head, Sovereign Lord and Protector of both the said parties, in
+whom and by whom the only and sole redress, reformation, and remedy herein
+absolutely resteth [of your goodness to consent]. By occasion whereof all
+your Commons in their conscience surely account that, beside the marvellous
+fervent love that your Highness shall thereby engender in their hearts
+towards your Grace, ye shall do the most princely feat, and show the most
+honourable and charitable precedent and mirrour that ever did sovereign
+lord upon his subjects; and therewithal merit and deserve of our merciful
+God eternal bliss--whose goodness grant your Grace in goodly, princely, and
+honourable estate long to reign, prosper, and continue as the Sovereign
+Lord over all your said most humble and obedient servants."[226]
+
+But little comment need be added in explanation of this petition, which,
+though drawn with evident haste, is no less remarkable for temper and good
+feeling, than for the masterly clearness with which the evils complained of
+are laid bare. Historians will be careful for the future how they swell the
+charges against Wolsey with quoting the lamentations of Archbishop Warham,
+when his Court of Arches was for a while superseded by the Legate's Court,
+and causes lingering before his commissaries were summarily dispatched at a
+higher tribunal.[227] The archbishop professed, indeed, that he derived no
+personal advantage from his courts,[228] and as we have only the popular
+impression to the contrary to set against his word, we must believe him;
+yet it was of small moment to the laity who were pillaged, whether the
+spoils taken from them filled the coffers of the master, or those of his
+followers and friends.
+
+When we consider, also, the significant allusion[229] to the young folks
+whom the bishops called their nephews, we cease to wonder at their lenient
+dealing with the poor priests who had sunk under the temptations of frail
+humanity; and still less can we wonder at the rough handling which was soon
+found necessary to bring back these high dignitaries to a better mind.
+
+The House of Commons, in casting their grievances into the form of a
+petition, showed that they had no desire to thrust forward of themselves
+violent measures of reform; they sought rather to explain firmly and
+decisively what the country required. The king, selecting out of the many
+points noticed those which seemed most immediately pressing, referred them
+back to the parliament, with a direction to draw up such enactments as in
+their own judgment would furnish effective relief. In the meantime he
+submitted the petition itself to the consideration of the bishops,
+requiring their immediate answer to the charges against them, and
+accompanied this request with a further important requisition. The
+legislative authority of convocation lay at the root of the evils which
+were most complained of. The bishops and clergy held themselves independent
+of either crown or parliament, passing canons by their own irresponsible
+and unchecked will, irrespective of the laws of the land, and sometimes in
+direct violation of them; and to these canons the laity were amenable
+without being made acquainted with their provisions, learning them only in
+the infliction of penalties for their unintended breach. The king required
+that thenceforward the convocation should consent to place itself in the
+position of parliament, and that his own consent should be required and
+received before any law passed by convocation should have the force of
+statute.[230]
+
+Little notion, indeed, could the bishops have possessed of the position in
+which they were standing. It seemed as if they literally believed that the
+promise of perpetuity which Christ had made to his church was a charm which
+would hold them free in the quiet course of their injustice; or else, under
+the blinding influence of custom, they did not really know that any
+injustice adhered to them. They could see in themselves only the ideal
+virtues of their saintly office, and not the vices of their fragile
+humanity; they believed that they were still holy, still spotless, still
+immaculate, and therefore that no danger might come near them. It cannot
+have been but that, before the minds of such men as Warham and Fisher, some
+visions of a future must at times have floated, which hung so plainly
+before the eyes of Wolsey and of Sir Thomas More.[231] They could not have
+been wholly deaf to the storm in Germany; and they must have heard
+something of the growls of smothered anger which for years had been audible
+at home, to all who had ears to hear.[232] Yet if any such thoughts at
+times did cross their imagination, they were thrust aside as an uneasy
+dream, to be shaken off like a nightmare, or with the coward's consolation,
+"It will last my time." If the bishops ever felt an uneasy moment, there is
+no trace of uneasiness in the answer which they sent in to the king, and
+which now, when we read it with the light which is thrown back out of the
+succeeding years, seems like the composition of mere lunacy. Perhaps they
+had confidence in the support of Henry. In their courts they were in the
+habit of identifying an attack upon themselves with an attack upon the
+doctrines of the Church; and reading the king's feelings in their own, they
+may have considered themselves safe under the protection of a sovereign who
+had broken a lance with Luther, and had called himself the Pope's champion.
+Perhaps they thought that they had bound him to themselves by a declaration
+which they had all signed in the preceding summer in favour of the
+divorce.[233] Perhaps they were but steeped in the dulness of official
+lethargy. The defence is long, wearying the patience to read it; wearying
+the imagination to invent excuses for the falsehoods which it contains. Yet
+it is well to see all men in the light in which they see themselves; and
+justice requires that we allow the bishops the benefit of their own reply.
+It was couched in the following words:--[234]
+
+"After our most humble wise, with our most bounden duty of honour and
+reverence to your excellent Majesty, endued from God with incomparable
+wisdom and goodness. Please it the same to understand that we, your orators
+and daily bounden bedemen, have read and perused a certain supplication
+which the Commons of your Grace's honourable parliament now assembled have
+offered unto your Highness, and by your Grace's commandment delivered unto
+us, that we should make answer thereunto. We have, as the time hath served,
+made this answer following, beseeching your Grace's indifferent benignity
+graciously to hear the same.
+
+"And first for that discord, variance, and debate which, in the preface of
+the said supplication they do allege to have risen among your Grace's
+subjects, spiritual and temporal, occasioned, as they say, by the
+uncharitable behaviour and demeanour of divers ordinaries: to this we, the
+ordinaries, answer, assuring your Majesty that in our hearts there is no
+such discord or variance ort our part against our brethren in God and
+ghostly children your subjects, as is induced in this preface; but our
+daily prayer is and shall be that all peace and concord may increase among
+your Grace's true subjects our said children, whom God be our witness we
+love, have loved, and shall love ever with hearty affection; never
+intending any hurt ne harm towards any of them in soul or body; ne have we
+ever enterprised anything against them of trouble, vexation, or
+displeasure; but only have, with all charity, exercised the spiritual
+jurisdiction of the Church, as we are bound of duty, upon certain
+evil-disposed persons infected with the pestilent poison of heresy. And to
+have peace with such had been against the Gospel of our Saviour Christ,
+wherein he saith, _Non veni mittere pacem sed gladium_. Wherefore,
+forasmuch as we know well that there be as well-disposed and
+well-conscienced men of your Grace's Commons in no small number assembled,
+as ever we knew at any time in parliament; and with that consider how on
+our part there is given no such occasion why the whole number of the
+spirituality and clergy should be thus noted unto your Highness; we
+humbling our hearts to God and remitting the judgment of this our
+inquietation to Him, and trusting, as his Scripture teacheth, that if we
+love him above all, omnia cooperabuntur in bonum, shall endeavour to
+declare to your Highness the innocency of us, your poor orators.
+
+"And where, after the general preface of the same supplication, your
+Grace's Commons descend to special particular griefs, and first to those
+divers fashions of laws concerning temporal things, whereon, as they say,
+the clergy in their convocation have made and daily do make divers laws, to
+their great trouble and inquietation, which said laws be sometimes
+repugnant to the statutes of your Realm, with many other complaints
+thereupon:[235] To this we say, that forasmuch as we repute and take our
+authority of making of laws to be grounded upon the Scriptures of God and
+the determination of Holy Church, which must be the rule and square to try
+the justice and righteousness of all laws, as well spiritual as temporal,
+we verily trust that in such laws as have been made by us, or by our
+predecessors, the same being sincerely interpreted, and after the meaning
+of the makers, there shall be found nothing contained in them but such as
+may be well justified by the said rule and square. And if it shall
+otherwise appear, as it is our duty whereunto we shall always most
+diligently apply ourselves to reform our ordinances to God's commission,
+and to conform our statutes to the determination of Scripture and Holy
+Church; _so we hope in God, and shall daily pray for the same, that your
+Highness will, if there appear cause why, with the assent of your people,
+temper your Grace's laws accordingly; whereby shall ensue a most sure and
+hearty conjunction and agreement; God being lapis angularis_.
+
+"And as concerning the requiring of your Highness's royal assent to the
+authorising of such laws as have been made by our predecessors, or shall be
+made by us, in such points and articles, as we have authority to rule and
+order; we knowing your Highness's wisdom, virtue, and learning, nothing
+doubt but that the same perceiveth how the granting thereunto dependeth not
+upon our will and liberty, _and that we may not submit the execution of our
+charges and duty certainly prescribed to us by God to your Highness's
+assent_; although, indeed, the same is most worthy for your most princely
+and excellent virtues, not only to give your royal assent, but also to
+devise and command what we should for good order or manners by statutes and
+laws provide in the church. Nevertheless, we considering we may not so nor
+in such sort restrain the doing of our office in the feeding and ruling of
+Christ's people, we most humbly desire your Grace (as the same hath done
+heretofore) to show your Grace's mind and opinion unto us, which we shall
+most gladly hear and follow if it shall please God to inspire us so to do;
+and with all humility we therefore beseech your Grace, following the steps
+of your most noble progenitors, to maintain and defend such laws and
+ordinances as we, according to our calling and by the authority of God,
+shall for his honour make to the edification of virtue and the maintaining
+of Christ's faith, whereof your Highness is defender in name, and hath been
+hitherto indeed a special protector.
+
+"Furthermore, where there be found in the said supplication, with mention
+of your Grace's person, other griefs that some of the said laws extend to
+the goods and possessions of your said lay subjects, declaring the
+transgressors not only to fall under the terrible censure of
+excommunication, but also under the detestable crime of heresy:
+
+"To this we answer that we remember no such, and yet if there be any such,
+it is but according to the common law of the Church, and also to your
+Grace's law, which determine and decree that every person spiritual or
+temporal condemned of heresy shall forfeit his moveables or immoveables to
+your Highness, or to the lord spiritual or temporal that by law hath right
+to them.[236] Other statutes we remember none that toucheth lands or goods.
+If there be, it were good that they were brought forth to be weighed and
+pondered accordingly.
+
+"Item as touching the second principal article of the said supplication,
+where they say that divers and many of your Grace's obedient subjects, and
+especially they that be of the poorest sort, be daily called before us or
+before our substitutes ex officio; sometimes at the pleasure of us, the
+ordinaries, without any probable cause, and sometimes at the only promotion
+of our summoner, without any credible fame first proved against them, and
+without presentment in the visitation or lawful accusation:
+
+"On this we desire your high wisdom and learning to consider that albeit in
+the ordering of Christ's people, your Grace's subjects, God of His
+spiritual goodness assisteth his church, and inspireth by the Holy Ghost as
+we verily trust such rules and laws as tend to the wealth of his elect
+folk; yet upon considerations to man unknown, his infinite wisdom leaveth
+or permitteth men to walk in their infirmity and frailty; so that we cannot
+ne will arrogantly presume of ourselves, as though being in name spiritual
+men, we were also in all our acts and doings clean and void from all
+temporal affections and carnality of this world, or that the laws of the
+church made for spiritual and ghostly purpose be not sometime applied to
+worldly intent. This we ought and do lament, as becometh us, very sore.
+Nevertheless, as the evil deeds of men be the mere defaults of those
+particular men, and not of the whole order of the clergy, nor of the law
+wholesomely by them made; our request and petition shall be with all
+humility and reverence; that laws well made be not therefore called evil
+because by all men and at all times they be not well executed; and that in
+such defaults as shall appear such distribution may be used _ut unusquisque
+onus suum portet_, and remedy be found to reform the offenders; unto the
+which your Highness shall perceive as great towardness in your said orators
+as can be required upon declaration of particulars. And other answer than
+this cannot be made in the name of your whole clergy, for though _in multis
+offendimus omnes_, as St. James saith, yet not 'in omnibus offendimus
+omnes;' and the whole number can neither justify ne condemn particular acts
+to them unknown but thus. He that calleth a man ex officio for correction
+of sin, doeth well. He that calleth men for pleasure or vexation, doeth
+evil. Summoners should be honest men. If they offend in their office, they
+should be punished. To prove first [their faults] before men be called, is
+not necessary. He that is called according to the laws ex officio or
+otherwise, cannot complain. He that is otherwise ordered should have by
+reason convenient recompence and so forth; that is well to be allowed, and
+misdemeanour when it appeareth to be reproved.
+
+"Item where they say in the same article that upon their appearance ex
+officio at the only pleasure of the ordinaries, they be committed to prison
+without bail or mainprize; and there they lie some half a year or more
+before they come to their deliverance; to this we answer,--
+
+"That we use no prison before conviction but for sure custody, and only of
+such as be suspected of heresy, in which crime, thanked be God, there hath
+fallen no such notable person in our time, or of such qualities as hath
+given occasion of any sinister suspicion to be conceived of malice or
+hatred to his person other than the heinousness of their crime deserveth.
+_Truth it is that certain apostates, friars, monks, lewd priests, bankrupt
+merchants, vagabonds, and lewd idle fellows of corrupt intent, have
+embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany_;
+and by them some have been seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against
+these, if judgment has been exercised according to the laws of the church,
+and conformably to the laws of this realm, we be without blame. If we have
+been too remiss and slack, we shall gladly do our duty from henceforth. If
+any man hath been, under pretence of this [crime], particularly offended,
+it were pity to suffer any man to be wronged; and thus it ought to be, and
+otherwise we cannot answer, no man's special case being declared in the
+said petition.
+
+"Item where they say further that they so appearing ex officio, be
+condemned to answer to many subtle questions by the which a simple,
+unlearned, or else a well-witted layman without learning sometimes is, and
+commonly may be trapped and induced into peril of open penance to their
+shame, or else [forced] to redeem their penance for money, as is commonly
+used; to this we answer that we should not use subtlety, for we should do
+all things plainly and openly; and if we do otherwise, we do amiss. We
+ought not to ask questions, but after the capacities of the man. Christ
+hath defended his true doctrine and faith in his Catholic church from all
+subtlety, and so preserved good men in the same, as they have not (blessed
+be God) been vexed, inquieted, or troubled in Christ's church. Thereupon
+evil men fall in danger by their own subtlety; we protest afore God we have
+neither known, read, nor heard of any one man damaged or prejudiced by
+spiritual jurisdiction in this behalf, neither in this realm nor any other,
+but only by his own deserts. Such is the goodness of God in maintaining the
+cause of his Catholic faith.
+
+"Item where they say they be compelled to do open penance, or else redeem
+the same for money; as for penance, we answer it consisteth in the arbitre
+of a judge who ought to enjoin such penance as might profit for correction
+of the fault. Whereupon we disallow that judge's doing who taketh money for
+penance for lucre or advantage, not regarding the reformation of sin as he
+ought to do. But when open penance may sometimes work in certain persons
+more hurt than good, it is commendable and allowable in that case to punish
+by the purse, and preserve the fame of the party; foreseeing always the
+money be converted _in usus pios et eleemosynam_, and thus we think of the
+thing, and that the offenders should be punished.
+
+"Item where they complain that two witnesses be admitted, be they never so
+defamed, of little truth or credence, adversaries or enemies to the
+parties; yet in many cases they be allowed by the discretion of the
+ordinaries to put the party defamed, ex officio, to open penance, and then
+to redemption for money; so that every of your subjects, upon the only will
+of the ordinaries or their substitutes, without any accuser, proved fame,
+or presentment, is or may be infamed, vexed, and troubled, to the peril of
+their lives, their shames, costs, and expenses:
+
+"To this we reply, _the Gospel of Christ teacheth us to believe two
+witnesses; and as the cause is, so the judge must esteem the quality of the
+witness; and in heresy no exception is necessary to be considered if their
+tale be likely; which hath been highly provided lest heretics without
+jeopardy might else plant their_ _heresies in lewd and light persons, and
+taking exception to the witnesses, take boldness to continue their folly.
+This is the universal law of Christendom, and hath universally done good.
+Of any injury done to any man thereby we know not_.
+
+"Item where they say it is not intended by them to take away from us our
+authority to correct and punish sins, and especially the detestable crime
+of heresy:
+
+"To this we answer, in the prosecuting heretics we regard our duty and
+office whereunto we be called, and if God will discharge us thereof, or
+cease that plague universal, as, by directing the hearts of princes, and
+specially the heart of your Highness (laud and thanks be unto Him), His
+goodness doth commence and begin to do, we should and shall have great
+cause to rejoice; as being our authority therein costly, dangerous, full of
+trouble and business, without any fruit, pleasure, or commodity worldly,
+but a continued conflict and vexation with pertinacity, wilfulness, folly,
+and ignorance, whereupon followeth their bodily and ghostly destruction, to
+our great sorrow.
+
+"Item where they desire that by assent of your Highness (if the laws
+heretofore made be not sufficient for the repression of heresy) more
+dreadful and terrible laws may be made; this We think is undoubtedly a more
+charitable request than as we trust necessary, considering that by the aid
+of your Highness, and the pains of your Grace's statutes freely executed,
+your realm may be in short time clean purged from the few small dregs that
+do remain, if any do remain.
+
+"Item where they desire some reasonable declaration may be made to your
+people, how they may, if they will, avoid the peril of heresy. No better
+declaration, we say, can be made than is already by our Saviour Christ, the
+Apostles, and the determination of the church, which if they keep, they
+shall not fail to eschew heresy.
+
+"Item where they desire that some charitable fashion may be devised by your
+wisdom for the calling of any of your subjects before us, that it shall not
+stand in the only will and pleasure of the ordinaries at their own
+imagination, without lawful accusation by honest witness, according to your
+law; to this we say that a better provision cannot be devised than is
+already devised by the clergy in our opinion; and if any default appear in
+the execution, it shall be amended on declaration of the particulars, and
+the same proved.
+
+"Item where they say that your subjects be cited out of the diocese which
+they dwell in, and many times be suspended and excommunicate for light
+causes upon the only certificate devised by the proctors, and that all your
+subjects find themselves grieved with the excessive fees taken in the
+spiritual courts:
+
+"To this article, for because it concerneth specially the spiritual courts
+of me the Archbishop of Canterbury, please it your Grace to understand that
+about twelve months past I reformed certain things objected here; and now
+within these ten weeks I reformed many other things in my said courts, as I
+suppose is not unknown unto your Grace's Commons; and some of the fees of
+the officers of my courts I have brought down to halves, some to the third
+part, and some wholly taken away and extincted; and yet it is objected to
+me as though I had taken no manner of reformation therein. Nevertheless I
+shall not cease yet; but in such things as I shall see your Commons most
+offended I will set redress accordingly, so as, I trust, they will be
+contented in that behalf. And I, the said archbishop, beseech your Grace to
+consider what service the doctors in civil law, which have had their
+practice in my courts, have done your Grace concerning treaties, truces,
+confederations, and leagues devised and concluded with outward princes; and
+that without such learned men in civil law your Grace could not have been
+so conveniently served as at all times you have been, which thing, perhaps,
+when such learned men shall fail, will appear more evident than it doth
+now. The decay whereof grieveth me to foresee, not so greatly for any cause
+concerning the pleasure or profit of myself, being a man spent, and at the
+point to depart this world, and having no penny of any advantage by my said
+courts, but principally for the good love which I bear to the honour of
+your Grace and of your realm. And albeit there is, by the assent of the
+Lords Temporal and the Commons of your Parliament, an act passed thereupon
+already, the matter depending before your Majesty by way of supplication
+offered to your Highness by your said Commons;[237] yet, forasmuch as we
+your Grace's humble chaplains, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, be
+bounden by oath to be intercessors for the rights of our churches; and
+forasmuch as the spiritual prelates of the clergy, being of your Grace's
+parliament, consented to the said act for divers great causes moving their
+conscience, we your Grace's said chaplains show unto your Highness that it
+hath appertained to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for the space of
+four hundred years or thereabouts to have spiritual jurisdiction over all
+your Grace's subjects dwelling within the provinces; and to have authority
+to call before them, not only in spiritual causes devolved to them by way
+of appeal, but also by way of querimony and complaint; which right and
+privilege pertaineth not only to the persons of the said archbishops, but
+also to the pre-eminences of their churches. Insomuch that when the
+archbishop of either of the sees dieth, the said privileges do not only
+remain to his successor (by which he is named Legatus natus), but also in
+the meantime of vacation the same privilege resteth in the churches of
+Canterbury and York; and is executed by the prior, dean and chapter of the
+said churches; and so the said act is directly against the liberty and
+privileges of the churches of Canterbury and York; and what dangers be to
+them which study and labour to take away the liberties and privileges of
+the church, whoso will read the general councils of Christendom and the
+canons of the fathers of the Catholic church ordained in that behalf, shall
+soon perceive. And further, we think verily that our churches, to which the
+said privileges were granted, can give no cause why the pope himself (whose
+predecessors granted that privilege) or any other (the honour of your Grace
+ever except) may justly take away the same privileges so lawfully
+prescribed from our churches, though we [ourselves] had greatly offended,
+abusing the said privileges. But when in our persons we trust we have given
+no cause why to lose that privilege, we beseech your Grace of your goodness
+and absolute power to set such orders in this behalf as we may enjoy our
+privileges lawfully admitted so long.
+
+"Item where they complain that there is exacted and demanded in divers
+parishes of this your realm, other manner of tythes than hath been
+accustomed to be paid this hundred years past; and in some parts of this
+your realm there is exacted double tythes, that is to say, threepence, or
+twopence-halfpenny, for one acre, over and beside the tythe for the
+increase of cattle that pastureth the same:
+
+"To this we say, that tythes being due by God's law, be so duly paid
+(thanked be God), by all good men, as there needeth not exaction in the
+most parts of this your Grace's realm. As for double tythes, they cannot be
+maintained due for one increase; whether in any place they be unduly
+exacted in fact we know not. This we know in learning, that neither a
+hundred years, nor seven hundred of non-payment, may debar the right of
+God's law. The manner of payment, and person unto whom to pay, may be in
+time altered, but the duty cannot by any means be taken away.
+
+"Item where they say that when a mortuary is due, curates sometimes, before
+they will demand it, will bring citation for it; and then will not receive
+the mortuaries till they may have such costs as they say they have laid out
+for the suit of the same; when, indeed, if they would first have charitably
+demanded it, they needed not to have sued for the same, for it should have
+been paid with good will:
+
+"We answer that curates thus offending, if they were known, ought to be
+punished, but who thus doeth we know not.
+
+"Item where they say that divers spiritual persons being presented to
+benefices within this your realm, we and our ministers do take of them
+great sums of money and reward; we reply that this is a particular abuse,
+and he that taketh reward doeth not well; and if any penny be exacted above
+the accustomed rate and after convenient proportion, it is not well done.
+But in taking the usual fee for the sealing, writing, and registering the
+letters, which is very moderate, we cannot think it to be reputed as any
+offence; neither have we heard any priests in our days complain of any
+excess therein.
+
+"And where they say in the same article that such as be presented be
+delayed without reasonable cause, to the intent that we the ordinaries may
+have the profit of the benefice during the vacation, unless they will pact
+and convent with us by temporal bonds, whereof some bonds contain that we
+should have part of the profit of the said benefice, which your said
+subjects suppose to be not only against right and conscience, but also
+seemeth to be simony, and contrary to the laws of God:
+
+"To this we do say that a delay without reasonable cause, and for a
+lucrative intent, is detestable in spiritual men, and the doers cannot
+eschew punishment: but otherwise a delay is sometimes expedient to examine
+the clerk, and sometimes necessary when the title is in variance. All other
+bargains and covenants being contrary to the law ought to be punished, as
+the quality is of the offence more or less, as simony or inordinate
+covetousness.
+
+"Item where they say that we give benefices to our nephews and kinsfolk,
+being in young age or infants, whereby the cure is not substantially looked
+into, nor the parishioners taught as they should be; we reply to this that
+the thing which is not lawful in others is in spiritual men more
+detestable. Benefices should be disposed of not _secundum carnem et
+sanguinem, sed secundum merita_. And when there is a default it is not
+authorised by the clergy as good, but reproved; whereupon in this the
+clergy is not to be blamed, but the default as it may appear must be laid
+to particular men.
+
+"And where they say that we take the profit of such benefices for the time
+of the minority of our said kinsfolk, if it be done to our own use and
+profit it is not well; _if it be bestowed to the bringing up and use of the
+same parties_, or applied to the maintenance of the church and God's
+service, or distributed among the poor, we do not see but that it may be
+allowed.
+
+"Item where they say that divers and many spiritual persons, not contented
+with the convenient livings and promotions of the church, daily intromit
+and exercise themselves in secular offices and rooms, as stewards,
+receivers, auditors, bailiffs, and other temporal occupations, withdrawing
+themselves from the good contemplative lives that they have professed, not
+only to the damage but also to the perilous example of your loving and
+obedient subjects; to this we your bedesmen answer that beneficed men may
+lawfully be stewards and receivers to their own bishops, as it evidently
+appeareth in the laws of the church; and we by the same laws ought to have
+no other. And as for priests to be auditors and bailiffs, we know none
+such.
+
+"And where, finally, they, in the conclusion of their supplication, do
+repeat and say that forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a
+few years past hath been much misdemeanour and violence upon the one part,
+and much default and lack of patience, charity, and good will on the other
+part; and marvellous discord in consequence of the quiet, peace, and
+tranquillity in which this your realm hath been ever hitherto preserved
+through your politic wisdom:
+
+"To the first part as touching such discord as is reported, and also the
+misdemeanour which is imputed to us and our doings, we trust we have
+sufficiently answered the same, humbly beseeching your Grace so to esteem
+and weigh such answer with their supplication as shall be thought good and
+expedient by your high wisdom. Furthermore we ascertain your Grace as
+touching the violence which they seem to lay to our charge, albeit divers
+of the clergy of this your realm have sundry times been _rigorously
+handled, and with much violence entreated by certain ill-disposed and
+seditious persons of the lay fee, have been injured in their bodies, thrown
+down in the kennel in the open_ _streets at mid-day_, even here within your
+city and elsewhere, to the great rebuke and disquietness of the clergy of
+your realm, the great danger of the souls of the said misdoers, and
+perilous example of your subjects. Yet we think verily, and do affirm the
+same, that no violence hath been so used on our behalf towards your said
+lay subjects in any case; unless they esteem this to be violence that we do
+use as well for the health of their souls as for the discharge of our
+duties in taking, examining, and punishing heretics according to the law:
+wherein we doubt not but that your Grace, and divers of your Grace's
+subjects, do understand well what charitable entreaty we have used with
+such as have been before us for the same cause of heresy; and what means we
+have devised and studied for safeguard specially of their souls; and that
+charitably, as God be our judge, and without violence as [far as] we could
+possibly devise. In execution thereof, and also of the laws of the church
+for repression of sin, and also for reformation of mislivers, it hath been
+to our great comfort that your Grace hath herein of your goodness, assisted
+and aided us in this behalf for the zeal and love which your Grace beareth
+to God's church and to His ministers; especially in defence of His faith
+whereof your Grace only and most worthily amongst all Christian princes
+beareth the title and name. And for that marvellous discord and grudge
+among your subjects as is reported in the supplication of your Commons, we
+beseech your Majesty, all the premises considered, to repress those that be
+misdoers; protesting in our behalf that we ourselves have no grudge nor
+displeasure towards your lay subjects our ghostly children. We intreat your
+Grace of your accustomed goodness to us your bedemen to continue our chief
+protector, defender, and aider in and for the execution of our office and
+duty; specially touching repression of heresy, reformation of sin, and due
+behaviour and order of all your Grace's subjects, spiritual and temporal;
+which (no doubt thereof) shall be much to the pleasure of God, great
+comfort to men's souls, quietness and unity of all your realm; and, as we
+think, most principally to the great comfort of your Grace's Majesty. Which
+we beseech lowly upon our knees, so entirely as we can, to be the author of
+unity, charity, and concord as above, for whose preservation we do and
+shall continually pray to Almighty God long to reign and prosper in most
+honourable estate to his pleasure."
+
+This was the bishops' defence; the best which, under the circumstances,
+they considered themselves capable of making. The House of Commons had
+stated their complaints in the form of special notorious facts; the bishops
+replied with urging the theory of their position, and supposed that they
+could relieve the ecclesiastical system from the faults of its ministers,
+by laying the sole blame on the unworthiness of individual persons. The
+degenerate representatives of a once noble institution could not perhaps be
+expected to admit their degeneracy, and confess themselves, as they really
+were, collectively incompetent; yet the defence which they brought forward
+would have been valid only so long as the blemishes were the rare
+exceptions in the working of an institution which was still generally
+beneficent. It was no defence at all when the faults had become the rule,
+and when there was no security in the system itself for the selection of
+worth and capacity to exercise its functions. The clergy, as I have already
+said, claimed the privileges of saints, while their conduct fell below the
+standard of that of ordinary men; and the position taken in this answer was
+tenable only on the hypothesis which it, in fact, deliberately asserted,
+that the judicial authority of the church had been committed to it by God
+Himself; and that no misconduct of its ministers in detail could forfeit
+their claims or justify resistance to them.
+
+There is something touching in the bishops' evidently sincere
+unconsciousness that there could be real room for blame. Warham, who had
+been Archbishop of Canterbury thirty years, took credit to himself for the
+reforms which, under the pressure of public opinion, he had introduced, in
+the last few weeks or months; and did not know that in doing so he had
+passed sentence on a life of neglect. In the opinion of the entire bench no
+infamy, however notorious, could shake the testimony of a witness in a case
+of heresy; no cruelty was unjust when there was suspicion of so horrible a
+crime; while the appointment of minors to church benefices (not to press
+more closely the edge of the accusation) they admitted while they affected
+to deny it; since they were not ashamed to defend the appropriation of the
+proceeds of benefices occupied by such persons, if laid out on the
+education and maintenance of the minors themselves.
+
+Yet these things were as nothing in comparison with the powers claimed for
+convocation; and the prelates of the later years of Henry's reign must have
+looked back with strange sensations at the language which their
+predecessors had so simply addressed to him. If the canons which
+convocation might think good to enact were not consistent with the laws of
+the Realm, "His Majesty" was desired to produce the wished-for uniformity
+by altering the laws of the Realm; and although the bishops might not
+submit their laws to His Majesty's approval, they would be happy, they told
+him, to consider such suggestions as he might think proper to make. The
+spirit of the Plantagenets must have slumbered long before such words as
+these could have been addressed to an English sovereign, and little did the
+bishops dream that these light words were the spell which would burst the
+charm, and bid that spirit wake again in all its power and terror.
+
+The House of Commons in the mean time had not been idle. To them the
+questions at issue were unincumbered with theoretic difficulties. Enormous
+abuses had been long ripe for dissolution, and there was no occasion to
+waste time in unnecessary debates. At such a time, with a House practically
+unanimous, business could be rapidly transacted, the more rapidly indeed in
+proportion to its importance. In six weeks, for so long only the session
+lasted, the astonished church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up
+before the Lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their
+incomes would be dried up to flow no longer; or would flow only in shallow
+rivulets along the beds of the once abundant torrents, The jurisdiction of
+the spiritual courts was not immediately curtailed, and the authority which
+was in future to be permitted to convocation lay over for further
+consideration, to be dealt with in another manner. But probate duties and
+legacy duties, hitherto assessed at discretion, were dwarfed into fixed
+proportions,[238] not to touch the poorer laity any more, and bearing even
+upon wealth with a reserved and gentle hand. Mortuaries were shorn of their
+luxuriance; when effects were small, no mortuary should be required; when
+large, the clergy should content themselves with a modest share. No velvet
+cloaks should be stripped any more from strangers' bodies to save them from
+a rector's grasp;[239] no shameful battles with apparitors should disturb
+any more the recent rest of the dead.[240] Such sums as the law would
+permit should be paid thenceforward in the form of decent funeral fees for
+householders dying in their own parishes, and there the exactions should
+terminate.[241]
+
+The carelessness of the bishops in the discharge of their most immediate
+duties obliged the legislature to trespass also in the provinces purely
+spiritual, and undertake the discipline of the clergy. The Commons had
+complained in their petition that the clergy, instead of attending to their
+duties, were acting as auditors, bailiffs, stewards, or in other
+capacities, as laymen; they were engaged in trade also, in farming, in
+tanning, in brewing, in doing anything but the duties which they were paid
+for doing; while they purchased dispensations for non-residence on their
+benefices; and of these benefices, in favoured cases, single priests held
+as many as eight or nine. It was thought unnecessary to wait for the
+bishops' pleasure to apply a remedy here. If the clergy were unjustly
+accused of these offences, a law of general prohibition would not touch
+them. If the belief of the House of Commons was well founded, there was no
+occasion for longer delay. It was therefore enacted[242]--"for the more
+quiet and virtuous increase and maintenance of divine service, the
+preaching and teaching the Word of God with godly and good example, for the
+better discharge of cures, the maintenance of hospitality, the relief of
+poor people, the increase of devotion and good opinion of the lay fee
+towards spiritual persons"--that no such persons thenceforward should take
+any land to farm beyond what was necessary, _bonā fide_, for the support of
+their own households; that they should not buy merchandise to sell again;
+that they should keep no tanneries or brewhouses, or otherwise directly or
+indirectly trade for gain. Pluralities were not to be permitted with
+benefices above the yearly value of eight pounds, and residence was made
+obligatory under penalty in cases of absence without special reason, of ten
+pounds for each month of such absence. The law against pluralities was
+limited as against existing holders, each of whom, for their natural lives,
+might continue to hold as many as four benefices. But dispensations, either
+for non-residence or for the violation of any other provision of the act,
+were made penal in a high degree, whether obtained from the bishops or from
+the court of Rome.
+
+These bills struck hard and struck home. Yet even persons who most
+disapprove of the Reformation will not at the present time either wonder at
+their enactment or complain of their severity. They will be desirous rather
+to disentangle their doctrine from suspicious connection, and will not be
+anxious to compromise their theology by the defence of unworthy professors
+of it.
+
+The bishops, however, could ill tolerate an interference with the
+privileges of the ecclesiastical order. The Commons, it was exclaimed, were
+heretics and schismatics;[243] the cry was heard everywhere, of Lack of
+faith, Lack of faith; and the lay peers being constitutionally
+conservative, and perhaps instinctively apprehensive of the infectious
+tendencies of innovation, it seemed likely for a time that an effective
+opposition might be raised in the Upper House. The clergy commanded an
+actual majority in that House from their own body, which they might employ
+if they dared; and although they were not likely to venture alone on so
+bold a measure, yet a partial support from the other members was a
+sufficient encouragement. The aged Bishop of Rochester was made the
+spokesman of the ecclesiastics on this occasion. "My Lords," he said, "you
+see daily what bills come hither from the Commons House, and all is to the
+destruction of the church. For God's sake see what a realm the kingdom of
+Bohemia was; and when the church went down, then fell the glory of that
+kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but Down with the church, and all
+this meseemeth is for lack of faith only."[244] "In result," says Hall,
+"the acts were sore debated; the Lords Spiritual would in no wise consent,
+and committees of the two Houses sate continually for discussion." The
+spiritualty defended themselves by prescription and usage, to which a
+Gray's Inn lawyer something insolently answered, on one occasion, "the
+usage hath ever been of thieves to rob on Shooter's Hill, _ergo_, it is
+lawful." "With this answer," continues Hall, "the spiritual men were sore
+offended because their doings were called robberies, but the temporal men
+stood by their sayings, insomuch that the said gentlemen declared to the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, that both the exaction of probates of testaments
+and the taking of mortuaries were open robbery and thefts."
+
+At length, people out of doors growing impatient, and dangerous symptoms
+threatening to show themselves, the king summoned a meeting in the
+Star-chamber between eight members of both Houses. The lay peers, after
+some discussion, conclusively gave way; and the bishops, left without
+support, were obliged to yield. They signified their unwilling consent, and
+the bills, "somewhat qualified," were the next day agreed to--"to the great
+rejoicing of the lay people, and the great displeasure of the spiritual
+persons."[245]
+
+Nor were the House of Commons contented with the substance of victory. The
+reply to their petition had perhaps by that time been made known to them,
+and at any rate they had been accused of sympathy with heresy, and they
+would not submit to the hateful charge without exacting revenge. The more
+clamorous of the clergy out of doors were punished probably by the stocks;
+from among their opponents in the Upper House, Fisher was selected for
+special and signal humiliation. The words of which he had made use were
+truer than the Commons knew; perhaps the latent truth of them was the
+secret cause of the pain which they inflicted; but the special anxiety of
+the English reformers was to disconnect themselves, with marked emphasis,
+from the movement in Germany, and they determined to compel the offending
+bishop to withdraw his words.
+
+They sent the speaker, Sir Thomas Audeley, to the king, who "very
+eloquently declared what dishonour it was to his Majesty and the realm,
+that they which were elected for the wisest men in the shires, cities, and
+boroughs within the realm of England, should be declared in so noble a
+presence to lack faith." It was equivalent to saying "that they were
+infidels, and no Christians--as ill as Turks and Saracens." Wherefore he
+"most humbly besought the King's Highness to call the said bishop before
+him, and to cause him to speak more discreetly of such a number as was in
+the Commons House."[246] Henry consented to their request, it is likely
+with no great difficulty, and availed himself of the opportunity to read a
+lesson much needed to the remainder of the bench. He sent for Fisher, and
+with him for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for six other bishops. The
+speaker's message was laid before them, and they were asked what they had
+to say. It would have been well for the weak trembling old men if they
+could have repeated what they believed and had maintained their right to
+believe it. Bold conduct is ever the most safe; it is fatal only when there
+is courage but for the first step, and fails when a second is required to
+support it. But they were forsaken in their hour of calamity, not by
+courage only, but by prudence, by judgment, by conscience itself. The
+Bishop of Rochester stooped to an equivocation too transparent to deceive
+any one; he said that "he meant only the doings of the Bohemians were for
+lack of faith, and not the doings of the Commons House"--"which saying was
+confirmed by the bishops present." The king allowed the excuse, and the
+bishops were dismissed; but they were dismissed into ignominy, and
+thenceforward, in all Henry's dealings with them, they were treated with
+contemptuous disrespect. For Fisher himself we must feel only sorrow. After
+seventy-six years of a useful and honourable life, which he might have
+hoped to close in a quiet haven, he was launched suddenly upon stormy
+waters, to which he was too brave to yield, which he was too timid to
+contend against; and the frail vessel drifting where the waves drove it,
+was soon piteously to perish.
+
+Thus triumphant on every side, the parliament, in the middle of December,
+closed its session, and lay England celebrated its exploits as a national
+victory. "The king removed to Greenwich, and there kept his Christmas with
+the queen with great triumph, with great plenty of viands, and disguisings,
+and interludes, to the great rejoicing of his people;"[247] the members of
+the House of Commons, we may well believe, following the royal example in
+town and country, and being the little heroes of the day. Only the bishops
+carried home sad hearts within them, to mourn over the perils of the church
+and the impending end of all things; Fisher, unhappily for himself, to
+listen to the wailings of the Nun of Kent, and to totter slowly into
+treason.
+
+Here, for the present leaving the clergy to meditate on their future, and
+reconsider the wisdom of their answer to the king respecting the
+ecclesiastical jurisdiction (a point on which they were not the less
+certain to be pressed, because the process upon it was temporarily
+suspended), we must turn to the more painful matter which, for a time
+longer, ran parallel with the domestic reformation, and as yet was unable
+to unite with it. After the departure of Campeggio, the further hearing of
+the divorce cause had been advoked to Rome, where it was impossible for
+Henry to consent to plead; while the appearance of the supposed brief had
+opened avenues of new difficulty which left no hope of a decision within
+the limits of an ordinary lifetime. Henry was still, however, extremely
+reluctant[248] to proceed to extremities, and appeal to the parliament. He
+had threatened that he would tolerate no delay, and Wolsey had evidently
+expected that he would not. Queen Catherine's alarm had gone so far, that
+in the autumn she had procured an injunction from the pope, which had been
+posted in the churches of Flanders, menacing the king with spiritual
+censures if he took any further steps.[249] Even this she feared that he
+would disregard, and in March, 1529-30, a second inhibition was issued at
+her request, couched in still stronger language.[250] But these measures
+were needless, or at least premature. Henry expected that the display of
+temper in the country in the late session would produce an effect both on
+the pope and on the emperor; and proposing to send an embassy to
+remonstrate jointly with them on the occasion of the emperor's coronation,
+which was to take place in the spring at Bologna, he had recourse in the
+mean time to an expedient which, though blemished in the execution, was
+itself reasonable and prudent.
+
+Among the many _technical_ questions which had been raised upon the
+divorce, the most serious was on the validity of the original dispensation;
+a question not only on the sufficiency of the form the defects of which the
+brief had been invented to remedy; but on the more comprehensive
+uncertainty whether Pope Julius had not exceeded his powers altogether in
+granting a dispensation where there was so close affinity. No one supposed
+that the pope could permit a brother to marry a sister; a dispensation
+granted in such a case would be _ipso facto_ void.--Was not the
+dispensation similarly void which permitted the marriage of a brother's
+widow? The advantage which Henry expected from raising this difficulty was
+the transfer of judgment from the partial tribunal of Clement to a broader
+court. The pope could not, of course, adjudicate on the extent of his own
+powers; especially as he always declared himself to be ignorant of the law;
+and the decision of so general a question rested either with a general
+council, or must be determined by the consent of Christendom, obtained in
+some other manner. If such general consent declared against the pope, the
+cause was virtually terminated. If there was some approach to a consent
+against him, or even if there was general uncertainty, Henry had a legal
+pretext for declining his jurisdiction, and appealing to a council.
+
+Thomas Cranmer, then a doctor of divinity at Cambridge,[251] is said to
+have been the person who suggested this ingenious expedient, and to have
+advised the king, as the simplest means of carrying it out, to consult in
+detail the universities and learned men throughout Europe. His notorious
+activity in collecting the opinions may have easily connected him with the
+origination of the plan, which probably occurred to many other persons as
+well as to him; but whoever was the first adviser, it was immediately acted
+upon, and English agents were despatched into Germany, Italy, and France,
+carrying with them all means of persuasion, intellectual, moral, and
+material, which promised to be of most cogent potency with lawyers'
+convictions.
+
+This matter was in full activity when the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn's
+father, with Cranmer, the Bishop of London, and Edward Lee, afterwards
+Archbishop of York, was despatched to Bologna to lay Henry's remonstrances
+before the emperor, who was come at last in person to enjoy his miserable
+triumph, and receive from the pope the imperial crown. Sir Nicholas Carew,
+who had been sent forward a few weeks previously, described in piteous
+language the state to which Italy had been reduced by him. Passing through
+Pavia, the English emissary saw the children crying about the streets for
+bread, and dying of hunger; the grapes in midwinter rotting on the vines,
+because there was no one to gather them; and for fifty miles scarcely a
+single creature, man or woman, in the fields. "They say," added Carew, "and
+the pope also showed us the same, that the whole people of that country,
+with divers other places in Italia, with war, famine, and pestilence, are
+utterly dead and gone."[252] Such had been the combined work of the vanity
+of Francis and the cold selfishness of Charles; and now the latter had
+arrived amidst the ruins which he had made, to receive his crown from the
+hands of a pope who was true to Italy, if false to all the world besides,
+and whom, but two years before, he had imprisoned and disgraced. We think
+of Clement as the creature of the emperor, and such substantially he
+allowed himself to be; but his obedience was the obedience of fear to a
+master whom he hated, and the bishop of Tarbčs, who was present at the
+coronation, and stood at his side through the ceremony, saw him trembling
+under his robes with emotion, and heard him sigh bitterly.[253] Very
+unwillingly, we may be assured, he was compelled to act his vacillating
+part to England, and England, at this distance of time, may forgive him for
+faults to which she owes her freedom, and need not refuse him some tribute
+of sympathy in his sorrows.
+
+Fallen on evil times, which greater wisdom and greater courage than had for
+many a century been found in the successors of St. Peter would have failed
+to encounter successfully, Clement VII. remained, with all his cowardice, a
+true Italian; his errors were the errors of his age and nation, and were
+softened by the presence, in more than usual measure, of Italian genius and
+grace. Benvenuto Cellini, who describes his character with much minuteness,
+has left us a picture of a hot-tempered, but genuine and kind-hearted man,
+whose taste was elegant, and whose wit, from the playful spirit with which
+it was pervaded, and from a certain tendency to innocent levity, approached
+to humour. He was liable to violent bursts of feeling; and his inability to
+control himself, his gesticulations, his exclamations, and his tears, all
+represent to us a person who was an indifferent master of the tricks of
+dissimulation to which he was reduced, and whose weakness entitles him to
+pity, if not to respect. The papacy had fallen to him at the crisis of its
+deepest degradation. It existed as a politically organised institution,
+which it was convenient to maintain, but from which the private hearts of
+all men had fallen away; and it depended for its very life upon the support
+which the courts of Europe would condescend to extend to it. Among these
+governments, therefore, distracted as they were by mutual hostility, the
+pope was compelled to make his choice; and the fatality of his position
+condemned him to quarrel with the only prince on whom, at the outset of
+these complications, he had a right to depend.
+
+In 1512, France had been on the point of declaring her religious
+independence; and as late as 1525, Francis entertained thoughts of offering
+the patriarchate to Wolsey.[254] Charles V., postponing his religious
+devotion for the leisure of old age, had reserved the choice of his party,
+to watch events and to wait upon opportunity; while, from his singular
+position, he wielded in one hand the power of Catholic Spain, in the other
+that of Protestant Germany, ready to strike with either, as occasion or
+necessity recommended. If his Spaniards had annexed the New World to the
+papacy, his German lanzknechts had stormed the Holy City, murdered
+cardinals, and outraged the pope's person: while both Charles and Francis,
+alike caring exclusively for their private interests, had allowed the Turks
+to overrun Hungary, to conquer Rhodes, and to collect an armament at
+Constantinople so formidable as to threaten Italy itself, and the very
+Christian faith. Henry alone had shown hitherto a true feeling for
+religion; Henry had made war with Louis XII. solely in the pope's quarrel;
+Henry had broken an old alliance with the emperor to revenge the capture of
+Rome, and had won Francis back to his allegiance. To Henry, if to any one,
+the Roman bishop had a right to look with confidence. But the power of
+England was far off, and could not reach to Rome. Francis had been baffled
+and defeated, his armies destroyed, his political influence in the
+Peninsula annihilated. The practical choice which remained to Clement lay
+only, as it seemed, between the emperor and martyrdom; and having, perhaps,
+a desire for the nobler alternative, yet being without the power to choose
+it, his wishes and his conduct, his words to private persons and his open
+actions before the world, were in perpetual contradiction. He submitted
+while his heart revolted; and while at Charles's dictation he was
+threatening Henry with excommunication if he proceeded further with his
+divorce, he was able at that very time to say, in confidence, to the Bishop
+of Tarbčs, that he would be well contented if the King of England would
+marry on his own responsibility, availing himself of any means which he
+might possess among his own people, so only that he himself was not
+committed to a consent or the privileges of the papacy were not trenched
+upon.[255]
+
+Two years later, when the course which the pope would really pursue under
+such circumstances was of smaller importance, Henry gave him an opportunity
+of proving the sincerity of this language; and the result was such as he
+expected it to be. As yet, however, he had not relinquished the hope of
+succeeding by a more open course.
+
+In March, 1529-30, the English ambassadors appeared at Bologna. Their
+instructions were honest, manly, and straightforward. They were directed to
+explain, _ab initio_, the grounds of the king's proceedings, and to appeal
+to the emperor's understanding of the obligations of princes. Full
+restitution was to be offered of Catherine's dowry, and the Earl of
+Wiltshire was provided with letters of credit adequate to the amount.[256]
+If these proposals were not accepted, they were to assume a more peremptory
+tone, and threaten the alienation of England; and if menaces were equally
+ineffectual, they were to declare that Henry, having done all which lay
+within his power to effect his purpose with the goodwill of his friends,
+since he could not do as he would, must now do as he could, and discharge
+his conscience. If the emperor should pretend that he would "abide the law,
+and would defer to the pope," they were to say, "that the sacking of Rome
+by the Spaniards and Germans had so discouraged the pope and cardinals,
+that they feared for body and goods," and had ceased to be free agents; and
+concluding finally that the king would fear God rather than man, and would
+rely on comfort from the Saviour against those who abused their authority,
+they were then to withdraw.[257] The tone of the directions was not
+sanguine, and the political complications of Europe, on which the emperor's
+reply must more or less have depended, were too involved to allow us to
+trace the influences which were likely to have weighed with him. There
+seems no primā facie reason, however, why the attempt might not have been
+successful. The revolutionary intrigues in England had decisively failed,
+and the natural sympathy of princes, and a desire to detach Henry from
+Francis, must have combined to recommend a return of the old cordiality
+which had so long existed between the sovereigns of England and Flanders.
+But whatever was the cause, the opening interview assured the Earl of
+Wiltshire that he had nothing to look for. He was received with distant
+courtesy; but Charles at once objected even to hearing his instructions, as
+an interested party.[258] The earl replied that he stood there, not as the
+father of the queen's rival, but as the representative of his sovereign;
+but the objection declared the attitude which Charles was resolved to
+maintain, and which, in fact, he maintained throughout. "The emperor,"
+wrote Lord Wiltshire to Henry, "is stiffly bent against your Grace's
+matter, and is most earnest in it; while the pope is led by the emperor,
+and neither will nor dare displease him."[259] From that quarter, so long
+as parties remained in their existing attitude, there was no hope. It seems
+to have been hinted, indeed, that if war broke out again between Charles
+and Francis, something might be done as the price of Henry's surrendering
+the French alliance;[260] but the suggestion, if it was made, was probably
+ironical; and as Charles was unquestionably acting against his interest in
+rejecting the English overtures, it is fair to give him credit for having
+acted on this one occasion of his life, upon generous motives. A respectful
+compliment was paid to his conduct by Henry himself in the reproaches which
+he addressed to the pope.[261]
+
+So terminated the first and the last overture on this subject which Henry
+attempted with Charles V. The ambassadors remained but a few days at
+Bologna, and then discharged their commission and returned. The pope,
+however, had played his part with remarkable skill, and by finessing
+dexterously behind the scenes, had contrived to prevent the precipitation
+of a rupture with himself. His simple and single wish was to gain time,
+trusting to accident or Providence to deliver him from his dilemma. On the
+one hand, he yielded to the emperor in refusing to consent to Henry's
+demand; on the other, he availed himself of all the intricacies to parry
+Catherine's demand for a judgment in her favour. He even seemed to part
+with the emperor on doubtful terms. "The latter," said the Bishop of
+Tarbčs,[262] "before leaving Bologna, desired his Holiness to place two
+cardinals' hats at his disposal, to enable him to reward certain services."
+His Holiness ventured to refuse. During his imprisonment, he said he had
+been compelled to nominate several persons for that office whose conduct
+had been a disgrace to their rank; and when the emperor denied his orders,
+the pope declared that he had seen them. The cardinals' hats, therefore,
+should be granted only when they were deserved, "when the Lutherans in
+Germany had been reduced to obedience, and Hungary had been recovered from
+the Turks." If this was acting, it was skilfully managed, and it deceived
+the eyes of the French ambassador.
+
+Still further to gratify Henry, the pope made a public declaration with
+respect to the dispute which had arisen on the extent of his authority,
+desiring, or professing to desire, that all persons whatever throughout
+Italy should be free to express their opinions without fear of incurring
+his displeasure. This declaration, had it been honestly meant, would have
+been creditable to Clement's courage: unfortunately for his reputation, his
+outward and his secret actions seldom corresponded, and the emperor's
+agents were observed to use very dissimilar language in his name. The
+double policy, nevertheless, was still followed to secure delay. Delay was
+his sole aim,--either that Catherine's death, or his own, or Henry's, or
+some relenting in one or other of the two princes who held their minatory
+arms extended over him, might spare himself and the church the calamity of
+a decision. For to the church any decision was fatal. If he declared for
+Charles, England would fall from it; if for Henry, Germany and Flanders
+were lost irrecoverably, and Spain itself might follow. His one hope was to
+procrastinate; and in this policy of hesitation for two more years he
+succeeded, till at length the patience of Henry and of England was worn
+out, and all was ended. When the emperor required sentence to be passed, he
+pretended to be about to yield; and at the last moment, some technical
+difficulty ever interfered to make a decision impossible. When Henry was
+cited to appear at Rome, a point of law was raised upon the privilege of
+kings, threatening to open into other points of law, and so to multiply to
+infinity. The pope, indeed, finding his own ends so well answered by
+evasion, imagined that it would answer equally those of the English nation,
+and he declared to Henry's secretary that "if the King of England would
+send a mandate ad totam causam, then if his Highness would, there might be
+given so many delays by reason of matters which his Highness might lay in,
+and the remissorials that his Grace might ask, ad partes, that peradventure
+in ten years or longer a sentence should not be given."[263] In point of
+worldly prudence, his conduct was unexceptionably wise; but something
+beyond worldly prudence was demanded of a tribunal which claimed to be
+inspired by the Holy Ghost.
+
+The dreary details of the negotiations I have no intention of pursuing.
+They are of no interest to any one,--a miserable tissue of insincerity on
+one side, and hesitating uncertainty on the other. There is no occasion for
+us to weary ourselves with the ineffectual efforts to postpone an issue
+which was sooner or later inevitable.
+
+I may not pass over in similar silence another unpleasant episode in this
+business,--the execution of Cranmer's project for collecting the sentiments
+of Europe on the pope's dispensing power. The details of this transaction
+are not wearying only, but scandalous; and while the substantial justice of
+Henry's cause is a reason for deploring the means to which he allowed
+himself to be driven in pursuing it, we may not permit ourselves either to
+palliate those means or to conceal them. The project seemed a simple one,
+and likely to be effective and useful. Unhappily, the appeal was still to
+ecclesiastics, to a body of men who were characterised throughout Europe by
+a universal absence of integrity, who were incapable of pronouncing an
+honest judgment, and who courted intimidation and bribery by the readiness
+with which they submitted to be influenced by them. Corruption was resorted
+to on all sides with the most lavish unscrupulousness, and the result
+arrived at was general discredit to all parties, and a conclusion which
+added but one more circle to the labyrinth of perplexities. Croke,[264] a
+Doctors' Commons lawyer, who was employed in Italy, described the state of
+feeling in the peninsula as generally in Henry's favour; and he said that
+he could have secured an all but universal consent, except for the secret
+intrigues of the Spanish agents, and their open direct menaces, when
+intrigue was insufficient. He complained bitterly of the treachery of the
+Italians who were in the English pay; the two Cassalis, Pallavicino, and
+Ghinucci, the Bishop of Worcester. These men, he said, were betraying Henry
+when they were pretending to serve him, and were playing secretly into the
+hands of the emperor.[265] His private despatches were intercepted, or the
+contents of them by some means were discovered; for the persons whom he
+named as inclining against the papal claims, became marked at once for
+persecution. One of them, a Carmelite friar, was summoned before the
+Cardinal Governor of Bologna, and threatened with death;[266] and a certain
+Father Omnibow, a Venetian who had been in active co-operation with Dr.
+Croke, wrote himself to Henry, informing him in a very graphic manner of
+the treatment to which, by some treachery, he had been exposed. Croke and
+Omnibow were sitting one morning in the latter's cell, "when there entered
+upon them the emperor's great ambassador, accompanied with many gentlemen
+of Spain, and demanded of the Father how he durst be so bold to take upon
+him to intermeddle in so great and weighty a matter, the which did not only
+lessen and enervate the pope's authority, but was noyful and odious to all
+Realms Christened."[267] Omnibow being a man of some influence in Venice,
+the ambassador warned him on peril of his life to deal no further with such
+things: there was not the slightest chance that the King of England could
+obtain a decision in his favour, because the question had been placed in
+the hands of six cardinals who were all devoted to the emperor: the pope,
+it was sternly added, had been made aware of his conduct, and was
+exceedingly displeased, and the general[268] of his order had at the same
+time issued an injunction, warning all members to desist at their peril
+from intercourse with the English agents. The Spanish party held themselves
+justified in resorting to intimidation to defend themselves against English
+money; the English may have excused their use of money as a defence against
+Spanish intimidation; and each probably had recourse to their several
+methods prior to experience of the proceedings of their adversaries, from a
+certain expectation of what those proceedings would be. Substantially, the
+opposite manoeuvres neutralised each other, and in Catholic countries,
+opinions on the real point at issue seem to have been equally balanced. The
+Lutheran divines, from their old suspicion of Henry, were more decided in
+their opposition to him. "The Italian Protestants," wrote Croke to the
+king, "be utterly against your Highness in this cause, and have letted as
+much as with their power and malice they could or might."[269] In Germany
+Dr. Bames and Cranmer found the same experience. Luther himself had not
+forgotten his early passage at arms with the English Defender of the Faith,
+and was coldly hostile; the German theologians, although they expressed
+themselves with reserve and caution, saw no reason to court the anger of
+Charles by meddling in a quarrel in which they had no interest; they
+revenged the studied slight which had been passed by Henry on themselves,
+with a pardonable indifference to the English ecclesiastical revolt.
+
+If, however, in Germany and Italy the balance of unjust interference lay on
+the imperial side, it was more than adequately compensated by the answering
+pressure which was brought to bear in England and in France on the opposite
+side. Under the allied sovereigns, the royal authority was openly exercised
+to compel such expressions of sentiment as the courts of London and Paris
+desired; and the measures which were taken oblige us more than ever to
+regret the inventive efforts of Cranmer's genius. For, in fact, these
+manoeuvres, even if honestly executed, were all unrealities. The question
+at issue was one of domestic English politics, and the metamorphosis of it
+into a question of ecclesiastical law was a mere delusion. The discussion
+was transferred to a false ground, and however the king may have chosen to
+deceive himself, was not being tried upon its real merits. A complicated
+difficulty vitally affecting the interests of a great nation, was laid for
+solution before a body of persons incompetent to understand or decide it,
+and the laity, with the alternative before them of civil war, and the
+returning miseries of the preceding century, could brook no judgment which
+did not answer to their wishes.
+
+The French king, contemptuously indifferent to justice, submitted to be
+guided by his interest; feeling it necessary for his safety to fan the
+quarrel between Henry and the emperor, he resolved to encourage whatever
+measures would make the breach between them irreparable. The reconciliation
+of Herod and Pontius Pilate[270] was the subject of his worst alarm; and a
+slight exercise of ecclesiastical tyranny was but a moderate price by which
+to ensure himself against so dangerous a possibility.
+
+Accordingly, at the beginning of June, the University of Paris was
+instructed by royal letters to pronounce an opinion on the extent to which
+the pope might grant dispensations for marriage within the forbidden
+degrees. The letters were presented by the grand master, and the latter in
+his address to the faculty, maintained at the outset an appearance of
+impartiality. The doctors were required to decide according to their
+conscience, having the fear of God before their eyes; and no open effort
+was ventured to dictate the judgment which was to be delivered.
+
+The majority of the doctors understood their duty and their position, and a
+speedy resolution was anticipated, when a certain Dr. Beda, an energetic
+Ultramontane, commenced an opposition. He said that, on a question which
+touched the power of the pope, they were not at liberty to pronounce an
+opinion without the permission of his Holiness himself; and that the
+deliberation ought not to go forward till they had applied for that
+permission and had received it. This view was supported by the Spanish and
+Italian party in the university. The debate grew warm, and at length the
+meeting broke up in confusion without coming to a resolution. Beda, when
+remonstrated with on the course which he was pursuing, did not hesitate to
+say that he had the secret approbation of his prince; that, however Francis
+might disguise from the world his real opinions, in his heart he only
+desired to see the pope victorious. An assertion so confident was readily
+believed, nor is it likely that Beda ventured to make it without some
+foundation. But being spoken of openly it became a matter of general
+conversation, and reaching the ears of the English ambassador, it was met
+with instant and angry remonstrance. "The ambassador," wrote the grand
+master to Francis, "has been to me in great displeasure, and has told me
+roundly that his master is trifled with by us. We give him words in plenty
+to keep his beak in the water; but it is very plain that we are playing
+false, and that no honesty is intended. Nor are his words altogether
+without reason; for many persons declare openly that nothing will be done.
+If the alliance of England, therefore, appear of importance to your
+Highness, it would be well for you to write to the Dean of the Faculty,
+directing him to close an impertinent discussion, and require an answer to
+the question asked as quickly as possible."[271] The tone of this letter
+proves, with sufficient clearness, the true feelings of the French
+government; but at the moment the alternative suggested by the grand master
+might not be ventured. Francis could not afford to quarrel with England, or
+to be on less than cordial terms with it, and for a time at least his
+brother sovereigns must continue to be at enmity. The negotiations for the
+recovery of the French princes out of their Spanish prison, were on the
+point of conclusion; and, as Francis was insolvent, Henry had consented to
+become security for the money demanded for their deliverance. Beda had,
+moreover, injured his cause by attacking the Gallican liberties; and as
+this was a point on which the government was naturally sensitive, some
+tolerable excuse was furnished for the lesson which it was thought proper
+to adminster to the offending doctor.
+
+On the seventeenth of June, 1530, therefore, Francis wrote as follows to
+the President of the Parliament of Paris:--
+
+"We have learnt, to our great displeasure, that one Beda, an imperialist,
+has dared to raise an agitation among the theologians, dissuading them from
+giving their voices on the cause of the King of England.--On receipt of
+this letter, therefore, you shall cause the said Beda to appear before you,
+and you shall show him the grievous anger which he has given us cause to
+entertain towards him. And further you shall declare to him, laying these
+our present writings before his eyes that he may not doubt the truth of
+what you say, that if he does not instantly repair the fault which he has
+committed, he shall be punished in such sort as that he shall remember
+henceforth what it is for a person of his quality to meddle in the affairs
+of princes. If he venture to remonstrate; if he allege that it is matter of
+conscience, and that before proceeding to pronounce an opinion it is
+necessary to communicate with the pope; in our name you shall forbid him to
+hold any such communication: and he and all who abet him, and all persons
+whatsoever, not only who shall themselves dare to consult the pope on this
+matter, but who shall so much as entertain the proposal of consulting him,
+shall be dealt with in such a manner as shall be an example to all the
+world. The liberties of the Gallican Church are touched, and the
+independence of our theological council, and there is no privilege
+belonging to this realm on which we are more peremptorily determined to
+insist."[272]
+
+The haughty missive, a copy of which was sent to England,[273] produced the
+desired effect. The doctors became obedient and convinced, and the required
+declaration of opinion in Henry's favour, was drawn up in the most ample
+manner. They made a last desperate effort to escape from the position in
+which they were placed when the seal of the university was to be affixed to
+the decision; but the resistance was hopeless, the authorities were
+inexorable, and they submitted. It is not a little singular that the
+English political agent employed on this occasion, and to whose lot it fell
+to communicate the result to the king, was Reginald Pole. He it was, who
+behind the scenes, and assisting to work the machinery of the intrigue,
+first there, perhaps, contracted his disgust with the cause on which he was
+embarked. There learning to hate the ill with which he was forced
+immediately into contact, he lost sight of the greater ill to which it was
+opposed; and in the recoil commenced the first steps of a career, which
+brought his mother to the scaffold, which overspread all England with an
+atmosphere of treason and suspicion, and which terminated at last after
+years of exile, rebellion, and falsehood, in a brief victory of blood and
+shame. So ever does wrong action beget its own retribution, punishing
+itself by itself, and wrecking the instruments by which it works. The
+letter which Pole wrote from Paris to Henry will not be uninteresting. It
+revealed his distaste for his occupation, though prudence held him silent
+as to his deeper feelings.
+
+"Please it your Highness to be advertised, that the determination and
+conclusion of the divines in this university was achieved and finished
+according to your desired purpose, upon Saturday last past. The sealing of
+the same has been put off unto this day, nor never could be obtained before
+for any soliciting on our parts which were your agents here, which never
+ceased to labour, all that lay in us, for the expedition of it, both with
+the privy president and with all such as we thought might in any part aid
+us therein. But what difficulties and stops hath been, to let the obtaining
+of the seal of the university, notwithstanding the conclusion passed and
+agreed unto by the more part of the faculty, by reason of such oppositions
+as the adversary part hath made to embezzle the determination that it
+should not take effect nor go forth in that same form as it was concluded,
+it may please your Grace, to be advertised by this bearer, Master Fox; who,
+with his prudence, diligence, and great exercise in the cause, hath most
+holp to resist all these crafts, and to bring the matter to that point as
+your most desired purpose hath been to have it. He hath indeed acted
+according to that hope which I had of him at the beginning and first
+breaking of the matter amongst the faculty here, when I, somewhat fearing
+and foreseeing such contentions, altercations, and empeschements as by most
+likelihood might ensue, did give your Grace advertisement, how necessary I
+thought it was to have Master Fox's presence. And whereas I was informed by
+Master Fox how it standeth with your Grace's pleasure, considering my
+fervent desire thereon, that, your motion once achieved and brought to a
+final conclusion in this university, I should repair to your presence, your
+Grace could not grant me at this time a petition more comfortable unto me.
+And so, making what convenient speed I may, my trust is shortly to wait
+upon your Highness. Thus Jesu preserve your most noble Grace to his
+pleasure, and your most comfort and honour. Written at Paris, the seventh
+day of July, by your Grace's most humble and faithful servant, REGINALD
+POLE."[274]
+
+We must speak of this transaction as it deserves, and call it wholly bad,
+unjust, and inexcusable. Yet we need not deceive ourselves into supposing
+that the opposition which was crushed so roughly was based on any principal
+of real honesty. In Italy, intrigue was used against intimidation. In
+France intimidation was used against intrigue; and the absence of rectitude
+in the parties whom it was necessary to influence, provoked and justified
+the contempt with which they were treated.
+
+The conduct of the English universities on the same occasion was precisely
+what their later characters would have led us respectively to expect from
+them. At Oxford the heads of houses and the senior doctors and masters
+submitted their consciences to state dictation, without opposition, and, as
+it seemed, without reluctance. Henry was wholly satisfied that the right
+was on his own side; he was so convinced of it, that an opposition to his
+wishes among his own subjects, he could attribute only to disloyalty or to
+some other unworthy feeling; and therefore, while he directed the
+convocation, "giving no credence to sinister persuasions, to show and
+declare their just and true learning in his cause," he was able to dwell
+upon the answer which he expected from them, as a plain matter of duty; and
+obviously as not admitting of any uncertainty whatever.
+
+"We will and command you," he said, "that ye, not leaning to wilful and
+sinister opinions of your own several minds, considering that we be your
+sovereign liege lord [and] totally giving your time, mind, and affections
+to the true overtures of divine learning in this behalf, do show and
+declare your true and just learning in the said cause, like as ye will
+abide by: wherein ye shall not only please Almighty God, but also us your
+liege lord. And we, for your so doing, shall be to you and to our
+university there so good and gracious a lord for the same, as ye shall
+perceive it well done in your well fortune to come. And in case you do not
+uprightly, according to divine learning, handle yourselves herein, ye may
+be assured that we, not without great cause, shall so quickly and sharply
+look to your unnatural misdemeanour herein, that it shall not be to your
+quietness and ease hereafter."[275] The admonitory clauses were
+sufficiently clear; they were scarcely needed, however, by the older
+members of the university. An enlarged experience of the world which years,
+at Oxford as well as elsewhere, had not failed to bring with them, a just
+apprehension of the condition of the kingdom, and a sense of the
+obligations of subjects in times of political difficulty, sufficed to
+reconcile the heads of the colleges to obedience; and threats were not
+required where it is unlikely that a thought of hesitation was entertained.
+But there was a class of residents which appears to be perennial in that
+university, composed out of the younger masters; a class of men who,
+defective alike in age, in wisdom, or in knowledge, were distinguished by a
+species of theoretic High Church fanaticism; who, until they received their
+natural correction from advancing years, required from time to time to be
+protected against their own extravagance by some form of external pressure.
+These were the persons whom the king was addressing in his more severe
+language, and it was not without reason that he had recourse to it.
+
+In order to avoid difficulty, and to secure a swift and convenient
+resolution, it was proposed that both at Oxford and Cambridge the
+universities should be represented by a committee composed of the heads of
+houses, the proctors, and the graduates in divinity and law: that this
+committee should agree upon a form of a reply; and that the university seal
+should then be affixed without further discussion. This proposition was
+plausible as well as prudent, for it might be supposed reasonably that
+young half-educated students were incapable of forming a judgment on an
+intricate point of law; and to admit their votes was equivalent to allowing
+judgment to be given by party feeling. The masters who were to be thus
+excluded refused however to entertain this view of their incapacity. The
+question whether the committee should be appointed was referred to
+convocation, where, having the advantage of numbers, they coerced the
+entire proceedings; and some of them "expressing themselves in a very
+forward manner" to the royal commissioners,[276] and the heads of houses
+being embarrassed, and not well knowing what to do, the king found it
+necessary again to interpose. He was unwilling, as he said, to violate the
+constitution of the university by open interference, "considering it to
+exist under grant and charter from the crown as a body politic, in the
+ruling whereof in things to be done in the name of the whole, the number of
+private suffrages doth prevail." "He was loth, too," he added, "to show his
+displeasure, whereof he had so great cause ministered unto him, unto the
+whole in general, whereas the fault perchance consisted and remained in
+light and wilful heads," and he trusted that it might suffice if the
+masters of the colleges used their private influence and authority[277] in
+overcoming the opposition. For the effecting of this purpose, however, and
+in order to lend weight to their persuasion, he assisted the convocation
+towards a conclusion with the following characteristic missive:--
+
+"To our trusty and well-beloved the heads of houses, doctors, and proctors
+of our University of Oxford:
+
+"Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well; and of late being informed, to
+our no little marvel and discontentation, that a great part of the youth of
+that our university, with contentious and factious manner daily combining
+together, neither regarding their duty to us their sovereign lord, nor yet
+conforming themselves to the opinions and orders of the virtuous, wise,
+sage, and profound learned men of that university, wilfully do stick upon
+the opinion to have a great number of regents and non-regents to be
+associate unto the doctors, proctors, and bachelors of divinity for the
+determination of our question; which we believe hath not been often seen,
+that such a number of right small learning in regard to the other should be
+joined with so famous a sort, or in a manner stay their seniors in so
+weighty a cause. And forasmuch as this, we think, should be no small
+dishonour to our university there, but most especially to you the seniors
+and rulers of the same; and as also, we assure you, this their unnatural
+and unkind demeanour is not only right much to our displeasure, but much to
+be marvelled of, upon what ground and occasion, they being our mere
+subjects, should show themselves more unkind and wilful in this matter than
+all other universities, both in this and all other regions do: we, trusting
+in the dexterity and wisdom of you and other the said discreet and
+substantial learned men of that university, be in perfect hope that ye will
+conduce and frame the said young persons unto order and conformity as it
+becometh you to do. Whereof we be desirous to hear with incontinent
+diligence; and doubt you not we shall regard the demeanour of every one of
+the university according to their merits and deserts. And if the youth of
+the university will play masteries as they begin to do, we doubt not but
+they shall well perceive that non est bonum irritare crabrones.[278]
+
+"Given under our hand and seal, at our Castle of Windsor,
+
+"HENRY R."[279]
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say, that, armed with this letter, the heads of
+houses subdued the recalcitrance of the overhasty "youth;" and Oxford duly
+answered as she was required to answer.
+
+The proceedings at Cambridge were not very dissimilar; but Cambridge being
+distinguished by greater openness and largeness of mind on this as on the
+other momentous subjects of the day than the sister university, was able to
+preserve a more manly bearing, and escape direct humiliation. Cranmer had
+written a book upon the divorce in the preceding year, which, as coming
+from a well-known Cambridge man, had occasioned a careful ventilation of
+the question there; the resident masters had been divided by it into
+factions nearly equal in number, though unharmoniously composed. The heads
+of houses, as at Oxford, were inclined to the king, but they were
+embarrassed and divided by the presence on the same side of the suspected
+liberals, the party of Shaxton, Latimer, and Cranmer himself. The agitation
+of many months had rendered all members of the university, young and old,
+so well acquainted (as they supposed) with the bearings of the difficulty,
+that they naturally resisted, as at the other university, the demand that
+their power should be delegated to a committee; and the Cambridge
+convocation, as well as that of Oxford, threw out this resolution when it
+was first proposed to them. A king's letter having made them more amenable,
+a list of the intended committee was drawn out, which, containing Latimer's
+name, occasioned a fresh storm. But the number in the senate house being
+nearly divided, "the labour of certain friends" turned the scale; the vote
+passed, and the committee was allowed, on condition that the question
+should be argued publicly in the presence of the whole university. Finally,
+judgment was obtained on the king's side, though in a less absolute form
+than he had required, and the commissioners did not think it prudent to
+press for a more extreme conclusion. They had been desired to pronounce
+that the pope had no power to permit a man to marry his brother's widow.
+They consented only to say that a marriage within those degrees was
+contrary to the divine law; but the question of the pope's power was left
+unapproached.[280]
+
+It will not be uninteresting to follow this judgment a further step, to the
+delivery of it into the hands of the king, where it will introduce us to a
+Sunday at Windsor Castle three centuries ago. We shall find present there,
+as a significant symptom of the time, Hugh Latimer, appointed freshly
+select preacher in the royal chapel, but already obnoxious to English
+orthodoxy, on account of his Cambridge sermons. These sermons, it had been
+said, contained many things good and profitable, "on sin, and godliness,
+and virtue," but much also which was disrespectful to established beliefs,
+the preacher being clearly opposed to "candles and pilgrimages," and
+"calling men unto the works that God commanded in his Holy Scripture, all
+dreams and unprofitable glosses set aside and utterly despised." The
+preacher had, therefore, been cited before consistory courts and
+interdicted by bishops, "swarms of friars and doctors flocking against
+Master Latimer on every side."[281] This also was to be noted about him,
+that he was one of the most fearless men who ever lived. Like John Knox,
+whom he much resembled, in whatever presence he might be, whether of poor
+or rich, of laymen or priests, of bishops or kings, he ever spoke out
+boldly from his pulpit what he thought, directly if necessary to particular
+persons whom he saw before him respecting their own actions. Even Henry
+himself he did not spare where he saw occasion for blame; and Henry, of
+whom it was said that he never was mistaken in a _man_--loving a _man_[282]
+where he could find him with all his heart--had, notwithstanding, chosen
+this Latimer as one of his own chaplains.
+
+The unwilling bearer of the Cambridge judgment was Dr. Buckmaster, the
+vice-chancellor, who, in a letter to a friend, describes his reception at
+the royal castle.
+
+"To the right worshipful Dr. Edmonds, vicar of Alborne, in Wiltshire, my
+duty remembered,--
+
+"I heartily commend me unto you, and I let you understand that yesterday
+week, being Sunday at afternoon, I came to Windsor, and also to part of Mr.
+Latimer's sermon; and after the end of the same I spake with Mr. Secretary
+[Cromwell], and also with Mr. Provost; and so after evensong I delivered
+our letters in the Chamber of Presence, all the court beholding. The king,
+with Mr. Secretary, did there read them; and did then give me thanks and
+talked with me a good while. He much lauded our wisdom and good conveyance
+in the matter, with the great quietness in the same. He showed me also what
+he had in his hands for our university, according to that which Mr.
+Secretary did express unto us, and so he departed from me. But by and bye
+he greatly praised Mr. Latimer's sermon; and in so praising said on this
+wise: 'This displeaseth greatly Mr. Vice-Chancellor yonder; yon same,' said
+he to the Duke of Norfolk, 'is Mr. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge,' and so
+pointed unto me. Then he spake secretly unto the said duke, which, after
+the king's departure, came unto me and welcomed me, saying, among other
+things, the king would speak with me on the next day. And here is the first
+act. On the next day I waited until it was dinner time; and so at the last
+Dr. Butts, [king's physician,] came unto me, and brought a reward, twenty
+nobles for me, and five marks for the junior proctor which was with me,
+saying that I should take that for a resolute answer, and that I might
+depart from the court when I would. Then came Mr. Provost, and when I had
+shewed him of the answer, he said I should speak with the king after dinner
+for all that, and so he brought me into a privy place where after dinner he
+would have me wait. I came thither and he both; and by one of the clock the
+king entered in. It was in a gallery. There were Mr. Secretary, Mr.
+Provost, Mr. Latimer, Mr. Proctor, and I, and no more. The king then talked
+with us until six of the clock. I assure you he was scarce contented with
+Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, that this was not also determined, _an Papa
+possit dispensare_. I made the best, and confirmed the same that they had
+shewed his Grace before; and how it would never have been so obtained. He
+opened his mind, saying he would have it determined after Easter, and of
+the same was counselled awhile.
+
+"Much other communication we had, which were too long here to recite. Then
+his Highness departed, casting a little holy water of the court; and I
+shortly after took my leave of Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, with whom I
+did not drink, nor yet was bidden, and on the morrow departed from thence,
+thinking more than I did say, and being glad that I was out of the court,
+where many men, as I did both hear and perceive, did wonder at me. And here
+shall be an end for this time of this fable.
+
+"All the world almost crieth out of Cambridge for this act, and specially
+on me; but I must bear it as well as I may. I have lost a benefice by it,
+which I should have had within these ten days; for there hath one fallen in
+Mr. Throgmorton's[283] gift which he hath faithfully promised unto me many
+a time, but now his mind is turned and alienate from me. If ye go to court
+after Easter I pray you have me in remembrance. Mr. Latimer preacheth
+still,--quod ęmuli ejus graviter ferunt.
+
+"Thus fare you well. Your own to his power,
+WILLIAM BUCKMASTER.[284]
+Cambridge, Monday after Easter, 1530."
+
+It does not appear that Cambridge was pressed further, and we may,
+therefore, allow it to have acquitted itself creditably, If we sum up the
+results of Cranmer's measure as a whole, it may be said that opinions had
+been given by about half Europe directly or indirectly unfavourable to the
+papal claims; and that, therefore, the king had furnished himself with a
+legal pretext for declining the jurisdiction of the court of Rome, and
+appealing to a general council. Objections to the manner in which the
+opinions had been gained could be answered by recriminations equally just;
+and in the technical aspect of the question a step had certainly been
+gained. It will be thought, nevertheless, on wider grounds, that the
+measure was a mistake; that it would have been far better if the legal
+labyrinth had never been entered, and if the divorce had been claimed only
+upon those considerations of policy for which it had been first demanded,
+and which formed the true justification of it. Not only might a shameful
+chapter of scandal have been spared out of the world's history, but the
+point on which the battle was being fought lay beside the real issue.
+Europe was shaken with intrigue, hundreds of books were written, and tens
+of thousands of tongues were busy for twelve months weaving logical
+subtleties, and all for nothing. The truth was left unspoken because it was
+not convenient to speak it, and all parties agreed to persuade themselves
+and accept one another's persuasions, that they meant something which they
+did not mean. Beyond doubt the theological difficulty really affected the
+king. We cannot read his own book[285] upon it without a conviction that
+his arguments were honestly urged, that his misgivings were real, and that
+he meant every word which he said. Yet it is clear at the same time that
+these misgivings would not have been satisfied, if all the wisdom of the
+world--pope, cardinals, councils, and all the learned faculties
+together--had declared against him, the true secret of the matter lying
+deeper, understood and appreciated by all the chief parties concerned, and
+by the English laity, whose interests were at stake; but in all these
+barren disputings ignored as if it had no existence.
+
+It was perhaps less easy than it seems to have followed the main road. The
+bye ways often promise best at first entrance into them, and Henry's
+peculiar temper never allowed him to believe beforehand that a track which
+he had chosen could lead to any conclusion except that to which he had
+arranged that it should lead. With an intellect endlessly fertile in
+finding reasons to justify what he desired, he could see no justice on any
+side but his own, or understand that it was possible to disagree with him
+except from folly of ill-feeling. Starting always with a foregone
+conclusion, he arrived of course where he wished to arrive. His "Glasse of
+Truth" is a very picture of his mind. "If the marshall of the host bids us
+do anything," he said, "shall we do it if it be against the great captain?
+Again, if the great captain bid us do anything, and the king or the emperor
+commandeth us to do another, dost thou doubt that we must obey the
+commandment of the king or emperor, and contemn the commandment of the
+great captain? Therefore if the king or the emperor bid one thing, and God
+another, we must obey God, and contemn and not regard neither king nor
+emperor." And, therefore, he argued, "we are not to obey the pope, when the
+pope commands what is unlawful."[286] These were but many words to prove
+what the pope would not have questioned; and either they concluded nothing
+or the conclusion was assumed.
+
+We cannot but think that among the many misfortunes of Henry's life his
+theological training was the greatest; and that directly or indirectly it
+was the parent of all the rest. If in this unhappy business he had trusted
+only to his instincts as an English statesman; if he had been contented
+himself with the truth, and had pressed no arguments except those which in
+the secrets of his heart had weight with him, he would have spared his own
+memory a mountain of undeserved reproach, and have spared historians their
+weary labour through these barren deserts of unreality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CHURCH AND STATE
+
+The authorities of the church, after the lesson which they had received
+from the parliament in its first session, were now allowed a respite of two
+years, during which they might reconsider the complaints of the people, and
+consult among themselves upon the conduct which they would pursue with
+respect to those complaints. They availed themselves of their interval of
+repose in a manner little calculated to recover the esteem which they had
+forfeited, or to induce the legislature further to stay their hand. Instead
+of reforming their own faults, they spent the time in making use of their
+yet uncurtailed powers of persecution; and they wreaked the bitterness of
+their resentment upon the unfortunate heretics, who paid with their blood
+at the stake for the diminished revenues and blighted dignities of their
+spiritual lords and superiors. During the later years of Wolsey's
+administration, the Protestants, though threatened and imprisoned, had
+escaped the most cruel consequences of their faith. Wolsey had been a
+warm-hearted and genuine man, and although he had believed as earnestly as
+his brother bishops, that Protestantism was a pernicious thing, destructive
+alike to the institutions of the country and to the souls of mankind, his
+memory can be reproached with nothing worse than assiduous but humane
+efforts for the repression of it. In the three years which followed his
+dismissal, a far more bloody page was written in the history of the
+reformers; and under the combined auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism,
+and the spleen of the angry clergy, the stake re-commenced its hateful
+activity. This portion of my subject requires a full and detailed
+treatment; I reserve the account of it, therefore, for a separate chapter,
+and proceed for the present with the progress of the secular changes.
+
+Although, as I said, no further legislative measures were immediately
+contemplated against the clergy, yet they were not permitted to forget the
+alteration in their position which had followed upon Wolsey's fall; and as
+they had shown in the unfortunate document which they had submitted to the
+king, so great a difficulty in comprehending the nature of that alteration,
+it was necessary clearly and distinctly to enforce it upon them. Until that
+moment they had virtually held the supreme power in the state. The
+nobility, crippled by the wars of the Roses, had sunk into the second
+place; the Commons were disorganised, or incapable of a definite policy;
+and the chief offices of the government had fallen as a matter of course to
+the only persons who for the moment were competent to hold them. The
+jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments, which had shown itself so
+bitterly under the Plantagenets, had been superseded from the accession of
+Henry VII. by a policy of studied conciliation, and the position of Wolsey
+had but symbolised the position of his order. But Wolsey was now gone, and
+the ecclesiastics who had shared his greatness while they envied it, were
+compelled to participate also in his change of fortune.
+
+This great minister, after the failure of a discreditable effort to fasten
+upon him a charge of high treason,--a charge which, vindictively pressed
+through the House of Lords, was wisely rejected by the Commons,--had been
+prosecuted with greater justice for a breach of the law, in having
+exercised the authority of papal legate within the realm of England. His
+policy had broken down: he had united against him in a common exasperation
+all orders in the state, secular and spiritual; and the possible
+consequences of his adventurous transgression had fallen upon him. The
+parliaments of Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV. had by a
+series of statutes pronounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any
+office or dignity in the Anglican church, under penalty of a premunire; the
+provisions of these acts extending not only to the persons themselves who
+accepted office under such conditions, but comprehending equally whoever
+acknowledged their authority, "their executors, procurators, fautors,
+maintainers, and receivers."[287] The importance attached to these laws was
+to be seen readily in the frequent re-enactment of them, with language of
+increasing vehemence; and although the primary object was to neutralise the
+supposed right of the pope to present to English benefices, and although
+the office of papal legate is not especially named in any one of the
+prohibitory clauses, yet so acute a canonist as Wolsey could not have been
+ignorant that it was comprehended under the general denunciation. The 5th
+of the 16th of Richard II. was in fact explicitly universal in its
+language, and dwelt especially on the importance of prohibiting the
+exercise of any species of jurisdiction which could encroach on the royal
+authority. He had therefore consciously violated a law on his own
+responsibility, which he knew to exist, but which he perhaps trusted had
+fallen into desuetude, and would not again be revived. It cannot be denied
+that in doing so, being at the time the highest law officer of the crown,
+he had committed a grave offence, and was justly liable to the full
+penalties of the broken statute. He had received the royal permission, but
+it was a plea which could not have availed him, and he did not attempt to
+urge it.[288] The contingency of a possible violation of the law by the
+king himself had been expressly foreseen and provided against in the act
+under which he was prosecuted,[289] and being himself the king's legal
+adviser, it was his duty to have kept his sovereign[290] informed of the
+true nature of the statute. He had neglected this, his immediate
+obligation, in pursuit of the interests of the church, and when Henry's
+eyes were opened, he did not consider himself called upon to interfere to
+shield his minister from the penalties which he had incurred, nor is it
+likely that in the face of the irritation of the country he could have done
+so if he had desired. It was felt, indeed, that the long services of
+Wolsey, and his generally admirable administration, might fairly save him
+(especially under the circumstances of the case) from extremity of
+punishment; and if he had been allowed to remain unmolested in the affluent
+retirement which was at first conceded to him, his treatment would not have
+caused the stain which we have now to lament on the conduct of the
+administration which succeeded his fall. He indeed himself believed that
+the final attack upon him was due to no influence of rival statesmen, but
+to the hatred of Anne Boleyn; and perhaps he was not mistaken. This,
+however, is a matter which does not concern us here, and I need not pursue
+it. It is enough that he had violated the law of England, openly and
+knowingly, and on the revival of the national policy by which that law had
+been enacted, he reaped the consequences in his own person.
+
+It will be a question whether we can equally approve of the enlarged
+application of the statute which immediately followed. The guilt of Wolsey
+did not rest with himself; it extended to all who had recognised him in his
+capacity of legate; to the archbishops and bishops, to the two Houses of
+Convocation, to the Privy Council, to the Lords and Commons, and indirectly
+to the nation itself. It was obvious that such a state of things was not
+contemplated by the act under which he was tried, and where in point of law
+all persons were equally guilty, in equity they were equally innocent; the
+circumstances of the case, therefore, rendered necessary a general pardon,
+which was immediately drawn out. The government, however, while granting
+absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their
+lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to
+conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had
+been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of
+despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. The
+overthrow of the last ecclesiastical minister was an opportunity to teach
+them that the privileges which they had abused were at an end; and as the
+lesson was so difficult for them to learn, the letter of the law which they
+had broken was put in force to quicken their perceptions. They were to be
+punished indirectly for their other evil doings, and forced to surrender
+some portion of the unnumbered exactions which they had extorted from the
+helplessness of their flocks.
+
+In pursuance of this resolution, therefore, official notice was issued in
+December, 1530, that the clergy lay all under a premunire, and that the
+crown intended to prosecute. Convocation was to meet in the middle of
+January, and this comforting fact was communicated to the bishops in order
+to divert their attention to subjects which might profitably occupy their
+deliberations. The church legislature had sate in the preceding years
+contemporaneously with the sitting of parliament, at the time when their
+privileges were being discussed, and when their conduct had been so angrily
+challenged: but these matters had not disturbed their placid equanimity:
+and while the bishops were composing their answer to the House of Commons,
+Convocation had been engaged in debating the most promising means of
+persecuting heretics and preventing the circulation of the Bible.[291] The
+session had continued into the spring of 1529-30, when the king had been
+prevailed upon to grant an order in council prohibiting Tyndale's
+Testament, in the preface of which the clergy were spoken of
+disrespectfully.[292] His consent had been obtained with great difficulty,
+on the representation of the bishops that the translation was faulty, and
+on their undertaking themselves to supply the place of it with a corrected
+version. But in obtaining the order, they supposed themselves to have
+gained a victory; and their triumph was celebrated in St. Paul's churchyard
+with an auto da fé, over which the Bishop of London consented to preside;
+when such New Testaments as the diligence of the apparitors could discover,
+were solemnly burned.
+
+From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was furnished by
+the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce its due effect,
+it was accompanied with the further information that the clergy of the
+province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon payment of a
+hundred thousand pounds--a very considerable fine, amounting to more than a
+million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds was required simultaneously
+from the province of York; and the whole sum was to be paid in instalments
+spread over a period of five years.[293] The demand was serious, but the
+clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the chances of the law;
+and feeling that, with the people so unfavourably disposed towards them,
+they had no chance of a more equitable construction of their position, they
+consented with a tolerable grace, the Upper House of Convocation first, the
+Lower following. Their debates upon the subject have not been preserved. It
+was probably difficult to persuade them that they were treated with
+anything but the most exquisite injustice; since Wolsey's legatine
+faculties had been the object of their general dread; and if he had
+remained in power, the religious orders would have been exposed to a
+searching visitation in virtue of these faculties, from which they could
+have promised themselves but little advantage. But their punishment, if
+tyrannical in form, was equitable in substance, and we can reconcile
+ourselves without difficulty to an act of judicial confiscation.
+
+The money, however, was not the only concession which the threat of the
+premunire gave opportunity to extort; and it is creditable to the clergy
+that the demand which they showed most desire to resist was not that which
+most touched their personal interests. In the preamble of the subsidy bill,
+under which they were to levy their ransom, they were required by the
+council to designate the king by the famous title which gave occasion for
+such momentous consequences, of "Protector and only Supreme Head of the
+Church and Clergy of England."[294] It is not very easy to see what Henry
+proposed to himself by requiring this designation, at so early a stage in
+the movement. The breach with the pope was still distant, and he was
+prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even seriously contemplate
+a step which he so little desired. It may have been designed as a reply to
+the papal censures: it may have been to give effect to his own menaces,
+which Clement to the last believed to be no more than words;[295] or
+perhaps (and this is the most likely) he desired by some emphatic act, to
+make his clergy understand the relation in which thenceforward they were to
+be placed towards the temporal authority. It is certain only that this
+title was not intended to imply what it implied when, four years later, it
+was conferred by act Of parliament, and when virtually England was severed
+by it from the Roman communion.
+
+But whatever may have been the king's motive, he was serious in requiring
+that the title should be granted to him. Only by acknowledging Henry as
+Head of the Church should the clergy receive their pardon, and the longer
+they hesitated, the more peremptorily he insisted on their obedience. The
+clergy had defied the lion, and the lion held them in his grasp; and they
+could but struggle helplessly, supplicate and submit. Archbishop Warham,
+just drawing his life to a close, presided for the last time in the
+miserable scene, imagining that the clouds were gathering for the storms of
+the latter day, and that Antichrist was coming in his power.
+
+There had been a debate of three days, whether they should or should not
+consent, when, on the 9th of February, a deputation of the judges appeared
+in Convocation, to ask whether the Houses were agreed, and to inform them
+finally that the king had determined to allow no qualifications. The clergy
+begged for one more day, and the following morning the bishops held a
+private meeting among themselves, to discuss some plan to turn aside the
+blow. They desired to see Cromwell, to learn, perhaps, if there was a
+chance of melting the hard heart of Henry; and after an interview with the
+minister which could not have been encouraging, they sent two of their
+number, the Bishops of Exeter and Lincoln, to attempt the unpromising task.
+It was in vain; the miserable old men were obliged to return with the
+answer that the king would not see them--they had seen only the judges, who
+had assured them, in simple language, that the pardon was not to be settled
+until the supremacy was admitted. The answer was communicated to the House,
+and again "debated." Submission was against the consciences of the unhappy
+clergy; to obey their consciences involved forfeiture of property; and
+naturally in such a dilemma they found resolution difficult. They attempted
+another appeal, suggesting that eight of their number should hold a
+conference with the privy council, and "discover, if they might, some
+possible expedient." But Henry replied, as before, that he would have a
+clear answer, "_yes_, or _no_." They might say "yes," and their pardon was
+ready. They might say "no"--and accept the premunire and its penalties. And
+now, what should the clergy have done? No very great courage was required
+to answer, "This thing is wrong; it is against God's will, and therefore it
+must not be, whether premunire come or do not come." They might have said
+it, and if they could have dared this little act of courage, victory was in
+their hands. With the cause against them so doubtful, their very attitude
+would have commanded back the sympathies of half the nation, and the king's
+threats would have exploded as an empty sound. But Henry knew the persons
+with whom he had to deal--forlorn shadows, decked in the trappings of
+dignity--who only by some such rough method could be brought to a knowledge
+of themselves. "Shrink to the clergy"--I find in a state paper of the
+time--"Shrink to the clergy, and they be lions; lay their faults roundly
+and charitably to them, and they be as sheep, and will lightly be reformed,
+for their consciences will not suffer them to resist."[296]
+
+They hesitated for another night. The day following, the archbishop
+submitted the clause containing the title to the Upper House, with a saving
+paragraph, which, as Burnet sententiously observes, the nature of things
+did require to be supposed.[297] "Ecclesię et cleri Anglicani," so it ran,
+"singularem protectorem, et unicum et supremum Dominum, et quantum per
+legem Christi licet, etiam supremum caput ipsius Majestatem agnoscimus--We
+recognise the King's Majesty to be our only sovereign lord, the singular
+protector of the church and clergy of England, and as far as is allowed by
+the law of Christ, also as our Supreme Head." The words were read aloud by
+the archbishop, and were received in silence. "Do you assent?" he asked.
+The House remained speechless. "Whoever is silent seems to consent," the
+archbishop said. A voice answered out of the crowd, "Then are we all
+silent." They separated for a few hours to collect themselves. In the
+afternoon sitting they discussed the sufficiency of the subterfuge; and at
+length agreeing that it saved their consciences, the clause was finally
+passed, the Bishop of Rochester, among the rest, giving his unwilling
+acquiescence.
+
+So for the present terminated this grave matter. The pardon was immediately
+submitted to parliament, where it was embodied in a statute;[298] and this
+act of dubious justice accomplished, the Convocation was allowed to return
+to its usual occupations, and continue the prosecutions of the heretics.
+
+The House of Commons, during their second session, had confined themselves
+meanwhile to secular business. They had been concerned chiefly with
+regulations affecting trade and labour; and the proceedings on the
+premunire being thought for the time to press sufficiently on the clergy,
+they deferred the further prosecution of their own complaints till the
+following year. Two measures, however, highly characteristic of the age,
+must not be passed over, one of which concerned a matter that must have
+added heavily to the troubles of the Bishop of Rochester at a time when he
+was in no need of any addition to his burdens.
+
+Fisher was the only one among the prelates for whom it is possible to feel
+respect. He was weak, superstitious, pedantical; towards the Protestants he
+was even cruel; but he was a singlehearted man, who lived in honest fear of
+evil, so far as he understood what evil was; and he alone could rise above
+the menaces of worldly suffering, under which his brethren on the bench
+sank so rapidly into meekness and submission. We can therefore afford to
+compassionate him in the unexpected calamity by which he was overtaken, and
+which must have tried his failing spirit in no common manner.
+
+He lived, while his duties required his presence in London, at a house in
+Lambeth, and being a hospitable person, he opened his doors at the dinner
+hour for the poor of the neighbourhood. Shortly after the matter which I
+have just related, many of these people who were dependent on his bounty
+were reported to have become alarmingly ill, and several gentlemen of the
+household sickened also in the same sudden and startling manner. One of
+these gentlemen died, and a poor woman also died; and it was discovered on
+inquiry that the yeast which had been used in various dishes had been
+poisoned. The guilty person was the cook, a certain Richard Rouse; and
+inasmuch as all crimes might be presumed to have had motives, and the
+motive in the present instance was undiscoverable, it was conjectured by
+Queen Catherine's friends that he had been bribed by Anne Boleyn, or by
+some one of her party, to remove out of the way the most influential of the
+English opponents of the divorce.[299] The story was possibly without
+foundation, although it is not unlikely that Fisher himself believed it.
+The shock of such an occurrence may well have unsettled his powers of
+reasoning, and at all times he was a person whose better judgment was
+easily harassed into incapacity. The origin of the crime, however, is of
+less importance than the effect of the discovery upon the nation, in whom
+horror of the action itself absorbed every other feeling. Murder of this
+kind was new in England. Ready as the people ever were with sword or
+lance--incurably given as they were to fighting in the best ordered
+times--an Englishman was accustomed to face his enemy, man to man, in the
+open day; and the Italian crime (as it was called) of poisoning had not
+till recent years been heard of.[300] Even revenge and passion recognised
+their own laws of honour and fair play; and the cowardly ferocity which
+would work its vengeance in the dark, and practise destruction by wholesale
+to implicate one hated person in the catastrophe, was a new feature of
+criminality. Occurring in a time so excited, when all minds were on the
+stretch, and imaginations were feverish with fancies, it appeared like a
+frightful portent, some prodigy of nature, or enormous new birth of
+wickedness, not to be received or passed by as a common incident, and not
+to be dealt with by the process of ordinary law. Parliament undertook the
+investigation, making it the occasion, when the evidence was completed, of
+a special statute, so remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording.
+The English were a stern people--a people knowing little of compassion
+where no lawful ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful
+and solemn horror of evil things,--a feeling which, in proportion as it
+exists, inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man
+is ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and is still
+contending with it; but we purchase compassion for utter wickedness only by
+doubting in our hearts whether wickedness is more than misfortune.
+
+"The King's royal Majesty," says the 9th of the 22nd of Henry VIII.,
+"calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of good and
+wholesome laws, and due execution of the same against the offenders
+thereof, is the only cause that good obedience and order hath been
+preserved in this realm; and his Highness having most tender zeal for the
+same, considering that man's life above all things is chiefly to be
+favoured, and voluntary murders most highly to be detested and abhorred;
+and specially all kinds of murders by poisoning, which in this realm
+hitherto, our Lord be thanked, hath been most rare and seldom committed or
+practised: and now, in the time of this present parliament, that is to say,
+on the eighteenth day of February, in the twenty-second year of his most
+victorious reign, one Richard Rouse, late of Rochester, in the county of
+Kent, cook, otherwise called Richard Cook, of his most wicked and damnable
+disposition, did cast a certain venom or poison into a vessel replenished
+with yeast or barm, standing in the kitchen of the reverend father in God,
+John Bishop of Rochester, at his place in Lambeth Marsh; with which yeast
+or barm, and other things convenient, porridge or gruel was forthwith made
+for his family there being; whereby not only the number of seventeen
+persons of his said family, which did eat of that porridge, were mortally
+infected or poisoned, and one of them, that is to say, Bennet Curwan,
+gentleman, is thereof deceased; but also certain poor people which resorted
+to the said bishop's place, and were there charitably fed with the remains
+of the said porridge and other victuals; were in like wise infected; and
+one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Tryppitt, widow, is also
+thereof now deceased: Our said sovereign lord the king, of his blessed
+disposition inwardly abhorring all such abominable offences, because that
+in manner no person can live in surety out of danger of death by that
+means, if practices thereof should not be eschewed, hath ordained and
+enacted by authority of this present parliament, that the said poisoning be
+adjudged and deemed as high treason; and that the said Richard, for the
+said murder and poisoning of the said two persons, shall stand and be
+attainted of high treason.
+
+"And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and committed,
+requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and enacted by
+authority of this present parliament that the said Richard Rouse shall be
+therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy; and
+that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or persons hereafter
+to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning, shall be reputed,
+deemed, and judged in the law to be high treason; and that all and every
+person or persons which shall hereafter be indicted and condemned by order
+of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted to the benefit of his or
+their clergy, but shall be immediately after such attainder or
+condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same."
+
+The sentence was carried into effect[301] in Smithfield, "on the tenebra
+Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others." The spectacle
+of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed three hundred
+years ago by the London citizens, within the walls of that old
+cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the significance of which is not
+easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of the soul there was the
+stake,[302] for the poisoners of the body, the boiling cauldron,--the two
+most fearful punishments for the most fearful of crimes. The stake at which
+the heretic suffered was an inherited institution descending through the
+usage of centuries; the poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the
+judgment of the English nation on a novel enormity; and I have called
+attention to it because the temper which this act exhibits is the key to
+all which has seemed most dark and cruel in the rough years which followed;
+a temper which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which,
+rightly or wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably
+hurried out the penalties of it.
+
+Following the statute against poisoning, there stands "an act for the
+banishment out of the country of divers outlandish and vagabond people
+called Egyptians;"[303] and attached to it another of analogous import,
+"for the repression of beggars and vagabonds," the number of whom, it was
+alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and much crime and
+other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by them. We may
+regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the energetic and
+reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into prominence all
+forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for those disorders. But
+they indicate something more than this: they point to the growth of a
+disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption of industry, and other
+symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us
+the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which
+it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation
+for its approaching trial. The act against the gipsies especially,
+illustrates one of the most remarkable features of the times. The air was
+impregnated with superstition; in a half consciousness of the impending
+changes, all men were listening with wide ears to rumours and prophecies
+and fantastic fore-shadowings of the future; and fanaticism, half deceiving
+and half itself deceived, was grasping the lever of the popular excitement
+to work out its own ends.[304] The power which had ruled the hearts of
+mankind for ten centuries was shaking suddenly to its foundation. The
+Infallible guidance of the Church was failing; its light gone out, or
+pronounced to be but a mere deceitful ignis fatuus; and men found
+themselves wandering in darkness, unknowing where to turn or what to think
+or believe. It was easy to clamour against the spiritual courts. From men
+smarting under the barefaced oppression of that iniquitous jurisdiction,
+the immediate outcry rose without ulterior thought; but unexpectedly the
+frail edifice of the church itself threatened under the attack to crumble
+into ruins; and many gentle hearts began to tremble and recoil when they
+saw what was likely to follow on their light beginnings. It was true that
+the measures as yet taken by the parliament and the crown professed to be
+directed, not to the overthrow of the church, but to the re-establishment
+of its strength. But the exulting triumph of the Protestants, the promotion
+of Latimer to a royal chaplaincy, the quarrel with the papacy, and a dim
+but sure perception of the direction in which the stream was flowing,
+foretold to earnest Catholics a widely different issue; and the simplest of
+them knew better than the court knew, that they were drifting from the sure
+moorings of the faith into the broad ocean of uncertainty. There seems,
+indeed, to be in religious men, whatever be their creed, and however
+limited their intellectual power, a prophetic faculty of insight into the
+true bearings of outward things,--an insight which puts to shame the
+sagacity of statesmen, and claims for the sons of God, and only for them,
+the wisdom even of the world. Those only read the world's future truly who
+have faith in principle, as opposed to faith in human dexterity; who feel
+that in human things there lies really and truly a spiritual nature, a
+spiritual connection, a spiritual tendency, which the wisdom of the serpent
+cannot alter, and scarcely can affect.
+
+Excitement, nevertheless, is no guarantee for the understanding; and these
+instincts, powerful as they are, may be found often in minds wild and
+chaotic, which, although they vaguely foresee the future, yet have no power
+of sound judgment, and know not what they foresee, or how wisely to
+estimate it. Their wisdom, if we may so use the word, combines crudely with
+any form of superstition or fanaticism. Thus in England, at the time of
+which we are speaking, Catholics and Protestants had alike their horoscope
+of the impending changes, each nearer to the truth than the methodical
+calculations of the statesmen; yet their foresight did not affect their
+convictions, or alter the temper of their hearts. They foresaw the same
+catastrophe, yet their faith still coloured the character of it. To the one
+it was the advent of Antichrist, to the other the inauguration of the
+millennium. The truest hearted men on all sides were deserted by their
+understandings at the moment when their understandings were the most deeply
+needed: and they saw the realities which were round them transfigured into
+phantoms through the mists of their hopes and fears. The present was
+significant only as it seemed in labour with some gigantic issue, and the
+events of the outer world flew from lip to lip, taking as they passed every
+shape most wild and fantastical. Until "the king's matter" was decided,
+there was no censorship upon speech, and all tongues ran freely on the
+great subjects of the day. Every parish pulpit rang with the divorce, or
+with the perils of the Catholic faith; at every village ale-house, the talk
+was of St. Peter's keys, the sacrament, or of the pope's supremacy, or of
+the points in which a priest differed from a layman. Ostlers quarrelled
+over such questions as they groomed their masters' horses; old women
+mourned across the village shopboards of the evil days which were come or
+coming; while every kind of strangest superstition, fairy stories and witch
+stories, stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and
+to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue of the
+general imagination.[305]
+
+These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English
+mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement,
+the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant,
+who to a man were devoted to the pope and to Queen Catherine, passed up and
+down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster, and
+the wrath of God; and mingling with their prophecies more than dubious
+language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who was opposing
+God and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste
+to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those
+wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose habits rendered them
+the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide
+a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate
+policy.[306] Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the emperor
+or the pope might pass unsuspected from the Land's End to
+Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying the links of
+the Catholic organisation: and in the later years of the struggle, as the
+intrigues became more determined and a closer connection was established
+between the Continental powers and the disaffected English, it became
+necessary to increase the penalty against these irregular wanderers from
+banishment to death. As yet, however, the milder punishment was held
+sufficient, and even this was imperfectly enforced.[307] The tendencies to
+treason were still incipient--they were tendencies only, which had as yet
+shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future was uncertain, the action
+of the government doubtful. The aim was rather to calm down the excitement
+of the people, and to extinguish with as little violence as possible the
+means by which it was fed.
+
+Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape in
+the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin
+Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of
+abstinence from food. This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after
+having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his
+mission, he was furnished with a priest's habit and a certificate under
+leaden seal.[308] Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and
+loaded himself with palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which
+Christ was scourged; and from thence making his way to England, he appeared
+at Paul's Cross an evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his
+divorce, denouncing his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven. He
+was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed,
+fifty days without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of
+the time the government thought it prudent to send him back to Scotland,
+without further punishment.[309]
+
+Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her
+reputation--the celebrated Nun of Kent--whose cell at Canterbury, for some
+three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the
+orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself. This singular
+woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes
+of England. By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired.
+Wolsey believed it, Warham believed it, the bishops believed it, Queen
+Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas More's philosophy was no protection to
+him against the same delusion; and finally, she herself believed the world,
+when she found the world believed in her. Her story is a psychological
+curiosity; and, interwoven as it was with the underplots of the time, we
+cannot observe it too accurately.
+
+In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a
+certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
+who possessed an estate there. Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was a
+country girl called Elizabeth Barton--a decent person, so far as we can
+learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having shown
+nothing unusual in her temperament. She was then attacked, however, by some
+internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was reduced into
+that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited the phenomena
+known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or clairvoyance.
+The scientific value of such phenomena is still undetermined, but that they
+are not purely imaginary is generally agreed. In the histories of all
+countries and of all times, we are familiar with accounts of young women of
+bad health and irritable nerves, who have exhibited at recurring periods
+certain unusual powers; and these exhibitions have had especial attraction
+for superstitious persons, whether they have believed in God, or in the
+devil, or in neither. A further feature also uniform in such cases, has
+been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a
+considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an
+insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of
+ordinary experience has been transcended. We have seen in our own time to
+what excesses occurrences of this kind may tempt the belief, even when
+defended with the armour of science. In the sixteenth century, when
+demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary
+insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to
+recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and
+that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise
+must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the
+subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under
+the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their
+natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make
+too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak
+girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to
+understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so,
+we continue the story.
+
+This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers and
+many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and
+said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had
+heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism
+and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel
+was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil.
+The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of
+so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard
+Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The
+girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been
+brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to
+it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and
+vice;"[311] or, as another account says, "she spake very godly certain
+things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."[312]
+This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration. It was
+clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there
+was no other alternative, it was plain that God had visited her. Her powers
+were assuredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence
+of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her
+clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.
+
+An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the parish of
+Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news
+to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story having lost nothing of its
+marvel by the way,[313] the archbishop, who was fast sinking into dotage,
+instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some competent person
+to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he assured Father Richard
+that "the speeches which she had spoken came of God; and bidding him keep
+him diligent account of all her utterances, directed him to inform her in
+his name that she was not to refuse or hide the goodness and works of God."
+Cobb, the bailiff, being encouraged by such high authority, would not keep
+any longer in his kitchen a prophetess with the archbishop's imprimatur
+upon her; and as soon as the girl was sufficiently recovered from her
+illness to leave her bed, he caused her to sit at his own mess with his
+mistress and the parson.[314] The story spread rapidly through the country;
+inquisitive foolish people came about her to try her skill with questions;
+and her illness, as she subsequently confessed, having then left her, and
+as only her reputation was remaining, she bethought herself whether it
+might not be possible to preserve it a little longer. "Perceiving herself
+to be much made of, to be magnified and much set by, by reason of trifling
+words spoken unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, she conceived in her
+mind that having so good success, and furthermore from so small an occasion
+and nothing to be esteemed, she might adventure further to enterprise and
+essay what she could do, being in good advisement and remembrance."[315]
+Her fits no longer recurred naturally, but she was able to reproduce either
+the reality or the appearance of them; and she continued to improvise her
+oracles with such ability as she could command, and with tolerable success.
+
+In this undertaking she was speedily provided with an efficient coadjutor.
+The Catholic church had for some time been unproductive of miracles, and as
+heresy was raising its head and attracting converts, so opportune an
+occurrence was not to be allowed to sleep. The archbishop sent his
+comptroller to the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury, with directions
+that two monks whom he especially named, Doctor Bocking, the cellarer, and
+Dan William Hadley, should go to Aldington to observe.[316] At first, not
+knowing what was before them, both prior and monks were unwilling to meddle
+with the matter.[317] They submitted, however, "from the obedience which
+they owed unto their lord;" and they had soon reason to approve the
+correctness of the archbishop's judgment. Bocking, selected no doubt from
+previous knowledge of his qualities, was a man devoted to his order, and
+not over-scrupulous as to the means by which he furthered the interests of
+it. With instinctive perception he discovered material in Elizabeth Barton
+too rich to be allowed to waste itself in a country village. Perhaps he
+partially himself believed in her, but he was more anxious to ensure the
+belief of others, and he therefore set himself to assist her inspiration
+towards more effective utterance. Conversing with her in her intervals of
+quiet, he discovered that she was wholly ignorant, and unprovided with any
+stock of mental or imaginative furniture; and that consequently her
+prophecies were without body, and too indefinite to be theologically
+available. This defect he remedied by instructing her in the Catholic
+legends, and by acquainting her with the revelations of St. Brigitt and St.
+Catherine of Sienna.[318] In these women she found an enlarged reflection
+of herself; the details of their visions enriched her imagery; and being
+provided with these fair examples, she was able to shape herself into
+fuller resemblance with the traditionary model of the saints.
+
+As she became more proficient, Father Bocking extended his lessons to the
+Protestant controversy, initiating his pupil into the mysteries of
+justification, sacramental grace, and the power of the keys. The ready
+damsel redelivered his instructions to the world in her moments of
+possession; and the world discovered a fresh miracle in the inspired wisdom
+of the untaught peasant. Lists of these pregnant sayings were
+forwarded[319] regularly to the archbishop, which still possibly lie
+mouldering in the Lambeth library, to be discovered by curious antiquaries.
+It is idle to inquire how far she was yet conscious of her falsehood.
+Conscious wilful deception lies far down the road in a course of this kind;
+and supported by the assurance of an archbishop, she was in all likelihood
+deep in lying before she actually knew it. Fanaticism and deceit are
+strangely near relations to each other, and the deceiver is often the
+person first deceived, and the last who is aware of the imposture.
+
+The instructions of the Father had made her acquainted with many stories of
+miraculous cures. The Catholic saints followed the type of the apostles,
+and to heal diseases by supernatural means was a more orthodox form of
+credential than clairvoyance or second sight. Being now cured of her real
+disorder, yet able to counterfeit the appearance of it, she could find no
+difficulty in arranging in her own case a miracle of the established kind,
+and so striking an incident would answer a further end. In the parish was a
+chapel of the Virgin, which was a place of pilgrimage; the pilgrims added
+something to the income of the priest; and if, by a fresh demonstration of
+the Virgin's presence at the favoured spot, the number of these pilgrims
+could be increased, they would add more. For both reasons, therefore, the
+miracle was desired; and the priest and the monk were agreed that any means
+were justifiable which would encourage the devotion of the people.[320]
+Accordingly, the girl announced, in one of her trances, that "she would
+never take health of her body till such time as she had visited the image
+of our Lady" in that chapel. The Virgin had herself appeared to her, she
+said, and had fixed a day for her appearance there, and had promised that
+on her obedience she would present herself in person and take away her
+disorder.[321] The day came; and as (under the circumstances) there was no
+danger of failure, the holy fathers had collected a vast concourse of
+people to witness the marvel. The girl was conducted to the chapel by a
+procession of more than two thousand persons, headed by the monk, the
+clergyman, and many other religious persons, the whole multitude "singing
+the Litany and saying divers psalms and orations by the way."
+
+"And when she was brought thither[322] and laid before the image of our
+Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her
+eyes being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly
+deformed. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had
+been in a tonne, her lips not greatly moving: she all that while continuing
+by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it
+told of anything of the joys of heaven, spake so sweetly and so heavenly,
+that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof; and contrarywise,
+when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly, that it
+put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many things for the
+confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of masses and confession,
+and many other such things. And after she had lyen there a long time, she
+came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. So this miracle was
+finished and solemnly sung; and a book was written of all the whole story
+thereof, and put into print; which ever since that time was commonly sold,
+and went abroad among the people."
+
+The miracle successfully accomplished, the residence at Aldington was no
+longer adapted for an acknowledged and favoured saint. The Virgin informed
+her that she was to leave the bailiff and devote herself to her exclusive
+service. She was to be Sister Elizabeth, and her especial favourite; and
+Father Bocking was to be her spiritual father. The priory of St.
+Sepulchre's, Canterbury, was chosen for the place of her profession; and as
+soon as she was established in her cell, she became a recognised priestess
+or prophetess, alternately communicating revelations, or indulging the
+curiosity of foolish persons, and for both services consenting to be paid.
+The church had by this time spread her reputation through England. The book
+of her oracles, which extended soon to a considerable volume, was shown by
+Archbishop Warham to the king, who sent it to Sir Thomas More, desiring him
+to look at it. More's good sense had not yet forsaken him; he pronounced it
+"a right poor production, such as any simple woman might speak of her own
+wit;"[323] and Henry himself "esteemed the matter as light as it afterwards
+proved lewd." But the world were less critical censors: the saintly halo
+was round her head, and her most trivial words caught the reflection of the
+glory, and seemed divine. "Divers and many, as well great men of the realm
+as mean men, and many learned men, but specially many religious men, had
+great confidence in her, and often resorted to her."[324] They "consulted
+her much as to the will of God touching the heresies and schisms in the
+realm;" and when the dispute arose between the bishops and the House of
+Commons, they asked her what judgment there was in heaven "on the taking
+away the liberties of the church;" to which questions her answers, being
+dictated by her confessor, were all which the most eager churchman could
+desire. Her position becoming more and more determined, the eccentric
+periods of her earlier visions subsided into regularity. Once a fortnight
+she was taken up into heaven into the presence of God and the saints, with
+heavenly lights, heavenly voices, heavenly melodies and joys. The place of
+ascent was usually the priory chapel, to which it was essential, therefore,
+that she should have continual access: and she was allowed, in consequence,
+to pass the dormitory door when she pleased--a privilege of which the
+Statute uncharitably hints that she availed herself for a less respectable
+purpose. But whatever was her secret conduct, her outward behaviour was in
+full keeping with her language and profession. She related many startling
+stories, not always of the most decent kind, of the attempts which the
+devil made to lead her astray. The devil and the angels were in fact
+alternate visitors to her cell, and the former, on one occasion, burnt a
+mark upon her hand, which she exhibited publicly, and to which the monks
+were in the habit of appealing, when there were any signs of scepticism in
+the visitors to the priory. On the occasion of these infernal visits,
+"great stinking smokes" were seen to issue from her chamber, "savouring
+grievously through all the dorture;" with which, however, it was suspected
+subsequently that a paper of brimstone and assafoetida, found among her
+property after her arrest, had been in some way connected. We smile at
+these stories, looking back at them with eyes enlightened by scientific
+scepticism; but they furnished matter for something else than smiles when
+the accounts of them could be exhibited by the clergy as a living proof of
+the credibility of the Aurea Legenda,--when the subject of them could be
+held up as a witness, accredited by miracles, to the truth of the old
+faith, a living evidence to shame the incredulity of the Protestant
+sectaries. She became a figure of great and singular significance; a "wise
+woman," to whom persons of the highest rank were not ashamed to have
+recourse to inquire of her the will of God, and to ask the benefit of her
+intercessory prayers, for which also they did not fail to pay at a rate
+commensurate with their credulity.[325]
+
+This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for
+herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the
+Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the queen, and
+the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the
+stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence
+that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she
+now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and audacity. Far
+from imitating the hesitation of the pope and the bishops, she issued
+boldly, "in the name and by the authority of God," a solemn prohibition
+against the king; threatening that, if he divorced his wife, he should not
+"reign a month, but should die a villain's death."[326] Burdened with this
+message, she forced herself into the presence of Henry himself;[327] and
+when she failed to produce an effect upon Henry's obdurate scepticism, she
+turned to the hesitating ecclesiastics, and roused their flagging spirits.
+The archbishop bent under her denunciations, and at her earnest request
+introduced her to Wolsey, then tottering on the edge of ruin.[328] He, too,
+in his confusion and perplexity, was frightened, and doubted. She made
+herself known to the papal ambassadors, and through them she took upon
+herself to threaten Clement,[329] assuming, in virtue of her divine
+commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were
+likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it might
+be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a similar career
+on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the destined saviour of
+the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the saviour of France.
+
+It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she were to
+be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the
+reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true
+heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her
+part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant
+girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the
+achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might
+be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound
+to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest
+adventures into falsehood were compatible with a belief that she was really
+and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a conviction would have enabled
+her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest
+statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on
+the failure of her prophecies, into the desperate career of treason into
+which we are soon to see her launched.
+
+Her proceedings were known partially, but partially only, to the king; and
+the king seems to have been the only person whose understanding was proof
+against her influence. To him she appeared nothing worse than an excited
+fanatic, and he allowed her to go her own way, as the best escapement of a
+frenzy. Until parliament had declared it illegal to discuss the marriage
+question further, he interfered with no one, and therefore not with her. If
+her own word was to be taken, he even showed her much personal kindness,
+having offered to make her an abbess, which is difficult to believe,
+especially as she said that she had refused his offer. She stated also that
+at the time of Lord Wiltshire's mission to the emperor, the Countess of
+Wiltshire endeavoured to persuade her to accept a place at the court, as a
+companion to Anne; which again is unsupported by other evidence, and sounds
+improbable.[330] But it is plain, that until she was found to be meditating
+treason, she experienced no treatment from the government of which she had
+cause to complain; and thus for the present we may leave her pursuing her
+machinations with the Canterbury friars, and return to the parliament.
+
+The second session had been longer than the first; it had commenced on the
+16th of January, and continued for ten weeks. On the 30th of March, which
+was to be its last day, Sir Thomas More came down to the House of Commons,
+and there read aloud to the members the decision of the various
+universities on the papal power, and the judgment of European learning on
+the general question of the king's divorce. The country, he said, was much
+disturbed, and the king desired them each to report what they had heard in
+their several counties and towns, "in order that all men might perceive
+that he had not attempted this matter of his own will or pleasure, as some
+strangers reported, but only for the discharge of his conscience and surety
+of the succession of his realm."[331] This appears to have been the first
+time that the subject was mentioned before parliament, and the occasion was
+reasonably and sensibly chosen. The clergy having possession of the
+pulpits, had used their opportunity to spread a false impression where the
+ignorance of the people would allow them to venture the experiment; the
+king having resolved to fall back upon the support of his subjects,
+naturally desired the assistance of the country gentlemen and the nobles to
+counteract the efforts of disaffection, and provided them with accurate
+information in the simplest manner which he could have chosen.
+
+But the desire expressed by Henry was no more than an unnecessary form, for
+as a body, the educated laity were as earnestly bent upon the divorce as
+the king himself could be, and might have been trusted to use all means by
+which to further it. The parliament was prorogued, but the Lords, shortly
+after the separation, united with such of the Commons as remained in
+London, to give a proof of their feeling by a voluntary address to the
+pope. The meaning of this movement was not to be mistaken. On one side, the
+Nun of Kent was threatening Clement, speaking, perhaps, the feelings of the
+clergy and of all the women in England; on the other side, the parliament
+thought well to threaten him, speaking for the great body of English _men_,
+for all persons of substance and property, who desired above all things
+peace and order and a secured succession.
+
+The language of this remarkable document[332] was as follows:--
+
+"To the Most Holy Lord our Lord and Father in Christ, Clement, by Divine
+Providence the seventh of that name, we desire perpetual happiness in our
+Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+"Most blessed Father, albeit the cause concerning the marriage of the most
+invincible prince, our sovereign lord, the King of England and of France,
+Defender of the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, does for sundry great and
+weighty reasons require and demand the aid of your Holiness, that it may be
+brought to that brief end and determination which we with so great and
+earnest desire have expected, and which we have been contented hitherto to
+expect, though so far vainly, at your Holiness's hands; we have been
+unable, nevertheless, to keep longer silence herein, seeing that this
+kingdom and the affairs of it are brought into so high peril through the
+unseasonable delay of sentence. His Majesty, who is our head, and by
+consequence the life of us all, and we through him as subject members by a
+just union annexed to the head, have with great earnestness entreated your
+Holiness for judgment; we have however entreated in vain: we are by the
+greatness of our grief therefore forced separately and distinctly by these
+our letters most humbly to demand a speedy determination. There ought,
+indeed, to have been no need of this request on our part. The justice of
+the cause itself, approved to be just by the sentence of so many learned
+men, by the suffrage of the most famous universities in England, France,
+and Italy, should have sufficed alone to have induced your Holiness to
+confirm the sentence given by others; especially when the interests of a
+king and kingdom are at stake, which in so many ways have deserved well of
+the apostolic see. This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with
+you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our
+entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety,
+and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither
+the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have
+received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have
+availed anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from you what
+it is your duty as a father to grant; the load of our grief, increased as
+it is beyond measure by the remembrance of the past miseries and calamities
+which have befallen this nation, makes vocal every member of our
+commonwealth, and compels us by word and letter to utter our complaints.
+
+"For what a misfortune is this,--that a sentence which our own two
+universities, which the University of Paris, and many other universities in
+France, which men of the highest learning and probity everywhere, at home
+and abroad, are ready to defend with word and pen, that such sentence, we
+say, cannot be obtained from the apostolic see by a prince to whom that see
+owes its present existence. Amidst the attacks of so many and so powerful
+enemies, the King of England ever has stood by that see with sword and pen,
+with voice and with authority. Yet he alone is to reap no benefit from his
+labours. He has saved the papacy from ruin, that others might enjoy the
+fruits of the life which he has preserved for it. We see not what answer
+can be made to this; and meanwhile we perceive a flood of miseries
+impending over the commonwealth, threatening to bring back upon us the
+ancient controversy on the succession, which had been extinguished only
+with so much blood and slaughter. We have now a king most eminent for his
+virtues, and reigning by unchallenged title, who will secure assured
+tranquillity to the realm if he leave a son born of his body to succeed
+him. The sole hope that such a son may be born to him lies in the being
+found for him some lawful marriage into which he may enter; and to such
+marriage the only obstacle lies with your Holiness. It cannot be until you
+shall confirm the sentence of so many learned men on the character of his
+former connection. This if you will not do, if you who ought to be our
+father have determined to leave us as orphans, and to treat us as
+castaways, we shall interpret such conduct to mean only that we are left to
+care for ourselves, and to seek our remedy elsewhere. We do not desire to
+be driven to this extremity, and therefore we beseech your Holiness without
+further delay to assist his Majesty's just and reasonable desires. We
+entreat you to confirm the judgment of these learned men; and for the sake
+of that love and fatherly affection which your office requires you to show
+towards us, not to close your bowels of compassion against us, your most
+dutiful, most loving, most obedient children. The cause of his Majesty is
+the cause of each of ourselves; the head cannot suffer, but the members
+must bear a part. We have all our common share in the pain and in the
+injury; and as the remedy is wholly in the power of your Holiness, so does
+the duty of your fatherly office require you to administer it. If, however,
+your Holiness will not do this, or if you choose longer to delay to do it,
+our condition hitherto will have been so much the more wretched, that we
+have so long laboured fruitlessly and in vain. But it will not be wholly
+irremediable; extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that
+is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper; and there is hope in the
+exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain
+a lesser evil, and trust that time may enable us to endure it.
+
+"These things we beseech your Holiness, in the name of our Lord Jesus
+Christ, to consider with yourself. You profess that on earth you are His
+vicar. Endeavour, then, to show yourself so to be, by pronouncing your
+sentence to the glory and praise of God, and giving your sanction to that
+truth which has been examined, approved, and after much deliberation
+confirmed by the most learned men of all nations. We meanwhile will pray
+the all-good God, whom we know by most sure testimony to be truth itself,
+that He will deign so to inform and direct the counsels of your Holiness,
+that we obtaining by your authority what is holy, just, and true, may be
+spared from seeking it by other more painful methods."
+
+Thus was the great crisis steadily maturing itself, and the cause by this
+petition was made to rest upon its proper merits. The justification of the
+demand for the divorce was the danger of civil war; and into civil war the
+nation had no intention of permitting themselves to be drifted by papal
+imbecility. Whatever was the origin of Henry's resolution, it was acted out
+with calmness, and justified by sober reason; and backed by the good sense
+of his lay subjects, he proceeded bravely, in spite of excommunication,
+interdict, and the Nun of Kent, towards the object which his country's
+interests, as well as his own, required.
+
+It would have been well if his private behaviour as a man had been as
+unobjectionable as his conduct as a sovereign. Hitherto he had remained
+under the same roof with Queen Catherine, but with that indelicacy which
+was the singular blemish on his character, he had maintained her rival in
+the same household with the state of a princess,[333] and needlessly
+wounded feelings which he was bound to have spared to the utmost which his
+duty permitted. The circumstances of the case, if they were known to us,
+though they could never excuse such a proceeding, might perhaps partially
+palliate it. Catherine was harsh and offensive, and it was by her own
+determination, and not by Henry's desire, that she was unprovided with an
+establishment elsewhere. There lay, moreover, as I have said, behind the
+scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now is happily
+concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us without the clue to
+these painful doings. Indelicate, however, the position given to Anne
+Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate in Henry to grant such a
+position, what shall we say of the lady who consented, in the presence of
+her sovereign and mistress, to wear such ignominious splendour?
+
+But in these most offensive relations there was henceforth to be a change.
+In June, 1531, two months after the prorogation of parliament, a deputation
+of the privy council went to the apartments of Catherine at Greenwich, and
+laying before her the papers which had been read by Sir Thomas More to the
+two Houses, demanded formally, whether, for the sake of the country, and
+for the quiet of the king's conscience, she would withdraw her appeal to
+Rome, and submit to an arbitration in the kingdom. It was, probably, but an
+official request, proposed without expectation that she would yield. After
+rejecting a similar entreaty from the pope himself, she was not likely,
+inflexible as she had ever been, to yield when the pope had admitted her
+appeal, and the emperor, victorious through Europe, had promised her
+support. She refused, of course, like herself, proudly, resolutely,
+gallantly, and not without the scorn which she was entitled to feel. The
+nation had no claims upon her, and "for the king's conscience," she
+answered, "I pray God send his Grace good quiet therein, and tell him I say
+I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married; and in that point I will
+abide till the court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, hath made
+thereof a determination and a final ending."[334] The learned councillors
+retired with their answer. A more passive resistance would have been more
+dignified; but Catherine was a queen, and a queen she chose to be; and in
+defence of her own high honour, and of her daughter's, by no act of hers
+would she abate one tittle of her dignity, or cease to assert her claim to
+it. Her reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request
+was only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency,
+and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the
+court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king
+to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw her
+again. She was removed to the More, a house in Hertfordshire, which had
+been originally built by George Neville, Archbishop of York, and had
+belonged to Wolsey, who had maintained it with his usual splendour.[335]
+Once more an attempt was made to persuade her to submit; but with no better
+result, and a formal establishment was then provided for her at Ampthill, a
+large place belonging to Henry not far from Dunstable. There at least she
+was her own mistress, surrounded by her own friends, who were true to her
+as queen, and she attracted to her side from all parts of England those
+whom sympathy or policy attached to her cause. The court, though keeping a
+partial surveillance over her, did not dare to restrict her liberty; and as
+the measures against the church became more stringent, and a separation
+from the papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus of a powerful
+political party. Her injuries had deprived the king and the nation of a
+right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to England. Her
+allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was the subject of
+the pope; and this dubious position gave her an advantage which she was not
+slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who adhered to the old
+faith, and to whom the measures of the government appeared a sacrilege.
+Through herself, or through her secretaries and confessors, a
+correspondence was conducted which brought the courts of the continent into
+connection with the various disaffected parties in England, with the Nun of
+Kent and her friars, with the Poles, the Nevilles, the Courtenays, and all
+the remaining faction of the White Rose. And so first the great party of
+sedition began to shape itself, which for sixty years, except in the
+shortlived interlude of its triumph under Catherine's daughter, held the
+nation on the edge of civil war. We shall see this faction slowly and
+steadily organising itself, starting from scattered and small beginnings,
+till at length it overspread all England and Ireland and Scotland,
+exploding from time to time in abortive insurrections, yet ever held in
+check by the tact and firmness of the government, and by the inherent
+loyalty of the English to the land of their birth. There was a proverb then
+current that "the treasons of England should never cease."[336] It was
+perhaps fortunate that the papal cause was the cause of a foreign power,
+and could only be defended by a betrayal of the independence of the
+country. In Scotland and Ireland the insurrectionists were more successful,
+being supported in either instance by the national feeling. But the
+strength of Scotland had been broken at Flodden; and Ireland, though hating
+"the Saxons" with her whole heart, was far off and divided. The true danger
+was at home; and when the extent and nature of it is fairly known and
+weighed, we shall understand better what is called the "tyranny" of Henry
+VIII. and of Elizabeth; and rather admire the judgment than condemn the
+resolution which steered the country safe among those dangerous shoals.
+Elizabeth's position is more familiar to us, and is more reasonably
+appreciated because the danger was more palpable. Henry has been hardly
+judged because he trampled down the smouldering fire, and never allowed it
+to assume the form which would have justified him with the foolish and the
+unthinking. Once and once only the flame blazed out; but it was checked on
+the instant, and therefore it has been slighted and forgotten. But with
+despatches before his eyes, in which Charles V. was offering James of
+Scotland the hand of the Princess Mary, with the title for himself of
+Prince of England and Duke of York[337]--with Ireland, as we shall speedily
+see it, in flame from end to end, and Dublin castle the one spot left
+within the island on which the banner of St. George still floated--with a
+corps of friars in hair shirts and chains, who are also soon to be
+introduced to us, and an inspired prophetess at their head preaching
+rebellion in the name of God--with his daughter, and his daughter's mother
+in league against him, some forty thousand clergy to be coerced into honest
+dealing, and the succession to the crown floating in uncertainty--finally,
+with excommunication hanging over himself, and at length falling, and his
+deposition pronounced, Henry, we may be sure, had no easy time of it, and
+no common work to accomplish; and all these things ought to be present
+before our minds, as they were present before his mind, if we would see him
+as he was, and judge him as we would be judged ourselves.
+
+Leaving disaffection to mature itself, we return to the struggle between
+the House of Commons and the bishops, which recommenced in the following
+winter; first pausing to notice a clerical interlude of some illustrative
+importance which took place in the close of the summer. The clergy, as we
+saw, were relieved of their premunire on engaging to pay 118,000 pounds
+within five years. They were punished for their general offences; the
+formal offence for which they were condemned being one which could not
+fairly be considered an offence at all. When they came to discuss therefore
+the manner in which the money was to be levied, they naturally quarrelled
+among themselves as to where the burden of the fine should fairly rest, and
+a little scene has been preserved to us by Hall, through which, with
+momentary distinctness, we can look in upon those poor men in their
+perplexity. The bishops had settled among themselves that each diocese
+should make its own arrangements; and some of these great persons intended
+to spare their own shoulders to the utmost decent extremity. With this
+object, Stokesley, Bishop of London, who was just then very busy burning
+heretics, and therefore in bad odour with the people, resolved to call a
+meeting of five or six of his clergy, on whom he could depend; and passing
+quietly with their assistance such resolutions as seemed convenient, to
+avoid in this way the more doubtful expedient of a large assembly.
+
+The necessary intimations were given, and the meeting was to be held on the
+1st of September, in the Chapter-house of St. Paul's. The bishop arrived at
+the time appointed, but unhappily for his hopes, not only the chosen six,
+but with them six hundred of the clergy of Middlesex, accompanied by a mob
+of the London citizens, all gathered in a crowd at the Chapter-house door,
+and clamouring to be admitted.
+
+The bishop, trusting in the strength of the chains and bolts, and still
+hoping to manage the affair officially, sent out a list of persons who
+might be allowed to take part in the proceedings, and these with difficulty
+made their way to the entrance. A rush was made by the others as they were
+going in, and there was a scuffle, which ended for the moment in the
+victory of the officials: but the triumph was of brief duration; the
+excluded clergy were now encouraged by the people; they returned vigorously
+to the attack, broke down the doors, "struck the bishop's officers over the
+face," and the whole crowd, priests and laity, rushed together, storming
+and shouting, into the Chapter-house. The scene may be easily imagined;
+dust flying, gowns torn, heads broken, well-fed faces in the hot September
+weather steaming with anger and exertion, and every voice in loudest
+outcry. At length the clamour was partially subdued, and the bishop,
+beautifully equal to the emergency, arose bland and persuasive.
+
+"My brethren," he said, "I marvel not a little why ye be so heady. Ye know
+not what shall be said to you, therefore I pray you keep silence, and hear
+me patiently. My friends, ye all know that we be men, frail of condition
+and no angels; and by frailty and lack of wisdom we have misdemeaned
+ourselves towards the king our sovereign lord and his laws; so that all we
+of the clergy were in premunire, by reason whereof all our promotions,
+lands, goods, and chattels were to him forfeit, and our bodies ready to be
+imprisoned. Yet his Grace, moved with pity and compassion, demanded of us
+what we could say why he should not extend his laws upon us.
+
+"Then the fathers of the clergy humbly besought his Grace for mercy, to
+whom he answered he was ever inclined to mercy. Then for all our great
+offences we had but little penance; for when he might, by the rigour of his
+laws, have taken all our livelihoods, he was contented with one hundred
+thousand pounds, to be paid in five years. And though this sum may be more
+than we may easily bear, yet, by the rigour of his law, we should have
+borne the whole burden; whereupon, my brethren, I charitably exhort you to
+bear your parts of your livelihood and salary towards payment of this sum
+granted."[338]
+
+The ingenuity of this address deserved all praise; but the beauty of the
+form was insufficient to disguise the inconclusiveness of the reasoning. It
+confessed an offence which the hearers knew to be none; the true
+provocation which had led to the penalty--the unjust extortion of the high
+church officials--was ignored. The crowd laughed and hooted. The clergy
+fiercely tightened their purse-strings, and the bishop was heard out with
+hardly restrained indignation. "My lord," it was shortly answered by one of
+them, "twenty nobles a year is but a bare living for a priest. Victual and
+all else is now so dear that poverty enforceth us to say nay. Besides that,
+my lord, we never meddled with the cardinal's faculties. Let the bishops
+and abbots which have offended pay." Loud clamour followed and shouts of
+applause. The bishop's officers gave the priests high words. The priests
+threw back the taunts as they came; and the London citizens, delighting in
+the scandalous quarrel, hounded on the opposition. From words they passed
+to blows; the bedell and vergers tried to keep order, but "were buffeted
+and stricken,"[339] and the meeting broke up in wild uproar and confusion.
+For this matter five of the lay crowd and fifteen London curates were sent
+to the Tower by Sir Thomas More; but the undignified manoeuvre had failed,
+and the fruit of it was but fresh disgrace. United, the clergy might have
+defied the king and the parliament; but in the race of selfishness the
+bishops and high dignitaries had cared only for their own advantage. They
+had left the poorer members of their order with no interest in common with
+that of their superiors, beyond the shield which the courts consented to
+extend over moral delinquency; and in the hour of danger they found
+themselves left naked and alone to bear the storm as they were able.
+
+This incident, and it was perhaps but one of many, is not likely to have
+softened the disposition of the Commons, or induced them to entertain more
+respectfully the bishops' own estimate of their privileges. The convocation
+and the parliament met simultaneously, on the 15th of January, and the
+conflict, which had been for two years in abeyance, recommenced. The
+initial measure was taken by convocation, and this body showed a spirit
+still unsubdued, and a resolution to fight in their own feebly tyrannical
+manner to the last. A gentleman in Gloucestershire had lately died, by name
+Tracy. In his last testament he had bequeathed his soul to God through the
+mercies of Christ, declining the mediatorial offices of the saints; and
+leaving no money to be expended in masses.[340] Such notorious heresy could
+not be passed over with impunity, and the first step of the assembled
+clergy[341] was to issue a commission to raise the body and burn it. Their
+audacity displayed at once the power which they possessed, and the temper
+in which they were disposed to use it. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems
+to have been responsible for this monstrous order, which unfortunately was
+carried into execution before Henry had time to interfere.[342] It was the
+last act of the kind, however, in which he was permitted to indulge, and
+the legislature made haste to take away such authority from hands so
+incompetent to use it. From their debates upon burning the dead Tracy,
+convocation were proceeding to discuss the possibility of burning the
+living Latimer,[343] when they were recalled to their senses by a summons
+to prepare some more reasonable answer than that which the bishops had made
+for them on their privilege of making laws. Twenty more years of work were
+to be lived by Latimer before they were to burn him, and their own
+delinquencies were for the present of a more pressing nature. The House of
+Commons at the same time proceeded to frame necessary bills on the other
+points of their complaint.
+
+The first act upon the roll recalls the Constitutions of Clarendon and the
+famous quarrel between Becket and the Crown. When Catholicism was a living
+belief, when ordained priests were held really and truly to possess those
+awful powers which the mystery of transubstantiation assigns to them, they
+were acknowledged by common consent to be an order apart from the rest of
+mankind, and being spiritual men, to be amenable only to spiritual
+jurisdiction. It was not intended that, if they committed crimes, they
+should escape the retributive consequences of those crimes: offenders
+against the law might (originally at least) be degraded, if the bishops
+thought good, and stripped of their commission be delivered thus to the
+secular arm. But the more appropriate punishment for such persons was of a
+more awful kind, proportioned to the magnitude of the fault; and was
+conveyed or held to be conveyed in the infliction of the spiritual death of
+excommunication. Excommunication was, in real earnest, the death of the
+soul, at a time when communion with the church was the only means by which
+the soul could be made partaker of the divine life; and it was a noble
+thing to believe that there was something worse for a man than legal
+penalties on his person or on his mortal body; it was beautiful to
+recognise in an active living form, that the heaviest ill which could
+befall a man was to be cut off from God. But it is only for periods that
+humanity can endure the atmosphere of these high altitudes of morality. The
+early Christians attempted a community of goods, but they were unequal to
+it for more than a generation. The discipline of Catholicism was assisted
+by superstition,--it remained vigorous for many hundreds of years, but it
+languished at last; and although there was so great virtue in a living
+idea, that its forms preserved the reverence of mankind unabated, even when
+in their effect and working they had become as evil as they once were
+noble; yet reverence and endurance were at length exhausted, and these
+forms were to submit to alteration in conformity with the altered nature of
+the persons whom they affected.
+
+I have already alluded to the abuse of "benefit of clergy;"[344] we have
+arrived at the first of those many steps by which at length it was finally
+put away,--a step which did not, however, as yet approach the heart of the
+evil, but touched only its extreme outworks. The clergy had monopolised the
+learning of the middle ages, and few persons external to their body being
+able to read or write, their privileges became co-extensive, as I above
+stated, with these acquirements. The exemption from secular jurisdiction,
+which they obtained in virtue of their sacred character, had been used as a
+protection in villainy for every scoundrel who could write his name. Under
+this plea, felons of the worst kind might claim, till this time, to be
+taken out of the hands of the law judges, and to be tried at the bishops'
+tribunals; and at these tribunals, such a monstrous solecism had
+Catholicism become, the payment of money was ever welcomed as the ready
+expiation of crime. To prevent the escape of the Bishop of Rochester's
+cook, who was a "clerk," parliament had specially interfered, and sentenced
+him without trial, by attainder. They now passed a general act, remarkable
+alike in what it provided as in what, for the present, it omitted to
+provide.[345] The preamble related the nature of the evil which was to be
+remedied, and the historical position of it. It dwelt upon the assurances
+which had been given again and again by the ordinaries that their
+privileges should not be abused; but these promises had been broken as
+often as they had been made; so that "continually manifest thieves and
+murderers, indicted and found guilty of their misdeeds by good and
+substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the usages of the common lawes of
+the land, delivered to the ordinaries as clerks convict, were speedily and
+hastily delivered and set at large by the ministers of the said ordinaries
+for corruption and lucre; or else because the ordinaries enclaiming such
+offenders by the liberties of the church would in no wise take the charges
+in safe keeping of them, but did suffer them to make their purgation by
+such as nothing knew of their misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and
+make void the good and provable trial which was used against such offenders
+by the king's law; to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such
+offenders, if the King's Highness by his authority royal put not speedy
+remedy thereto."
+
+To provide such necessary remedy, it was enacted that thenceforward no
+person under the degree of subdeacon, if guilty of felony, should be
+allowed to plead "his clergy" any more, but should be proceeded against by
+the ordinary law. So far it was possible to go--an enormous step if we
+think of what the evil had been; and in such matters to make a beginning
+was the true difficulty--it was the logical premise from which the
+conclusion could not choose but follow. Yet such was the mystical
+sacredness which clung about the ordained clergy, that their patent
+profligacy had not yet destroyed it--a priest might still commit a murder,
+and the profane hand of the law might not reach to him.
+
+The measure, however, if imperfect, was excellent in its degree; and when
+this had been accomplished, the House proceeded next to deal with the
+Arches Court--the one enormous grievance of the time. The petition of the
+Commons has already exhibited the condition of this institution; but the
+act by which the power of it was limited added more than one particular to
+what had been previously stated, and the first twenty lines of the statute
+which was now passed[346] may be recommended to the consideration of the
+modern censors of the Reformation. The framer of the resolution was no bad
+friend to the bishops, if they had possessed the faculty of knowing who
+their true friends were, for the statement of complaint was limited, mild,
+and moderate. Again, as with the "benefit of clergy," the real ground for
+surprise is that any fraction of a system so indefensible should have been
+permitted to continue. The courts were nothing else but the vicious sources
+of unjust revenue; and with the opportunity so fairly offered, it is
+strange indeed that they were not swept utterly away. But sweeping measures
+have never found favour in England. There has ever been in English
+legislation, even when most reforming, that temperate spirit of equity
+which has refused to visit the sins of centuries upon a single generation.
+The statute limited its accusations to the points which it was designed to
+correct, and touched these with a hand firmly gentle.
+
+"Whereas great numbers of the king's subjects," says the preamble, "as well
+men, wives, servants, or others dwelling in divers dioceses of the realm of
+England and Wales, heretofore have been at many times called by citations
+and other processes compulsory to appear in the Arches, Audience, and other
+high Courts of the archbishops of this realm, far from and out of the
+dioceses where such persons are inhabitant and dwelling; and many times to
+answer to surmised and feigned causes and matters, which have been sued
+more for vexation and malice than from any just cause of suit; and when
+certificate hath been made by the sumners, apparitors, or any such light
+litterate persons, that the party against whom such citations have been
+awarded hath been cited or summoned; and thereupon the same party so
+certified to be cited or summoned hath not appeared according to the
+certificate, the same party therefore hath been excommunicated, or, at the
+least, suspended from all divine service; and thereupon, before that he or
+she could be absolved, hath been compelled, not only to pay the fees of the
+court whereunto he or she was so called, amounting to the sum of two
+shillings, or twenty pence at the least; but also to pay to the sumner, for
+every mile distant from the place where he or she then dwelled unto the
+same court whereunto he or she was summoned to appear, twopence; to the
+great charge and impoverishment of the king's subjects, and to the great
+occasion of misbehaviour of wives, women, and servants, and to the great
+impairment and diminution of their good names and honesties--be it
+enacted----" We ask what?--looking with impatience for some large measure
+to follow these solemn accusations; and we find parliament contenting
+itself with forbidding the bishops, under heavy penalties, to cite any man
+out of his own diocese, except for specified causes (heresy being one of
+them), and with limiting the fees which were to be taken by the officers of
+the courts.[347] It could hardly be said that in this parliament there was
+any bitter spirit against the church. This act showed only mild forbearance
+and complacent endurance of all tolerable evil.
+
+Another serious matter was dealt with in the same moderate temper. The
+Mortmain Act had prohibited the church corporations from further absorbing
+the lands; but the Mortmain Act was evaded in detail, the clergy using
+their influence to induce persons on their deathbeds to leave estates to
+provide a priest for ever "to sing for their souls." The arrangement was
+convenient possibly for both parties, or if not for both, certainly for
+one; but to tie up lands for ever for a special service was not to the
+advantage of the country; and it was held unjust to allow a man a perpetual
+power over the disposition of property to atone for the iniquities of his
+life. But the privilege was not abolished altogether; it was submitted only
+to reasonable limitation. Men might still burden their lands to find a
+priest for twenty years. After twenty years the lands were to relapse for
+the service of the living, and sinners were expected in equity to bear the
+consequence in their own persons of such offences as remained after that
+time unexpiated.[348]
+
+Thus, in two sessions, the most flagrant of the abuses first complained of
+were in a fair way of being remedied. The exorbitant charges for
+mortuaries, probate duties, legacy duties, the illegal exactions for the
+sacraments, the worst injustices of the ecclesiastical courts, the
+non-residence, pluralities, neglect of cures, the secular occupations and
+extravagant privileges of the clergy, were either terminated or brought
+within bounds. There remained yet to be disposed of the legislative power
+of the convocation and the tyrannical prosecutions for heresy. The last of
+these was not yet ripe for settlement; the former was under reconsideration
+by the convocation itself, which at length was arriving at a truer
+conception of its position; and this question was not therefore to be dealt
+with by the legislature.
+
+One more important measure, however, was passed by parliament before it
+separated, and it is noticeable as the first step which was taken in the
+momentous direction of a breach with the See of Rome. A practice had
+existed for some hundreds of years in all the churches of Europe, that
+bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees, should transmit to
+the pope, on receiving their bulls of investment, one year's income from
+their new preferments. It was called the payment of annates, or
+firstfruits, and had originated in the time of the crusades, as a means of
+providing a fund for the holy wars. Once established, it had settled into
+custom,[349] and was one of the chief resources of the papal revenue. From
+England alone, as much as 160,000 pounds had been paid out of the country
+in fifty years;[350] and the impost was alike oppressive to individuals and
+injurious to the state. Men were appointed to bishopricks frequently at an
+advanced age, and dying, as they often did, within two or three years of
+their nomination, their elevation had sometimes involved their families and
+friends in debt and embarrassment;[351] while the annual export of so much
+bullion was a serious evil at a time when the precious metals formed the
+only currency, and were so difficult to obtain. Before a quarrel with the
+court of Rome had been thought of as a possible contingency, the king had
+laboured with the pope to terminate the system by some equitable
+composition; and subsequently cessation of payment had been mentioned more
+than once in connection with the threats of a separation. The pope had made
+light of these threats, believing them to be no more than words; there was
+an opportunity, therefore, of proving that the English government was
+really in earnest, in a manner which would touch him in a point where he
+was naturally sensitive, and would show him at the same time that he could
+not wholly count on the attachment even of the clergy themselves. For, in
+fact, the church itself was fast disintegrating, and the allegiance even of
+the bishops and the secular clergy to Rome had begun to waver: they had a
+stronger faith in their own privileges than in the union of Christendom;
+and if they could purchase the continuance of the former at the price of a
+quarrel with the pope, some among them were not disinclined to venture the
+alternative. The Bishop of Rochester held aloof from such tendencies, and
+Warham, though he signed the address of the House of Lords to the pope,
+regretted the weakness to which he had yielded: but in the other prelates
+there was little seriousness of conviction; and the constitution of the
+bench had been affected also by the preferment of Gardiner and Edward Lee
+to two of the sees made vacant by the death of Wolsey. Both these men had
+been active agents in the prosecution of the divorce; and Gardiner,
+followed at a distance by the other, had shaped out, as the pope grew more
+intractable, the famous notion that the English church could and should
+subsist as a separate communion, independent of foreign control, self
+governed, self organised, and at the same time adhering without variation
+to Catholic doctrine. This principle (if we may so abuse the word) shot
+rapidly into popularity: a party formed about it strong in parliament,
+strong in convocation, strong out of doors among the country gentlemen and
+the higher clergy--a respectable, wealthy, powerful body, trading upon a
+solecism, but not the less, therefore, devoted to its maintenance, and in
+their artificial horror of being identified with heresy, the most
+relentless persecutors of the Protestants. This party, unreal as they were,
+and influential perhaps in virtue of their unreality, became for the moment
+the arbiters of the Church of England; and the bishops belonging to it, and
+each rising ecclesiastic who hoped to be a bishop, welcomed the resistance
+of the annates as an opportunity for a demonstration of their strength. On
+this question, with a fair show of justice, they could at once relieve
+themselves of a burden which pressed upon their purses, and as they
+supposed, gratify the king. The conservatives were still numerically the
+strongest, and for a time remained in their allegiance to the Papacy,[352]
+but their convictions were too feeble to resist the influence brought to
+bear upon them, and when Parliament re-assembled after the Easter recess,
+the two Houses of Convocation presented an address to the crown for the
+abolition of the impost, and with it of all other exactions, direct and
+indirect,--the indulgences, dispensations, delegacies, and the thousand
+similar forms and processes by which the privileges of the Church of
+England were abridged for the benefit of the Church of Rome, and weighty
+injury of purse inflicted both on the clergy and the laity.[353]
+
+That they contemplated a conclusive revolt from Rome as a consequence of
+the refusal to pay annates, appears positively in the close of their
+address: "May it please your Grace," they concluded, after detailing their
+occasions for complaint,--"may it please your Grace to cause the said
+unjust exactions to cease, and to be foredone for ever by act of your high
+Court of Parliament; and in case the pope will make process against this
+realm for the attaining those annates, or else will retain bishops' bulls
+till the annates be paid; forasmuch as the exaction of the said annates is
+against the law of God and the pope's own laws, forbidding the buying or
+selling of spiritual gifts or promotions; and forasmuch as all good
+Christian men be more bound to obey God than any man; and forasmuch as St.
+Paul willeth us to withdraw from all such as walk inordinately; may it
+please your Highness to ordain in this present parliament that the
+obedience of your Highness and of the people be withdrawn from the See of
+Rome."[354]
+
+It was perhaps cruel to compel the clergy to be the first to mention
+separation--or the language may have been furnished by the Erastian party
+in the Church, who hoped to gratify the King by it, and save the annates
+for themselves; but there was no intention, if the battle was really to be
+fought, of decorating the clergy with the spoils. The bill was passed, but
+passed conditionally, leaving power to the Crown if the pope would consent
+to a compromise of settling the question by a composition. There was a
+Papal party in the House of Commons whose opposition had perhaps to be
+considered,[355] and the annates were left suspended before Clement at once
+as a menace and a bribe.
+
+"Forasmuch," concluded the statute, "as the King's Highness and this his
+high Court of Parliament neither have nor do intend in this or any other
+like cause any manner of extremity or violence, before gentle courtesy and
+friendly ways and means be first approved and attempted, and without a very
+great urgent cause and occasion given to the contrary; but principally
+coveting to disburden this Realm of the said great exactions and
+intolerable charges of annates and firstfruits: [the said Court of
+Parliament] have therefore thought convenient to commit the final order and
+determination of the premises unto the King's Highness, so that if it may
+seem to his high wisdom and most prudent discretion meet to move the Pope's
+Holiness and the Court of Rome, amicably, charitably, and reasonably, to
+compound either to extinct the said annates, or by some friendly, loving,
+and tolerable composition to moderate the same in such way as may be by
+this his Realm easily borne and sustained, then those ways of composition
+once taken shall stand in the strength, force, and effect of a law."[356]
+
+The business of the session was closing. It remained to receive the reply
+of convocation on the limitation of its powers. The convocation, presuming,
+perhaps, upon its concessions on the annates question, and untamed by the
+premunire, had framed their answer in the same spirit which had been
+previously exhibited by the bishops. They had re-asserted their claims as
+resting on divine authority, and had declined to acknowledge the right of
+any secular power to restrain or meddle with them.[357] The second answer,
+as may be supposed, fared no better than the first. It was returned with a
+peremptory demand for submission; and taught by experience the uselessness
+of further opposition, the clergy with a bad grace complied. The form was
+again drawn by the bishops, and it is amusing to trace the workings of
+their humbled spirit in their reluctant descent from their high estate.
+They still laboured to protect their dignity in the terms of their
+concession:--
+
+"As concerning such constitutions and ordinances provincial," they wrote,
+"as shall be made hereafter by your most humble subjects, we having our
+special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, your princely
+goodness, and fervent zeal for the promotion of God's honour and Christian
+religion, and specially in your incomparable learning far exceeding in our
+judgment the learning of all other kings and princes that we have read of;
+and not doubting but that the same should still continue and daily increase
+in your Majesty; do offer and promise here unto the same, that from
+henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put in execution any
+such constitutions and ordinances so by us to be made in time coming,
+unless your Highness by your Royal assent shall license us to make,
+promulge, and execute such constitutions, and the same so made be approved
+by your Highness's authority.
+
+"And whereas your Highness's most honourable Commons do pretend that divers
+of the constitutions provincial, which have been heretofore enacted, be not
+only much prejudicial to your Highness's prerogative royal, but be also
+overmuch onerous to your said Commons, we, your most humble servants for
+the consideration before said, be contented to refer all the said
+constitutions to the judgment of your Grace only. And whatsoever of the
+same shall finally be found prejudicial and overmuch onerous as is
+pretended, we offer and promise your Highness to moderate or utterly to
+abrogate and annul the same, according to the judgment of your Grace.
+Saving to us always such liberties and immunities of this Church of England
+as hath been granted unto the same by the goodness and benignity of your
+Highness and of others your most noble progenitors; with such constitutions
+provincial as do stand with the laws of Almighty God and of your Realm
+heretofore made, which we most humbly beseech your Grace to ratify and
+approve by your most Royal assent for the better execution of the same in
+times to come."[358]
+
+The acknowledgment appeared to be complete, and might perhaps have been
+accepted without minute examination, except for the imprudent acuteness of
+the Lower House of Convocation. As it passed through their hands, they
+discovered--what had no doubt been intended as a loophole for future
+evasion--that the grounds which were alleged to excuse the submission were
+the virtues of the reigning king: and therefore, as they sagaciously
+argued, the submission must only remain in force for his life. They
+introduced a limitation to that effect. Some further paltry dabbling was
+also attempted with the phraseology: and at length, impatient with such
+dishonest trifling, and weary of a discussion in which they had resolved to
+allow but one conclusion, the king and the legislature thought it well to
+interfere with a high hand, and cut short such unprofitable folly. The
+language of the bishops was converted into an act of parliament; a mixed
+commission was appointed to revise the canon law, and the clergy with a few
+brief strokes were reduced for ever into their fit position of
+subjects.[359] Thus with a moderate hand this great revolution was
+effected, and, to outward appearance, with offence to none except the
+sufferers, whose misuse of power when they possessed it deprived them of
+all sympathy in their fall.
+
+But no change of so vast a kind can be other than a stone of stumbling to
+those many persons for whom the beaten ways of life alone are tolerable,
+and who, when these ways are broken, are bewildered and lost. Religion,
+when men are under its influence at all, so absorbs their senses, and so
+pervades all their associations, that no faults in the ministers of it can
+divest their persons of reverence; and just and necessary as all these
+alterations were, many a pious and noble heart was wounded, many a man was
+asking himself in his perplexity where things would end, and still more
+sadly, where, if these quarrels deepened, would lie his own duty. Now the
+Nun of Kent grew louder in her Cassandra wailings. Now the mendicant friars
+mounted the pulpits exclaiming sacrilege; bold men, who feared nothing that
+men could do to them, and who dared in the king's own presence, and in his
+own chapel, to denounce him by name.[360] The sacred associations of twelve
+centuries were tumbling into ruin; and hot and angry as men had been before
+the work began, the hearts of numbers sank in them when they "saw what was
+done;" and they fell away slowly to doubt, disaffection, distrust, and at
+last treason.
+
+The first outward symptom of importance pointing in this direction, was the
+resignation of the seals by Sir Thomas More.[361] More had not been an
+illiberal man; when he wrote the _Utopia_, he seemed even to be in advance
+of his time. None could see the rogue's face under the cowl clearer than
+he, or the proud bad heart under the scarlet hat; and few men had ventured
+to speak their thoughts more boldly. But there was in More a want of
+confidence in human nature, a scorn of the follies of his fellow creatures
+which, as he became more earnestly religious, narrowed and hardened his
+convictions, and transformed the genial philosopher into the merciless
+bigot. "Heresy" was naturally hateful to him; his mind was too clear and
+genuine to allow him to deceive himself with the delusions of Anglicanism;
+and as he saw the inevitable tendency of the Reformation to lead ultimately
+to a change of doctrine, he attached himself with increasing determination
+to the cause of the pope and of the old faith. As if with an instinctive
+prescience of what would follow from it, he had from the first been opposed
+to the divorce; and he had not concealed his feeling from the king at the
+time when the latter had pressed the seals on his unwilling acceptance. In
+consenting to become chancellor, he had yielded only to Henry's entreaties;
+he had held his office for two years and a half--and it would have been
+well for his memory if he had been constant in his refusal--for in his
+ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to counterpoise
+the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy Protestants. At the
+close of the session, however, the acts of which we have just described, he
+felt that he must no longer countenance, by remaining in an office so near
+to the crown, measures which he so intensely disapproved and deplored; it
+was time for him to retire from a world not moving to his mind; and in the
+fair tranquillity of his family prepare himself for the evil days which he
+foresaw. In May, 1532, he petitioned for permission to resign, resting his
+request unobtrusively on failing health; and Henry sadly consented to lose
+his services.
+
+Parallel to More's retirement, and though less important, yet still
+noticeable, is a proceeding of old Archbishop Warham under the same trying
+circumstances. In the days of his prosperity, Warham had never reached to
+greatness as a man. He had been a great ecclesiastic, successful,
+dignified, important, but without those highest qualities which command
+respect or interest. The iniquities of Warham's spiritual courts were
+greater than those of any other in England. He had not made them what they
+were. They grew by their own proper corruption; and he was no more
+responsible for them than every man is responsible for the continuance of
+an evil by which he profits, and which he has power to remedy. We must look
+upon him as the leader of the bishops in their opposition to the reform;
+and he was the probable author of the famous answer to the Commons'
+petition, which led to such momentous consequences.[362] These consequences
+he had lived partially to see. Powerless to struggle against the stream, he
+had seen swept away one by one those gigantic privileges to which he had
+asserted for his order a claim divinely sanctioned; and he withdrew himself
+heartbroken, into his palace at Lambeth, and there entered his solemn
+protest against all which had been done. Too ill to write, and trembling on
+the edge of the grave, he dictated to his notaries from his bed these not
+unaffecting words:--
+
+"In the name of God, Amen. We, William, by Divine Providence Archbishop of
+Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, hereby
+publicly and expressly do protest for ourselves and for our Holy
+Metropolitan Church of Canterbury, that to any statute passed or hereafter
+to be passed in this present Parliament, began the third of November, 1529,
+and continued until this present time; in so far as such statute or
+statutes be in derogation of the Pope of Rome or the Apostolic See, or be
+to the hurt, prejudice, or limitation of the powers of the Church, or shall
+tend to the subverting, enervating, derogating from, or diminishing the
+laws, customs, privileges, prerogatives, pre-eminence of liberties of our
+Metropolitan Church of Canterbury; we neither will, nor intend, nor with
+clear conscience are able to consent to the same, but by these writings we
+do dissent from, refuse, and contradict them."[363]
+
+Thus formally having delivered his soul, he laid himself down and died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN
+
+Although in the question of the divorce the king had interfered
+despotically to control the judgment of the universities, he had made no
+attempt, as we have seen, to check the tongues of the clergy. Nor if he had
+desired to check them, is it likely that at the present stage of
+proceedings he could have succeeded. No law had as yet been passed which
+made a crime of a difference of opinion on the pope's dispensing powers;
+and so long as no definitive sentence had been pronounced, every one had
+free liberty to think and speak as he pleased. So great, indeed, was the
+anxiety to disprove Catherine's assertion that England was a _locus
+suspectus_, and therefore that the cause could not be equitably tried
+there, that even in the distribution of patronage there was an ostentatious
+display of impartiality. Not only had Sir Thomas More been made chancellor,
+although emphatically on Catherine's side; but Cuthbert Tunstal, who had
+been her counsel, was promoted to the see of Durham. The Nun of Kent, if
+her word was to be believed, had been offered an abbey,[364] and that Henry
+permitted language to pass unnoticed of the most uncontrolled violence,
+appears from a multitude of informations which were forwarded to the
+government from all parts of the country. But while imposing no restraint
+on the expression of opinion, the council were careful to keep themselves
+well informed of the opinions which were expressed, and an instrument was
+ready made to their hands, which placed them in easy possession of what
+they desired. Among the many abominable practices which had been introduced
+by the ecclesiastical courts, not the least hateful was the system of
+espionage with which they had saturated English society; encouraging
+servants to be spies on their masters, children on their parents,
+neighbours on their neighbours, inviting every one who heard language
+spoken anywhere of doubtful allegiance to the church, to report the words
+to the nearest official, as an occasion of instant process. It is not
+without a feeling of satisfaction, that we find this detestable invention
+recoiling upon the heads of its authors. Those who had so long suffered
+under it, found an opportunity in the turning tide, of revenging themselves
+on their oppressors; and the country was covered with a ready-made army of
+spies, who, with ears ever open, were on the watch for impatient or
+disaffected language in their clerical superiors, and furnished steady
+reports of such language to Cromwell.[365]
+
+Specimens of these informations will throw curious light on the feelings of
+a portion at least of the people. The English licence of speech, if not
+recognised to the same extent as it is at present, was certainly as fully
+practised. On the return of the Abbot of Whitby from the convocation at
+York in the summer of 1532, when the premunire money was voted, the
+following conversation was reported as having been overheard in the abbey.
+
+The prior of the convent asked the abbot what the news were. "What news,"
+said the abbot, "evil news. The king is ruled by a common ---- Anne Boleyn,
+who has made all the spiritualty to be beggared, and the temporalty also.
+Further he told the prior of a sermon that he had heard in York, in which
+it was said, when a great wind rose in the west we should hear news. And he
+asked what that was; and he said a great man told him at York, and if he
+knew as much as three in England he would tell what the news were. And he
+said who were they? and he said the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire,
+and the common ---- Anne Boleyn."[366]
+
+The dates of these papers cannot always be determined; this which follows,
+probably, is something later, but it shows the general temper in which the
+clergy were disposed to meet the measures of the government.
+
+"Robert Legate, friar of Furness, deposeth that the monks had a prophecy
+among them, that 'in England shall be slain the decorate rose in his
+mother's belly,' and this they interpret of his Majesty, saying that his
+Majesty shall die by the hands of priests; for the church is the mother,
+and the church shall slay his Grace. The said Robert maintaineth that he
+hath heard the monks often say this. Also, it is said among them that the
+King's Grace was not the right heir to the crown; for that his Grace's
+father came in by no line, but by the sword. Also, that no secular knave
+should be head of the church; also that the abbot did know of these
+treasons, and had made no report thereof."[367]
+
+Nor was it only in the remote abbeys of the North that such dangerous
+language was ventured. The pulpit of St. Paul's rang Sunday after Sunday
+with the polemics of the divorce; and if "the holy water of the court" made
+the higher clergy cringing and cowardly, the rank and file, even in London
+itself, showed a bold English front, and spoke out their thoughts with
+entire recklessness. Among the preachers on Catherine's side, Father
+Forest, famous afterward in Catholic martyrologies, began to distinguish
+himself. Forest was warden of a convent of Observants at Greenwich attached
+to the royal chapel, and having been Catherine's confessor, remained, with
+the majority of the friars, faithful to her interests, and fearless in the
+assertion of them. From their connection with the palace, the intercourse
+of these monks with the royal household was considerable; their position
+gave them influence, and Anne Boleyn tried the power of her charms, if
+possible, to gain them over. She had succeeded with a few of the weaker
+brothers, but she was unable (and her inability speaks remarkably for
+Henry's endurance of opposition through the early stages of the
+controversy) to protect those whose services she had won from the anger of
+their superiors. One monk in whom she was interested the warden
+imprisoned,[368] another there was an effort to expel,[369] because he was
+ready to preach on her side; and Forest himself preached a violent sermon
+at Paul's Cross, attacking Cromwell and indirectly the king.[370] He was
+sent for to the court, and the persecuted brothers expected their triumph;
+but he returned, as one of them wrote bitterly to Cromwell, having been
+received with respect and favour, as if, after all, the enmity of a brave
+man found more honour at the court than the complacency of cowardice.
+Father Forest, says this letter, has been with the king. "He says he spake
+with the king for half an hour and more, and was well retained by his
+Grace; and the King's Grace did send him a great piece of beef from his own
+table; and also he met with my Lord of Norfolk, and he says he took him in
+his arms and bade him welcome."[371]
+
+Forest, unfortunately for himself, misconstrued forbearance into fear, and
+went his way at last, through treason and perjury, to the stake. In the
+meantime the Observants were left in possession of the royal chapel, the
+weak brother died in prison, and the king, when at Greenwich, continued to
+attend service, submitting to listen, as long as submission was possible,
+to the admonitions which the friars used the opportunity to deliver to him.
+
+In these more courteous days we can form little conception of the licence
+which preachers in the sixteenth century allowed themselves, or the
+language which persons in high authority were often obliged to bear.
+Latimer spoke as freely to Henry VIII. of neglected duties, as to the
+peasants in his Wiltshire parish. St. Ambrose did not rebuke the Emperor
+Theodosius more haughtily than John Knox lectured Queen Mary and her
+ministers on the vanities of Holyrood; and Catholic priests, it seems, were
+not afraid to display even louder disrespect.
+
+On Sunday, the first of May, 1532, the pulpit at Greenwich was occupied by
+Father Peto, afterwards Cardinal Peto, famous through Europe as a Catholic
+incendiary; but at this time an undistinguished brother of the Observants
+convent. His sermon had been upon the story of Ahab and Naboth, and his
+text had been, "Where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall
+they lick thy blood, O king." Henry, the court, and most likely Anne Boleyn
+herself, were present; the first of May being the great holy-day of the
+English year, and always observed at Greenwich with peculiar splendour.
+The preacher had dilated at length upon the crimes and the fall of Ahab,
+and had drawn the portrait in all its magnificent wickedness.  He had
+described the scene in the court of heaven, and spoken of the lying
+prophets who had mocked the monarch's hopes before the fatal battle. At the
+end, he turned directly to Henry, and assuming to himself the mission of
+Micaiah, he closed his address in the following audacious words:--"And now,
+O king," he said, "hear what I say to thee.  I am that Micaiah whom thou
+wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that this marriage is unlawful,
+and I know that I shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the waters of
+sorrow, yet because the Lord hath put it in my mouth I must speak it.
+There are other preachers, yea too many, which preach and persuade thee
+otherwise, feeding they folly and frail affections upon hopes of their own
+worldly promotion; and by that means they betray thy soul, thy honour, and
+thy posterity; to obtain fat benefices, to become rich abbots and bishops,
+and I know not what.  These I say are the four hundred prophets who, in the
+spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee.  Take heed lest thou, being seduced,
+find Ahab's punishment, who had his blood licked up by the dogs."
+
+Henry must have been compelled to listen to many such invectives. He left
+the chapel without noticing what had passed; and in the course of the week
+Peto went down from Greenwich to attend a provincial council at Canterbury,
+and perhaps to communicate with the Nun of Kent. Meantime a certain Dr.
+Kirwan was commissioned to preach on the other side of the question the
+following Sunday.
+
+Kirwan was one of those men of whom the preacher spoke prophetically, since
+by the present and similar services he made his way to the archbishopric of
+Dublin and the bishopric of Oxford, and accepting the Erastian theory of a
+Christian's duty, followed Edward VI. into heresy, and Mary into popery and
+persecution. He regarded himself as an official of the state religion; and
+his highest conception of evil in a Christian was disobedience to the
+reigning authority. We may therefore conceive easily the burden of his
+sermon in the royal chapel. "He most sharply reprehended Peto," calling him
+foul names, "dog, slanderer, base beggarly friar, rebel, and traitor,"
+saying "that no subject should speak so audaciously to his prince:" he
+"commended" Henry's intended marriage, "thereby to establish his seed in
+his seat for ever;" and having won, as he supposed, his facile victory, he
+proceeded with his peroration, addressing his absent antagonist. "I speak
+to thee, Peto," he exclaimed, "to thee, Peto, which makest thyself Micaiah,
+that thou mayest speak evil of kings; but now art not to be found, being
+fled for fear and shame, as unable to answer my argument." In the royal
+chapel at Greenwich there was more reality than decorum. A voice out of the
+rood-loft cut short the eloquent declamation. "Good sir," it said, "you
+know Father Peto is gone to Canterbury to a provincial council, and not
+fled for fear of you; for to-morrow he will return again. In the meantime I
+am here as another Micaiah, and will lay down my life to prove those things
+true which he hath taught. And to this combat I challenge thee; thee
+Kirwan, I say, who art one of the four hundred into whom the spirit of
+lying is entered, and thou seekest by adultery to establish the succession,
+betraying thy king for thy own vain glory into endless perdition."
+
+A scene of confusion followed, which was allayed at last by the king
+himself, who rose from his seat and commanded silence. It was thought that
+the limit of permissible licence had been transcended, and the following
+day Peto and Elstowe, the other speaker, were summoned before the council
+to receive a reprimand. Lord Essex told them they deserved to be sewn into
+a sack and thrown into the Thames. "Threaten such things to rich and dainty
+folk, which have their hope in this world," answered Elstowe, gallantly,
+"we fear them not; with thanks to God we know the way to heaven to be as
+ready by water as by land."[372] Men of such metal might be broken, but
+they could not be bent. The two offenders were hopelessly unrepentant and
+impracticable, and it was found necessary to banish them. They retired to
+Antwerp, where we find them the following year busy procuring copies of the
+Bishop of Rochester's book against the king, which was broadly disseminated
+on the continent, and secretly transmitting them into England; in close
+correspondence also with Fisher himself, with Sir Thomas More, and for the
+ill fortune of their friends, with the court at Brussels, between which and
+the English Catholics the intercourse was dangerously growing.[373]
+
+The Greenwich friars, with their warden, went also a bad way. The death of
+the persecuted brother was attended with circumstances in a high degree
+suspicious.[374] Henry ordered an enquiry, which did not terminate in any
+actual exposure; but a cloud hung over the convent, which refused to be
+dispelled; the warden was deposed, and soon after it was found necessary to
+dissolve the order.
+
+If the English monks had shared as a body the character of the Greenwich
+Observants, of the Carthusians of London and Richmond, and of some other
+establishments,--which may easily be numbered,--the resistance which they
+might have offered to the government, with the sympathy which it would have
+commanded, would have formed an obstacle to the Reformation that no power
+could have overcome. It was time, however, for the dissolution of the
+monasteries, when the few among them, which on other grounds might have
+claimed a right to survive, were driven by their very virtues into treason.
+The majority perished of their proper worthlessness; the few remaining
+contrived to make their existence incompatible with the safety of the
+state.
+
+Leaving for the present these disorders to mature themselves, I must now
+return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous
+course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying
+what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very
+Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and
+we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that,
+although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the
+hard ground is immediately beyond.
+
+We shall, perhaps, be able most readily to comprehend the position of the
+various parties in Europe, by placing them before us as they stood
+severally in the summer of 1532, and defining briefly the object which each
+was pursuing.
+
+Henry only, among the great powers, laid his conduct open to the world,
+declaring truly what he desired, and seeking it by open means. He was
+determined to proceed with the divorce, and he was determined also to
+continue the Reformation of the English Church. If consistently with these
+two objects he could avoid a rupture with the pope, he was sincerely
+anxious to avoid it. He was ready to make great efforts, to risk great
+sacrifices, to do anything short of surrendering what he considered of
+vital moment, to remain upon good terms with the See of Rome. If his
+efforts failed, and a quarrel was inevitable, he desired to secure himself
+by a close maintenance of the French alliance; and having induced Francis
+to urge compliance upon the pope by a threat of separation if he refused,
+to prevail on him, in the event of the pope's continued obstinacy, to put
+his threat in execution, and unite with England in a common schism. All
+this is plain and straightforward--Henry concealed nothing, and, in fact,
+had nothing to conceal. In his threats, his promises, and his entreaties,
+we feel entire certainty that he was speaking his real thoughts.
+
+The emperor's position, also, though not equally simple, is intelligible,
+and commands our respect. Although if he had consented to sacrifice his
+aunt, he might have spared himself serious embarrassment; although both by
+the pope and by the consistory such a resolution would probably have been
+welcomed with passionate thankfulness; yet at all hazards Charles was
+determined to make her his first object, even with the risk of convulsing
+Europe. At the same time his position was encumbered with difficulty. The
+Turks were pressing upon him in Hungary and in the Mediterranean; his
+relations with Francis--fortunately for the prospects of the
+Reformation--were those of inveterate hostility; while in Germany he had
+been driven to make terms with the Protestant princes; he had offended the
+pope by promising them a general council, in which the Lutheran divines
+should be represented; and the pope, taught by recent experience, was made
+to fear that these symptoms of favour towards heresy, might convert
+themselves into open support.
+
+With Francis the prevailing feeling was rivalry with the emperor, combined
+with an eager desire to recover his influence in Italy, and to restore
+France to the position in Europe which had been lost by the defeat of
+Pavia, and the failure of Lautrec at Naples. This was his first object, to
+which every other was subsidiary. He was disinclined to a rupture with the
+pope; but the possibility of such a rupture had been long contemplated by
+French statesmen. It was a contingency which the pope feared:--which the
+hopes of Henry pictured as more likely than it was--and Francis, like his
+rivals in the European system, held the menace of it extended over the
+chair of St. Peter, to coerce its unhappy occupant into compliance with his
+wishes. With respect to Henry's divorce, his conduct to the University of
+Paris, and his assurances repeated voluntarily on many occasions, show that
+he was sincerely desirous to forward it. He did not care for Henry, or for
+England, or for the cause itself; he desired only to make the breach
+between Henry and Charles irreparable; to make it impossible for ever that
+"his two great rivals" should become friends together; and by inducing the
+pope to consent to the English demand, to detach the court of Rome
+conclusively from the imperial interests.
+
+The two princes who disputed the supremacy of Europe, were intriguing one
+against the other, each desiring to constitute himself the champion of the
+church; and to compel the church to accept his services, by the threat of
+passing over to her enemies. By a dexterous use of the cards which were in
+his hands, the King of France proposed to secure one of two alternatives.
+Either he would form a league between himself, Henry, and the pope, against
+the emperor, of which the divorce, and the consent to it, which he would
+extort from Clement, should be the cement; or, if this failed him, he would
+avail himself of the vantage ground which was given to him by the English
+alliance to obtain such concessions for himself at the emperor's expense as
+the pope could be induced to make, and the emperor to tolerate.
+
+Such, in so far as I can unravel the web of the diplomatic correspondence,
+appear to have been the open positions and the secret purposes of the great
+European powers.
+
+There remains the fourth figure upon the board, the pope himself, labouring
+with such means as were at his disposal to watch over the interests of the
+church, and to neutralise the destructive ambition of the princes, by
+playing upon their respective selfishnesses. On the central question, that
+of the divorce, his position was briefly this. Both the emperor and Henry
+pressed for a decision. If he decided for Henry, he lost Germany; if he
+decided for Catherine, while Henry was supported by Francis, France and
+England threatened both to fall from him. It was therefore necessary for
+him to induce the emperor to consent to delay, while he worked upon the
+King of France; and, if France and England could once be separated, he
+trusted that Henry would yield in despair. This most subtle and difficult
+policy reveals itself in the transactions open and secret of the ensuing
+years. It was followed with a dexterity as extraordinary as its
+unscrupulousness, and with all but perfect success. That it failed at all,
+in the ordinary sense of failure, was due to the accidental delay of a
+courier; and Clement, while he succeeded in preserving the allegiance of
+France to the Roman see, succeeded also--and this is no small thing to have
+accomplished--in weaving the most curious tissue of falsehood which will be
+met with even in the fertile pages of Italian subtlety.
+
+With this general understanding of the relation between the great parties
+in the drama, let us look to their exact position in the summer of 1532.
+
+Charles was engaged in repelling an invasion of the Turks, with an
+anarchical Germany in his rear, seething with fanatical anabaptists, and
+clamouring for a general council.
+
+Henry and Francis had been called upon to furnish a contingent against
+Solyman, and had declined to act with the emperor. They had undertaken to
+concert their own measures between themselves, if it proved necessary for
+them to move; and in the meantime Cardinal Grammont and Cardinal Tournon
+were sent by Francis to Rome, to inform Clement that unless he gave a
+verdict in Henry's favour, the Kings of France and England, being _une
+mesme chose_, would pursue some policy with respect to him,[375] to which
+he would regret that he had compelled them to have recourse. So far their
+instructions were avowed and open. A private message revealed the secret
+means by which the pope might escape from his dilemma; the cardinals were
+to negotiate a marriage between the Duke of Orleans and the pope's niece
+(afterwards so infamously famous), Catherine de Medicis. The marriage, as
+Francis represented it to Henry, was beneath the dignity of a prince of
+France, he had consented to it, as he professed, only for Henry's
+sake;[376] but the pope had made it palatable by a secret article in the
+engagement, for the grant of the duchy of Milan as the lady's dowry.
+
+Henry, threatened as we have seen with domestic disturbance, and with
+further danger on the side of Scotland, which Charles had succeeded in
+agitating, concluded, on the 23rd of June, a league, offensive and
+defensive, with Francis, the latter engaging to send a fleet into the
+Channel, and to land 15,000 troops in England if the emperor should attempt
+an invasion from the sea.[378] For the better consolidation of this league,
+and to consult upon the measures which they would pursue on the great
+questions at issue in Christendom, and lastly to come to a final
+understanding on the divorce, it was agreed further that in the autumn the
+two kings should meet at Calais. The conditions of the interview were still
+unarranged on the 22nd of July, when the Bishop of Paris, who remained
+ambassador at the English court, wrote to Montmorency to suggest that Anne
+Boleyn should be invited to accompany the King of England on this occasion,
+and that she should be received in state. The letter was dated from
+Ampthill, to which Henry had escaped for a while from his Greenwich friars
+and other troubles, and where the king was staying a few weeks before the
+house was given up to Queen Catherine. Anne Boleyn was with him; she now,
+as a matter of course, attended him everywhere. Intending her, as he did,
+to be the mother of the future heir to his crown, he preserved what is
+technically called her honour unimpeached and unimpaired. In all other
+respects she occupied the position and received the homage due to the
+actual wife of the English sovereign; and in this capacity it was the
+desire of Henry that she should be acknowledged by a foreign prince.
+
+The bishop's letter on this occasion is singularly interesting and
+descriptive. The court were out hunting, he said, every day; and while the
+king was pursuing the heat of the chase, he and Mademoiselle Anne were
+posted together, each with a crossbow, at the point to which the deer was
+to be driven. The young lady, in order that the appearance of her reverend
+cavalier might correspond with his occupation, had made him a present of a
+hunting cap and frock, a horn and a greyhound. Her invitation to Calais he
+pressed with great earnestness, and suggested that Marguerite de Valois,
+the Queen of Navarre, should be brought down to entertain her. The Queen of
+France being a Spaniard, would not, he thought, be welcome: "the sight of a
+Spanish dress being as hateful in the King of England's eyes as the devil
+himself." In other respects the reception should be as magnificent as
+possible, "and I beseech you," he concluded, "keep out of the court, _deux
+sortes de gens_, the imperialists, and the wits and mockers; the English
+can endure neither of them."[379]
+
+Through the tone of this language the contempt is easily visible with which
+the affair was regarded in the French court. But for Francis to receive in
+public the rival of Queen Catherine, to admit her into his family, and to
+bring his sister from Paris to entertain her, was to declare in the face of
+Europe, in a manner which would leave no doubt of his sincerity, that he
+intended to countenance Henry. With this view only was the reception of
+Anne desired by the King of England; with this view it was recommended by
+the bishop, and assented to by the French court. Nor was this the only
+proof which Francis was prepared to give, that he was in earnest. He had
+promised to distribute forty thousand crowns at Rome, in bribing cardinals
+to give their voices for Henry in the consistory, with other possible
+benefactions.[380]
+
+He had further volunteered his good offices with the court of Scotland,
+where matters were growing serious, and where his influence could be used
+to great advantage. The ability of James the Fifth to injure Henry happily
+fell short of his inclination, but encouraged by secret promises from
+Clement and from the emperor, he was waiting his opportunity to cross the
+Border with an army; and in the meantime he was feeding with efficient
+support a rebellion in Ireland. Of what was occurring at this time in that
+perennially miserable country I shall speak in a separate chapter. It is
+here sufficient to mention, that on the 23rd of August, Henry received
+information that McConnell of the Isles, after receiving knighthood from
+James, had been despatched into Ulster with four thousand men,[381] and was
+followed by Mackane with seven thousand more on the 3rd of September.[382]
+Peace with England nominally continued; but the Kers, the Humes, the Scotts
+of Buccleugh, the advanced guard of the Marches, were nightly making forays
+across the Border, and open hostilities appeared to be on the point of
+explosion.[383] If war was to follow, Henry was prepared for it. He had a
+powerful force at Berwick, and in Scotland itself a large party were
+secretly attached to the English interests. The clan of Douglas, with their
+adherents, were even prepared for open revolt, and open transfer of
+allegiance.[384] But, although Scottish nobles might be gained over, and
+Scottish armies might be defeated in the field, Scotland itself, as the
+experience of centuries had proved, could never be conquered. The policy of
+the Tudors had been to abstain from aggression, till time should have
+soothed down the inherited animosity between the two countries; and Henry
+was unwilling to be forced into extremities which might revive the bitter
+memories of Flodden. The Northern counties also, in spite of their Border
+prejudices, were the stronghold of the papal party, and it was doubtful how
+far their allegiance could be counted upon in the event of an invasion
+sanctioned by the pope. The hands of the English government were already
+full without superadded embarrassment, and the offered mediation of Francis
+was gratefully welcomed.
+
+These were the circumstances under which the second great interview was to
+take place between Francis the First and Henry of England.[385] Twelve
+years had passed since their last meeting, and the experience which those
+years had brought to both of them, had probably subdued their inclination
+for splendid pageantry. Nevertheless, in honour of the occasion, some faint
+revival was attempted of the magnificence of the Field of the Cloth of
+Gold. Anne Boleyn was invited duly; and the Queen of Navarre, as the Bishop
+of Paris recommended, came down to Boulogne to receive her. The French
+princes came also to thank Henry in person for their deliverance out of
+their Spanish prison; and he too, on his side, brought with him his young
+Marcellus, the Duke of Richmond, his only son--illegitimate
+unfortunately--but whose beauty and noble promise were at once his father's
+misery and pride; giving point to his bitterness at the loss of his sons by
+Catherine; quickening his hopes of what might be, and deepening his
+discontent with that which was. If this boy had lived, he would have been
+named to follow Edward the Sixth in the succession, and would have been
+King of England;[386] but he too passed away in the flower of his
+loveliness, one more evidence of the blight which rested upon the stem of
+the Tudors.
+
+The English court was entertained by Francis at Boulogne. The French court
+was received in return at Calais by the English. The outward description of
+the scene, the magnificent train of the princes, the tournaments, the
+feasts, the dances, will be found minutely given in the pages of Hall, and
+need not be repeated here. To Hall indeed, the outward life of men, their
+exploits in war, and their pageantries in peace, alone had meaning or
+interest; and the backstairs secrets of Vatican diplomacy, the questionings
+of opinion, and all the brood of mental sicknesses then beginning to
+distract the world, were but impertinent interferences with the true
+business of existence. But the healthy objectiveness of an old English
+chronicler is no longer possible for us; we may envy where we cannot
+imitate; and our business is with such features of the story as are of
+moment to ourselves.
+
+The political questions which were to be debated at the conference, were
+three; the Turkish Invasion, the General Council, and King Henry's divorce.
+
+On the first, it was decided that there was no immediate occasion for
+France and England to move. Solyman's retreat from Vienna had relieved
+Europe from present peril; and the enormous losses which he had suffered,
+might prevent him from repeating the experiment. If the danger became again
+imminent, however, the two kings agreed to take the field in person the
+following year at the head of eighty thousand men.
+
+On the second point they came to no conclusion, but resolved only to act in
+common.
+
+On the third and most important, they parted with a belief that they
+understood each other; but their memories, or the memory of one of them,
+proved subsequently treacherous; and we can only extract what passed
+between them out of their mutual recriminations.
+
+It was determined certainly that at the earliest convenient moment, a
+meeting should take place between the pope and Francis; and that at this
+meeting Francis should urge in person concession to Henry's demands. If the
+pope professed himself unable to risk the displeasure of the emperor, it
+should be suggested that he might return to Avignon, where he would be
+secure under the protection of France and England. If he was still
+reluctant, and persisted in asserting his right to compel Henry to plead
+before him at Rome, or if he followed up his citations by inhibitions,
+suspensions, excommunications, or other form of censure, Francis declared
+that he would support Henry to the last, whether against the pope himself
+or against any prince or potentate who might attempt to enforce the
+sentence. On this point the promises of the King of France were most
+profuse and decided; and although it was not expressly stated in words,
+Henry seems to have persuaded himself that, if the pope pressed matters to
+extremities, Francis had engaged further that the two countries should
+pursue a common course, and unite in a common schism. The two princes did
+in fact agree, that if the general council which they desired was refused,
+they would summon provincial councils on their own authority. Each of them
+perhaps interpreted their engagements by their own wishes or
+interests.[387]
+
+We may further believe, since it was affirmed by Henry, and not denied by
+Francis, that the latter advised Henry to bring the dispute to a close, by
+a measure from which he could not recede; that he recommended him to act on
+the general opinion of Europe that his marriage with Queen Catherine was
+null, and at once upon his return to England to make Anne Boleyn his
+wife.[388]
+
+So far the account is clear. This advice was certainly given, and as
+certainly Francis undertook to support Henry through all the consequences
+in which the marriage might involve him. But a league for mutual defence
+fell short of what Henry desired, and fell short also of what Francis, by
+the warmth of his manner, had induced Henry for the moment to believe that
+he meant. It is probable that the latter pressed upon him engagements which
+he avoided by taking refuge in general professions; and no sooner had Henry
+returned to England, than either misgivings occurred to him as to the
+substantial results of the interview, or he was anxious to make the French
+king commit himself more definitely. He sent to him to beg that he would
+either write out, or dictate and sign, the expressions which he had used;
+professing to wish it only for the comfort which he would derive from the
+continual presence of such refreshing words--but surely for some deeper
+reason.[389]
+
+Francis had perhaps said more than he meant; Henry supposed him to have
+meant more than he said. Yet some promise was made, which was not
+afterwards observed; and Francis acknowledged some engagement in an apology
+which he offered for the breach of it. He asserted, in defence of himself,
+that he had added a stipulation which Henry passed over in silence,--that
+no steps should be taken towards annulling the marriage with Catherine in
+the English law courts until the effect had been seen of his interview with
+the pope, provided the pope on his side remained similarly inactive.[390]
+Whatever it was which he had bound himself to do, this condition, if made
+at all, could be reconciled only with his advice that Henry should marry
+Anne Boleyn without further delay, on the supposition that the interview in
+question was to take place immediately; for the natural consequences of the
+second marriage would involve, as a matter of course, some speedy legal
+declaration with respect to the first. And when on various pretexts the
+pope postponed the meeting, and on the other part of his suggestion Henry
+had acted within a few months of his return from Calais, it became
+impossible that such a condition could be observed. It availed for a formal
+excuse; but Francis vainly endeavoured to disguise his own infirmity of
+purpose behind the language of a negotiation which conveyed, when it was
+used, a meaning widely different.
+
+The conference was concluded on the 1st of November, but the court was
+detained at Calais for a further fortnight by violent gales in the Channel.
+In the excited state of public feeling, events in themselves ordinary
+assumed a preternatural significance. The friends of Queen Catherine, to
+whom the meeting between the kings was of so disastrous augury, and the
+nation generally, which an accident to Henry at such a time would have
+plunged into a chaos of confusion, alike watched the storm with anxious
+agitation; on the king's return to London, Te Deums were offered in the
+churches, as if for his deliverance from some extreme and imminent peril.
+The Nun of Kent on this great occasion was admitted to conferences with
+angels. She denounced the meeting, under celestial instruction, as a
+conspiracy against Heaven. The king, she said, but for her interposition,
+would have proceeded, while at Calais, to his impious marriage;[391] and
+God was so angry with him, that he was not permitted to profane with his
+unholy eyes the blessed Sacrament. "It was written in her revelations,"
+says the statute of her attainder, "that when the King's Grace was at
+Calais, and his Majesty and the French king were hearing mass in the Church
+of Our Lady, that God was so displeased with the King's Highness, that his
+Grace saw not at that time the blessed sacrament in the form of bread, for
+it was taken away from the priest, being at mass, by an angel, and was
+ministered to the said Elizabeth, there being present and invisible, and
+suddenly conveyed and rapt thence again into the nunnery where she was
+professed."[392]
+
+She had an interview with Henry on his return through Canterbury, to try
+the effect of her Cassandra presence on his fears;[393] but if he still
+delayed his marriage, it was probably neither because he was frightened by
+her denunciations, nor from alarm at the usual occurrence of an equinoctial
+storm. Many motives combined to dissuade him from further hesitation. Six
+years of trifling must have convinced him that by decisive action alone he
+could force the pope to a conclusion. He was growing old, and the
+exigencies of the succession, rendered doubly pressing by the long
+agitation, required immediate resolution. He was himself satisfied that he
+was at liberty to marry whom he pleased and when he pleased, his
+relationship to Catherine, according to his recent convictions, being such
+as had rendered his connection with her from the beginning invalid and
+void. His own inclinations and the interests of the nation pointed to the
+same course. The King of France had advised it. Even the pope himself, at
+the outset of the discussion, had advised it also. "Marry freely," the pope
+had said; "fear nothing, and all shall be arranged as you desire." He had
+forborne to take the pope at his word; he had hoped that the justice of his
+demands might open a less violent way to him; and he had shrunk from a step
+which might throw even a causeless shadow over the legitimacy of the
+offspring for which he longed. The case was now changed; no other
+alternative seemed to be open to his choice, and it was necessary to bring
+the matter to a close once and for all.
+
+But Henry, as he said himself, was past the age when passion or appetite
+would be likely to move him, and having waited so many years, he could
+afford to wait a little longer, till the effects of the Calais conferences
+upon the pope should have had time to show themselves. In December, Clement
+was to meet the emperor at Bologna. In the month following, it might be
+hoped that he would meet Francis at Marseilles or Avignon, and from their
+interview would be seen conclusively the future attitude of the papal and
+imperial courts. Experience of the past forbade anything like sanguine
+expectation; yet it was not impossible that the pope might be compelled at
+last to yield the required concessions. The terms of Henry's understanding
+with Francis were not perhaps made public, but he was allowed to dictate
+the language which the French cardinals were to make use of in the
+consistory;[394] and the reception of Anne Boleyn by the French king was
+equivalent to the most emphatic declaration that if the censures of the
+church were attempted in defence of Catherine, the enforcement of them
+would be resisted by the combined arms of France and England.
+
+And the pope did in fact feel himself in a dilemma from which all his
+address was required to extricate him. He had no support from his
+conscience, for he knew that he was acting unjustly in refusing the
+divorce; while to risk the emperor's anger, which was the only honest
+course before him, was perhaps for that very reason impossible. He fell
+back upon his Italian cunning, and it did not fail him in his need. But his
+conduct, though creditable to his ingenuity, reflects less pleasantly on
+his character; and when it is traced through all its windings, few
+reasonable persons will think that they have need to blush at the causes
+which led to the last breach between England and the papacy.
+
+From the time of Catherine's appeal and the retirement of Campeggio,
+Clement, with rare exceptions, had maintained an attitude of impassive
+reserve. He had allowed judgment to be delayed on various pretexts, because
+until that time delay had answered his purposes sufficiently. But to the
+English agents he had been studiously cold, not condescending even to hold
+out hopes to them that concession might be possible. Some little time
+before the meeting at Calais, however, a change was observed in the
+language both of the pope himself and of the consistory. The cardinals were
+visibly afraid of the position which had been taken by the French king;
+questions supposed to be closed were once more admitted to debate in a
+manner which seemed to show that their resolution was wavering; and one
+day, at the close of a long argument, the following curious conversation
+took place between some person (Sir Gregory Cassalis, apparently), who
+reported it to Henry, and Clement himself. "I had desired a private
+interview with his Holiness," says the writer, "intending to use all my
+endeavours to persuade him to satisfy your Majesty. But although I did my
+best, I could obtain nothing from him; he had an answer for everything
+which I advanced, and it was in vain that I laboured to remove his
+difficulties. At length, however, in reply to something which I had
+proposed, he said shortly,--Multo minus scandalosum fuisset dispensare cum
+majestate vestrā super duabus uxoribus, quam ea cedere quę ego petebam, _it
+would have created less scandal to have granted your Majesty a dispensation
+to have two wives than to concede what I was then demanding_. As I did not
+know how far this alternative would be pleasing to your Majesty, I
+endeavoured to divert him from it, and to lead him back to what I had been
+previously saying. He was silent for a while, and then, paying no regard to
+my interruption, he continued to speak of the 'two wives,' admitting
+however that there were difficulties in the way of such an arrangement,
+principally it seemed because the emperor would refuse his consent from the
+possible injury which it might create to his cousin's prospects of the
+succession. I replied, that as to the succession, I could not see what
+right the emperor had to a voice upon the matter. If some lawful means
+could be discovered by which your Majesty could furnish yourself with male
+offspring, the emperor could no more justly complain than if the queen were
+to die and the prospects of the princess were interfered with by a second
+marriage of an ordinary kind. To this the pope made no answer. I cannot
+tell what your Majesty will think, nor how far this suggestion of the pope
+would be pleasing to your Majesty. Nor indeed can I feel sure, in
+consequence of what he said about the emperor, that he actually would grant
+the dispensation of which he spoke. I have thought it right, however, to
+inform you of what passed."[395]
+
+This letter is undated, but it was written, as appears from internal
+evidence, some time in the year 1532.[396]
+
+The pope's language was ambiguous, and the writer did not allow himself to
+derive from it any favourable augury; but the tone in which the suggestions
+had been made was by many degrees more favourable than had been heard for a
+very long time in the quarter from which they came, and the symptoms which
+it promised of a change of feeling were more than confirmed in the
+following winter.
+
+Charles was to be at Bologna in the middle of December, where he was to
+discuss with Clement the situation of Europe, and in particular of Germany,
+with the desirableness of fulfilling the engagements into which he had
+entered for a general council.
+
+This was the avowed object of the meeting. But, however important the
+question of holding a council was becoming, it was not immediately
+pressing; and we cannot doubt that the disquiet occasioned by the alliance
+of England and France was the cause that the conference was held at so
+inconvenient a season. The pope left Rome on the 18th of November, having
+in his train a person who afterwards earned for himself a dark name in
+English history, Dr. Bonner, then a famous canon lawyer attached to the
+embassy. The journey in the wild weather was extremely miserable; and
+Bonner, whose style was as graphic as it was coarse, sent home a humorous
+account of it to Cromwell.[397] Three wretched weeks the party were upon
+the road, plunging through mire and water. They reached Bologna on the 8th
+of December, where, four days after them, arrived Charles V. It is
+important, as we shall presently see, to observe the dates of these
+movements. I shall have to compare with them the successive issues of
+several curious documents. On the 12th of December the pope and the emperor
+met at Bologna; on the 24th Dr. Bennet, Henry's able secretary, who had
+been despatched from England to be present at the conference, wrote to
+report the result of his observations. He had been admitted to repeated
+interviews with the pope, as well before as after the emperor's arrival;
+and the language which the former made use of could only be understood, and
+was of course intended to be understood, as expressing the attitude in
+which he was placing himself towards the imperial faction. Bennet's letter
+was as follows:--
+
+"I have been sundry and many times with the pope, as well afore the coming
+of the emperour as sythen, yet I have not at any time found his Holiness
+more tractable or propense to show gratuity unto your Highness than now of
+late,--insomuch that he hath more freely opened his mind than he was
+accustomed, and said also that he would speak with me frankly without any
+observance or respect at all. At which time, I greatly lamented (your
+Highness's cause being so just) no means could be found and taken to
+satisfy your Highness therein; and I said also that I doubted not but that
+(if his Holiness would) ways might be found by his wisdom, now at the
+emperour's being with him, to satisfy your Highness; and that done, his
+Holiness should not only have your Highness in as much or more friendship
+than he hath had heretofore, but also procure thereby that thing which his
+Holiness hath chiefly desired, which is, as he hath said, a universal
+concord among the princes of Christendom. His Holiness answered, that he
+would it had cost him a joint of his hand that such a way might be
+excogitate; and he said also, that the best thing which he could see to be
+done therein at this present, for a preparation to that purpose, was the
+thing which is contained in the first part of the cipher.[398] Speaking of
+the justness of your cause, he called to his remembrance the thing which he
+told me two years past; which was, that the opinion of the lawyers was more
+certain, favourable, and helping to your cause than the opinion of the
+divines; for he said that as far as he could perceive, the lawyers, though
+they held quod Papa possit dispensare in this case, yet they commonly do
+agree quod hoc fieri debeat ex maximā causā, adhibitā causę cognitione,
+which in this case doth not appear; and he said, that to come to the truth
+herein he had used all diligence possible, and enquired the opinion of
+learned men, being of fame and indifferency both in the court here and in
+other places. And his Holiness promised me that he would herein use all
+good policy and dexterity to imprint the same in the emperour's head; which
+done, he reckoneth many things to be invented that may be pleasant and
+profitable to your Highness; adding yet that this is not to be done with a
+fury, but with leisure and as occasion shall serve, lest if he should
+otherwise do, he should let and hinder that good effect which peradventure
+might ensue thereby."[399]
+
+This letter has all the character of truth about it. The secretary had no
+interest in deceiving Henry, and it is quite certain that, whether honestly
+or not, the pope had led him to believe that his sympathies were again on
+the English side, and that he was using his best endeavours to subdue the
+emperor's opposition.
+
+On the 26th of December, two days later, Sir Gregory Cassalis, who had also
+followed the papal court to Bologna, wrote to the same effect. He, too, had
+been with the pope, who had been very open and confidential with him. The
+emperor, the pope said, had complained of the delay in the process, but he
+had assured him that it was impossible for the consistory to do more than
+it had done. The opinion of the theologians was on the whole against the
+papal power of dispensation in cases of so close relationship; of the canon
+lawyers part agreed with the theologians, and those who differed from them
+were satisfied that such a power might not be exercised unless there were
+most urgent cause, unless, that is, the safety of a kingdom were dependent
+upon it. Such occasion he had declared that he could not find to have
+existed for the dispensation granted by his predecessor. The emperor had
+replied that there had been such occasion: the dispensation had been
+granted to prevent war between Spain and England; and that otherwise great
+calamities would have befallen both countries. But this was manifestly
+untrue; and his Holiness said that he had answered, It was a pity, then,
+that these causes had not been submitted at the time, as the reason for the
+demand, which it was clear that they had not been: as the case stood, it
+was impossible for him to proceed further. Upon which he added, "Se vidisse
+Cęsarem obstupefactum." "I write the words," continued Sir Gregory,
+"exactly as the pope related them to me. Whether he really spoke in this
+way, I cannot tell; of this, however, I am sure, that on the day of our
+conversation he had taken the blessed sacrament. He assured me further,
+that he had laboured to induce the emperor to permit him to satisfy your
+Majesty. I recommended him that when next the emperor spoke with him upon
+the subject, he should enter at greater length on the question of
+_justice_, and that some other person should be present at the conference,
+that there might be no room left for suspicion."[400]
+
+The manner of Clement was so unlike what Cassalis had been in the habit
+of witnessing in him, that he was unable, as we see, wholly to persuade
+himself that the change was sincere: the letter, however, was despatched
+to England, and was followed in a few days by Bonner, who brought
+with him the result of the pope's good will in the form of definite
+propositions--instructions of similar purport having been forwarded at the
+same time to the papal nuncio in England. The pope, so Henry was informed,
+was now really well disposed to do what was required; he had urged upon the
+emperor the necessity of concessions, and the cause might be settled in one
+of two ways, to either of which he was himself ready to consent. Catherine
+had appealed against judgment being passed in England, as a place which was
+not indifferent. Henry had refused to allow his cause to be heard anywhere
+but in his own realm; pleading first his privilege as a sovereign prince;
+and secondly, his exemption as an Englishman.[401] The pope, with
+appearance of openness, now suggested that Henry should either "send a
+mandate requiring the remission of his cause to an indifferent place, in
+which case he would himself surrender his claim to have it tried in the
+courts at Rome, and would appoint a legate and two auditors to hear the
+trial elsewhere;" or else, a truce of three or four years being concluded
+between England, France, and Spain, the pope would "with all celerity
+indict a general council, to which he would absolutely and wholly remit the
+consideration of the question."[402]
+
+Both proposals carried on their front a show of fair dealing, and if
+honestly proffered, were an evidence that something more might at length be
+hoped than words. But the true obstacle to a settlement lay, as had been
+long evident, rather in the want of an honest will, than in legal
+difficulties or uncertainty as to the justice of the cause; and while
+neither of the alternatives as they stood were admissible or immediately
+desirable, there were many other roads, if the point of honesty were once
+made good, which would lead more readily to the desired end. Once for all
+Henry could not consent to plead out of England; while an appeal to a
+council would occupy more time than the condition of the country could
+conveniently allow. But the offer had been courteously made; it had been
+accompanied with language which might be sincere; and the king replied with
+grace, and almost with cordiality; not wholly giving Clement his
+confidence, but expressing a hope that he might soon be no longer justified
+in withholding it. He was unable, he said, to accept the first condition,
+because it was contrary to his coronation oath; "it so highly touched the
+prerogative royal of the realm, that though he were minded to do it, yet
+must he abstain without the assent of the court of parliament, which he
+thought verily would never condescend to it."[403] The other suggestion he
+did not absolutely reject, but the gathering of a council was too serious a
+matter to be precipitated, and the situation of Christendom presented many
+obstacles to a measure which would be useless unless it were carried
+through by all the great powers in a spirit of cordial unanimity. He
+trusted therefore that if the pope's intentions were really such as he
+pretended to entertain, he would find some method more convenient of
+proving his sincerity.
+
+It was happy for Henry that experience had taught him to be distrustful.
+Events proved too clearly that Clement's assumed alteration of tone was no
+more than a manoeuvre designed to entice him to withdraw from the position
+in which he had entrenched himself, and to induce him to acknowledge that
+he was amenable to an earthly authority exterior to his own realm.[404] In
+his offer to refer the cause to a general council, he proved that he was
+insincere, when in the following year he refused to allow a council to be a
+valid tribunal for the trial of it. The course which he would have followed
+if the second alternative had been accepted, may be conjectured from the
+measures which, as I shall presently show, he was at this very moment
+secretly pursuing. Henry, however, had happily resolved that he would be
+trifled with no further; he felt instinctively that only action would cut
+the net in which he was entangled; and he would not hesitate any longer to
+take a step which, in one way or another, must bring the weary question to
+a close. If the pope meant well, he would welcome a resolution which made
+further procrastination impossible; if he did not mean well, he could not
+be permitted to dally further with the interests of the English nation.
+Within a few days, therefore, of Bonner's return from Bologna, he took the
+final step from which there was no retreat, and "somewhere about St. Paul's
+day,"[405] Anne Boleyn received the prize for which she had thirsted seven
+long years, in the hand of the King of England. The ceremony was private.
+No authentic details are known either of the scene of it or the
+circumstances under which it took place; but it is said to have been
+performed by the able Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, summoned up for the
+purpose from the Welsh Marches, of which he was warden. It was done,
+however--in one way or other finally done--the cast was thrown, and a match
+was laid to the train which now at length could explode the spell of
+intrigue, and set Henry and England free.
+
+We have arrived at a point from which the issue of the labyrinth is clearly
+visible. The course of it has been very dreary; and brought in contact as
+we have been with so much which is painful, so much which is discreditable
+to all parties concerned, we may perhaps have lost our sense of the broad
+bearings of the question in indiscriminate disgust. It will be well,
+therefore, to pause for a moment to recapitulate those features of the
+story which are the main indications of its character, and may serve to
+guide our judgment in the censure which we shall pass.
+
+It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII. had
+been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the interests of
+the kingdom, if he had forborne, while his request was pending, to affront
+the princess who had for many years been his companion and his queen; if he
+had shown her that respect which her high character gave her a right to
+demand, and which her situation as a stranger ought to have made it
+impossible to him to refuse; his conduct would have been liable to no
+imputation, and our sympathies would without reserve have been on his side.
+He could not have been expected to love a person to whom he had been
+married as a boy for political convenience, merely because she was his
+wife; especially when she was many years his senior in age, disagreeable in
+her person, and by the consciousness of it embittered in her temper. His
+kingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience, it
+may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his children; and
+looking upon it as the sentence of Heaven upon a connection, the legality
+of which had from the first been violently disputed, he believed that he
+had been living in incest, and that his misfortunes were the consequence of
+it. Under these circumstances he had a full right to apply for a
+divorce.[406]
+
+The causa urgentissima of the canon law for which, by the pope's own
+showing, the dispensing powers had been granted to him, had arisen in an
+extreme form; and when the vital interests of England were sacrificed to
+the will of a foreign prince, sufficient reason had arisen for the nation
+to decline submission to so emphatic injustice, and to seek within itself
+its own remedies for its own necessities. These considerations must be
+allowed all their weight; and except for them, it is not to be supposed
+that Henry would have permitted private distaste or inclination to induce
+him to create a scandal in Europe. In his conduct, however, as in that of
+most men, good was chequered with evil, and sincerity with self-deception.
+Personal feeling can be traced from the first, holding a subsidiary,
+indeed, but still an influential place, among his motives; and exactly so
+far as he was influenced by it, his course was wrong, as the consequence
+miserably proved. The position which, in his wife's presence, he assigned
+to another woman, however he may have persuaded himself that Catherine had
+no claim to be considered his wife, admits neither of excuse nor of
+palliation; and he ought never to have shared his throne with a person who
+consented to occupy that position. He was blind to the coarseness of Anne
+Boleyn, because, in spite of his chivalry, his genius, his accomplishments,
+in his relations with women he was without delicacy himself. He directed,
+or attempted to direct, his conduct by the broad rules of what he thought
+to be just; and in the wide margin of uncertain ground where rules of
+action cannot be prescribed, and where men must guide themselves by
+consideration for the feelings of others, he--so far as women were
+concerned--was altogether or almost a stranger. Such consideration is a
+virtue which can be learned only in the society of equals, where necessity
+obliges men to practise it. Henry had been a king from his boyhood; he had
+been surrounded by courtiers who had anticipated all his desires; and
+exposed as he was to an ordeal from which no human being could have escaped
+uninjured, we have more cause, after all, to admire him for those
+excellences which he conquered for himself, than to blame the defects which
+he retained.
+
+But if in his private relations the king was hasty and careless, towards
+the pope to whom we must now return, he exhausted all resources of
+forbearance: and although, when separation from Rome was at length forced
+upon him, he then permitted no half measures, and swept into his new career
+with the strength of irresistible will, it was not till he had shown
+resolution no less great in the endurance of indignity; and of the three
+great powers in Europe, the prince who was compelled to break the unity of
+the Catholic church, was evidently the only one who was capable of real
+sacrifices to preserve it unbroken. Clement comprehended his reluctance,
+but presumed too far upon it; and if there was sin in the "great schism" of
+the Reformation, the guilt must rest where it is due. We have now to show
+the reverse side of the transactions at Bologna, and explain what a person
+wearing the title of his Holiness, in virtue of his supposed sanctity, had
+been secretly doing.
+
+In January, 1532, some little time before his conversation with Sir Gregory
+Cassalis on the subject of the two wives, the pope had composed a pastoral
+letter to Henry, which had never been issued. From its contents it would
+seem to have been written on the receipt of an indignant remonstrance of
+Queen Catherine, in which she had complained of her desertion by her
+husband, and of the public position which had been given to her rival. She
+had supposed (and it was the natural mistake of an embittered and injured
+woman) that Anne Boleyn had been placed in possession of the rights of an
+actual, and not only of an intended wife; and the pope, accepting her
+account of the situation, had written to implore the king to abstain, so
+long as the cause remained undetermined, from creating so great a scandal
+in Christendom, and to restore his late queen to her place at his side.
+This letter, as it was originally written, was one of Clement's happiest
+compositions.[407] He abstained in it from using any expression which could
+be construed into a threat: he appealed to Henry's honourable character,
+which no blot had hitherto stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion
+of the Christian world, he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects
+which would be produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the
+Holy See in a person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry had
+deserved that such a letter should be written to him; and the pope was more
+than justified in writing it. The letter, however, if it was sent, produced
+no effect, and on the 15th of November, three days before Clement's
+departure to Bologna, where he pretended (we must not forget) that he
+considered Henry substantially right; he added a postscript, in a tone not
+contrasting only with his words to the ambassadors, but with the language
+of the brief itself.
+
+Again urging Henry's delinquencies, his separation from his wife, and the
+scandal of his connection with another person, he commanded him, under
+penalty of excommunication, within one month of the receipt of those
+injunctions, to restore the queen to her place, and to abstain
+thenceforward from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn pending the issue of
+the trial. "Otherwise," the pope continued, "when the said term shall have
+elapsed, we pronounce thee, Henry King of England, and the said Anne, to be
+_ipso facto_ excommunicate, and command all men to shun and avoid your
+presence; and although our mind shrinks from allowing such a thought of
+your Serenity, although by ourselves and by our auditory of the Rota an
+inhibition has been already issued against you; although the act of which
+you are suspected be in itself forbidden by all laws human and divine, yet
+the reports which are brought to us do so move us, that once more we do
+inhibit you from dissolving your marriage with the aforesaid Catherine, or
+from continuing process, in your own courts, of divorce from her. And we do
+also hereby warn you, that you presume not to contract any new marriage
+with the said or with any other woman; we declare such marriage, if you
+still attempt it, to be vain and of none effect, and so to be regarded by
+all persons in obedience to the Apostolic see."[408]
+
+An inhibitory mandate, was a natural consequence of the conference of
+Calais, provided that the pope intended to proceed openly and uprightly;
+and if it had been sent upon the spot, Henry could have complained of
+nothing worse than of an honourable opposition to his wishes. But the
+mystery was not yet exhausted. The postscript was not issued, it was not
+spoken of; it was carried secretly to Bologna, and it bears at its foot a
+further date of the 23rd of December, the very time, that is to say, at
+which the pope was representing himself to Bennet as occupied only in
+devising the best means of satisfying Henry, and to Sir Gregory Cassalis,
+as so convinced of the justice of the English demands, that he had ventured
+in defence of them to the edge of rupture with the emperor.
+
+It might be urged that he was sincere both in his brief and in his
+conversation; that he believed that a verdict ought to be given, and would
+at last be given, against the original marriage, and that therefore he was
+the more anxious to prevent unnecessary scandal. Yet a menace of
+excommunication couched in so haughty a tone, could have been honestly
+reconciled with his other conduct, only by his following a course with
+respect to it which he did not follow--by informing the ambassadors openly
+of what he had done, and transmitting his letter through their hands to
+Henry himself. This he might have done; and though the issue of such a
+document at such a time would have been open to question, it might
+nevertheless have been defended. His Holiness, however, did nothing of the
+kind. No hint was let fall of the existence of any minatory brief; he
+sustained his pretence of good will, till there was no longer any occasion
+for him to counterfeit; and two months later it suddenly appeared on the
+doors of the churches in Flanders.
+
+Henry at first believed it to be forgery, One forged brief had already been
+produced by the imperialists in the course of their transactions, and he
+imagined that this was another; even his past experience of Clement had not
+prepared him for this last venture of effrontery; he wrote to Bennet,
+enclosing a copy, and requiring him to ascertain if it were really
+genuine.[409]
+
+The pope could not deny his hand, though the exposure, and the strange
+irregular character of the brief itself troubled him, and Bonner, who was
+again at the papal court, said that "he was in manner ashamed, and in great
+perplexity what he might do therein."[410]
+
+His conduct will be variously interpreted, and to attempt to analyse the
+motives of a double-minded man is always a hazardous experiment; but a
+comparison of date, the character of Clement himself, the circumstances in
+which he was placed, and the retrospective evidence from after events,
+points almost necessarily to but one interpretation. It is scarcely
+disputable that, frightened at the reception of Anne Boleyn in France, the
+pope found it necessary to pretend for a time an altered disposition
+towards Henry; and that the emperor, unable to feel wholly confident that a
+person who was false to others was true to himself, had exacted the brief
+from him as a guarantee for his good faith; Charles, on his side, reserving
+the publication until Francis had been gained over, and until Clement was
+screened against the danger which he so justly feared, from the
+consequences of the interview at Calais.
+
+There was duplicity of a kind; this cannot be denied; and if not designed
+to effect this object, this object in fact it answered. While Clement was
+talking smoothly to Bennet and Cassalis, secret overtures were advanced at
+Paris for a meeting at Nice between the pope, the emperor, and the King of
+France, from which Henry was to be excluded.[411] The emperor made haste
+with concessions to Francis, which but a few months before would have
+seemed impossible. He withdrew his army out of Lombardy, and left Italy
+free; he consented to the marriage which he had so earnestly opposed
+between Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Orleans, agreeing also, it is
+probable, to the contingency of the Duchy of Milan becoming ultimately her
+dowry. And Francis having coquetted with the proposal for the Nice
+meeting,[412] not indeed accepting, but not absolutely rejecting it,
+Charles consented also to waive his objections to the interview between
+Francis and the pope, on which he had looked hitherto with so much
+suspicion; provided that the pope would bear in mind some mysterious and
+unknown communication which had passed at Bologna.[413]
+
+Thus was Francis won. He cared only, as the pope had seen, for his own
+interests; and from this time he drew away, by imperceptible degrees, from
+his engagements to England. He did not stoop to dishonour or treacherous
+betrayal of confidence, for with all his faults he was, in the technical
+acceptation of that misused term, a gentleman. He declined only to maintain
+the attitude which, if he had continued in it, would have compelled the
+pope to yield; and although he continued honestly to urge him to make
+concessions, he no longer affected to make them the price of preserving
+France in allegiance to the Holy See. Nor need we regret that Francis
+shrank from a resolution which Henry had no right to require of him. To
+have united with France in a common schism at the crisis of the Reformation
+would have only embarrassed the free motions of England; and two nations
+whose interests and whose tendencies were essentially opposite, might not
+submit to be linked together by the artificial interests of their princes.
+The populace of England were unconsciously on the rapid road to
+Protestantism. The populace of France were fanatically Catholic. England
+was to go her way through a golden era of Elizabeth to Cromwell, the
+Puritans, and a Protestant republic; a republic to be perpetuated, if not
+in England herself, yet among her great children beyond the sea. France was
+to go her way through Bartholomew massacres and the dragonnades to a
+polished Louis the Magnificent, and thence to the bloody Medea's cauldron
+of Revolution, out of which she was to rise as now we know her. No common
+road could have been found for such destinies as these; and the French
+prince followed the direction of his wiser instincts when he preferred a
+quiet arrangement with the pope, in virtue of which his church should be
+secured by treaty the liberties which she desired, to a doubtful struggle
+for a freedom which his people neither wished nor approved. The interests
+of the nation were in fact his own. He could ill afford to forsake a
+religion which allowed him so pleasantly to compound for his amatory
+indulgences by the estrapade[414] and a zeal for orthodoxy.
+
+It became evident to Henry early in the spring that he was left
+substantially alone. His marriage had been kept secret with the intention
+that it should be divulged by the King of France to the pope when he met
+him at Marseilles; and as the pope had pretended an anxiety that either the
+King of England should be present in person at that interview, or should be
+represented by an ambassador of adequate rank, a train had been equipped
+for the occasion, the most magnificent which England could furnish. Time,
+meanwhile, passed on; the meeting, which was to have taken place first in
+January, and then in April, was delayed till October, and in the interval
+the papal brief had appeared in Flanders; the queen's pregnancy could not
+admit of concealment; and the evident proof which appeared that France was
+no longer to be depended upon, convinced the English government that they
+had nothing to hope for from abroad, and that Henry's best resources were
+to be found, where in fact they had always been, in the strength and
+affection of his own people.
+
+From this choking atmosphere, therefore, we now turn back to England and
+the English parliament; and the change is from darkness to light, from
+death to life. Here was no wavering, no uncertainty, no smiling faces with
+false hearts behind them; but the steady purpose of resolute men, who
+slowly, and with ever opening vision, bore the nation forward to the fair
+future which was already dawning.
+
+Parliament met at the beginning of February, a few days after the king's
+marriage, which, however, still remained a secret. It is, I think, no
+slight evidence of the calmness with which the statesmen of the day
+proceeded with their work, that in a session so momentous, in a session in
+which the decisive blow was to be struck of the most serious revolution
+through which the country as yet had passed, they should have first settled
+themselves calmly down to transact what was then the ordinary business of
+legislation, the struggle with the vital evils of society. The first nine
+statutes which were passed in this session were economic acts to protect
+the public against the frauds of money-making tradesmen; to provide that
+shoes and boots should be made of honest leather; that food should be sold
+at fair prices, that merchants should part with their goods at fair
+profits; to compel, or as far as the legislature was able to do it, to
+compel all classes of persons to be true men; to deal honestly with each
+other, in that high Quixotic sense of honesty which requires good subjects
+at all times and under all circumstances to consider the interests of the
+commonwealth as more important than their own. I have already spoken of
+this economic legislation, and I need not dwell now upon details of it;
+although under some aspects it may be thought that more which is truly
+valuable in English history lies in these unobtrusive statutes than in all
+our noisy wars, reformations, and revolutions. The history of this as of
+all other nations (or so much of it as there is occasion for any of us to
+know), is the history of the battles which it has fought and won with evil;
+not with political evil merely, or spiritual evil; but with all
+manifestations whatsoever of the devil's power. And to have beaten back, or
+even to have struggled against and stemmed in ever so small a degree those
+besetting basenesses of human nature, now held so invincible that the
+influences of them are assumed as the fundamental axioms of economic
+science; this appears to me a greater victory than Agincourt, a grander
+triumph of wisdom and faith and courage than even the English constitution
+or the English liturgy. Such a history, however, lies beside the purpose
+which I may here permit myself; and the two acts with which the session
+closed, alone in this place require our attention.
+
+The first of these is one of the many "Acts of Apparel," which are to be
+found in the early volumes of the statute book. The meaning of these laws
+becomes intelligible when we reflect upon the condition of the people. The
+English were an organised nation of soldiers; they formed an army
+perpetually ready for the field, where the degrees were determined by
+social position; and the dresses prescribed to the various orders of
+society were the graduated uniforms which indicated the rank of the
+wearers. When every man was a soldier, and every gentleman was an officer,
+the same causes existed for marking, by costume, the distinctions of
+authority, which lead to the answering differences in the modern regiments.
+
+The changing conditions of the country at the time of the Reformation, the
+growth of a middle class, with no landed possessions, yet made wealthy by
+trade or other industry, had tended necessarily to introduce confusion; and
+the policy of this reign, which was never more markedly operative than
+during the most critical periods of it, was to reinvigorate the discipline
+of the feudal system; and pending the growth of what might better suit the
+age, pending the great struggle in which the nation was engaged, to hold
+every man at his post. The statute specifies its object, and the motives
+with which it was passed.
+
+"Whereas," says the preamble, "divers laws, ordinances, and statutes have
+been with great deliberation and advice provided and established for the
+necessary repressing and avoiding the inordinate excess daily more and more
+used in the sumptuous and costly array and apparel accustomably worn in
+this realm, whereof hath ensued, and daily do chance such sundry high and
+notable inconveniences as be to the great and notorious detriment of the
+commonweal, the subversion of politic order in knowledge and distinction of
+people according to their preeminence and degrees, to the utter
+impoverishment and undoing of many light and inexpert persons inclined to
+pride, the mother of all vices: Be it enacted,"[415]--but I need not enter
+into the particulars of the uniforms worn by the nobles and gentlemen of
+the court of Henry VIII.; the temper, not the detail, is of importance; and
+of the wisdom or unwisdom of such enactments, we who live in a changed age
+should be cautious of forming a hasty opinion. The ends which the old
+legislation proposed to itself, have in latter ages been resigned as
+impracticable. We are therefore no longer adequate judges how far those
+ends may in other times have been attainable, and we can still less judge
+of the means through which the attainment of them was sought.
+
+The second act of which I have to speak is open to no such ambiguity; it
+remains among the few which are and will be of perpetual moment in our
+national history. The conduct of the pope had forced upon the parliament
+the reconsideration of the character of his supremacy; and when the
+question had once been asked, in the existing state of feeling but one
+answer to it was possible.
+
+The authority of the church over the state, the supreme kingship of Christ,
+and consequently of him who was held to be Christ's vicar, above all
+worldly sovereignties, was an established reality of medięval Europe. The
+princes had with difficulty preserved their jurisdiction in matters purely
+secular; while in matters spiritual, and in that vast section of human
+affairs in which the spiritual and the secular glide one into the other,
+they had been compelled--all such of them as lay within the pale of the
+Latin communion--to acknowledge a power superior to their own. To the popes
+was the ultimate appeal in all causes of which the spiritual courts had
+cognisance. Their jurisdiction had been extended by an unwavering pursuit
+of a single policy, and their constancy in the twelfth century was rewarded
+by absolute victory. In England, however, the field was no sooner won than
+it was again disputed, and the civil government gave way at last only when
+the danger seemed to have ceased. So long as the papacy was feared, so long
+as the successors of St. Peter held a sword which could inflict sensible
+wounds, and enforce obedience by penalties, the English kings had resisted
+both the theory and the application. While the pope was dangerous he was
+dreaded and opposed. When age had withered his arm, and the feeble
+lightnings flickered in harmless insignificance, they consented to withdraw
+their watchfulness, and his supremacy was silently allowed as an innocent
+superstition. It existed as some other institutions exist at the present
+day, with a merely nominal authority; with a tacit understanding, that the
+power which it was permitted to retain should be exerted only in conformity
+with the national will.
+
+Under these conditions the Tudor princes became loyal subjects to the Holy
+See, and so they would have willingly remained, had not Clement, in an evil
+hour for himself, forgotten the terms of the compact. He laid upon a legal
+fiction a strain which his predecessors, in their palmiest days, would have
+feared to attempt; and the nation, after grave remonstrance, which was only
+received with insults, exorcised the chimęra with a few resolute words for
+ever. The parliament, in asserting the freedom of England, carefully chose
+their language. They did not pass a new law, but they passed an act
+declaratory merely of the law which already existed, and which they were
+vindicating against illegal encroachment. "Whereas," says the Statute of
+Appeals, "by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is
+manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire,
+and so hath been accepted in the world; governed by one supreme head and
+king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the
+same; unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people,
+divided in terms by names of spiritualty and temporalty, be bound and ought
+to bear, next to God, a natural and humble obedience: he being also
+institute and furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with
+plenary, whole, and entire power, pre-eminence and authority, prerogative
+and jurisdiction, to render and yield justice and final determination to
+all manner of folk resident or subject within this his realm, without
+restraint or provocation to any foreign prince or potentate of the world:
+the body spiritual whereof having power when any cause of the law divine
+happened to come in question, or of spiritual learning, [such cause being]
+declared, interpret, and shewed by that part of the body politic called the
+spiritualty, now usually called the English church; (which also hath been
+reported and also found of that sort, that both for knowledge, integrity,
+and sufficiency of numbers, it hath been always thought to be, and is also
+at this hour sufficient and meet of itself, without the interfering of any
+exterior person or persons, to declare and determine all such doubts, and
+to administer all such offices and duties as to the administration of their
+rooms spiritual doth appertain): and the laws temporal, for trial of
+property of lands and goods, and for the conservation of the people of this
+realm in unity and peace, having been and yet being administered, adjudged,
+and executed by sundry judges and administers of the said body politic
+called the temporalty: and seeing that both these authorities and
+jurisdictions do conjoin together for the due administration of justice,
+the one to help the other: and whereas the king's most noble progenitors,
+and the nobility and commons of this said realm at divers and sundry
+parliaments, as well in the time of King Edward I., Edward III., Richard
+II., Henry IV., and other noble kings of this realm, made sundry
+ordinances, laws, and provisions for the conservation of the prerogatives,
+liberties, and pre-eminences of the imperial crown of this realm, and of
+the jurisdiction spiritual and temporal of the same, to keep it from the
+annoyance as well of the see of Rome as from the authority of other foreign
+potentates attempting the diminution or violation thereof, as often as from
+time to time any such annoyance or attempt might be known or espied: and
+notwithstanding the said good statutes and ordinances, and since the making
+thereof, divers inconveniences and dangers not provided for plainly by the
+said statutes, have risen and sprung by reason of appeals sued out of this
+realm to the see of Rome, in causes testamentary, causes of matrimony and
+divorce, right of tithes, oblations, and obventions, not only to the great
+inquietation, vexation, trouble, costs, and charges of the King's Highness,
+and many of his subjects and residents in this his realm; but also to the
+delay and let of the speedy determination of the said causes, for so much
+as parties appealing to the said court of Rome most commonly do the same
+for the delay of justice; and forasmuch as the great distance of way is so
+far out of this realm, so that the necessary proofs, nor the true knowledge
+of the causes, can neither there be so well known, nor the witnesses so
+well examined there as within this realm, so that the parties grieved by
+means of the said appeals be most times without remedy; in consideration
+hereof, all testamentary and matrimonial causes, and all suits for tithes,
+oblations, and obventions shall henceforth be adjudged in the spiritual and
+temporal courts within the realm, without regard to any process of foreign
+jurisdiction, or any inhibition, excommunication, or interdict. Persons
+procuring processes, inhibitions, appeals, or citations from the court of
+Rome, as well as their fautors, comforters, counsellors, aiders and
+abettors, all and every of them shall incur the penalties of premunire; and
+in all such cases as have hitherto admitted of appeal to Rome, the appeals
+shall be from the Archdeacon's court to the Bishop's court, from the
+Bishop's court to that of the Archbishop, and no further."[416]
+
+The act was carried through Parliament in February, but again, as with the
+Annates Bill, the king delayed his sanction till the post could reach and
+return from the Vatican. The Bishop of Bayonne wrote that there was hope
+that Clement might yet give way, and entreated that the king would send an
+"excusator," a person formally empowered to protest for him that he could
+not by the laws of England plead at a foreign tribunal; and that with this
+imperfect recognition of his authority the pope would be satisfied.
+
+Chastillon, the French ambassador, had an interview with the king, to
+communicate the bishop's message.
+
+"The morning after," Chastillon wrote, "his Majesty sent for me and desired
+me to repeat my words before the council. I obeyed; but the majority
+declared, that there was nothing in them to act upon, and that the king
+must not put himself in subjection. His Majesty himself, too, I found less
+warm than in his preceding conversation. I begged the council to be
+patient. I said everything that I could think of likely to weigh with the
+king, I promised him a sentence from our Holy Father declaring his first
+marriage null, his present marriage good. I urged him on all grounds,
+public and private, to avoid a rupture with the Holy See. Such a sentence,
+I said, would be the best security for the queen, and the safest guarantee
+for the unopposed succession of her offspring. If the marriage was
+confirmed by the Holy Father's authority, the queen's enemies would lose
+the only ground where they could make a stand. The peace of the realm was
+now menaced. The emperor talked loudly and made large preparations. Let the
+king be allied with France, and through France with the Holy See, and the
+emperor could do him no harm. Thus I said my proposals were for the benefit
+of the realm of his Majesty, and of the children who might be born to him.
+The king would act more prudently both for his own interest, and for the
+interest of his children, in securing himself, than in running a risk of
+creating universal confusion; and, besides, he owed something to the king
+his brother, who had worked so long and so hard for him.
+
+"After some further conversation, his Majesty took me aside into a garden,
+where he told me that for himself he agreed in what I had said; but he
+begged me to keep his confidence secret. He fears, I think, to appear to
+condescend too easily.
+
+"He will not, however, publish the acts of parliament till he sees what is
+done at Rome. The vast sums of money which used to be sent out of the
+country will go no longer; but in other respects he will be glad to return
+to good terms. He will send the excusator when he hears again from M. de
+Paris; and for myself, I think, that although the whole country is in a
+blaze against the pope, yet with the good will and assistance of the king,
+the Holy Father will be reinstated in the greater part of his
+prerogatives."
+
+But the hope that the pope would yield proved again delusive. Henry wrote
+to him himself in the spirit of his conversation with Chastillon. His
+letter was presented by Cardinal Tournon, and Clement said all that could
+be said in acknowledgment without making the one vital concession. But
+whenever it was put before him that the cause must be heard and decided in
+England and in no other place, he talked in the old language of uncertainty
+and impossibilities;[417] and Henry learning at the same time that a
+correspondence was going forward between Clement and Francis, with the
+secrets of which he was not made acquainted, went forward upon his own way.
+April brought with it the certainty that the expected concessions were
+delusive. Anne Boleyn's pregnancy made further delay impossible.
+D'Inteville, who had succeeded Chastillon as French ambassador, once more
+attempted to interfere, but in vain. Henry told him he could not help
+himself, the pope forced him to the course which he was pursuing, by the
+answer which he had been pleased to issue; and he could only encounter
+enmity with its own weapons. "The archbishop," d'Inteville wrote to
+Francis, "will try the question, and will give judgment. I entreated the
+king to wait till the conference at Nice, but he would not consent. I
+prayed him to keep the sentence secret till the pope had seen your Majesty;
+he replied it was impossible."[418]
+
+Thus the statute became law which transferred to the English courts of law
+the power so long claimed and exercised by the Roman see. There are two
+aspects under which it may be regarded, as there were two objects for which
+it was passed. Considered as a national act, few persons will now deny that
+it was as just in itself as it was politically desirable. If the pope had
+no jurisdiction over English subjects, it was well that he should be known
+to have none; if he had, it was equally well that such jurisdiction should
+cease. The question was not of communion between the English and Roman
+churches, which might or might not continue, but which this act would not
+affect. The pope might still retain his rights of episcopal precedency,
+whatever those might be, with all the privileges attached to it. The
+parliament merely declared that he possessed no right of interference in
+domestic disputes affecting persons and property.
+
+But the act had a special as well as a national bearing, and here it is
+less easy to arrive at a just conclusion. It destroyed the validity of
+Queen Catherine's appeal; it placed a legal power in the hands of the
+English judges to proceed to pass sentence upon the divorce; and it is open
+to the censure which we ever feel entitled to pass upon a measure enacted
+to meet the particular position of a particular person. When embarrassments
+have arisen from unforeseen causes, we have a right to legislate to prevent
+a repetition of those embarrassments. Our instincts tell us that no
+legislation should be retrospective, and should affect only positions which
+have been entered into with a full knowledge at the time of the condition
+of the laws.
+
+The statute endeavours to avoid the difficulty by its declaratory form; but
+again this is unsatisfactory; for that the pope possessed some authority
+was substantially acknowledged in every application which was made to him;
+and when Catherine had married under a papal dispensation, it was a strange
+thing to turn upon her, and to say, not only that the dispensation in the
+particular instance had been unlawfully granted, but that the pope had no
+jurisdiction in the matter by the laws of the land which she had entered.
+
+On the other hand, throughout the entire negotiations King Henry and his
+ministers had insisted jealously on the English privileges. They had
+declared from the first that they might, if they so pleased, fall back upon
+their own laws. In desiring that the cause might be heard by a papal legate
+in England, they had represented themselves rather as condescending to a
+form than acknowledging a right; and they had, in fact, in allowing the
+opening of Campeggio's court, fallen, all of them, even Henry himself,
+under the penalties of the statutes of provisors. The validity of
+Catherine's appeal they had always consistently denied. If the papal
+jurisdiction was to be admitted at all, it could only be through a minister
+sitting as judge within the realm of England; and the maxim, "Ne Angli
+extra Angliam litigare cogantur," was insisted upon as the absolute
+privilege of every English subject.
+
+Yet, if we allow full weight to these considerations, a feeling of painful
+uncertainty continues to cling to us; and in ordinary cases to be uncertain
+on such a point is to be in reality certain. The state of the law could not
+have been clear, or the statute of appeals would not have been required;
+and explain it as we may, it was in fact passed for a special cause against
+a special person; and that person a woman.
+
+How far the parliament was justified by the extremity of the case is a
+further question, which it is equally difficult to answer. The alternative,
+as I have repeatedly said, was an all but inevitable civil war, on the
+death of the king; and practically, when statesmen are entrusted with the
+fortunes of an empire, the responsibility is too heavy to allow them to
+consider other interests. Salus populi suprema lex, ever has been and ever
+will be the substantial canon of policy with public men, and morality is
+bound to hesitate before it censures them. There are some acts of injustice
+which no national interest can excuse, however great in itself that
+interest may be, or however certain to be attained by the means proposed.
+Yet government, in its easiest tax, trenches to a certain extent on natural
+right and natural freedom; and trenches further and further in proportion
+to the emergency with which it has to deal. How far it may go in this
+direction, or whether Henry VIII. and his parliament went too far, is a
+difficult problem; their best justification is an exceptive clause
+introduced into the act, which was intended obviously to give Queen
+Catherine the utmost advantage which was consistent with the liberties of
+the realm. "In case," says the concluding paragraph, "of any cause, or
+matter, or contention now depending for the causes before rehearsed, or
+that hereafter shall come into contention for any of the same causes in any
+of the foresaid courts, which hath, doth, shall, or may touch the king, his
+heirs or successors, kings of this realm; in all or every such case or
+cases the party grieved as aforesaid shall or may appeal from any of the
+said courts of this realm, to the spiritual prelates and other abbots and
+priors of the Upper House, assembled and convocate by the king's writ in
+convocation."[419] If Catherine's cause was as just as Catholics and
+English high churchmen are agreed to consider it, the English church might
+have saved her. If Catherine herself had thought first or chiefly of
+justice, she would not perhaps have accepted the arbitration of the English
+convocation; but long years before she would have been in a cloister.
+
+Thus it is that while we regret, we are unable to blame; and we cannot wish
+undone an act, to have shrunk from which might have spared a single heart,
+but _might_ have wrecked the English nation. We increase our pity for
+Catherine because she was a princess. We measure the magnitude of the evils
+which human beings endure by their position in the scale of society; and
+misfortunes which private persons would be expected to bear without
+excessive complaining, furnish matter for the lamentation of ages when they
+touch the sacred head which has been circled with a diadem. Let it be so.
+Let us compensate the queen's sorrows with unstinted sympathy; but let us
+not trifle with history, by confusing a political necessity with a moral
+crime.
+
+The English parliament, then, had taken up the gauntlet which the pope had
+flung to it with trembling fingers: and there remained nothing but for the
+Archbishop of Canterbury to make use of the power of which by law he was
+now possessed. And the time was pressing, for the new queen was enciente,
+and further concealment was not to be thought of. The delay of the
+interview between the pope and Francis, and the change in the demeanour of
+the latter, which had become palpably evident, discharged Henry of all
+promises by which he might have bound himself; and to hesitate before the
+menaces of the pope's brief would have been fatal.
+
+The act of appeals being passed, convocation was the authority to which the
+power of determining unsettled points of spiritual law seemed to have
+lapsed. In the month of April, therefore, Cranmer, now Archbishop of
+Canterbury,[420] submitted to it the two questions, on the resolution of
+which the sentence which he was to pass was dependent.
+
+The first had been already answered separately by the bench of bishops and
+by the universities, and had been agitated from end to end of Europe--was
+it lawful to marry the widow of a brother dying without issue, but having
+consummated his marriage; and was the Levitical prohibition of such a
+marriage grounded on a divine law, with which the pope could not dispense,
+or on a canon law of which a dispensation was permissible?[421]
+
+The pope had declared himself unable to answer; but he had allowed that the
+general opinion was against the power of dispensing,[422] and there could
+be little doubt, therefore, of the reply of the English convocation, or at
+least of the upper house. Fisher attempted an opposition; but wholly
+without effect. The, question was one in which the interests of the higher
+clergy were not concerned, and they were therefore left to the dominion of
+their ordinary understandings. Out of two hundred and sixty-three votes,
+nineteen only were in the pope's favour.[423]
+
+The lower house was less unanimous, as might have been expected, and as had
+been experienced before; the opposition spirit of the English clergy being
+usually then, as much as now, in the ratio of their poverty. But there too
+the nature of the case compelled an overwhelming majority.[424] It was
+decided by both houses that Pope Julius, in granting a licence for the
+marriage of Henry and Catherine, had exceeded his authority, and that this
+marriage was therefore, _ab initio_, void.
+
+The other question to be decided was one of fact; whether the marriage of
+Catherine with Prince Arthur had or had not been consummated, a matter
+which the Catholic divines conceived to be of paramount importance, but
+which to few persons at the present day will seem of any importance
+whosoever. We cannot even read the evidence which was produced without a
+sensation of disgust, although in those broader and less conscious ages the
+indelicacy was less obviously perceptible. And we may console ourselves
+with the hope that the discussion was not so wounding as might have been
+expected to the feelings of Queen Catherine, since at all official
+interviews, with all classes of persons, at all times and in all places,
+she appeared herself to court the subject.[425] There is no occasion in
+this place to follow her example. It is enough that Ferdinand, at the time
+of her first marriage, satisfied himself, after curious inquiry, that he
+might hope for a grandchild; and that the fact of the consummation was
+asserted in the treaty between England and Spain, which preceded the
+marriage with Henry, and in this supposed brief of Pope Julius which
+permitted it.[426] We cannot in consequence be surprised that the
+convocation accepted the conclusion which was sanctioned by so high
+authority, and we rather wonder at the persistency of Catherine's denials.
+With respect to this vote, therefore, we need notice nothing except that
+Dr. Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells[427] was one of an exceedingly small
+minority, who were inclined to believe that the denial might be true, and
+this bishop was one of the four who were associated with Cranmer when he
+sate at Dunstable for the trial of the cause.
+
+The ground being thus opened, and all preparations being completed, the
+archbishop composed a formal letter to the king, in which he dwelt upon the
+uncertain prospects of the succession, and the danger of leaving a question
+which closely affected it so long unsettled. He expatiated at length on the
+general anxiety which was felt throughout the realm, and requested
+permission to employ the powers attached to his office to bring it to some
+conclusion. The recent alterations had rendered the archbishop something
+doubtful of the nature of his position; he was diffident and unwilling to
+offend; and not clearly knowing in the exercise of the new authority which
+had been granted to him, whether the extension of his power was accompanied
+with a parallel extension of liberty in making use of it, he wrote two
+copies of this letter, with slight alterations of language, that the king
+might select between them the one which he would officially recognise. Both
+these copies are extant; both were written the same day from the same
+place; both were folded, sealed, and sent. It seems, therefore, that
+neither was Cranmer furnished beforehand with a draught of what he was to
+write; nor was his first letter sent back to him corrected. He must have
+acted by his own judgment; and a comparison of the two letters is singular
+and instructive. In the first he spoke of his office and duty in language,
+chastened indeed and modest, but still language of independence; and while
+he declared his unwillingness to "enterprise any part of that office"
+without his Grace's favour obtained, and pleasure therein first known, he
+implied nevertheless that his request was rather of courtesy than of
+obligation, and had arisen rather from a sense of moral propriety than
+because he might not legally enter on the exercise of his duty without the
+permission of the crown.[428]
+
+The moderate gleam of freedom vanishes in the other copy under a few pithy
+changes, as if Cranmer instinctively felt the revolution which had taken
+place in the relations of church and state. Where in the first letter he
+asked for his Grace's favour, in the second he asked for his Grace's favour
+_and licence_--where in the first he requested to know his Grace's pleasure
+as to his proceeding, in the second he desired his Most Excellent Majesty
+to _license_ him to proceed. The burden of both letters was the same, but
+the introduction of the little word license changed all. It implied a
+hesitating belief that the spiritual judges might perhaps thenceforward be
+on a footing with the temporal judges and the magistrates; that under the
+new constitution they were to understand that they held their offices not
+directly under God as they had hitherto pretended, but under God through
+the crown.
+
+The answer of Henry indicated that he had perceived the archbishop's
+uncertainty; and that he was desirous by the emphatic distinctness of his
+own language to spare him a future recurrence of it. He accepted the
+deferential version of the petition; but even Cranmer's anticipation of
+what might be required of him had not reached the reality. In running
+through the preamble, the king flung into the tone of it a character of
+still deeper humility;[429] and he conceded the desired licence in the
+following imperial style. "In consideration of these things,"--_i.e._ of
+the grounds urged by the archbishop for the petition--"albeit we being your
+King and Sovereign, do recognise no superior on earth but only God, and not
+being subject to the laws of any earthly creature; yet because ye be under
+us, by God's calling and ours, the most principal minister of our spiritual
+jurisdiction within this our Realm, who we think assuredly is so in the
+fear of God, and love towards the observance of his laws, to the which
+laws, we as a Christian king have always heretofore, and shall ever most
+obediently submit ourself, we will not therefore refuse (our pre-eminence,
+power, and authority to us and to our successors in this behalf
+nevertheless saved) your humble request, offer, and towardness--that is, to
+mean to make an end according to the will and pleasure of Almighty God in
+our said great cause of matrimony, which hath so long depended
+undetermined, to our great and grievous unquietness and burden of our
+conscience. Wherefore we, inclining to your humble petition, by these our
+letters sealed with our seal, and signed with our sign manual, do license
+you to proceed in the said cause, and the examination and final
+determination of the same; not doubting but that ye will have God and the
+justice of the said cause only before your eyes, and not to regard any
+earthly or worldly affection therein; for assuredly the thing which we most
+covet in the world, is so to proceed in all our acts and doings as may be
+the most acceptable to the pleasure of Almighty God our Creator, to the
+wealth and honour of us, our successors and posterity, and the surety of
+our Realm, and subjects within the same."[430]
+
+The vision of ecclesiastical independence, if Cranmer had indulged in it,
+must have faded utterly before his eyes on receiving this letter. As clergy
+who committed felony were no longer exempted from the penalties of their
+crimes; so henceforward the courts of the clergy were to fell into
+conformity with the secular tribunals. The temporal prerogatives of
+ecclesiastics as a body whose authority over the laity was countervailed
+with no reciprocal obligation, existed no longer. This is what the language
+of the king implied. The difficulty which the persons whom he was
+addressing experienced in realising the change in their position, obliged
+him to be somewhat emphatic in his assertion of it; and it might be
+imagined at first sight, that in insisting on his superiority to the
+officers of the spiritual courts, he claimed a right to dictate their
+sentences. But to venture such a supposition would be to mistake the nature
+of English sovereignty and the spirit of the change. The supreme authority
+in England was the law; and the king no more possessed, or claimed a power
+of controlling the judgment of the bishops or their ministers, than he
+could interfere with the jurisdiction of the judges of the bench. All
+persons in authority, whether in church or state, held their offices
+thenceforth by similar tenure; but the rule of the proceedings in each
+remained alike the law of the land, which Henry had no more thought of
+superseding by his own will than the most constitutional of modern princes.
+
+The closing sentences of his reply to Cranmer are striking, and it is
+difficult to believe that he did not mean what he was saying. From the
+first step in the process to the last, he maintained consistently that his
+only object was to do what was right. He was thoroughly persuaded that the
+course which he was pursuing was sanctioned by justice--and persons who are
+satisfied that he was entitled to feel such persuasion, need not refuse him
+the merit of sincerity, because (to use the language which Cromwell used at
+the fatal crisis of his life[431]) "It may be well that they who medelle in
+many matters are not able to answer for them all."
+
+Cranmer, then, being fortified with this permission, and taking with him
+the Bishops of London, Winchester, Lincoln, and Bath and Wells (the latter
+perhaps having been chosen in consequence of his late conduct in the
+convocation, to give show of fairness to the proceeding), went down to
+Dunstable and opened his court there. The queen was at Ampthill, six miles
+distant, having entered on her sad tenancy, it would seem, as soon as the
+place had been evacuated by the gaudy hunting party of the preceding
+summer. The cause being undecided, and her title being therefore uncertain,
+she was called by the safe name of "the Lady Catherine," and under this
+designation she was served with a citation from the archbishop to appear
+before him on Saturday, the 10th of May. The bearers of the summons were
+Sir Francis Bryan (an unfortunate choice, for he was cousin of the new
+queen, and insolent in his manner and bearing), Sir Thomas Gage, and Lord
+Vaux. She received them like herself with imperial sorrow. They delivered
+their message; she announced that she refused utterly to acknowledge the
+competency of the tribunal before which she was called; the court was a
+mockery; the archbishop was a shadow.[432] She would neither appear before
+him in person, nor commission any one to appear on her behalf.
+
+The court had but one course before it--she was pronounced contumacious,
+and the trial went forward. None of her household were tempted even by
+curiosity to be present. "There came not so much as a servant of hers to
+Dunstable, save such as were brought in as witnesses;" some of them having
+been required to give evidence in the re-examination which was thought
+necessary, as to the nature of the relation of their mistress with her
+first boy husband. As soon as this disgusting question had been
+sufficiently investigated, nothing remained but to pronounce judgment. The
+marriage with the king was declared to have been null and void from the
+beginning, and on the 23rd of May, the archbishop sent to London the
+welcome news that the long matter was at an end.[433]
+
+It was over;--over at last; yet so over, that the conclusion could but
+appear to the losing party a fresh injustice. To those who were concerned
+in bringing it to pass, to the king himself, to the nation, to Europe, to
+every one who heard of it at the time, it must have appeared, as it appears
+now to us who read the story of it, if a necessity, yet a most unwelcome
+and unsatisfying one. That the king remained uneasy is evident from the
+efforts which he continued to make, or which he allowed to be made,
+notwithstanding the brief of the 23rd of December, to gain the sanction of
+the pope. That the nation was uneasy, we should not require the evidence of
+history to tell us. "There was much murmuring in England," says Hall, "and
+it was thought by the unwise that the Bishop of Rome would curse all
+Englishmen; that the emperor and he would destroy all the people." And
+those who had no such fears, and whose judgment in the main approved of
+what had been done, were scandalised at the presentation to them at the
+instant of the publication of the divorce, of a new queen, four months
+advanced in pregnancy. This also was a misfortune which had arisen out of
+the chain of duplicities, a fresh accident swelling a complication which
+was already sufficiently entangled. It had been occasioned by steps which
+at the moment at which they were ventured, prudence seemed to justify; but
+we the more regret it, because, in comparison with the interests which were
+at issue, the few months of additional delay were infinitely unimportant.
+
+Nevertheless, we have reason to be thankful that the thing, well or ill,
+was over; seven years of endurance were enough for the English nation, and
+may be supposed to have gained even for Henry a character for patience. In
+some way, too, it is needless to say, the thing must have ended. The life
+of none of us is long enough to allow us to squander so large a section of
+it struggling in the meshes of a law-suit; and although there may be a
+difference of opinion on the wisdom of having first entered upon ground of
+such a kind, few thinking persons can suggest any other method in which
+either the nation or the king could have extricated themselves. Meanwhile,
+it was resolved that such spots and blemishes as hung about the transaction
+should be forgotten in the splendour of the coronation. If there was
+scandal in the condition of the queen, yet under another aspect that
+condition was matter of congratulation to a people so eager for an heir;
+and Henry may have thought that the sight for the first time in public of
+so beautiful a creature, surrounded by the most magnificent pageant which
+London had witnessed since the unknown day on which the first stone of it
+was laid, and bearing in her bosom the long-hoped-for inheritor of the
+English crown, might induce a chivalrous nation to forget what it was the
+interest of no loyal subject to remember longer, and to offer her an
+English welcome to the throne.
+
+In anticipation of the timely close of the proceedings at Dunstable, notice
+had been given in the city early in May, that preparations should be made
+for the coronation on the first of the following month. Queen Anne was at
+Greenwich, but, according to custom, the few preceding days were to be
+spent at the Tower; and on the 19th of May, she was conducted thither in
+state by the lord mayor and the city companies, with one of those splendid
+exhibitions upon the water which in the days when the silver Thames
+deserved its name, and the sun could shine down upon it out of the blue
+summer sky, were spectacles scarcely rivalled in gorgeousness by the
+world-famous wedding of the Adriatic. The river was crowded with boats, the
+banks and the ships in the pool swarmed with people; and fifty great barges
+formed the procession, all blazing with gold and banners. The queen herself
+was in her own barge, close to that of the lord mayor; and in keeping with
+the fantastic genius of the time, she was preceded up the water by "a foyst
+or wafter full or ordnance, in which was a great dragon continually moving
+and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst stood terrible monsters and
+wild men, casting fire and making hideous noise."[434] So, with trumpets
+blowing, cannon pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns of the ships, in
+a blaze of fireworks and splendour, Anne Boleyn was borne along to the
+great archway of the Tower, where the king was waiting on the stairs to
+receive her.
+
+And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the welcome news to
+have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life
+dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of expectation. No
+bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had been huddled over
+like a stolen love-match, and the marriage feast had been eaten in vexation
+and disappointment. These past mortifications were to be atoned for by a
+coronation pageant which the art and the wealth of the richest city in
+Europe should be poured out in the most lavish profusion to adorn.
+
+On the morning of the 31st of May, the families of the London citizens were
+stirring early in all houses. From Temple Bar to the Tower, the streets
+were fresh strewed with gravel, the footpaths were railed off along the
+whole distance, and occupied on one side by the guilds, their workmen, and
+apprentices, on the other by the city constables and officials in their
+gaudy uniforms, "with their staves in hand for to cause the people to keep
+good room and order."[435] Cornhill and Gracechurch Street had dressed
+their fronts in scarlet and crimson, in arras and tapestry, and the rich
+carpet-work from Persia and the East. Cheapside, to outshine her rivals,
+was draped even more splendidly in cloth of gold, and tissue, and velvet.
+The sheriffs were pacing up and down on their great Flemish horses, hung
+with liveries, and all the windows were thronged with ladies crowding to
+see the procession pass. At length the Tower guns opened, the grim gates
+rolled back, and under the archway in the bright May sunshine, the long
+column began slowly to defile. Two states only permitted their
+representatives to grace the scene with their presence--Venice and France.
+It was, perhaps, to make the most of this isolated countenance, that the
+French ambassador's train formed the van of the cavalcade. Twelve French
+knights came riding foremost in surcoats of blue velvet with sleeves of
+yellow silk, their horses trapped in blue, with white crosses powdered on
+their hangings. After them followed a troop of English gentlemen, two and
+two, and then the Knights of the Bath, "in gowns of violet, with hoods
+purfled with miniver like doctors." Next, perhaps at a little interval, the
+abbots passed on, mitred in their robes; the barons followed in crimson
+velvet, the bishops then, and then the earls and marquises, the dresses of
+each order increasing in elaborate gorgeousness. All these rode on in
+pairs. Then came alone Audeley, lord-chancellor, and behind him the
+Venetian ambassador and the Archbishop of York; the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, and Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne and of Paris, not now with
+bugle and hunting-frock, but solemn with stole and crozier. Next, the lord
+mayor, with the city mace in hand, the Garter in his coat of arms; and then
+Lord William Howard--Belted Will Howard, of the Scottish Border, Marshal of
+England. The officers of the queen's household succeeded the marshal in
+scarlet and gold, and the van of the procession was closed by the Duke of
+Suffolk, as high constable, with his silver wand. It is no easy matter to
+picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splendour which in such a pageant
+must have drawn along the London streets,--those streets which now we know
+so black and smoke-grimed, themselves then radiant with masses of colour,
+gold, and crimson, and violet. Yet there it was, and there the sun could
+shine upon it, and tens of thousands of eyes were gazing on the scene out
+of the crowded lattices.
+
+Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps however, it passed unheeded. Those
+eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near. In an open
+space behind the constable there was seen approaching "a white chariot,"
+drawn by two palfreys in white damask which swept the ground, a golden
+canopy borne above it making music with silver bells: and in the chariot
+sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful occasion of all this
+glittering homage; fortune's plaything of the hour, the Queen of
+England--queen at last--borne along upon the waves of this sea of glory,
+breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had risked her fair
+name, her delicacy, her honour, her self-respect, to win; and she had won
+it.
+
+There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing loose
+over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of gold
+and diamonds--most beautiful--loveliest--most favoured perhaps, as she
+seemed at that hour, of all England's daughters. Alas! "within the hollow
+round" of that coronet--
+
+  Kept death his court, and there the antick sate,
+  Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp.
+  Allowing her a little breath, a little scene
+  To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks,
+  Infusing her with self and vain conceit,
+  As if the flesh which walled about her life
+  Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus,
+  Bored through her castle walls; and farewell, Queen.
+
+Fatal gift of greatness! so dangerous ever! so more than dangerous in those
+tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the great deeps of
+thought; and nations are in the throes of revolution;--when ancient order
+and law and tradition are splitting in the social earthquake; and as the
+opposing forces wrestle to and fro, those unhappy ones who stand out above
+the crowd become the symbols of the struggle, and fall the victims of its
+alternating fortunes. And what if into an unsteady heart and brain,
+intoxicated with splendour, the outward chaos should find its way,
+converting the poor silly soul into an image of the same confusion,--if
+conscience should be deposed from her high place, and the Pandora box be
+broken loose of passions and sensualities and follies; and at length there
+be nothing left of all which man or woman ought to value, save hope of
+God's forgiveness.
+
+Three short years have yet to pass, and again, on a summer morning, Queen
+Anne Boleyn will leave the Tower of London--not radiant then with beauty on
+a gay errand of coronation, but a poor wandering ghost, on a sad tragic
+errand, from which she will never more return, passing away out of an earth
+where she may stay no longer, into a presence where, nevertheless, we know
+that all is well--for all of us--and therefore for her.
+
+But let us not cloud her shortlived sunshine with the shadow of the future.
+She went on in her loveliness, the peeresses following in their carriages,
+with the royal guard in their rear. In Fenchurch Street she was met by the
+children of the city schools; and at the corner of Gracechurch Street a
+masterpiece had been prepared of the pseudo-classic art, then so
+fashionable, by the merchants of the Styll Yard. A Mount Parnassus had been
+constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into a basin with four
+jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope
+at his feet, and on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or
+harps, and singing each of them some "posy" or epigram in praise of the
+queen, which was presented, after it had been sung, written in letters of
+gold.
+
+From Gracechurch Street, the procession passed to Leadenhall, where there
+was a spectacle in better taste, of the old English Catholic kind, quaint
+perhaps and forced, but truly and even beautifully emblematic. There was
+again a "little mountain," which was hung with red and white roses; a gold
+ring was placed on the summit, on which, as the queen appeared, a white
+falcon was made to "descend as out of the sky"--"and then incontinent came
+down an angel with great melody, and set a close crown of gold upon the
+falcon's head; and in the same pageant sat Saint Anne with all her issue
+beneath her; and Mary Cleophas with her four children, of the which
+children one made a goodly oration to the queen, of the fruitfulness of St.
+Anne, trusting that like fruit should come of her."[436]
+
+With such "pretty conceits," at that time the honest tokens of an English
+welcome, the new queen was received by the citizens of London. These scenes
+must be multiplied by the number of the streets, where some fresh fancy met
+her at every turn. To preserve the festivities from flagging, every
+fountain and conduit within the walls ran all day with wine; the bells of
+every steeple were ringing; children lay in wait with song, and ladies with
+posies, in which all the resources of fantastic extravagance were
+exhausted; and thus in an unbroken triumph--and to outward appearance
+received with the warmest affection--she passed under Temple Bar, down the
+Strand by Charing Cross to Westminster Hall. The king was not with her
+throughout the day; nor did he intend to be with her in any part of the
+ceremony. She was to reign without a rival, the undisputed sovereign of the
+hour.
+
+Saturday being passed in showing herself to the people, she retired for the
+night to "the king's manour house at Westminster," where she slept. On the
+following morning, between eight and nine o'clock, she returned to the
+hall, where the lord mayor, the city council, and the peers were again
+assembled, and took her place on the high dais at the top of the stairs
+under the cloth of state; while the bishops, the abbots, and the monks of
+the abbey formed in the area. A railed way had been laid with carpets
+across Palace Yard and the Sanctuary to the abbey gates, and when all was
+ready, preceded by the peers in their robes of parliament, the Knights of
+the Garter in the dress of the order, she swept out under her canopy, the
+bishops and the monks "solemnly singing." The train was borne by the old
+Duchess of Norfolk her aunt, the Bishops of London and Winchester on either
+side "bearing up the lappets of her robe." The Earl of Oxford carried the
+crown on its cushion immediately before her. She was dressed in purple
+velvet furred with ermine, her hair escaping loose, as she usually wore it,
+under a wreath of diamonds.
+
+On entering the abbey, she was led to the coronation chair Where she sat
+while the train fell into their places, and the preliminaries, of the
+ceremonial were despatched. Then she was conducted up to the high altar,
+and anointed Queen of England, and she received from the hands of Cranmer,
+fresh come in haste from Dunstable, with the last words of his sentence
+upon Catherine scarcely silent upon his lips, the golden sceptre, and St.
+Edward's crown.
+
+Did any twinge of remorse, any pang of painful recollection, pierce at that
+moment the incense of glory which she was inhaling? Did any vision flit
+across her of a sad mourning figure which once had stood where she was
+standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into the darkening twilight of a
+life cut short by sorrow? Who can tell? At such a time, that figure would
+have weighed heavily upon a noble mind, and a wise mind would have been
+taught by the thought of it, that although life be fleeting as a dream, it
+is long enough to experience strange vicissitudes of fortune. But Anne
+Boleyn was not noble and was not wise,--too probably she felt nothing but
+the delicious, all-absorbing, all-intoxicating present, and if that plain,
+suffering face presented itself to her memory at all, we may fear that it
+was rather as a foil to her own surpassing loveliness. Two years later, she
+was able to exult over Catherine's death; she is not likely to have thought
+of her with gentler feelings in the first glow and flush of triumph.
+
+We may now leave these scenes. They concluded in the usual English style,
+with a banquet in the great hall, and with all outward signs of enjoyment
+and pleasure. There must have been but few persons present however who did
+not feel that the sunshine of such a day might not last for ever, and that
+over so dubious a marriage no Englishman could exult with more than half a
+heart. It is foolish to blame lightly actions which arise in the midst of
+circumstances which are and can be but imperfectly known; and there may
+have been political reasons which made so much pomp desirable. Anne Boleyn
+had been the subject of public conversation for seven years, and Henry, no
+doubt, desired to present his jewel to them in the rarest and choicest
+setting. Yet to our eyes, seeing, perhaps, by the light of what followed, a
+more modest introduction would have appeared more suited to the doubtful
+nature of her position.
+
+At any rate we escape from this scene of splendour very gladly as from
+something unseasonable. It would have been well for Henry VIII. if he had
+lived in a world in which women could have been dispensed with; so ill, in
+all his relations with them, he succeeded. With men he could speak the
+right word, he could do the right thing; with women he seemed to be under a
+fatal necessity of mistake.
+
+It was now necessary, however, after this public step, to communicate in
+form to the emperor the divorce and the new marriage. The king was assured
+of the rectitude of the motives on which he had himself acted, and he knew
+at the same time that he had challenged the hostility of the papal world.
+Yet he did not desire a quarrel if there were means of avoiding it; and
+more than once he had shown respect for the opposition which he had met
+with from Charles, as dictated by honourable care for the interests of his
+kinswoman. He therefore, in the truest language which will be met with in
+the whole long series of the correspondence, composed a despatch for his
+ambassador at Brussels, and expressed himself in a tone of honest sorrow
+for the injury which he had been compelled to commit. Neither the coercion
+which the emperor had exerted over the pope, nor his intrigues with his
+subjects in Ireland and England, could deprive the nephew of Catherine of
+his right to a courteous explanation; and Henry directed Doctor Nicholas
+Hawkins in making his communication "to use only gentle words;" to express
+a hope that Charles would not think only of his own honour, but would
+remember public justice; and that a friendship of long standing, which the
+interests of the subjects of both countries were concerned so strongly in
+maintaining, might not be broken. The instructions are too interesting to
+pass over with a general description. After stating the grounds on which
+Henry had proceeded, and which Charles thoroughly understood, Hawkins was
+directed to continue thus:--
+
+"The King of England is not ignorant what respect is due unto the world.
+How much he hath laboured and travailed therein he hath sufficiently
+declared and showed in his acts and proceedings. If he had contemned the
+order and process of the world, or the friendship and amity of your
+Majesty, he needed not to have sent so often to the pope and to you both,
+nor continued and spent his time in delays. He might have done what he has
+done now, had it so liked him, with as little difficulty as now, if without
+such respect he would have followed his pleasure."
+
+The minister was then to touch the pope's behaviour and Henry's
+forbearance, and after that to say:--
+
+"Going forward in that way his Highness saw that he could come to no
+conclusion; and he was therefore compelled to step right forth out of the
+maze, and so to quiet himself at last. And is it not time to have an end in
+seven years? It is not to be asked nor questioned whether the matter hath
+been determined after the common fashion, but whether it hath in it common
+justice, truth, and equity. For observation of the common order, his Grace
+hath done what lay in him. Enforced by necessity he hath found the true
+order which he hath in substance followed with effect, and hath done as
+becometh him. He doubteth not but your Majesty, remembering his cause from
+the beginning hitherto, will of yourself consider and think, that among
+mortal men nothing should be immortal; and suits must once have an end, si
+possis recte, si non quocunque modo. If his Highness cannot as he would,
+then must he do as he may; and he that hath a journey to be perfected must,
+if he cannot go one way, essay another. For his matter with the pope, he
+shall deal with him apart. Your Majesty he taketh for his friend, and as to
+a friend he openeth these matters to you, trusting to find your Majesty no
+less friendly than he hath done heretofore."[437]
+
+If courtesy obliged Henry to express a confidence in the stability of the
+relations between himself and Charles, which it was impossible that he
+could have felt, yet in other respects this letter has the most pleasant
+merit of honesty. Hawkins was so much overcome by "the sweetness of it,"
+that "he nothing doubted if that the emperor read the same, by God's grace
+he should be utterly persuaded;" and although in this expectation he was a
+little over sanguine, as in calmer moments he would have acknowledged, yet
+plain speech is never without its value; and Charles himself after he had
+tried other expedients, and they had not succeeded with him, found it more
+prudent to acquiesce in what could no longer be altered, and to return to
+cordiality.
+
+For the present he remained under the impression that by the great body of
+the English the divorce was looked upon with coldness and even with
+displeasure, that the king was supported only by the complacency of a few
+courtiers, and that the nation were prepared to compel him to undo the
+wrong which had been inflicted upon Catherine and the princess. So he was
+assured by the Spanish party in England; so all the disaffected assured
+him, who were perhaps themselves deceived. He had secured Ireland, and
+Scotland also in so far as James's promises could secure it;[438] and he
+was not disposed to surrender for the present so promising a game till he
+had tried his strength and proved his weakness. He replied coldly to
+Hawkins, "That for the King of England's amity he would be glad thereof, so
+the said king would do works according. The matter was none of his; but the
+lady, whose rights had been violated, was his aunt and an orphan, and that
+he must see for her, and for her daughter his cousin."[439]
+
+The scarcely ambiguous answer was something softened the following day;
+perhaps only, however, because it was too plain a betrayal of his
+intentions. He communicated at once with Catherine, and Henry speedily
+learnt the nature of the advice which he had given to her. After the
+coronation had passed off so splendidly, when no disturbance had risen, no
+voice had been raised for her or for her daughter, the poor queen's spirit
+for the moment had sunk; she had thought of leaving the country, and flying
+with the Princess Mary to Spain. The emperor sent to urge her to remain a
+little longer, guaranteeing her, if she could command her patience, an
+ample reparation for her injuries. Whatever might appear upon the surface,
+the new queen, he was assured, was little loved by the people, and "they
+were ready to join with any prince who would espouse her quarrel."[440] All
+classes, he said, were agreed in one common feeling of displeasure. They
+were afraid of a change of religion; they were afraid of the wreck of their
+commerce; and the whole country was fast ripening towards insurrection. The
+points on which he relied as the occasion of the disaffection betrayed the
+sources of his information. He was in correspondence with the regular
+clergy through Peto at Antwerp, and through his Flemish subjects with
+merchants of London. Among both these classes, as well as among the White
+Rose nobles, he had powerful adherents; and it could not have been
+forgotten in the courts, either of London or Brussels, that within the
+memory of living men, a small band of exiles, equipped by a Duke of
+Burgundy, had landed at a Yorkshire village, and in a month had
+revolutionised the kingdom.
+
+In the eyes of Charles there was no reason why an attempt which had
+succeeded once might not succeed again under circumstances seemingly of far
+fairer promise. The strength of a party of insurrection is a power which
+official statesmen never justly comprehend. It depends upon moral
+influences, which they are professionally incapable of appreciating. They
+are able complacently to ignore the existence of substantial disaffection
+though all society may be undermined; they can build their hopes, When it
+suits their convenience, on the idle trifling of superficial discontent. In
+the present instance there was some excuse for the mistake. That in England
+there really existed an active and organised opposition, prepared, when
+opportunity offered, to try the chances of rebellion, was no delusion of
+persons who measured facts by their desires; it was an ascertained peril of
+serious magnitude, which might be seriously calculated upon; and if the
+experiment was tried, reasonable men might fairly be divided in opinion on
+the result to be expected.
+
+In the meantime the government had been obliged to follow up the coronation
+of the new queen by an act which the situation of the kingdom explained and
+excused; but which, if Catherine had been no more than a private person,
+would have been wanton cruelty. Among the people she still bore her royal
+title; but the name of queen, so long as she was permitted to retain it,
+was an allowed witness against the legality of the sentence at Dunstable.
+There could not be "two queens" in England,[441] and one or other must
+retire from the designation. A proclamation was therefore issued by the
+council, declaring, that in consequence of the final proofs that the Lady
+Catherine had never been lawfully married to the king, she was to bear
+thenceforward the title which she had received after the death of her first
+husband, and be called the Princess Dowager.
+
+Harsh as this measure was, she had left no alternative to the government by
+which to escape the enforcement of it, by her refusal to consent to any
+form of compromise. If she was queen, Anne Boleyn was not queen. If she was
+queen, the Princess Mary remained the heir to the crown, and the expected
+offspring of Anne would be illegitimate. If the question had been merely of
+names, to have moved it would have been unworthy and wicked; but where
+respect for private feeling was incompatible with the steps which a nation
+felt necessary in order to secure itself against civil convulsions, private
+feeling was compelled not unjustly to submit to injury. Mary, though still
+a girl, had inherited both her father's will and her mother's obstinacy.
+She was in correspondence, as we have seen, with the Nun of Kent, and aware
+at least, if she was not further implicated in it, of a conspiracy to place
+her on the throne. Charles was engaged in the same designs; and it will not
+be pretended that Catherine was left without information of what was going
+forward, or that her own conduct was uninfluenced by policy. These
+intrigues it was positively necessary to stifle, and it was impossible to
+leave a pretext of which so powerful a use might be made in the hands of a
+party whose object was not only to secure to the princess her right to
+succeed her father, but to compel him by arms either to acknowledge it, or
+submit to be deposed.[442]
+
+Our sympathies are naturally on the side of the weak and the unsuccessful.
+State considerations lose their force after the lapse of centuries, when no
+interests of our own are any longer in jeopardy; and we feel for the great
+sufferers of history only in their individual capacity, without recalling
+or caring for the political exigencies to which they were sacrificed. It is
+an error of disguised selfishness, the counterpart of the carelessness with
+which in our own age, when we are ourselves constituents of an interested
+public, we ignore what it is inconvenient to remember.
+
+Thus, therefore, on one hot Midsummer Sunday in this year 1533, the people
+gathering to church in every parish through the English counties, read,
+nailed upon the doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that the Lady
+Catherine of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not to be
+called by that title any more, but was to be called Princess Dowager, and
+so to be held and esteemed. The proclamation, we may suppose, was read with
+varying comments; of the reception of it in the northern counties, the
+following information was forwarded to the crown. The Earl of Derby,
+lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had
+arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on
+the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness
+and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses,
+which he had sent with his letter, and which were to the following
+effect:--
+
+Richard Clark deposeth that the said James Harrison reading the
+proclamation, said that Queen Catherine was queen, Nan Bullen should not be
+queen, nor the king should be no king but on his bearing.
+
+William Dalton deposeth, that in his hearing the above-named James said, I
+will take none for queen but Queen Catherine--who the devil made Nan
+Bullen, that hoore, queen? I will never take her for queen--and he the said
+William answered, "Hold thy peace, thou wot'st not what thou sayest--but
+that thou art a priest I should punish thee, that others should take
+example."
+
+Richard Sumner and John Clayton depose, that they came in company with the
+said James from Perbalt to Eccleston, when the said James did say, "This is
+a marvellous world--the king will put down the order of priests and destroy
+the Sacrament, but he cannot reign long, for York will be in London
+hastily."[443]
+
+Here was the later growth of the spirit which we saw a few months
+previously in the monks of Furness. The mutterings of discontent had
+developed into plain open treason, confident of success, and scarcely
+caring to conceal itself--and Yorkshire was preparing for rebellion and
+"the Pilgrimage of Grace."
+
+There is another quarter also into which we must follow the proclamation,
+and watch the effect of the royal order in a scene where it is well that we
+should for a few moments rest. Catherine was still at Ampthill, surrounded
+by her own attendants, who formed an inner circle, shielding her retirement
+against impertinent curiosity. She rarely or never allowed herself to be
+seen; Lord Mountjoy, with an official retinue, was in attendance in the
+house; but the occupation was not a pleasant one, and he was as willing to
+respect the queen's seclusion as she to remain secluded. Injunctions
+arrived however from the court at the end of June, which compelled him to
+request an interview; a deputation of the privy council had come down to
+inform the ex-queen of the orders of the government, and to desire that
+they might be put in force in her own family. Aware probably of the nature
+of the communication which was to be made to her, she refused repeatedly to
+admit them to her presence. At length, however, she nerved herself for the
+effort, and on the 3rd of July Mountjoy and the state commissioners were
+informed that she was ready to receive them.
+
+As they entered her room she was lying on a sofa. She had a bad cough, and
+she had hurt her foot with a pin, and was unable to stand or walk. Her
+attendants were all present by her own desire; she was glad to see around
+her some sympathising human faces, to enable her to endure the cold hard
+eyes of the officials of the council.
+
+She inquired whether the message was to be delivered in writing or by word
+of mouth.
+
+They replied that they had brought with them instructions which they were
+to read, and that they were further charged with a message which was to be
+delivered verbally. She desired that they would read their written
+despatch. It was addressed to the Princess Dowager, and she at once
+excepted to the name. She was not Princess Dowager, she said, but queen,
+and the king's true wife. She came to the king a clear maid for any bodily
+knowledge of Prince Arthur; she had borne him lawful issue and no bastard,
+and therefore queen she was, and queen she would be while she lived.
+
+The commissioners were prepared for the objection, and continued, without
+replying, to read. The paper contained a statement of worn-out unrealities;
+the old story of the judgment of the universities and the learned men, the
+sentence of convocation, and of the houses of parliament; and, finally, the
+fact of substantial importance, that the king, acting as he believed
+according to the laws of God, had married the Lady Anne Boleyn, who was now
+his lawful wife, and anointed Queen of England.
+
+Oh yes, she answered when they had done, we know that, and "we know the
+authority by which it has been done--more by power than justice." The
+king's learned men were learned heretics; the honest learning was for her.
+As for the seals of the universities there were strange stories about the
+way in which they had been obtained. The universities and the parliament
+had done what the king bade them; and they had gone against their
+consciences in doing it; but it was of no importance to her--she was in the
+hands of the pope, who was God's vicar, and she acknowledged no other
+judge.
+
+The commissioners informed her of the decision of the council that she was
+no longer to bear the title of queen. It stood, they said, neither with the
+laws of God nor man, nor with the king's honour, to have two queens named
+within the realm; and in fact, there was but one queen, the king's lawful
+wife, to whom he was now married.
+
+She replied shortly that she was the king's lawful queen, and none other.
+
+There was little hope in her manner that anything which could be said would
+move her; but her visitors were ordered to try her to the uttermost.
+
+The king, they continued, was surprised that she could be so disobedient;
+and not only that she was disobedient herself, but that she allowed and
+encouraged her servants in the same conduct.
+
+She was ready to obey the king; she answered, when she could do so without
+disobeying God; but she could not damn her soul even for him. Her servants,
+she said, must do the best they could; they were standing round her as she
+was speaking; and she turned to them with an apology, and a hope that they
+would pardon her. She would hinder her cause, she said; and put her soul in
+danger, if on their account she were to relinquish her name, and she could
+not do it.
+
+The deputation next attempted her on her worldly side. If she would obey,
+they informed her that she would be allowed not only her jointure as
+Princess Dowager and her own private fortune, but all the settlements which
+had been made upon her on her marriage with the king.
+
+She "passed not upon possessions, in regard of this matter," she replied.
+It touched her conscience, and no worldly considerations were of the
+slightest moment.
+
+In disobeying the king, they said; seeing that she was none other than his
+subject, she might give cause for dissension and disturbance; and she might
+lose the favour of the people.
+
+She "trusted not," she replied--she "never minded it, nor would she"--she
+"desired only to save her right; and if she should lose the favour of the
+people in defending that right, yet she trusted to go to heaven cum famā et
+infamiā."
+
+Promises and persuasions being unavailing, they tried threats. She was told
+that if she persisted in so obstinate a course, the king would be obliged
+to make known to the world the offers which he had made to her, and the ill
+reception which they had met with--and then he would perhaps withdraw those
+offers, and conceive some evil opinions of high displeasure towards her.
+
+She answered that there was no manner of offers neither of lands nor goods
+that she had respect unto in comparison of her cause--and as to the loss of
+the king's affection, she trusted to God, to whom she would daily pray for
+him.
+
+The learned council might as well have reasoned with the winds; or
+threatened the waves of the sea. But they were not yet weary, and their
+next effort was as foolish as it was ungenerous. They suggested, "that if
+she did reserve the name of queen, it was thought that she would do it of a
+vain desire and appetite of glory; and further, she might be an occasion
+that the king would withdraw his love from her most dear daughter the Lady
+Princess, which should chiefly move her, if none other cause did."
+
+They must have known little of Catherine, if they thought she could be
+influenced by childish vanity. It was for no vain glory that she cared, she
+answered proudly; she was the king's true wife, and her conscience forbade
+her to call herself otherwise; the princess was his true begotten child;
+and as God hath given her to them, so for her part she would render her
+again; neither for daughter, family, nor possessions, would she yield in
+her cause; and she made a solemn protestation, calling on every one present
+to bear witness to what she said, that the king's wife she was, and such
+she would take herself to be, and that she would never surrender the name
+of queen till the pope had decided that she must bear it no longer.
+
+So ended the first interview. Catherine, before the commissioners left her,
+desired to have a copy of the proposals which they had brought, that she
+might translate and send them to Rome. They returned with them the next
+day, when she requested to see the report which they intended to send to
+the council of the preceding conversation. It was placed in her hands; and
+as she read it and found there the name of Princess Dowager, she took a pen
+and dashed out the words, the mark of which indignant ink-stroke may now be
+seen in the letter from which this account is taken.[444] With the accuracy
+of the rest she appeared to be satisfied--only when she found again their
+poor suggestion that she was influenced by vanity, she broke out with a
+burst of passionate indignation.
+
+"I would rather be a poor beggar's wife," she said, "and be sure of heaven,
+than queen of all the world, and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own
+consent. I stick not so for vain glory, but because I know myself the
+king's true wife--and while you call me the king's subject, I was his
+subject while he took me for his wife. But if he take me not for his wife,
+I came not into this Realm as merchandise, nor to be married to any
+merchant; nor do I continue in the same but as his lawful wife, and not as
+a subject to live under his dominion otherwise. I have always demeaned
+myself well and truly towards the king--and if it can be proved that either
+in writing to the pope or any other, I have either stirred or procured
+anything against his Grace, or have been the means to any person to make
+any motion which might be prejudicial to his Grace or to his Realm, I am
+content to suffer for it. I have done England little good, and I should be
+sorry to do it any harm. But if I should agree to your motions and
+persuasions, I should slander myself, and confess to have been the king's
+harlot for twenty-four years. The cause, I cannot tell by what subtle
+means, has been determined here within the king's Realm, before a man of
+his own making, the Bishop of Canterbury, no person indifferent I think in
+that behalf; and for the indifference of the place, I think the place had
+been more indifferent to have been judged in hell; for no truth can be
+suffered here, whereas the devils themselves I suppose do tremble to see
+the truth in this cause so sore oppressed."[445]
+
+Most noble, spirited, and like a queen. Yet she would never have been
+brought to this extremity, and she would have shown a truer nobleness, if
+four years before she could have yielded at the pope's entreaty on the
+first terms which were proposed to her. Those terms would have required no
+humiliating confessions; they would have involved no sentence on her
+marriage nor touched her daughter's legitimacy. She would have broken no
+law of God, nor seemed to break it. She was required only to forget her own
+interests; and she would not forget them, though all the world should be
+wrecked by her refusal. She denied that she was concerned in "motions
+prejudicial to the king or to the Realm," but she must have placed her own
+interpretation on the words, and would have considered excommunication and
+interdict a salutary discipline to the king and parliament. She knew that
+this sentence was imminent, that in its minor form it had already fallen;
+and she knew that her nephew and her friends in England were plotting to
+give effect to the decree. But we may pass over this. It is not for an
+English writer to dwell upon those faults of Catherine of Arragon, which
+English remorse has honourably insisted on forgetting. Her injuries,
+inevitable as they were, and forced upon her in great measure by her own
+wilfulness, remain among the saddest spots in the pages of our history.
+
+One other brief incident remains to be noticed here, to bring up before the
+imagination the features of this momentous summer. It is contained in the
+postscript of a letter of Cranmer to Hawkins the ambassador in Germany; and
+the manner in which the story is told is no less suggestive than the story
+itself.
+
+The immediate present, however awful its import, will ever seem common and
+familiar to those who live and breathe in the midst of it. In the days of
+the September massacre at Paris, the theatres were open as usual; men ate,
+and drank, and laughed, and cried, and went about their common work,
+unconscious that those days which were passing by them, so much like other
+days, would remain the _dies nefasti_, accursed in the memory of mankind
+for ever. Nothing is terrible, nothing is sublime in human things, so long
+as they are before our eyes. The great man has so much in common with men
+in general, the routine of daily life, in periods the most remarkable in
+history, contains so much that is unvarying, that it is only when time has
+done its work; and all which was unimportant has ceased to be remembered,
+that such men and such times stand out in their true significance. It might
+have been thought that to a person like Cranmer, the court at Dunstable,
+the coronation of the new queen, the past out of which these things had
+risen, and the future which they threatened to involve, would have seemed
+at least serious; and that engaged as he had been as a chief actor, in a
+matter which, if it had done nothing else, had broken the heart of a
+high-born lady whom once he had honoured as his queen, he would have been
+either silent about his exploits, or if he had spoken of them, would have
+spoken not without some show of emotion. We look for a symptom of feeling,
+but we do not find it. When the coronation festivities were concluded he
+wrote to his friend an account of what had been done by himself and others
+in the light gossiping tone of easiest content; as if he were describing
+the common incidents of a common day. It is disappointing, and not wholly
+to be approved of. Still less can we approve of the passage with which he
+concludes his letter.
+
+"Other news we have none notable, but that one Frith, which was in the
+Tower in prison,[446] was appointed by the King's Grace to be examined
+before me, my Lord of London, my Lord of Winchester, my Lord of Suffolk, my
+Lord Chancellor, and my Lord of Wiltshire; whose opinion was so notably
+erroneous that we could not dispatch him, but were fain to leave him to the
+determination of his ordinary, which is the Bishop of London. His said
+opinion is of such nature, that he thought it not necessary to be believed
+as an article of our faith that there is the very corporeal presence of
+Christ within the host and sacrament of the altar; and holdeth on this
+point much after the opinion of Oecolampadius.
+
+"And surely I myself sent for him three or four times to persuade him to
+leave that imagination. But for all that we could do therein, he would not
+apply to any counsel. Notwithstanding now he is at a final end with all
+examinations; for my Lord of London hath given sentence, and delivered him
+to the secular power when he looketh every day to go unto the fire. And
+there is also condemned with him one Andrew a tailor for the self-same
+opinion; and thus fare you well."[447]
+
+These victims went as they were sentenced, dismissed to their martyr's
+crowns at Smithfield, as Queen Anne Boleyn but a few days before had
+received her golden crown at the altar of Westminster Abbey. Twenty years
+later another fire was blazing under the walls of Oxford; and the hand
+which was now writing these light lines was blackening in the flames of it,
+paying there the penalty of the same "imagination" for which Frith and the
+poor London tailor were with such cool indifference condemned. It is
+affecting to know that Frith's writings were the instruments of Cranmer's
+conversion; and the fathers of the Anglican church have left a monument of
+their sorrow for the shedding of this innocent blood in the Order of the
+Communion service, which closes with the very words on which the primate,
+with his brother bishops, had sate in judgment.[448]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PROTESTANTS
+
+Where changes are about to take place of great and enduring moment, a kind
+of prologue, on a small scale, sometimes anticipates the true opening of
+the drama; like the first drops which give notice of the coming storm, or
+as if the shadows of the reality were projected forwards into the future,
+and imitated in dumb show the movements of the real actors in the story.
+
+Such a rehearsal of the English Reformation was witnessed at the close of
+the fourteenth century, confused, imperfect, disproportioned, to outward
+appearance barren of results; yet containing a representative of each one
+of the mixed forces by which that great change was ultimately effected, and
+foreshadowing even something of the course which it was to run.
+
+There was a quarrel with the pope upon the extent of the papal privileges;
+there were disputes between the laity and the clergy,--accompanied, as if
+involuntarily, by attacks on the sacramental system and the Catholic
+faith,--while innovation in doctrine was accompanied also with the tendency
+which characterised the extreme development of the later
+Protestants--towards political republicanism, the fifth monarchy, and
+community of goods. Some account of this movement must be given in this
+place, although it can be but a sketch only. "Lollardry"[449] has a history
+of its own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation.
+It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced
+their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on
+which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out,
+and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the
+name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil
+from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy
+into their language; and in the word _miscreant_, misbeliever, as the
+synonym of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible record of
+the popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe.
+
+The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the see of
+Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and fifty
+years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the
+archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and
+exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church had
+recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been
+conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The practice which then became
+established was in accordance with the general spirit of the English
+constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the cathedral chapter applied to the
+crown for a congé d'élire. The application was a form; the consent was
+invariable. A bishop was then elected by a majority of suffrages; his name
+was submitted to the metropolitan, and by him to the pope. If the pope
+signified his approval, the election was complete; consecration followed;
+and the bishop having been furnished with his bulls of investiture, was
+presented to the king, and from him received "the temporalities" of his
+see. The mode in which the great abbots were chosen was precisely similar;
+the superiors of the orders to which the abbeys belonged were the channels
+of communication with the pope, in the place of the archbishops; but the
+elections in themselves were free, and were conducted in the same manner.
+The smaller church benefices, the small monasteries or parish churches,
+were in the hands of private patrons, lay or ecclesiastical; but in the
+case of each institution a reference was admitted, or was supposed to be
+admitted, to the court of Rome.
+
+There was thus in the pope's hand an authority of an indefinite kind, which
+it was presumed that his sacred office would forbid him to abuse, but
+which, however, if he so unfortunately pleased, he might abuse at his
+discretion. He had absolute power over every nomination to an English
+benefice; he might refuse his consent till such adequate reasons, material
+or spiritual, as he considered sufficient to induce him to acquiesce, had
+been submitted to his consideration. In the case of nominations to the
+religious houses, the superiors of the various orders residing abroad had
+equal facilities for obstructiveness; and the consequence of so large a
+confidence in the purity of the higher orders of the Church became visible
+in an act of parliament which it was found necessary to pass in
+1306-7.[450]
+
+"Of late," says this act, "it has come to the knowledge of the king, by the
+grievous complaint of the honourable persons, lords, and other noblemen of
+his realm, that whereas monasteries, priories, and other religious houses
+were founded to the honour and glory of God, and the advancement of holy
+church, by the king and his progenitors, and by the said noblemen and their
+ancestors; and a very great portion of lands and tenements have been given
+by them to the said monasteries, priories, and religious houses, and the
+religious men serving God in them; to the intent that clerks and laymen
+might be admitted in such houses, and that sick and feeble folk might be
+maintained, hospitality, almsgiving, and other charitable deeds might be
+done, and prayers be said for the souls of the founders and their heirs;
+the abbots, priors, and governors of the said houses, _and certain aliens
+their superiors_, as the abbots and priors of the Cistertians, the
+Premonstrants, the orders of Saint Augustine and of Saint Benedict, and
+many more of other religions and orders have at their own pleasure set
+divers heavy, unwonted heavy and importable tallages, payments, and
+impositions upon every of the said monasteries and houses subject unto
+them, in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, without the privity of the
+king and his nobility, contrary to the laws and customs of the said realm;
+and thereby the number of religious persons being oppressed by such
+tallages, payments, and impositions, the service of God is diminished, alms
+are not given to the poor, the sick, and the feeble; the healths of the
+living and the souls of the dead be miserably defrauded; hospitality,
+alms-giving, and other godly deeds do cease; and so that which in times
+past was charitably given to godly uses and to the service of God, is now
+converted to an evil end, by permission whereof there groweth great scandal
+to the people." To provide against a continuance of these abuses, it was
+enacted that no "religious" persons should, under any pretence or form,
+send out of the kingdom any kind of tax, rent, or tallage; and that "priors
+aliens" should not presume to assess any payment, charge, or other burden
+whatever upon houses within the realm.[451]
+
+The language of this act was studiously guarded. The pope was not alluded
+to; the specific methods by which the extortion was practised were not
+explained; the tax upon presentations to benefices, either having not yet
+distinguished itself beyond other impositions, or the government trusting
+that a measure of this general kind might answer the desired end. Lucrative
+encroachments, however, do not yield so easily to treatment; nearly fifty
+years after it became necessary to re-enact the same statute; and while
+recapitulating the provisions of it, the parliament found it desirable to
+point out more specifically the intention with which it was passed.
+
+The popes in the interval had absorbed in their turn from the heads of the
+religious orders, the privileges which by them had been extorted from the
+affiliated societies. Each English benefice had become the fountain of a
+rivulet which flowed into the Roman exchequer, or a property to be
+distributed as the private patronage of the Roman bishop: and the English
+parliament for the first time found itself in collision with the Father of
+Christendom.
+
+"The pope," says the fourth of the twenty-fifth of Edward III.,
+"accroaching to himself the signories of the benefices within the realm of
+England, doth give and grant the same to aliens which did never dwell in
+England, and to cardinals which could not dwell here, and to others as well
+aliens as denizens, whereby manifold inconveniences have ensued." "Not
+regarding" the statute of Edward I., he had also continued to present to
+bishopricks, abbeys, priories, and other valuable preferments: money in
+large quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds of these
+offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the papal
+nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law, and were
+conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were sold in the
+papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an Englishman or
+a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elections to bishopricks
+should be free as in time past, that the rights of patrons should be
+preserved, and penalties of imprisonment, forfeiture, or outlawry,
+according to the complexion of the offence, should be attached to all
+impetration of benefices from Rome by purchase or otherwise.[452]
+
+If statute law could have touched the evil, these enactments would have
+been sufficient for the purpose; but the influence of the popes in England
+was of that subtle kind which was not so readily defeated. The law was
+still defied, or still evaded; and the struggle continued till the close of
+the century, the legislature labouring patiently, but ineffectually, to
+confine with fresh enactments their ingenious adversary.[453]
+
+At length symptoms appeared of an intention on the part of the popes to
+maintain their claims with spiritual censures, and the nation was obliged
+to resolve upon the course which, in the event of their resorting to that
+extremity, it would follow. The lay lords[454] and the House of Commons
+found no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion. They passed a fresh penal
+statute with prohibitions even more emphatically stringent, and decided
+that "if any man brought into this realm any sentence, summons, or
+excommunication, contrary to the effect of the statute, he should incur
+pain of life and members, with forfeiture of goods; and if any prelate made
+execution of such sentence, his temporalities should be taken from him, and
+should abide in the king's hands till redress was made."[455]
+
+So bold a measure threatened nothing less than open rupture. The act,
+however, seems to have been passed in haste, without determined
+consideration; and on second thoughts, it was held more prudent to attempt
+a milder course. The strength of the opposition to the papacy lay with the
+Commons.[456] When the session of parliament was over, a great council was
+summoned to reconsider what should be done, and an address was drawn up,
+and forwarded to Rome, with a request that the then reigning pope would
+devise some manner by which the difficulty could be arranged.[457] Boniface
+IX. replied with the same want of judgment which was shown afterwards on an
+analogous occasion by Clement VII. He disbelieved the danger; and daring
+the government to persevere, he granted a prebendal stall at Wells to an
+Italian cardinal, to which a presentation had been made already by the
+king. Opposing suits were instantly instituted between the claimants in the
+courts of the two countries. A decision was given in England in favour of
+the nominee of the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were
+excommunicated.[458] The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a
+struggle of force, and the government had no alternative but to surrender
+at discretion, or to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation.
+
+The proceedings on this occasion seem to have been unusual, and significant
+of the importance of the crisis. Parliament either was sitting at the time
+when the excommunication was issued, or else it was immediately assembled;
+and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of a petition to the king, a
+declaration of the circumstances which had occurred. After having stated
+generally the English law on the presentation to benefices, "Now of late,"
+they added, "divers processes be made by his Holiness the Pope, and
+censures of excommunication upon certain bishops, because they have made
+execution of the judgments [given in the king's courts], to the open
+disherison of the crown; whereby, if remedy be not provided, the crown of
+England, which hath been so free at all times, that it has been in no
+earthly subjection, should be submitted to the pope; and the laws and
+statutes of the realm by him be defeated and avoided at his will, in
+perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of the king our lord, his crown,
+his regality, and all his realm." The Commons, therefore, on their part,
+declared, "That the things so attempted were clearly against the king's
+crown and his regality, used and approved of in the time of all his
+progenitors, and therefore they and all the liege commons of the realm
+would stand with their said lord the king, and his said crown, in the cases
+aforesaid, to live and die."[459] Whether they made allusion to the act of
+1389 does not appear--a measure passed under protest from one of the
+estates of the realm was possibly held unequal to meet the emergency--at
+all events they would not rely upon it. For after this peremptory assertion
+of their own opinion, they desired the king, "and required him in the way
+of justice," to examine severally the lords spiritual and temporal how they
+thought, and how they would stand.[460] The examination was made, and the
+result was satisfactory. The lay lords replied without reservation that
+they would support the crown. The bishops (they were in a difficulty for
+which all allowance must be made) gave a cautious, but also a manly answer.
+They would not affirm, they said, that the pope had a right to
+excommunicate them in such cases, and they would not say that he had not.
+It was clear, however, that legal or illegal, such excommunication was
+against the privileges of the English crown, and therefore that, on the
+whole, they would and ought to be with the crown, _loialment_, like loyal
+subjects, as they were bound by their allegiance.[461]
+
+In this unusual and emphatic manner, the three estates agreed that the pope
+should be resisted; and an act passed "that all persons suing at the court
+of Rome, and obtaining thence any bulls, instruments, sentences of
+excommunication which touched the king, or were against him, his regality,
+or his realm, and they which brought the same within the realm, or received
+the same, or made thereof notification, or any other execution whatever,
+within the realm or without, they, their notaries, procurators, maintainers
+and abettors, fautors and counsellors, should be put out of the king's
+protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, be
+forfeited."
+
+The resolute attitude of the country terminated the struggle. Boniface
+prudently yielded, and for the moment; and indeed for ever under this
+especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back. The temper
+which had been roused in the contest, might perhaps have carried the nation
+further. The liberties of the crown had been asserted successfully. The
+analogous liberties of the church might have followed; and other channels,
+too, might have been cut off, through which the papal exchequer fed itself
+on English blood. But at this crisis the anti-Roman policy was arrested in
+its course by another movement, which turned the current of suspicion, and
+frightened back the nation to conservatism.
+
+While the crown and the parliament had been engaged with the pope, the
+undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the
+people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against
+the spiritual authorities at home. The parliament had lamented that the
+duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of the
+extortions of their superiors abroad. The people, who were equally
+convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an interpretation of the
+phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and attributed it to the
+temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence generated by enormous
+wealth.
+
+This form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great
+forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the
+crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of
+another forerunner of a greater change.
+
+The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. Lewis, on the authority of
+Leland,[462] says that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire. Fuller,
+though with some hesitation, prefers Durham.[463] He emerges into distinct
+notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of
+Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in
+divinity, and having earned for himself powerful friends and powerful
+enemies. He had made his name distinguished by attacks upon the clergy for
+their indolence and profligacy: attacks both written and orally
+delivered--those written, we observe, being written in English, not in
+Latin.[464] In 1365, Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him Warden
+of Canterbury Hall; the appointment, however, was made with some
+irregularity, and the following year, Archbishop Islip dying, his
+successor, Langham, deprived Wycliffe, and the sentence was confirmed by
+the king. It seemed, nevertheless, that no personal reflection was intended
+by this decision, for Edward III. nominated the ex-warden one of his
+chaplains immediately after, and employed him on an important mission to
+Bruges, where a conference on the benefice question was to be held with a
+papal commission.
+
+Other church preferment was subsequently given to Wycliffe; but Oxford
+remained the chief scene of his work. He continued to hold his
+professorship of divinity; and from this office the character of his
+history took its complexion. At a time when books were rare and difficult
+to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from the
+fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to
+imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all Europe
+flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a
+party by the mere fact of his position.
+
+The burden of Wycliffe's teaching was the exposure of the indolent fictions
+which passed under the name of religion in the established theory of the
+church. He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance, with bare
+feet and russet mantle.[465] As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great
+Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate. By the
+contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought as he did;
+and gradually, under his captaincy, these "poor priests," as they were
+called--vowed to poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no
+benefice, lest they should misspend the property of the poor, and because,
+as apostles, they were bound to go where their Master called them,[466]
+spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to preach the faith
+which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of relics and of indulgences,
+but of repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of
+the Bible which Wycliffe had translated, leaving here and there, as they
+travelled, their costly treasures, as shining seed points of light; and
+they refused to recognise the authority of the bishops, or their right to
+silence them.
+
+If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by a
+prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe might
+have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against the pope
+might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the
+church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a century. He
+was summoned to answer for himself before the Archbishop of Canterbury in
+1377. He appeared in court supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke
+of Lancaster, the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities
+were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield.
+
+But the "poor priests" had other doctrines besides those which they
+discovered in the Bible, relating to subjects with which, as apostles, they
+would have done better if they had shrunk from meddling. The inefficiency
+of the clergy was occasioned, as Wycliffe thought, by their wealth and by
+their luxury. He desired to save them from a temptation too heavy for them
+to bear, and he insisted that by neglect of duty their wealth had been
+forfeited, and that it was the business of the laity to take it from its
+unworthy possessors. The invectives with which the argument was accompanied
+produced a widely-spread irritation. The reins of the country fell
+simultaneously into the weak hands of Richard II., and the consequence was
+a rapid spread of disorder. In the year which followed Richard's accession,
+consistory judges were assaulted in their courts, sanctuaries were
+violated, priests were attacked and ill-treated in church, church-yard, and
+cathedral, and even while engaged in the mass;[467] the contagion of the
+growing anarchy seems to have touched even Wycliffe himself, and touched
+him in a point most deeply dangerous.
+
+His theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had led
+him to the near confines of Anabaptism. Expanding his views upon the
+estates of the church into an axiom, he taught that "charters of perpetual
+inheritance were impossible;" "that God could not give men civil
+possessions for ever;"[468] "that property was founded in grace, and
+derived from God;" and "seeing that forfeiture was the punishment of
+treason, and all sin was treason against God, the sinner must consequently
+forfeit his right to what he held of God." These propositions were nakedly
+true, as we shall most of us allow; but God has his own methods of
+enforcing extreme principles; and human legislation may only meddle with
+them at its peril. The theory as an abstraction could be represented as
+applying equally to the laity as to the clergy, and the new teaching
+received a practical comment in 1381, in the invasion of London by Wat, the
+tyler of Dartford, and 100,000 men, who were to level all ranks, put down
+the church, and establish universal liberty.[469] Two priests accompanied
+the insurgents, not Wycliffe's followers, but the licentious counterfeits
+of them, who trod inevitably in their footsteps, and were as inevitably
+countenanced by their doctrines. The insurrection was attended with the
+bloodshed, destruction, and ferocity natural to such outbreaks. The
+Archbishop of Canterbury and many gentlemen were murdered; and a great part
+of London sacked and burnt. It would be absurd to attribute this disaster
+to Wycliffe, nor was there any desire to hold him responsible for it; but
+it is equally certain that the doctrines which he had taught were
+incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the
+spirit which had caused the explosion. It is equally certain that he had
+brought discredit on his nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject
+of the utmost difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of
+the people to confound heterodoxy of opinion with sedition, anarchy, and
+disorder.
+
+So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a guarantee for the
+conduct of his immediate disciples; and although his favour had far
+declined, a party in the state remained attached to him, with sufficient
+influence to prevent the adoption of extreme measures against the "poor
+priests." In the year following the insurrection, an act was passed for
+their repression in the House of Lords, and was sent down by the king to
+the Commons. They were spoken of as "evil persons," going from place to
+place in defiance of the bishops, preaching in the open air to great
+congregations at markets and fairs, "exciting the people," "engendering
+discord between the estates of the realm." The ordinaries had no power to
+silence them, and had therefore desired that commissions should be issued
+to the sheriffs of the various counties, to arrest all such persons, and
+confine them, until they would "justify themselves" in the ecclesiastical
+courts.[470] Wycliffe petitioned against the bill, and it was rejected; not
+so much perhaps out of tenderness for the reformer, as because the Lower
+House was excited by the controversy with the pope; and being doubtfully
+disposed towards the clergy, was reluctant to subject the people to a more
+stringent spiritual control.
+
+But Wycliffe himself meanwhile had received a clear intimation of his own
+declining position. His opposition to the church authorities, and his
+efforts at re-invigorating the faith of the country, had led him into
+doubtful statements on the nature of the eucharist; he had entangled
+himself in dubious metaphysics on a subject on which no middle course is
+really possible; and being summoned to answer for his language before a
+synod in London, he had thrown himself again for protection on the Duke of
+Lancaster. The duke (not unnaturally under the circumstances) declined to
+encourage what he could neither approve nor understand;[471] and Wycliffe,
+by his great patron's advice, submitted. He read a confession of faith
+before the bishops, which was held satisfactory; he was forbidden, however,
+to preach again in Oxford, and retired to his living of Lutterworth, in
+Leicestershire, where two years later he died.
+
+With him departed all which was best and purest in the movement which he
+had commenced. The zeal of his followers was not extinguished, but the
+wisdom was extinguished which had directed it; and perhaps the being
+treated as the enemies of order had itself a tendency to make them what
+they were believed to be. They were left unmolested for the next twenty
+years, the feebleness of the government, the angry complexion which had
+been assumed by the dispute with Rome, and the political anarchy in the
+closing decade of the century, combining to give them temporary shelter;
+but they availed themselves of their opportunity to travel further on the
+dangerous road on which they had entered; and on the settlement of the
+country under Henry IV. they fell under the general ban which struck down
+all parties who had shared in the late disturbances.
+
+They had been spared in 1382, only for more sharp denunciation, and a more
+cruel fate; and Boniface having healed, on his side, the wounds which had
+been opened, by well-timed concessions, there was no reason left for
+leniency. The character of the Lollard teaching was thus described (perhaps
+in somewhat exaggerated language) in the preamble of the act of 1401.[472]
+
+"Divers false and perverse people," so runs the act _De Heretico
+comburendo_, "of a certain new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of the
+sacraments of the church, and of the authority of the same, against the law
+of God and of the church, usurping the office of preaching, do perversely
+and maliciously, in divers places within the realm, preach and teach divers
+new doctrines, and wicked erroneous opinions, contrary to the faith and
+determination of Holy Church. And of such sect and wicked doctrines they
+make unlawful conventicles, they hold and exercise schools, they make and
+write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and excite and
+stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division
+among the people, and other enormities horrible to be heard, daily do
+perpetrate and commit. The diocesans cannot by their jurisdiction
+spiritual, without aid of the King's Majesty, sufficiently correct these
+said false and perverse people, nor refrain their malice, because they do
+go from diocess to diocess, and will not appear before the said diocesans;
+but the jurisdiction spiritual, the keys of the church, and the censures of
+the same, do utterly contemn and despise; and so their wicked preachings
+and doctrines they do from day to day continue and exercise, to the
+destruction of all order and rule, right and reason."
+
+Something of these violent accusations is perhaps due to the horror with
+which false doctrine in matters of faith was looked upon in the Catholic
+church, the grace by which alone an honest life was made possible being
+held to be dependent upon orthodoxy. But the Lollards had become political
+revolutionists as well as religious reformers; the revolt against the
+spiritual authority had encouraged and countenanced a revolt against the
+secular; and we cannot be surprised, therefore, that these institutions
+should have sympathised with each other, and have united to repress a
+danger which was formidable to both.
+
+The bishops, by this act, received arbitrary power to arrest and imprison
+on suspicion, without check or restraint of law, at their will and
+pleasure. Prisoners who refused to abjure their errors, who persisted in
+heresy, or relapsed into it after abjuration, were sentenced to be burnt at
+the stake--a dreadful punishment, on the wickedness of which the world has
+long been happily agreed. Yet we must remember that those who condemned
+teachers of heresy to the flames, considered that heresy itself involved
+everlasting perdition; that they were but faintly imitating the severity
+which orthodoxy still ascribes to Almighty God Himself.
+
+The tide which was thus setting back in favour of the church did not yet,
+however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to
+sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of
+the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410,
+spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made
+upon the subject to the king.[473] The country, too, continued to be
+agitated with war and treason; and when Henry V. became king, in 1412, the
+church was still uneasy, and the Lollards were as dangerous as ever.
+Whether by prudent conduct they might have secured a repeal of the
+persecuting act is uncertain; it is more likely, from their conduct, that
+they had made their existence incompatible with the security of any
+tolerable government.
+
+A rumour having gone abroad that the king intended to enforce the laws
+against heresy, notices were found fixed against the doors of the London
+churches, that if any such measure was attempted, a hundred thousand men
+would be in arms to oppose it. These papers were traced to Sir John
+Oldcastle, otherwise called Lord Cobham, a man whose true character is more
+difficult to distinguish, in the conflict of the evidence which has come
+down to us about him, than that of almost any noticeable person in history.
+He was perhaps no worse than a fanatic. He was certainly prepared, if we
+may trust the words of a royal proclamation (and Henry was personally
+intimate with Oldcastle, and otherwise was not likely to have exaggerated
+the charges against him), he was prepared to venture a rebellion, with the
+prospect of himself becoming the president of some possible Lollard
+commonwealth.[474] The king, with swift decisiveness, annihilated the
+incipient treason. Oldcastle was himself arrested. He escaped out of the
+Tower into Scotland; and while Henry was absent in France he seems to have
+attempted to organise some kind of Scotch invasion; but he was soon after
+again taken on the Welsh Border, tried and executed. An act which was
+passed in 1414 described his proceedings as an "attempt to destroy the
+king, and all other manner of estates of the realm, as well spiritual as
+temporal, and also all manner of policy, and finally the laws of the land."
+The sedition was held to have originated in heresy, and for the better
+repression of such mischiefs in time to come, the lord chancellor, the
+judges, the justices of the peace, the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and
+every other officer having government of people, were sworn on entering
+their office to use their best power and diligence to detect and prosecute
+all persons suspected of so heinous a crime.[475]
+
+Thus perished Wycliffe's labour,--not wholly, because his translation of
+the Bible still remained a rare treasure; as seed of future life, which
+would spring again under happier circumstances. But the sect which he
+organised, the special doctrines which he set himself to teach, after a
+brief blaze of success, sank into darkness; and no trace remained of
+Lollardry except the black memory of contempt and hatred with which the
+heretics of the fourteenth century were remembered by the English people,
+long after the actual Reformation had become the law of the land.[476]
+
+So poor a close to a movement of so fair promise was due partly to the
+agitated temper of the times; partly, perhaps, to a want of judgment in
+Wycliffe; but chiefly and essentially because it was an untimely birth.
+Wycliffe saw the evil; he did not see the remedy; and neither in his mind
+nor in the mind of the world about him, had the problem ripened itself for
+solution. England would have gained little by the premature overthrow of
+the church, when the house out of which the evil spirit was cast out could
+have been but swept and garnished for the occupation of the seven devils of
+anarchy.
+
+The fire of heresy continued to smoulder, exploding occasionally in
+insurrection,[477] occasionally blazing up in nobler form, when some poor
+seeker for the truth, groping for a vision of God in the darkness of the
+years which followed, found his way into that high presence through the
+martyr's fire. But substantially, the nation relapsed into obedience--the
+church was reprieved for a century. Its fall was delayed till the spirit in
+which it was attacked was winnowed clean of all doubtful elements--until
+Protestantism had recommenced its enterprise in a desire, not for a fairer
+adjustment of the world's good things, but in a desire for some deeper,
+truer, nobler, holier insight into the will of God. It recommenced not
+under the auspices of a Wycliffe, not with the partial countenance of a
+government which was crossing swords with the Father of Catholic
+Christendom, and menacing the severance of England from the unity of the
+faith, but under a strong dynasty of undoubted Catholic loyalty, with the
+entire administrative power, secular as well as spiritual, in the hands of
+the episcopate. It sprung up spontaneously, unguided, unexcited, by the
+vital necessity of its nature, among the masses of the nation.
+
+Leaping over a century, I pass to the year 1525, at which time, or about
+which time, a society was enrolled in London calling itself "The
+Association of Christian Brothers."[478] It was composed of poor men,
+chiefly tradesmen, artisans, a few, a very few of the clergy; but it was
+carefully organised, it was provided with moderate funds, which were
+regularly audited; and its paid agents went up and down the country
+carrying Testaments and tracts with them, and enrolling in the order all
+persons who dared to risk their lives in such a cause. The harvest had been
+long ripening. The records of the bishops' courts[479] are filled from the
+beginning of the century with accounts of prosecutions for heresy--with
+prosecutions, that is, of men and women to whom the masses, the
+pilgrimages, the indulgences, the pardons, the effete paraphernalia of the
+establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen up in blind
+resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that whatever was the
+truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been idle; they had
+plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim after victim had
+been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it was all in vain:
+punishment only multiplied offenders, and "the reek" of the martyrs, as was
+said when Patrick Hamilton was burnt at St. Andrews, "infected all that it
+did blow upon."[480]
+
+There were no teachers, however, there were no books, no unity of
+conviction, only a confused refusal to believe in lies. Copies of
+Wycliffe's Bible remained, which parties here and there, under death
+penalties if detected, met to read;[481] copies, also, of some of his
+tracts[482] were extant; but they were unprinted transcripts, most rare and
+precious, which the watchfulness of the police made it impossible to
+multiply through the press, and which remained therefore necessarily in the
+possession of but a few fortunate persons.
+
+The Protestants were thus isolated in single groups or families, without
+organisation, without knowledge of each other, with nothing to give them
+coherency as a party; and so they might have long continued, except for an
+impulse from some external circumstances. They were waiting for direction,
+and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain.
+
+The state of England did but represent the state of all Northern Europe.
+Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic nature was
+in the people, there was the same weariness of unreality, the same craving
+for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a leader in the
+race of discontent. In Germany, all classes shared the common feeling; in
+England it was almost confined to the lowest. But, wherever it existed, it
+was a free, spontaneous growth in each separate breast, not propagated by
+agitation, but springing self sown, the expression of the honest anger of
+honest men at a system which had passed the limits of toleration, and which
+could be endured no longer. At such times the minds of men are like a train
+of gunpowder, the isolated grains of which have no relation to each other,
+and no effect on each other, while they remain unignited; but let a spark
+kindle but one of them, and they shoot into instant union in a common
+explosion. Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st
+of October, 1517. In the middle of that day Luther's denunciation of
+Indulgences was fixed against the gate of All Saints church, Wittenberg,
+and it became, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the sign to which
+the sick spirits throughout the western world looked hopefully and were
+healed. In all those millions of hearts the words of Luther found an echo,
+and flew from lip to lip, from ear to ear. The thing which all were longing
+for was done, and in two years from that day there was scarcely perhaps a
+village from the Irish Channel to the Danube in which the name of Luther
+was not familiar as a word of hope and promise. Then rose a common cry for
+guidance. Books were called for--above all things, the great book of all,
+the Bible. Luther's inexhaustible fecundity flowed with a steady stream,
+and the printing presses in Germany and in the Free Towns of the
+Netherlands, multiplied Testaments and tracts in hundreds of thousands.
+Printers published at their own expense as Luther wrote.[483] The continent
+was covered with disfrocked monks who had become the pedlars of these
+precious wares;[484] and as the contagion spread, noble young spirits from
+other countries, eager themselves to fight in God's battle, came to
+Wittenberg to learn from the champion who had struck the first blow at
+their great enemy how to use their weapons. "Students from all nations came
+to Wittenberg," says one, "to hear Luther and Melancthon. As they came in
+sight of the town they returned thanks to God with clasped hands; for from
+Wittenberg, as heretofore from Jerusalem, proceeded the light of
+evangelical truth, to spread thence to the utmost parts of the earth."[485]
+Thither came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so
+much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and
+thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William
+Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the
+Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence
+to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's family,
+and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm
+approval to suit his patron's conservatism,[486] he fell into disgrace.
+From Gloucestershire he removed to London, where Cuthbert Tunstall had
+lately been made bishop, and from whom he looked for countenance in an
+intention to translate the New Testament. Tunstall showed little
+encouragement to this enterprise; but a better friend rose where he was
+least looked for; and a London alderman, Humfrey Monmouth by name, hearing
+the young dreamer preach on some occasion at St. Dunstan's, took him to his
+home for half a year, and kept him there: where "the said Tyndal," as the
+alderman declared, "lived like a good priest, studying both night and day;
+he would eat but sodden meat, by his good will, nor drink but small single
+beer; nor was he ever seen to wear linen about him all the time of his
+being there."[487] The half year being passed, Monmouth gave him ten
+pounds, with which provision he went off to Wittenberg; and the alderman,
+for assisting him in that business, went to the Tower--escaping, however,
+we are glad to know, without worse consequences than a short imprisonment.
+Tyndal saw Luther,[488] and under his immediate direction translated the
+Gospels and Epistles while at Wittenberg. Thence he returned to Antwerp,
+and settling there under the privileges of the city, he was joined by Joy,
+who shared his great work with him. Young Frith from Cambridge came to him
+also, and Barnes, and Lambert, and many others of whom no written record
+remains, to concert a common scheme of action.
+
+In Antwerp, under the care of these men, was established the printing
+press, by which books were supplied, to accomplish for the teaching of
+England what Luther and Melancthon were accomplishing for Germany. Tyndal's
+Testament was first printed, then translations of the best German books,
+reprints of Wycliffe's tracts or original commentaries. Such volumes as the
+people most required were here multiplied as fast as the press could
+produce them; and for the dissemination of these precious writings, the
+brave London Protestants dared, at the hazard of their lives, to form
+themselves into an organised association.
+
+It is well to pause and look for a moment at this small band of heroes; for
+heroes they were, if ever men deserved the name. Unlike the first reformers
+who had followed Wycliffe, they had no earthly object, emphatically none;
+and equally unlike them, perhaps, because they had no earthly object, they
+were all, as I have said, poor men--either students, like Tyndal, or
+artisans and labourers who worked for their own bread, and in tough contact
+with reality, had learnt better than the great and the educated the
+difference between truth and lies. Wycliffe had royal dukes and noblemen
+for his supporters--knights and divines among his disciples--a king and a
+House of Commons looking upon him, not without favour. The first
+Protestants of the sixteenth century had for their king the champion of
+Holy Church, who had broken a lance with Luther; and spiritual rulers over
+them alike powerful and imbecile, whose highest conception of Christian
+virtue was the destruction of those who disobeyed their mandates. The
+masses of the people were indifferent to a cause which promised them no
+material advantage; and the Commons of Parliament, while contending with
+the abuses of the spiritual authorities, were laboriously anxious to wash
+their hands of heterodoxy. "In the crime of heresy, thanked be God," said
+the bishops in 1529, "there hath no notable person fallen in our time;" no
+chief priest, chief ruler, or learned Pharisee--not one. "Truth it is that
+certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants,
+vagabonds and lewd idle fellows of corrupt nature, have embraced the
+abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them
+have been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if
+judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be
+without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our
+duty from henceforth."[489] Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of
+their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of
+authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige of centuries; here too
+were the phantom legions of superstition and cowardice; and here were all
+the worthier influences so pre-eminently English, which lead wise men to
+shrink from change, and to cling to things established, so long as one
+stone of them remains upon another, This was the army of conservatism.
+Opposed to it were a little band of enthusiasts, armed only with truth and
+fearlessness; "weak things of the world," about to do battle in God's name;
+and it was to be seen whether God or the world was the stronger. They were
+armed, I say, with the truth. It was that alone which could have given them
+victory in so unequal a struggle. They had returned to the essential
+fountain of life; they re-asserted the principle which has lain at the root
+of all religions, whatever their name or outward form, which once burnt
+with divine lustre in that Catholicism which was now to pass away; the
+fundamental axiom of all real life, that the service which man owes to God
+is not the service of words or magic forms, or ceremonies or opinions; but
+the service of holiness, of purity, of obedience to the everlasting laws of
+duty.
+
+When we look through the writings of Latimer, the apostle of the English
+Reformation, when we read the depositions against the martyrs, and the
+lists of their crimes against the established faith, we find no opposite
+schemes of doctrine, no "plans of salvation;" no positive system of
+theology which it was held a duty to believe; these things were of later
+growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the living spirit in a
+perishable body. We find only an effort to express again the old
+exhortation of the Wise Man--"Will you hear the beginning and the end of
+the whole matter? Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the whole
+duty of man."
+
+Had it been possible for mankind to sustain themselves upon this single
+principle without disguising its simplicity, their history would have been
+painted in far other colours than those which have so long chequered its
+surface. This, however, has not been given to us; and perhaps it never will
+be given. As the soul is clothed in flesh, and only thus is able to perform
+its functions in this earth, where it is sent to live; as the thought must
+find a word before it can pass from mind to mind; so every great truth
+seeks some body, some outward form in which to exhibit its powers. It
+appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it to
+themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and
+these things which in their proper nature are but illustrations, stiffen
+into essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises in era after
+era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at
+once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the
+spirit, the form and the reality. For a while the lower tendencies are held
+in check; the meaning of the symbolism is remembered and fresh; it is a
+living language, pregnant and suggestive. Bye and bye, as the mind passes
+into other phases, the meaning is forgotten; the language becomes a dead
+language; and the living robe of life becomes a winding-sheet of
+corruption. The form is represented as everything, the spirit as nothing;
+obedience is dispensed with; sin and religion arrange a compromise; and
+outward observances, or technical inward emotions, are converted into
+jugglers' tricks, by which men are enabled to enjoy their pleasures and
+escape the penalties of wrong. Then such religion becomes no religion, but
+a falsehood; and honourable men turn away from it, and fall back in haste
+upon the naked elemental life.
+
+This, as I understand it, was the position of the early Protestants. They
+found the service of God buried in a system where obedience was dissipated
+into superstition; where sin was expiated by the vicarious virtues of other
+men; where, instead of leading a holy life, men were taught that their
+souls might be saved through masses said for them, at a money rate, by
+priests whose licentiousness disgraced the nation which endured it; a
+system in which, amidst all the trickery of the pardons, pilgrimages,
+indulgences,--double-faced as these inventions are--wearing one meaning in
+the apologies of theologians, and quite another to the multitude who live
+and suffer under their influence--one plain fact at least is visible. The
+people substantially learnt that all evils which could touch either their
+spirits or their bodies, might be escaped by means which resolved
+themselves, scarcely disguised, into the payment of moneys.
+
+The superstition had lingered long; the time had come when it was to pass
+away. Those in whom some craving lingered for a Christian life turned to
+the heart of the matter, to the book which told them who Christ was, and
+what he was; and finding there that holy example for which they longed,
+they flung aside in one noble burst of enthusiastic passion, the disguise
+which had concealed it from them. They believed in Christ, not in the
+bowing rood, or the pretended wood of the cross on which he suffered; and
+when that saintly figure had once been seen--the object of all love, the
+pattern of all imitation--thenceforward neither form nor ceremony should
+stand between them and their God.
+
+Under much confusion of words and thoughts, confusion pardonable in all
+men, and most of all in them, this seems to me to be transparently visible
+in the aim of these "Christian Brothers;" a thirst for some fresh and noble
+enunciation of the everlasting truth, the one essential thing for all men
+to know and believe. And therefore they were strong; and therefore they at
+last conquered. Yet if we think of it, no common daring was required in
+those who would stand out at such a time in defence of such a cause. The
+bishops might seize them on mere suspicion; and the evidence of the most
+abandoned villains sufficed for their conviction.[490] By the act of Henry
+V., every officer, from the lord chancellor to the parish constable, was
+sworn to seek them out and destroy them; and both bishops and officials had
+shown no reluctance to execute their duty. Hunted like wild beasts from
+hiding-place to hiding-place, decimated by the stake, with the certainty
+that however many years they might be reprieved, their own lives would
+close at last in the same fiery trial; beset by informers, imprisoned,
+racked, and scourged; worst of all, haunted by their own infirmities, the
+flesh shrinking before the dread of a death of agony--thus it was that they
+struggled on; earning for _themselves_ martyrdom--for _us_, the free
+England in which we live and breathe. Among the great, until Cromwell came
+to power, they had but one friend, and he but a doubtful one, who long
+believed the truest kindness was to kill them. Henry VIII. was always
+attracted towards the persons of the reformers. Their open bearing
+commanded his respect. Their worst crime in the bishops' eyes--the
+translating the Bible--was in his eyes not a crime, but a merit; he had
+himself long desired an authorised English version, and at length compelled
+the clergy to undertake it; while in the most notorious of the men
+themselves, in Tyndal and in Frith, he had more than once expressed an
+anxious interest.[491] But the convictions of his early years were long in
+yielding. His feeling, though genuine, extended no further than to pity, to
+a desire to recover estimable heretics out of errors which he would
+endeavour to pardon. They knew, and all the "brethren" knew, that if they
+persisted, they must look for the worst from the king and from every
+earthly power; they knew it, and they made their account with it. An
+informer deposed to the council, that he had asked one of the society "how
+the King's Grace did take the matter against the sacrament; which answered,
+the King's Highness was extreme against their opinions, and would punish
+them grievously; also that my Lords of Norfolk and Suffolk, my Lord Marquis
+of Exeter, with divers other great lords, were very extreme against them.
+Then he (the informer) asked him how he and his fellows would do seeing
+this, the which answered they had two thousand books out against the
+Blessed Sacrament, in the commons' hands; and if it were once in the
+commons' heads, they would have no further care."[492]
+
+Tyndal then being at work at Antwerp, and the society for the dispersion of
+his books thus preparing itself in England, the authorities were not slow
+in taking the alarm. The isolated discontent which had prevailed hitherto
+had been left to the ordinary tribunals; the present danger called for
+measures of more systematic coercion. This duty naturally devolved on
+Wolsey, and the office of Grand Inquisitor, which he now assumed, could not
+have fallen into more competent hands.
+
+Wolsey was not cruel. There is no instance, I believe, in which he of his
+special motion sent a victim to the stake;--it would be well if the same
+praise could be allowed to Cranmer. There was this difference between the
+cardinal and other bishops, that while they seemed to desire to punish,
+Wolsey was contented to silence; while they, in their conduct of trials,
+made escape as difficult as possible, Wolsey sought rather to make
+submission easy. He was too wise to suppose that he could cauterise heresy,
+while the causes of it, in the corruption of the clergy, remained
+unremoved; and the remedy to which he trusted, was the infusing new vigour
+into the constitution of the church.[493] Nevertheless, he was determined
+to repress, as far as outward measures could repress it, the spread of the
+contagion; and he set himself to accomplish his task with the full energy
+of his nature, backed by the whole power, spiritual and secular, of the
+kingdom. The country was covered with his secret police, arresting
+suspected persons and searching for books. In London the scrutiny was so
+strict that at one time there was a general flight and panic; suspected
+butchers, tailors, and carpenters, hiding themselves in the holds of
+vessels in the river, and escaping across the Channel.[494] Even there they
+were not safe. Heretics were outlawed by a common consent of the European
+governments. Special offenders were hunted through France by the English
+emissaries with the permission and countenance of the court,[495] and there
+was an attempt to arrest Tyndal at Brussels, from which, for that time, he
+happily escaped.[496]
+
+Simultaneously the English universities fell under examination, in
+consequence of the appearance of dangerous symptoms among the younger
+students. Dr. Barnes, returning from the continent, had used violent
+language in a pulpit at Cambridge; and Latimer, then a neophyte in heresy,
+had grown suspect, and had alarmed the heads of houses. Complaints against
+both of them were forwarded to Wolsey, and they were summoned to London to
+answer for themselves.
+
+Latimer, for some cause, found favour with the cardinal, and was dismissed,
+with a hope on the part of his judge that his accusers might prove as
+honest as he appeared to be, and even with a general licence to
+preach.[497] Barnes was less fortunate; he was far inferior to Latimer; a
+noisy, unwise man, without reticence or prudence. In addition to his
+offences in matters of doctrine, he had attacked Wolsey himself with
+somewhat vulgar personality; and it was thought well to single him out for
+a public, though not a very terrible admonition. His house had been
+searched for books, which he was suspected, and justly suspected, of having
+brought with him from abroad. These, however, through a timely warning of
+the danger, had been happily secreted,[498] or it might have gone harder
+with him. As it was, he was committed to the Fleet on the charge of having
+used heretical language. An abjuration was drawn up by Wolsey, which he
+signed; and while he remained in prison preparations were made for a
+ceremony, in which he was to bear a part, in St. Paul's church, by which
+the Catholic authorities hoped to produce some salutary effect on the
+disaffected spirits of London.
+
+Vast quantities of Tyndal's publications had been collected by the police.
+The bishops, also, had subscribed among themselves[499] to buy up the
+copies of the New Testament before they left Antwerp;--an unpromising
+method, like an attempt to extinguish fire by pouring oil upon it; they had
+been successful, however, in obtaining a large immediate harvest, and a
+pyramid of offending volumes was ready to be consumed in a solemn _auto da
+fé_.
+
+In the morning of Shrove Sunday, then, 1527, we are to picture to ourselves
+a procession moving along London streets from the Fleet prison to St.
+Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight
+marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with
+bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men
+marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds'
+weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the
+fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy,
+was remitted. One of these was Barnes; the other five were "Stillyard men,"
+undistinguishable by any other name, but detected members of the
+brotherhood.
+
+It was eight o'clock when they arrived at St. Paul's. The people had
+flocked in crowds before them. The public seats and benches were filled.
+All London had hurried to the spectacle. A platform was erected in the
+centre of the nave, on the top of which, enthroned in pomp of purple and
+gold and splendour, sate the great cardinal, supported on each side with
+eighteen bishops, mitred abbots, and priors--six-and-thirty in all; his
+chaplains and "spiritual doctors" sitting also where they could find place,
+"in gowns of damask and satin." Opposite the platform, over the north door
+of the cathedral, was a great crucifix--a famous image, in those days
+called the Rood of Northen; and at the foot of it, inside a rail, a fire
+was burning, with the sinful books, the Tracts and Testaments, ranged round
+it in baskets, waiting for the execution of sentence.
+
+Such was the scene into the midst of which the six prisoners entered. A
+second platform stood in a conspicuous place in front of the cardinal's
+throne, where they could be seen and heard by the crowd; and there upon
+their knees, with their fagots on their shoulders, they begged pardon of
+God and the Holy Catholic Church for their high crimes and offences. When
+the confession was finished Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon:
+and the sermon over, Barnes turned to the people, declaring that "he was
+more charitably handled than he deserved, his heresies were so heinous and
+detestable."
+
+There was no other religious service: mass had perhaps been said previous
+to the admission into the church of heretics lying under censure; and the
+knight marshal led the prisoners down from the stage to the fire underneath
+the crucifix. They were taken within the rails, and three times led round
+the blazing pile, casting in their fagots as they passed. The contents of
+the baskets were heaped upon the fagots, and the holocaust was complete.
+This time, an unbloody sacrifice was deemed sufficient. The church was
+satisfied with penance, and Fisher pronounced the prisoners absolved, and
+received back into communion.[500]
+
+So ended this strange exhibition, designed to work great results on the
+consciences of the spectators. It may be supposed, however, that men whom
+the tragedies of Smithfield failed to terrify, were not likely to be
+affected deeply by melodrame and blazing paper.
+
+A story follows of far deeper human interest, a story in which the
+persecution is mirrored with its true lights and shadows, unexaggerated by
+rhetoric; and which, in its minute simplicity, brings us face to face with
+that old world, where men like ourselves lived, and worked, and suffered,
+three centuries ago.
+
+Two years before the time at which we have now arrived, Wolsey, in
+pursuance of his scheme of converting the endowments of the religious
+houses to purposes of education, had obtained permission from the pope to
+suppress a number of the smaller monasteries. He had added largely to the
+means thus placed at his disposal from his own resources, and had founded
+the great college at Oxford, which is now called Christchurch.[501]
+Desiring his magnificent institution to be as perfect as art could make it,
+he had sought his professors in Rome, in the Italian universities, wherever
+genius or ability could be found; and he had introduced into the foundation
+several students from Cambridge, who had been reported to him as being of
+unusual promise. Frith, of whom we have heard, was one of these. Of the
+rest, John Clark, Sumner, and Taverner are the most noticeable. At the time
+at which they were invited to Oxford, they were tainted, or some of them
+were tainted, in the eyes of the Cambridge authorities, with suspicion of
+heterodoxy;[502] and it is creditable to Wolsey's liberality, that he set
+aside these unsubstantiated rumours, not allowing them to weigh against
+ability, industry, and character. The church authorities thought only of
+crushing what opposed them, especially of crushing talent, because talent
+was dangerous. Wolsey's noble anxiety was to court talent, and if possible
+to win it.
+
+The young Cambridge students, however, ill repaid his confidence (so, at
+least, it must have appeared to him), and introduced into Oxford the rising
+epidemic. Clark, as was at last discovered, was in the habit of reading St.
+Paul's Epistles to young men in his rooms; and a gradually increasing
+circle of undergraduates, of three or four years' standing,[503] from
+various colleges, formed themselves into a spiritual freemasonry, some of
+them passionately insisting on being admitted to the lectures, in spite of
+warnings from Clark himself, whose wiser foresight knew the risk which they
+were running, and shrank from allowing weak giddy spirits to thrust
+themselves into so fearful peril.[504]
+
+This little party had been in the habit of meeting for about six
+months,[505] when at Easter, 1527, Thomas Garret, a fellow of
+Magdalen,[506] who had gone out of residence, and was curate at All Hallows
+church, in London, re-appeared in Oxford. Garret was a secret member of the
+London Society, and had come down at Clark's instigation, to feel his way
+in the university. So excellent a beginning had already been made, that he
+had only to improve upon it. He sought out all such young men as were given
+to Greek, Hebrew, and the polite Latin;[507] and in this visit met with so
+much encouragement, that the Christmas following he returned again, this
+time bringing with him treasures of forbidden books, imported by "the
+Christian Brothers;" New Testaments, tracts and volumes of German divinity,
+which he sold privately among the initiated.
+
+He lay concealed, with his store, at "the house of one Radley,"[508] the
+position of which cannot now be identified; and there he remained for
+several weeks, unsuspected by the university authorities, till orders were
+sent by Wolsey to the Dean of Christchurch, for his arrest. Precise
+information was furnished at the same time respecting himself, his mission
+in Oxford, and his place of concealment.[509]
+
+The proctors were put upon the scent, and directed to take him; but one of
+them, Arthur Cole, of Magdalen, by name, not from any sympathy with
+Garret's objects, as the sequel proved, but probably from old acquaintance,
+for they were fellows at the same college, gave him information of his
+danger, and warned him to escape.
+
+His young friends, more alarmed for their companion than for themselves,
+held a meeting instantly to decide what should be done; and at this meeting
+was Anthony Dalaber, an undergraduate of Alban Hall, and one of Clark's
+pupils, who will now tell the story of what followed.
+
+"The Christmas before that time, I, Anthony Dalaber, the scholar of Alban
+Hall, who had books of Master Garret, had been in my country, at
+Dorsetshire, at Stalbridge, where I had a brother, parson of this parish,
+who was very desirous to have a curate out of Oxford, and willed me in any
+wise to get him one there, if I could. This just occasion offered, it was
+thought good among the brethren (for so we did not only call one another,
+but were indeed one to another), that Master Garret, changing his name,
+should be sent forth with my letters into Dorsetshire, to my brother, to
+serve him there for a time, until he might secretly convey himself from
+thence some whither over the sea. According hereunto I wrote my letters in
+all haste possible unto my brother, for Master Garret to be his curate; but
+not declaring what he was indeed, for my brother was a rank papist, and
+afterwards was the most mortal enemy that ever I had, for the Gospel's
+sake.
+
+"So on Wednesday (Feb. 18), in the morning before Shrovetide, Master Garret
+departed out of Oxford towards Dorsetshire, with my letter, for his new
+service."
+
+The most important person being thus, as was supposed, safe from immediate
+danger, Dalaber was at leisure to think a little about himself; and
+supposing, naturally, that the matter would not end there, and that some
+change of residence might be of advantage for his own security, he moved
+off from Alban Hall (as undergraduates it seems were then at liberty to do)
+to Gloucester College,[510] under pretence that he desired to study civil
+law, for which no facilities existed at the hall. This little matter was
+affected on the Thursday; and all Friday and Saturday morning he "was so
+much busied in setting his poor stuff in order, his bed, his books, and
+such things else as he had," that he had no leisure to go forth anywhere
+those two days, Friday and Saturday.
+
+"Having set up my things handsomely," he continues, "the same day, before
+noon, I determined to spend that whole afternoon, until evensong time, at
+Frideswide College,[511] at my book in mine own study; and so shut my
+chamber door unto me, and my study door also, and took into my head to read
+Francis Lambert upon the Gospel of St. Luke, which book only I had then
+within there. All my other books written on the Scriptures, of which I had
+great numbers, I had left in my chamber at Alban's Hall, where I had made a
+very secret place to keep them safe in, because it was so dangerous to have
+any such books. And so, as I was diligently reading in the same book of
+Lambert upon Luke, suddenly one knocked at my chamber door very hard, which
+made me astonished, and yet I sat still and would not speak; then he
+knocked again more hard, and yet I held my peace; and straightway he
+knocked again yet more fiercely; and then I thought this: peradventure it
+is somebody that hath need of me; and therefore I thought myself bound to
+do as I would be done unto; and so, laying my book aside, I came to the
+door and opened it, and there was Master Garret, as a man amazed, whom I
+thought to have been with my brother, and one with him."
+
+Garret had set out on his expedition into Dorsetshire, but had been
+frightened, and had stolen back into Oxford on the Friday, to his old
+hiding place, where, in the middle of the night, the proctors had taken
+him. He had been carried to Lincoln, and shut up in a room in the rector's
+house, where he had been left all day. In the afternoon the rector went to
+chapel, no one was stirring about the college, and he had taken advantage
+of the opportunity to slip the bolt of the door and escape. He had a friend
+at Gloucester College, "a monk who had bought books of him;" and Gloucester
+lying on the outskirts of the town, he had hurried down there as the
+readiest place of shelter. The monk was out; and as no time was to be lost,
+Garret asked the servant on the staircase to show him Dalaber's rooms.
+
+As soon as the door was opened, "he said he was undone, for he was taken."
+"Thus he spake unadvisedly in the presence of the young man, who at once
+slipped down the stairs," it was to be feared, on no good errand. "Then I
+said to him," Dalaber goes on, "alas, Master Garret, by this your
+uncircumspect coming here and speaking so before the young man, you have
+disclosed yourself and utterly undone me. I asked him why he was not in
+Dorsetshire. He said he had gone a day's journey and a half; but he was so
+fearful, his heart would none other but that he must needs return again
+unto Oxford. With deep sighs and plenty of tears, he prayed me to help to
+convey him away; and so he cast off his hood and gown wherein he came to
+me, and desired me to give him a coat with sleeves, if I had any; and he
+told me that he would go into Wales, and thence convey himself, if he
+might, into Germany. Then I put on him a sleeved coat of mine. He would
+also have had another manner of cap of me, but I had none but priestlike,
+such as his own was.
+
+"Then kneeled we both down together upon our knees, and lifting up our
+hearts and hands to God our heavenly Father, desired him, with plenty of
+tears, so to conduct and prosper him in his journey, that he might well
+escape the danger of all his enemies, to the glory of His Holy Name, if His
+good pleasure and will so were. And then we embraced and kissed the one the
+other, the tears so abundantly flowing out from both our eyes, that we all
+bewet both our faces, and scarcely for sorrow could we speak one to
+another. And so he departed from me, apparelled in my coat, being committed
+unto the tuition of our Almighty and merciful Father.
+
+"When he was gone down the stairs from my chamber, I straightways did shut
+my chamber door, and went into my study; and taking the New Testament in my
+hands, kneeled down on my knees, and with many a deep sigh and salt tear, I
+did, with much deliberation, read over the tenth chapter of St. Matthew's
+Gospel,[512] praying that God would endue his tender and lately-born little
+flock in Oxford with heavenly strength by his Holy Spirit; that quietly to
+their own salvation, with all godly patience, they might bear Christ's
+heavy cross, which I now saw was presently to be laid on their young and
+weak backs, unable to bear so huge a burden without the greater help of his
+Holy Spirit.
+
+"This done, I laid aside my book safe, folded up Master Garret's gown and
+hood, and so, having put on my short gown, and shut my doors, I went
+towards Frideswide (Christchurch), to speak with that worthy martyr of God,
+Master Clark. But of purpose I went by St. Mary's church, to go first unto
+Corpus Christi College, to speak with Diet and Udal, my faithful brethren
+and fellows in the Lord. By chance I met by the way a brother of ours, one
+Master Eden, fellow of Magdalen, who, as soon as he saw me, said, we were
+all undone, for Master Garret was returned, and was in prison. I said it
+was not so; he said it was. I heard, quoth he, our Proctor, Master Cole,
+say and declare the same this day. Then I told him what was done; and so
+made haste to Frideswide, to find Master Clark, for I thought that he and
+others would be in great sorrow.
+
+"Evensong was begun; the dean and the canons were there in their grey
+amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came thither. I stood in
+the choir door and heard Master Taverner play, and others of the chapel
+there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont to sing also; but now my
+singing and music were turned into sighing and musing. As I there stood, in
+cometh Dr. Cottisford,[513] the commissary, as fast as ever he could go,
+bareheaded, as pale as ashes (I knew his grief well enough); and to the
+dean he goeth into the choir, were he was sitting in his stall, and talked
+with him, very sorrowfully: what, I know not; but whereof I might and did
+truly guess. I went aside from the choir door to see and hear more. The
+commissary and dean came out of the choir, wonderfully troubled as it
+seemed. About the middle of the church, met them Dr. London,[514] puffing,
+blustering, and blowing like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey.
+They talked together awhile; but the commissary was much blamed by them,
+insomuch that he wept for sorrow.
+
+"The doctors departed, and sent abroad their servants and spies everywhere.
+Master Clark, about the middle of the compline,[515] came forth of the
+choir. I followed him to his chamber, and declared what had happened that
+afternoon of Master Garret's escape. Then he sent for one Master Sumner and
+Master Bets, fellows and canons there. In the meantime he gave me a very
+godly exhortation, praying God to give us all the wisdom of the serpent and
+the harmlessness of doves, for we should shortly have much need thereof.
+When Master Sumner and Master Bets came, he caused me to declare again the
+whole matter to them two. Then desiring them to tell our other brethren in
+that college, I went to Corpus Christi College, to comfort our brethren
+there, where I found in Diet's chamber, looking for me, Fitzjames, Diet,
+and Udal. They all knew the matter before by Master Eden, whom I had sent
+unto Fitzjames. So I tarried there and supped with them, where they had
+provided meat and drink for us before my coming; and when we had ended,
+Fitzjames would needs have me to lie that night with him in my old lodging
+at Alban's Hall. But small rest and little sleep took we both there that
+night."
+
+The next day, which was Sunday, Dalaber rose at five o'clock, and as soon
+as he could leave the Hall, hastened off to his rooms at Gloucester. The
+night had been wet and stormy, and his shoes and stockings were covered
+with mud. The college gates, when he reached them, were still closed, an
+unusual thing at that hour; and he walked up and down under the walls in
+the bleak grey morning, till the clock struck seven, "much disquieted, his
+head full of forecasting cares," but resolved, like a brave man, that come
+what would, he would accuse no one, and declare nothing but what he saw was
+already known. The gates were at last opened; he went to his rooms, and for
+some time his key would not turn in the door, the lock having been meddled
+with. At length he succeeded in entering, and found everything in
+confusion, his bed tossed and tumbled, his study door open, and his clothes
+strewed about the floor. A monk who occupied the opposite rooms, hearing
+him return, came to him and said that the commissary and the two proctors
+had been there looking for Garret. Bills and swords had been thrust through
+the bed-straw, and every corner of the room searched for him. Finding
+nothing, they had left orders that Dalaber, as soon as he returned, should
+appear before the prior of the students.
+
+"This so troubled me," Dalaber says, "that I forgot to make clean my hose
+and shoes, and to shift me into another gown; and all bedirted as I was, I
+went to the said prior's chamber." The prior asked him where he had slept
+that night. At Alban's Hall, he answered, with his old bedfellow,
+Fitzjames. The prior said he did not believe him, and asked if Garret had
+been at his rooms the day before. He replied that he had. Whither had he
+gone, then? the prior inquired; and where was he at that time? "I
+answered," says Dalaber, "that I knew not, unless he was gone to Woodstock;
+he told me that he would go there, because one of the keepers had promised
+him a piece of venison to make merry with at Shrovetide. This tale I
+thought meetest, though it were nothing so."[516]
+
+At this moment the university beadle entered with two of the commissary's
+servants, bringing a message to the prior that he should repair at once to
+Lincoln, taking Dalaber with him. "I was brought into the chapel," the
+latter continues, "and there I found Dr. Cottisford, commissary; Dr.
+Higdon, Dean of Cardinal's College; and Dr. London, Warden of New College;
+standing together at the altar. They called for chairs and sate down, and
+then [ordered] me to come to them; they asked me what my name was, how long
+I had been at the university, what I studied," with various other
+inquiries: the clerk of the university, meanwhile, bringing pens, ink, and
+paper, and arranging a table with a few loose boards upon tressels. A mass
+book, he says, was then placed before him, and he was commanded to lay his
+hand upon it, and swear that he would answer truly such questions as should
+be asked him. At first he refused; but afterwards, being persuaded, "partly
+by fair words, and partly by great threats," he promised to do as they
+would have him; but in his heart he "meant nothing so to do." "So I laid my
+hand on the book," he goes on, "and one of them gave me my oath, and
+commanded me to kiss the book. They made great courtesy between them who
+should examine me; at last, the rankest Pharisee of them all took upon him
+to do it.
+
+"Then he asked me again, by my oath, where Master Garret was, and whither I
+had conveyed him. I said I had not conveyed him, nor yet wist where he was,
+nor whither he was gone, except he were gone to Woodstock, as I had before
+said. Surely, they said, I brought him some whither this morning, for they
+might well perceive by my foul shoes and dirty hosen that I had travelled
+with him the most part of the night. I answered plainly, that I lay at
+Alban's Hall with Sir Fitzjames, and that I had good witness thereof. They
+asked me where I was at evensong. I told them at Frideswide, and that I
+saw, first, Master Commissary, and then Master Doctor London, come thither
+to Master Dean. Doctor London and the Dean threatened me that if I would
+not tell the truth I should surely be sent to the Tower of London, and
+there be racked, and put into Little-ease.[517]
+
+"At last when they could get nothing out of me whereby to hurt or accuse
+any man, or to know anything of that which they sought, they all three
+together brought me up a long stairs, into a great chamber, over Master
+Commissary's chamber, wherein stood a great pair of very high stocks. Then
+Master Commissary asked me for my purse and girdle, and took away my money
+and my knives; and then they put my legs into the stocks, and so locked me
+fast in them, in which I sate, my feet being almost as high as my head; and
+so they departed, locking fast the door, and leaving me alone.
+
+"When they were all gone, then came into my remembrance the worthy
+forewarning and godly declaration of that most constant martyr of God,
+Master John Clark, who, well nigh two years before that, when I did
+earnestly desire him to grant me to be his scholar, said unto me after this
+sort: 'Dalaber, you desire you wot not what, and that which you are, I
+fear, unable to take upon you; for though now my preaching be sweet and
+pleasant to you, because there is no persecution laid on you for it, yet
+the time will come, and that, peradventure, shortly, if ye continue to live
+godly therein, that God will lay on you the cross of persecution, to try
+you whether you can as pure gold abide the fire. You shall be called and
+judged a heretic; you shall be abhorred of the world; your own friends and
+kinsfolk will forsake you, and also hate you; you shall be cast into
+prison, and none shall dare to help you; you shall be accused before
+bishops, to your reproach and shame, to the great sorrow of all your
+friends and kinsfolk. Then will ye wish ye had never known this doctrine;
+then will ye curse Clark, and wish that ye had never known him because he
+hath brought you to all these troubles.'
+
+"At which words, I was so grieved that I fell down on my knees at his feet,
+and with tears and sighs besought him that, for the tender mercy of God, he
+would not refuse me; saying that I trusted, verily, that he which had begun
+this in me would not forsake me, but would give me grace to continue
+therein to the end. When he heard me say so, he came to me, took me in his
+arms and kissed me, the tears trickling from his eyes; and said unto me:
+'The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do; and from henceforth for ever,
+take me for your father, and I will take you for my son in Christ.'"
+
+In these meditations the long Sunday morning wore away. A little before
+noon the commissary came again to see if his prisoner was more amenable;
+finding him, however, still obstinate, he offered him some dinner--a
+promise which we will hope he fulfilled, for here Dalaber's own narrative
+abruptly forsakes us,[518] leaving uncompleted, at this point, the most
+vivid picture which remains to us of a fraction of English life in the
+reign of Henry VIII. If the curtain fell finally on the little group of
+students, this narrative alone would furnish us with rare insight into the
+circumstances under which the Protestants fought their way. The story,
+however, can be carried something further, and the strangest incident
+connected with it remains to be told.
+
+Dalaber breaks off on Sunday at noon. The same day, or early the following
+morning, he was submitted once more to examination: this time, for the
+discovery of his own offences, and to induce him to give up his
+confederates. With respect to the latter he proved "marvellous obstinate."
+"All that was gotten of him was with much difficulty;" nor would he confess
+to any names as connected with heresy or heretics except that of Clark,
+which was already known. About himself he was more open. He wrote his "book
+of heresy," that is, his confession of faith, "with his own hand"--his
+evening's occupation, perhaps, in the stocks in the rector of Lincoln's
+house; and the next day he was transferred to prison.[519]
+
+This offender being thus disposed of, and strict secrecy being observed to
+prevent the spread of alarm, a rapid search was set on foot for books in
+all suspected quarters. The fear of the authorities was that "the infect
+persons would flee," and "convey" their poison "away with them."[520] The
+officials, once on the scent of heresy, were skilful in running down the
+game. No time was lost, and by Monday evening many of "the brethren" had
+been arrested, their rooms examined, and their forbidden treasures
+discovered and rifled. Dalaber's store was found "hid with marvellous
+secresy;" and in one student's desk a duplicate of Garret's list--the
+titles of the volumes with which the first "Religious Tract Society" set
+themselves to convert England.
+
+Information of all this was conveyed in haste by Dr. London to the Bishop
+of Lincoln, as the ordinary of the university; and the warden told his
+story with much self-congratulation. On one point, however, the news which
+he had to communicate was less satisfactory. Garret himself was
+gone--utterly gone. Dalaber was obstinate, and no clue to the track of the
+fugitive could be discovered. The police were at fault; neither bribes nor
+threats could elicit anything; and in these desperate circumstances, as he
+told the bishop, the three heads of houses conceived that they might strain
+a point of propriety for so good a purpose as to prevent the escape of a
+heretic. Accordingly, after a full report of the points of their success,
+Doctor London went on to relate the following remarkable proceeding:
+
+"After Master Garret escaped, _the commissary being in extreme pensiveness,
+knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a figure to be made
+by one expert in astronomy--and his judjment doth continually persist upon
+this, that he fled in a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of
+London, and will shortly to the sea side_. He was curate unto the parson of
+Honey Lane.[521] It is likely he is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as
+soon as I knew the judgment of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and
+my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises;
+that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of
+London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works,
+which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul,
+opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of the same."[522]
+
+We might much desire to know what the bishop's sensations were in reading
+this letter--to know whether it occurred to him that in this naļve
+acknowledgment, the Oxford heresy hunters were themselves confessing to an
+act of heresy; and that by the law of the church, which they were so eager
+to administer, they were liable to the same death which they were so
+zealous to secure for the poor vendors of Testaments. So indeed they really
+were. Consulting the stars had been ruled from immemorial time to be
+dealing with the devil; the penalty of it was the same as for witchcraft;
+yet here was a reverend warden of a college considering it his duty to
+write eagerly of a discovery obtained by these forbidden means, to his own
+diocesan, begging him to communicate with the Cardinal of York and the
+Bishop of London, that three of the highest church authorities in England
+might become _participes criminis_, by acting on this diabolical
+information.
+
+Meanwhile, the commissary, not wholly relying on the astrologer, but
+resolving prudently to make use of the more earthly resources which were at
+his disposal, had sent information of Garret's escape to the corporations
+of Dover, Rye, Winchester, Southampton, and Bristol, with descriptions of
+the person of the fugitive; and this step was taken with so much
+expedition, that before the end of the week no vessel was allowed to leave
+either of those harbours without being strictly searched.
+
+The natural method proved more effectual than the supernatural, though
+again with the assistance of a singular accident. Garret had not gone to
+London; unfortunately for himself, he had not gone to Wales as he had
+intended. He left Oxford, as we saw, the evening of Saturday, February
+21st. That night he reached a village called Corkthrop,[523] where he lay
+concealed till Wednesday; and then, not in the astrologer's orange-tawny
+dress, but in "a courtier's coat and buttoned cap," which he had by some
+means contrived to procure, he set out again on his forlorn journey, making
+for the nearest sea-port, Bristol, where the police were looking out to
+receive him. His choice of Bristol was peculiarly unlucky. The "chapman" of
+the town was the step-father of Cole, the Oxford proctor: to this person,
+whose name was Master Wilkyns, the proctor had written a special letter, in
+addition to the commissary's circular; and the family connection acting as
+a spur to his natural activity, a coast guard had been set before Garret's
+arrival, to watch for him down the Avon banks, and along the Channel shore
+for fifteen miles. All the Friday night "the mayor, with the aldermen, and
+twenty of the council, had kept privy watch," and searched suspicious
+houses at Master Wilkyns's instance; the whole population were on the
+alert, and when the next afternoon, a week after his escape, the poor
+heretic, footsore and weary, dragged himself into the town, he found that
+he had walked into the lion's mouth.[524] He quickly learnt this danger to
+which he was exposed, and hurried off again with the best speed which he
+could command; but it was too late. The chapman, alert and indefatigable,
+had heard that a stranger had been seen in the street; the police were set
+upon his track, and he was taken at Bedminster, a suburb on the opposite
+bank of the Avon, and hurried before a magistrate, where he at once
+acknowledged his identity.
+
+With such happy success were the good chapman's efforts rewarded. Yet in
+this world there is no light without shadow; no pleasure without its alloy.
+In imagination, Master Wilkyns had thought of himself conducting the
+prisoner in triumph into the streets of Oxford, the hero of the hour. The
+sour formality of the law condemned him to ill-merited disappointment.
+Garret had been taken beyond the liberties of the city; it was necessary,
+therefore, to commit him to the county gaol, and he was sent to Ilchester.
+"Master Wilkyns offered himself to be bound to the said justice in three
+hundred pounds to discharge him of the said Garret, and to see him surely
+to Master Proctor's of Oxford; yet could he not have him, for the justice
+said that the order of the law would not so serve."[525] The fortunate
+captor had therefore to content himself with the consciousness of his
+exploit, and the favourable report of his conduct which was sent to the
+bishops; and Garret went first to Ilchester, and thence was taken by
+special writ, and surrendered to Wolsey.
+
+Thus unkind had fortune shown herself to the chief criminal, guilty of the
+unpardonable offence of selling Testaments at Oxford, and therefore hunted
+down as a mad dog, and a common enemy of mankind. He escaped for the
+present the heaviest consequences, for Wolsey persuaded him to abjure. A
+few years later we shall again meet him, when he had recovered his better
+nature, and would not abjure, and died as a brave man should die. In the
+meantime we return to the university, where the authorities were busy
+trampling out the remains of the conflagration.
+
+Two days after his letter respecting the astrologer, the Warden of New
+College wrote again to the Diocesan, with an account of his further
+proceedings. He was an efficient inquisitor, and the secrets of the poor
+undergraduates had been unravelled to the last thread. Some of "the
+brethren" had confessed; all were in prison; and the doctor desired
+instructions as to what should be done with them. It must be said for Dr.
+London, that he was anxious that they should be treated leniently. Dalaber
+described him as a roaring lion, and he was a bad man, and came at last to
+a bad end. But it is pleasant to find that even he, a mere blustering
+arrogant official, was not wholly without redeeming points of character;
+and as little good will be said for him hereafter, the following passage in
+his second letter may be placed to the credit side of his account. The tone
+in which he wrote was at least humane, and must pass for more than an
+expression of natural kindness, when it is remembered that he was
+addressing a person with whom tenderness for heresy was a crime.
+
+"These youths," he said, "have not been long conversant with Master Garret,
+nor have greatly perused his mischievous books; and long before Master
+Garret was taken, divers of them were weary of these works, and delivered
+them to Dalaber. I am marvellous sorry for the young men. If they be openly
+called upon, although they appear not greatly infect, yet they shall never
+avoid slander, because my Lord's Grace did send for Master Garret to be
+taken. I suppose his Grace will know of your good lordship everything.
+Nothing shall be hid, I assure your good lordship, an every one of them
+were my brother; and I do only make this moan for these youths, for surely
+they be of the most towardly young men in Oxford; and as far as I do yet
+perceive, not greatly infect, but much to blame for reading any part of
+these works."[526]
+
+Doctor London's intercession, if timid, was generous; he obviously wished
+to suggest that the matter should be hushed up, and that the offending
+parties should be dismissed with a reprimand. If the decision had rested
+with Wolsey, it is likely that this view would have been readily acted
+upon. But the Bishop of Lincoln was a person in whom the spirit of humanity
+had been long exorcised by the spirit of an ecclesiastic. He was staggering
+along the last years of a life against which his own register[527] bears
+dreadful witness, and he would not burden his conscience with mercy to
+heretics. He would not mar the completeness of his barbarous career. He
+singled out three of the prisoners--Garret, Clark, and Ferrars[528]--and
+especially entreated that they should be punished. "They be three perilous
+men," he wrote to Wolsey, "and have been the occasion of the corruption of
+youth. They have done much mischief, and for the love of God let them be
+handled thereafter."[529]
+
+Wolsey had Garret in his own keeping, and declined to surrender him.
+Ferrars had been taken at the Black Friars, in London,[530] and making his
+submission, was respited and escaped with abjuration. But Clark was at
+Oxford, in the bishop's power, and the wicked old man was allowed to work
+his will upon him. A bill of heresy was drawn, which the prisoner was
+required to sign. He refused, and must have been sent to the stake, had he
+not escaped by dying prematurely of the treatment which he had received in
+prison.[531] His last words only are recorded. He was refused the
+communion, not perhaps as a special act of cruelty, but because the laws of
+the church would not allow the holy thing to be profaned by the touch of a
+heretic. When he was told that it would not be suffered, he said "_crede et
+manducāsti_"--"faith is the communion;" and so passed away; a very noble
+person, so far as the surviving features of his character will let us
+judge; one who, if his manhood had fulfilled the promise of his youth,
+would have taken no common part in the Reformation.
+
+The remaining brethren were then dispersed. Some were sent home to their
+friends--others, Anthony Dalaber among them, were placed on their trial,
+and being terrified at their position, recanted, and were sentenced to do
+penance. Ferrars was brought to Oxford for the occasion, and we discern
+indistinctly (for the mere fact is all which survives) a great fire at
+Carfax; a crowd of spectators, and a procession of students marching up
+High Street with fagots on their shoulders, the solemn beadles leading them
+with gowns and maces. The ceremony was repeated to which Dr. Barnes had
+been submitted at St. Paul's. They were taken three times round the fire,
+throwing in each first their fagot, and then some one of the offending
+books, in token that they repented and renounced their errors.
+
+Thus was Oxford purged of heresy. The state of innocence which Dr. London
+pathetically lamented[532] was restored, and the heads of houses had peace
+till their rest was broken by a ruder storm.
+
+In this single specimen we may see a complete image of Wolsey's
+persecution, as with varying details it was carried out in every town and
+village from the Tweed to the Land's End. I dwell on the stories of
+individual suffering, not to colour the narrative, or to re-awaken feelings
+of bitterness which may well rest now and sleep for ever; but because,
+through the years in which it was struggling for recognition, the history
+of Protestantism is the history of its martyrs. No rival theology, as I
+have said, had as yet shaped itself into formulas. We have not to trace any
+slow growing elaboration of opinion. Protestantism, before it became an
+establishment, was a refusal to live any longer in a lie. It was a falling
+back upon the undefined untheoretic rules of truth and piety which lay upon
+the surface of the Bible, and a determination rather to die than to mock
+with unreality any longer the Almighty Maker of the world. We do not look
+in the dawning manifestations of such a spirit for subtleties of intellect.
+Intellect, as it ever does, followed in the wake of the higher virtues of
+manly honesty and truthfulness. And the evidences which were to effect the
+world's conversion were so cunningly arranged syllogistic demonstrations,
+but once more those loftier evidences which lay in the calm endurance by
+heroic men of the extremities of suffering, and which touched--not the mind
+with conviction, but the heart with admiring reverence.
+
+In the concluding years of his administration Wolsey was embarrassed with
+the divorce. Difficulties were gathering round him, from the failure of his
+hopes abroad and the wreck of his popularity at home; and the activity of
+the persecution was something relaxed, as the guiding mind of the great
+minister ceased to have leisure to attend to it. The bishops, however,
+continued, each in his own diocese, to act with such vigour as they
+possessed. Their courts were unceasingly occupied with vexatious suits,
+commenced without reason, and conducted without justice. They summoned
+arbitrarily as suspected offenders whoever had the misfortune to have
+provoked their dislike; either compelling them to criminate themselves by
+questions on the intricacies of theology,[533] or allowing sentence to be
+passed against them on the evidence of abandoned persons, who would not
+have been admissible as witnesses before the secular tribunals.[534]
+
+It might have been thought that the clear perception which was shown by the
+House of Commons of the injustice with which the trials for heresy were
+conducted, the disregard, shameless and flagrant, of the provisions of the
+statutes under which the bishops were enabled to proceed, might have led
+them to reconsider the equity of persecution in itself; or, at least, to
+remove from the office of judges persons who had shown themselves so
+signally unfit to exercise that office. It would have been indecent,
+however, if not impossible, to transfer to a civil tribunal the cognisance
+of opinion; and, on the other hand, there was as yet among the upper
+classes of the laity no kind of disposition to be lenient towards those who
+were really unorthodox. The desire so far was only to check the reckless
+and random accusations of persons whose offence was to have criticised, not
+the doctrine but the moral conduct, of the church authorities. The
+Protestants, although from the date of the meeting of the parliament and
+Wolsey's fall their ultimate triumph was certain, gained nothing in its
+immediate consequences. They suffered rather from the eagerness of the
+political reformers to clear themselves from complicity with heterodoxy;
+and the bishops were even taunted with the spiritual dissensions of the
+realm as an evidence of their indolence and misconduct.[535] Language of
+this kind boded ill for the "Christian Brethren;" and the choice of
+Wolsey's successor for the office of chancellor soon confirmed their
+apprehensions; Wolsey had chastised them with whips; Sir Thomas More would
+chastise them with scorpions; and the philosopher of the _Utopia_, the
+friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty, whose genius was
+cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to the world
+that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the
+bigot, of the fanatic, but may co-exist with the fairest graces of the
+human character. The lives of remarkable men usually illustrate some
+emphatic truth. Sir Thomas More may be said to have lived to illustrate the
+necessary tendencies of Romanism in an honest mind convinced of its truth;
+to show that the test of sincerity in a man who professes to regard
+orthodoxy as an essential of salvation, is not the readiness to endure
+persecution, but the courage which will venture to inflict it.
+
+The seals were delivered to the new chancellor in November, 1529. By his
+oath on entering office he was bound to exert himself to the utmost for the
+suppression of heretics:[536] he was bound, however, equally to obey the
+conditions under which the law allowed them to be suppressed. Unfortunately
+for his reputation as a judge, he permitted the hatred of "that kind of
+men," which he did not conceal that he felt,[537] to obscure his conscience
+on this important feature of his duty, and tempt him to imitate the worst
+iniquities of the bishops. I do not intend in this place to relate the
+stories of his cruelties in his house at Chelsea,[538] which he himself
+partially denied, and which at least we may hope were exaggerated. Being
+obliged to confine myself to specific instances, I choose rather those on
+which the evidence is not open to question; and which prove against More,
+not the zealous execution of a cruel law, for which we may not fairly hold
+him responsible, but a disregard, in the highest degree censurable, of his
+obligations as a judge.
+
+The acts under which heretics were liable to punishment, were the 15th of
+the 2nd of Henry IV., and the 1st of the 2nd of Henry V.
+
+By the act of Henry IV., the bishops were bound to bring offenders to trial
+in open court, within three months of their arrest, if there were no lawful
+impediment. If conviction followed, they might imprison at their
+discretion. Except under these conditions, they were not at liberty to
+imprison.
+
+By the act of Henry V., a heretic, if he was first indicted before a
+secular judge, was to be delivered within ten days (or if possible, a
+shorter period) to the bishop, "to be acquit or convict" by a jury in the
+spiritual court, and to be dealt with accordingly.[539]
+
+The secular judge might detain a heretic for ten days before delivering him
+to the bishop. The bishop might detain him for three months before his
+trial. Neither the secular judge nor the bishop had power to inflict
+indefinite imprisonment at will while the trial was delayed; nor if on the
+trial the bishop failed in securing a conviction, was he at liberty to
+detain the accused person any longer on the same charge, because the result
+was not satisfactory to himself. These provisions were not preposterously
+lenient. Sir Thomas More should have found no difficulty in observing them
+himself, and in securing the observance of them by the bishops, at least in
+cases where he was himself responsible for the first committal. It is to be
+feared that he forgot that he was a judge in his eagerness to be a
+partisan, and permitted no punctilious legal scruples to interfere with the
+more important object of ensuring punishment to heretics.
+
+The first case which I shall mention is one in which the Bishop of London
+was principally guilty; not, however, without More's countenance, and, if
+Foxe is to be believed, his efficient support.
+
+In December, 1529, the month succeeding his appointment as chancellor,
+More, at the instance of the Bishop of London,[540] arrested a citizen of
+London, Thomas Philips by name, on a charge of heresy.
+
+The prisoner was surrendered in due form to his diocesan, and was brought
+to trial on the 4th of February; a series of articles being alleged against
+him by Foxford, the bishop's vicar-general. The articles were of the usual
+kind. The prisoner was accused of having used unorthodox expressions on
+transubstantiation, on purgatory, pilgrimages, and confession. It does not
+appear whether any witnesses were produced. The vicar-general brought his
+accusations on the ground of general rumour, and failed to maintain them.
+Whether there were witnesses or not, neither the particular offences, nor
+even the fact of the general rumour, could be proved to the satisfaction of
+the jury. Philips himself encountered each separate charge with a specific
+denial, declaring that he neither was, nor ever had been, other than
+orthodox; and the result of the trial was, that no conviction could be
+obtained. The prisoner "was found so clear from all manner of infamous
+slanders and suspicions, that all the people before the said bishop,
+shouting in judgment as with one voice, openly witnessed his good name and
+fame, to the great reproof and shame of the said bishop, if he had not been
+ashamed to be ashamed."[541] The case had broken down; the proceedings were
+over, and by law the accused person was free. But the law, except when it
+was on their own side, was of little importance to the church authorities.
+As they had failed to prove Philips guilty of heresy, they called upon him
+to confess his guilt by abjuring it; "as if," he says, "there were no
+difference between a nocent and an innocent, between a guilty and a not
+guilty."[542]
+
+He refused resolutely, and was remanded to prison, in open violation of the
+law. The bishop, in conjunction with Sir Thomas More,[543] sent for him
+from time to time, submitting him to private examinations, which again were
+illegal; and urged the required confession, in order, as Philips says, "to
+save the bishop's credit."
+
+The further they advanced, the more difficult it was to recede; and the
+bishop at length, irritated at his failure, concluded the process with an
+arbitrary sentence of excommunication. From this sentence, whether just or
+unjust, there was then no appeal, except to the pope. The wretched man, in
+virtue of it, was no longer under the protection of the law, and was
+committed to the Tower, where he languished for three years, protesting,
+but protesting fruitlessly, against the tyranny which had crushed him, and
+clamouring for justice in the deaf ears of pedants who knew not what
+justice meant.
+
+If this had occurred at the beginning of the century, the prisoner would
+have been left to die, as countless multitudes had already died, unheard,
+uncared for, unthought of; the victim not of deliberate cruelty, but of
+that frightfullest portent, folly armed with power. Happily the years of
+his imprisonment had been years of swift revolution. The House of Commons
+had become a tribunal where oppression would not any longer cry wholly
+unheard; Philips appealed to it for protection, and recovered his
+liberty.[544]
+
+The weight of guilt in this instance presses essentially on Stokesley; yet
+a portion of the blame must be borne also by the chancellor, who first
+placed Philips in Stokesley's hands; who took part in the illegal private
+examinations, and who could not have been ignorant of the prisoner's
+ultimate fate. If, however, it be thought unjust to charge a good man's
+memory with an offence in which his part was only secondary, the following
+iniquity was wholly and exclusively his own. I relate the story without
+comment in the address of the injured person to More's successor.[545]
+
+"_To the Right Hon. the Lord Chancellor of England. (Sir T. Audeley) and
+other of the King's Council._
+
+"In most humble wise showeth unto your goodness your poor bedeman John
+Field, how that the next morrow upon twelfth day,[546] in the twenty-first
+year of our sovereign lord the King's Highness, Sir Thomas More, Knight,
+then being Lord Chancellor of England, did send certain of his servants,
+and caused your said bedeman, with certain others, to be brought to his
+place at Chelsea, and there kept him (after what manner and fashion it were
+now long to tell), by the space of eighteen days;[547] and then set him at
+liberty, binding him to appear before him again the eighth day following in
+the Star Chamber, which was Candlemas eve; at which day your said bedeman
+appeared, and was then sent to the Fleet, where he continued until Palm
+Sunday two years after [in violation of both the statutes], kept so close
+the first quarter that his keeper only might visit him; and always after
+closed up with those that were handled most straitly; often searched,
+sometimes even at midnight; besides snares and traps laid to take him in.
+Betwixt Michaelmas and Allhalloween tide next after his coming to prison
+there was taken from your bedeman a Greek vocabulary, price five shillings;
+Saint Cyprian's works, with a book of the same Sir Thomas More's making,
+named the _Supplication of Souls_. For what cause it was done he committeth
+to the judgment of God, that seeth the souls of all persons. The said Palm
+Sunday, which was also our Lady's day, towards night there came two
+officers of the Fleet, named George Porter and John Butler, and took your
+bedeman into a ward alone, and there, after long searching, found his purse
+hanging at his girdle; which they took, and shook out the money to the sum
+of ten shillings, which was sent him to buy such necessaries as he lacked,
+and delivered him again his purse, well and truly keeping the money to
+themselves, as they said for their fees; and forthwith carried him from the
+Fleet (where he lost such poor bedding as he then had, and could never
+since get it), and delivered him to the Marshalsea, under our gracious
+sovereign's commandment and Sir Thomas More's. When the Sunday before the
+Rogation week following, your bedeman fell sick; and the Whitsun Monday was
+carried out on four men's backs, and delivered to his friends to be
+recovered if it so pleased God. At which time the keeper took for your
+bedeman's fees other ten shillings, when four shillings should have
+sufficed if he had been delivered in good health.
+
+"Within three weeks it pleased God to set your bedeman on his feet, so that
+he might walk abroad. Whereof when Sir Thomas More heard (who went out of
+his chancellorship about the time your bedeman was carried out of prison),
+although he had neither word nor deed which he could ever truly lay to your
+bedeman's charge, yet made he such means by the Bishops of Winchester and
+London, as your bedeman heard say, to the Hon. Lord Thomas Duke of Norfolk,
+that he gave new commandment to the keeper of the Marshalsea to attach
+again your said bedeman; which thing was speedily done the Sunday three
+weeks after his deliverance. And so he continued in prison again until
+Saint Lawrence tide following; at which time money was given to the keeper,
+and some things he took which were not given, and then was your bedeman
+re-delivered through the king's goodness, under sureties bound in a certain
+sum, that he should appear the first day of the next term following, and
+then day by day until his dismission. And so hath your bedeman been at
+liberty now twelve months waiting daily from term to term, and nothing laid
+to his charge as before.
+
+"Wherefore, the premises tenderly considered, and also your said bedeman's
+great poverty, he most humbly beseecheth your goodness that he may now be
+clearly discharged; and if books, money, or other things seem to be taken
+or kept from him otherwise than justice would, eftsoons he beseecheth you
+that ye will command it to be restored.
+
+"As for his long imprisonment, with other griefs thereto appertaining, he
+looketh not to have recompense of man; but committeth his whole cause to
+God, to whom your bedeman shall daily pray, according as he is bound, that
+ye may so order and govern the realm that it may be to the honour of God
+and your heavenly and everlasting reward."
+
+I do not find the result of this petition, but as it appeared that Henry
+had interested himself in the story, it is likely to have been successful.
+We can form but an imperfect judgment on the merits of the case, for we
+have only the sufferer's _ex parte_ complaint, and More might probably have
+been able to make some counter-statement. But the illegal imprisonment
+cannot be explained away, and cannot be palliated; and when a judge permits
+himself to commit an act of arbitrary tyranny, we argue from the known to
+the unknown, and refuse reasonably to give him credit for equity where he
+was so little careful of law.
+
+Yet a few years of misery in a prison was but an insignificant misfortune
+when compared with the fate under which so many other poor men were at this
+time overwhelmed. Under Wolsey's chancellorship the stake had been
+comparatively idle; he possessed a remarkable power of making recantation
+easy; and there is, I believe, no instance in which an accused heretic was
+brought under his immediate cognisance, where he failed to arrange some
+terms by which submission was made possible. With Wolsey heresy was an
+error--with More it was a crime. Soon after the seals changed hands the
+Smithfield fires recommenced; and, the chancellor acting in concert with
+them, the bishops resolved to obliterate, in these edifying spectacles, the
+recollection of their general infirmities. The crime of the offenders
+varied--sometimes it was a denial of the corporal presence, more often it
+was a reflection too loud to be endured on the character and habits of the
+clergy; but whatever it was, the alternative lay only between abjuration
+humiliating as ingenuity could make it, or a dreadful death. The hearts of
+many failed them in the trial, and of all the confessors those perhaps do
+not deserve the least compassion whose weakness betrayed them, who sank and
+died broken-hearted. Of these silent sufferers history knows nothing. A
+few, unable to endure the misery of having, as they supposed, denied their
+Saviour, returned to the danger from which they had fled, and washed out
+their fall in martyrdom. Latimer has told us the story of his friend
+Bilney--little Bilney, or Saint Bilney,[548] as he calls him, his companion
+at Cambridge, to whom he owed his own conversion. Bilney, after escaping
+through Wolsey's hands in 1527, was again cited in 1529 before the Bishop
+of London. Three times he refused to recant. He was offered a fourth and
+last chance. The temptation was too strong, and he fell. For two years he
+was hopelessly miserable; at length his braver nature prevailed. There was
+no pardon for a relapsed heretic, and if he was again in the bishop's hands
+he knew well the fate which awaited him.
+
+He told his friends, in language touchingly significant, that "he would go
+up to Jerusalem;" and began to preach in the fields. The journey which he
+had undertaken was not to be a long one. He was heard to say In a sermon,
+that of his personal knowledge certain things which had been offered in
+pilgrimage had been given to abandoned women. The priests, he affirmed,
+"take away the offerings, and hang them about their women's necks; and
+after that they take them off the women, if they please them not, and hang
+them again upon the images."[549] This was Bilney's heresy, or formed the
+ground of his arrest; he was orthodox on the mass, and also on the power of
+the keys; but the secrets of the sacred order were not to be betrayed with
+impunity. He was seized, and hurried before the Bishop of Norwich; and
+being found heterodox on the papacy and the mediation of the saints by the
+Bishop of Norwich he was sent to the stake.
+
+Another instance of recovered courage, and of martyrdom consequent upon it,
+is that of James Bainham, a barrister of the Middle Temple. This story is
+noticeable from a very curious circumstance connected with it.
+
+Bainham had challenged suspicion by marrying the widow of Simon Fish, the
+author of the famous _Beggars' Petition_, who had died in 1528; and, soon
+after his marriage, was challenged to give an account of his faith. He was
+charged with denying transubstantiation, with questioning the value of the
+confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative
+Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief.
+He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in
+God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,"[550]--a conception of
+Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to
+whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against him commenced with
+a demand that he should give up his books, and also the names of other
+barristers with whom he was suspected to have held intercourse. He refused;
+and in consequence his wife was imprisoned, and he himself was racked in
+the Tower by order of Sir Thomas More. Enfeebled by suffering, he was then
+brought before Stokesley, and terrified by the cold merciless eyes of his
+judge, he gave way, not about his friends, but about himself: he abjured,
+and was dismissed heartbroken. This was on the seventeenth of February. He
+was only able to endure his wretchedness for a month. At the end of it, he
+appeared at a secret meeting of the Christian Brothers, in "a warehouse in
+Bow Lane," where he asked forgiveness of God and all the world for what he
+had done; and then went out to take again upon his shoulders the heavy
+burden of the cross.
+
+The following Sunday, at the church of St. Augustine, he rose in his seat
+with the fatal English Testament in his hand, and "declared openly, before
+all the people, with weeping tears, that he had denied God," praying them
+all to forgive him, and beware of his weakness; "for if I should not return
+to the truth," he said, "this Word of God would damn me, body and soul, at
+the day of judgment." And then he prayed "everybody rather to die than to
+do as he did, for he would not feel such a hell again as he did feel for
+all the world's good."[551]
+
+Of course but one event was to be looked for; he knew it, and himself wrote
+to the bishop, telling him what he had done. No mercy was possible: he
+looked for none, and he found none.
+
+Yet perhaps he found what the wise authorities thought to be some act of
+mercy. They could not grant him pardon in this world upon any terms; but
+they would not kill him till they had made an effort for his soul. He was
+taken to the Bishop of London's coal cellar at Fulham, the favourite
+episcopal penance chamber, where he was ironed and put in the stocks; and
+there was left for many days, in the chill March weather, to bethink
+himself. This failing to work conviction, he was carried to Sir Thomas
+More's house at Chelsea, where for two nights he was chained to a post and
+whipped; thence, again, he was taken back to Fulham for another week of
+torture; and finally to the Tower, for a further fortnight, again with
+ineffectual whippings.
+
+The demands of charity were thus satisfied. The pious bishop and the
+learned chancellor had exhausted their means of conversion; they had
+discharged their consciences; and the law was allowed to take its course.
+The prisoner was brought to trial on the 20th of April, as a relapsed
+heretic. Sentence followed; and on the last of the month the drama closed
+in the usual manner at Smithfield. Before the fire was lighted Bainham made
+a farewell address to the people, laying his death expressly to More, whom
+he called his accuser and his judge.[552]
+
+It is unfortunately impossible to learn the feelings with which these
+dreadful scenes were witnessed by the people. There are stories which show
+that, in some instances, familiarity had produced the usual effect; that
+the martyrdom of saints was at times of no more moment to an English crowd
+than the execution of ordinary felons--that it was a mere spectacle to the
+idle, the hardened, and the curious. On the other hand, it is certain that
+the behaviour of the sufferers was the argument which at last converted the
+nation; and an effect which in the end was so powerful with the multitude,
+must have been visible long before in the braver and better natures. The
+increasing number of prosecutions in London shows, also, that the leaven
+was spreading. There were five executions in Smithfield between 1529 and
+1533, besides those in the provinces. The prisons were crowded with
+offenders who had abjured and were undergoing sentence; and the list of
+those who were "troubled" in various ways is so extensive, as to leave no
+doubt of the sympathy which, in London at least, must have been felt by
+many, very many, of the spectators of the martyrs' deaths. We are left, in
+this important point, mainly to conjecture; and if we were better furnished
+with evidence, the language of ordinary narrative would fail to convey any
+real notion of perplexed and various emotions. We have glimpses, however,
+into the inner world of men, here and there of strange interest; and we
+must regret that they are so few.
+
+A poor boy at Cambridge, John Randall, of Christ's College, a relation of
+Foxe the martyrologist, destroyed himself in these years in religious
+desperation; he was found in his study hanging by his girdle, before an
+open Bible, with his dead arm and finger stretched pitifully towards a
+passage on predestination.[553]
+
+A story even more remarkable is connected with Bainham's execution. Among
+the lay officials present at the stake, was "one Pavier," town clerk of
+London. This Pavier was a Catholic fanatic, and as the flames were about to
+be kindled he burst out into violent and abusive language. The fire blazed
+up, and the dying sufferer, as the red flickering tongues licked the flesh
+from off his bones, turned to him and said, "May God forgive thee, and shew
+more mercy than thou, angry reviler, shewest to me." The scene was soon
+over; the town clerk went home. A week after, one morning when his wife had
+gone to mass, he sent all his servants out of his house on one pretext or
+another, a single girl only being left, and he withdrew to a garret at the
+top of the house, which he used as an oratory. A large crucifix was on the
+wall, and the girl having some question to ask, went to the room, and found
+him standing before it "bitterly weeping." He told her to take his sword,
+which was rusty, and clean it. She went away, and left him; when she
+returned, a little time after, he was hanging from a beam, dead. He was a
+singular person. Edward Hall, the historian, knew him, and had heard him
+say, that "if the king put forth the New Testament in English, he would not
+live to bear it."[554] And yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What
+was it? Had the meaning of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross
+suddenly revealed itself? Had some inner voice asked him whether, in the
+prayer for his persecutors with which Christ had parted out of life, there
+might be some affinity with words which had lately sounded in his own ears?
+God, into whose hands he threw himself, self-condemned in his wretchedness,
+only knows the agony of that hour. Let the secret rest where it lies, and
+let us be thankful for ourselves that we live in a changed world.
+
+Thus, however, the struggle went forward; a forlorn hope of saints led the
+way up the breach, and paved with their bodies a broad road into the new
+era; and the nation the meanwhile was unconsciously waiting till the works
+of the enemy were won, and they could walk safely in and take possession.
+While men like Bilney and Bainham were teaching with words and writings,
+there were stout English hearts labouring also on the practical side of the
+same conflict, instilling the same lessons, and meeting for themselves the
+same consequences. Speculative superstition was to be met with speculative
+denial. Practical idolatry required a rougher method of disenchantment.
+
+Every monastery, every parish church, had in those days its special relics,
+its special images, its special something, to attract the interest of the
+people. The reverence for the remains of noble and pious men, the dresses
+which they had worn, or the bodies in which their spirits had lived, was in
+itself a natural and pious emotion; but it had been petrified into a dogma;
+and like every other imaginative feeling which is submitted to that bad
+process, it had become a falsehood, a mere superstition, a substitute for
+piety, not a stimulus to it, and a perpetual occasion of fraud. The people
+brought offerings to the shrines where it was supposed that the relics were
+of greatest potency. The clergy, to secure the offerings, invented the
+relics, and invented the stories of the wonders which had been worked by
+them. The greatest exposure of these things took place at the visitation of
+the religious houses. In the meantime, Bishop Shaxton's unsavoury inventory
+of what passed under the name of relics in the diocese of Salisbury, will
+furnish an adequate notion of these objects of popular veneration. There
+"be set forth and commended unto the ignorant people," he said, "as I
+myself of certain which be already come to my hands, have perfect
+knowledge, stinking boots, mucky combes, ragged rochettes, rotten girdles,
+pyl'd purses, great bullocks' horns, locks of hair, and filthy rags,
+gobbetts of wood, under the name of parcels of the holy cross, and such
+pelfry beyond estimation."[555] Besides matters of this kind, there were
+images of the Virgin or of the Saints; above all, roods or crucifixes, of
+especial potency, the virtues of which had begun to grow uncertain,
+however, to sceptical Protestants; and from doubt to denial, and from
+denial to passionate hatred, there were but a few brief steps. The most
+famous of the roods was that of Boxley in Kent, which used to smile and
+bow, or frown and shake its head, as its worshippers were generous or
+closehanded. The fortunes and misfortunes of this image I shall by and bye
+have to relate. There was another, however, at Dovercourt, in Suffolk, of
+scarcely inferior fame. This image was of such power that the door of the
+church in which it stood was open at all hours to all comers, and no human
+hand could close it. Dovercourt therefore became a place of great and
+lucrative pilgrimage, much resorted to by the neighbours on all occasions
+of difficulty.
+
+Now it happened that within the circuit of a few miles there lived four
+young men, to whom the virtues of the rood had become greatly questionable.
+If it could work miracles, it must be capable, so they thought, of
+protecting its own substance; and they agreed to apply a practical test
+which would determine the extent of its abilities. Accordingly (about the
+time of Bainham's first imprisonment), Robert King of Dedham, Robert
+Debenham of Eastbergholt, Nicholas Marsh of Dedham, and Robert Gardiner of
+Dedham, "their consciences being burdened to see the honour of Almighty God
+so blasphemed by such an idol," started off "on a wondrous goodly night" in
+February, with hard frost and a clear full moon, ten miles across the
+wolds, to the church.
+
+The door was open as the legend declared; but nothing daunted, they entered
+bravely, and lifting down the "idol" from its shrine, with its coat and
+shoes, and the store of tapers which were kept for the services, they
+carried it on their shoulders for a quarter of a mile from the place where
+it had stood, "without any resistance of the said idol." There setting it
+on the ground, they struck a light, fastened the tapers to the body, and
+with the help of them, sacrilegiously burnt the image down to a heap of
+ashes; the old dry wood "blazing so brimly," that it lighted them a full
+mile on their way home.[556]
+
+For this night's performance, which, if the devil is the father of lies,
+was a stroke of honest work against him and his family, the world rewarded
+these men after the usual fashion. One of them, Robert Gardiner, escaped
+the search which was made, and disappeared till better times; the remaining
+three were swinging in chains six months later on the scene of their
+exploit. Their fate was perhaps inevitable. Men who dare to be the first in
+great movements are ever self-immolated victims. But I suppose that it was
+better for them to be bleaching on their gibbets, than crawling at the feet
+of a wooden rood, and believing it to be God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These were the first Paladins of the Reformation; the knights who slew the
+dragons and the enchanters, and made the earth habitable for common flesh
+and blood. They were rarely, as we have said, men of great ability, still
+more rarely men of "wealth and station;" but men rather of clear senses and
+honest hearts. Tyndal was a remarkable person, and so Clark and Frith
+promised to become; but the two last were cut off before they had found
+scope to show themselves; and Tyndal remaining abroad, lay outside the
+battle which was being fought in England, doing noble work, indeed, and
+ending as the rest ended, with earning a martyr's crown; but taking no part
+in the actual struggle except with his pen. As yet but two men of the
+highest order of power were on the side of Protestantism--Latimer and
+Cromwell. Of them we have already said something; but the time was now fast
+coming when they were to step forward, pressed by circumstances which could
+no longer dispense with them, into scenes of far wider activity; and the
+present seems a fitting occasion to give some closer account of their
+history. When the breach with the pope was made irreparable, and the papal
+party at home had assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the
+fortunes of the Protestants entered into a new phase. The persecution
+ceased; and those who but lately were carrying fagots in the streets, or
+hiding for their lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the
+sunshine of political favour. The summer was but a brief one, followed soon
+by returning winter; but Cromwell and Latimer had together caught the
+moment as it went by; and before it was over, a work had been done in
+England which, when it was accomplished once, was accomplished for ever.
+The conservative party recovered their power, and abused it as before; but
+the chains of the nation were broken, and no craft of kings or priests or
+statesmen could weld the magic links again.
+
+It is a pity that of two persons to whom England owes so deep a debt, we
+can piece together such scanty biographies. I must attempt, however, to
+give some outline of the little which is known.
+
+The father of Latimer was a solid English yeoman, of Thurcaston, in
+Leicestershire. "He had no lands of his own," but he rented a farm "of four
+pounds by the year," on which "he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men;"
+"he had walk for a hundred sheep, and meadow ground for thirty cows."[557]
+The world prospered with him; he was able to save money for his son's
+education and his daughters' portions; but he was freehanded and
+hospitable; he kept open house for his poor neighbours; and he was a good
+citizen, too, for "he did find the king a harness with himself and his
+horse," ready to do battle for his country, if occasion called. His family
+were brought up "in godliness and the fear of the Lord;" and in all points
+the old Latimer seems to have been a worthy, sound, upright man, of the
+true English mettle.
+
+There were several children.[558] The Reformer was born about 1490, some
+five years after the usurper Richard had been killed at Bosworth. Bosworth
+being no great distance from Thurcaston, Latimer the father is likely to
+have been present in the battle, on one side or the other--the right side
+in those times it was no easy matter to choose--but he became a good
+servant of the new government--and the little Hugh, when a boy of seven
+years old, helped to buckle[559] on his armour for him, "when he went to
+Blackheath field."[560] Being a soldier himself, the old gentleman was
+careful to give his sons, whatever else he gave them, a sound soldier's
+training. "He was diligent," says Latimer, "to teach me to shoot with the
+bow: he taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in the bow--not to draw
+with strength of arm, as other nations do, but with the strength of the
+body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I
+increased in these, my bows were made bigger and bigger."[561] Under this
+education, and in the wholesome atmosphere of the farmhouse, the boy
+prospered well; and by and bye, showing signs of promise, he was sent to
+school. When he was fourteen, the promises so far having been fulfilled,
+his father transferred him to Cambridge.[562]
+
+He was soon known at the university as a sober, hard-working student. At
+nineteen, he was elected fellow of Clare Hall; at twenty, he took his
+degree, and became a student in divinity, when he accepted quietly, like a
+sensible man, the doctrines which he had been brought up to believe. At the
+time when Henry VIII. was writing against Luther, Latimer was fleshing his
+maiden sword in an attack upon Melancthon;[563] and he remained, he said,
+till he was thirty, "in darkness and the shadow of death." About this time
+he became acquainted with Bilney, whom he calls "the instrument whereby God
+called him to knowledge." In Bilney, doubtless, he found a sound
+instructor; but a careful reader of his sermons will see traces of a
+teaching for which he was indebted to no human master. His deepest
+knowledge was that which stole upon him unconsciously through the
+experience of life and the world. His words are like the clear impression
+of a seal; the account and the result of observations, taken first hand, on
+the condition of the English men and women of his time, in all ranks and
+classes, from the palace to the prison. He shows large acquaintance with
+books; with the Bible, most of all; with patristic divinity and school
+divinity; and history, sacred and profane: but if this had been all, he
+would not have been the Latimer of the Reformation, and the Church of
+England would not, perhaps, have been here to-day. Like the physician, to
+whom a year of practical experience in a hospital teaches more than a life
+of closest study, Latimer learnt the mental disorders of his age in the age
+itself; and the secret of that art no other man, however good, however
+wise, could have taught him. He was not an echo, but a voice; and he drew
+his thoughts fresh from the fountain--from the facts of the era in which
+God had placed him.
+
+He became early famous as a preacher at Cambridge, from the first, "a
+seditious fellow," as a noble lord called him in later life, highly
+troublesome to unjust persons in authority. "None, except the stiff-necked
+and uncircumcised, ever went away from his preaching, it was said, without
+being affected with high detestation of sin, and moved to all godliness and
+virtue."[564] And, in his audacious simplicity, he addressed himself always
+to his individual hearers, giving his words a personal application, and
+often addressing men by name. This habit brought him first into difficulty
+in 1525. He was preaching before the university, when the Bishop of Ely
+came into the church, being curious to hear him. He paused till the bishop
+was seated; and when he recommenced, he changed his subject, and drew an
+ideal picture of a prelate as a prelate ought to be; the features of which,
+though he did not say so, were strikingly unlike those of his auditor. The
+bishop complained to Wolsey, who sent for Latimer, and inquired what he had
+said. Latimer repeated the substance of his sermon; and other conversation
+then followed, which showed Wolsey very clearly the nature of the person
+with whom he was speaking. No eye saw more rapidly than the cardinal's the
+difference between a true man and an impostor; and he replied to the Bishop
+of Ely's accusations by granting the offender a licence to preach in any
+church in England. "If the Bishop of Ely cannot abide such doctrine as you
+have here repeated," he said, "you shall preach it to his beard, let him
+say what he will."[565]
+
+Thus fortified, Latimer pursued his way, careless of the university
+authorities, and probably defiant of them. He was still orthodox in points
+of theoretic belief. His mind was practical rather than speculative, and he
+was slow in arriving at conclusions which had no immediate bearing upon
+action. No charge could be fastened upon him, definitely criminal; and he
+was too strong to be crushed by that compendious tyranny which treated as
+an act of heresy the exposure of imposture or delinquency.
+
+On Wolsey's fall, however, he would have certainly been silenced: if he had
+fallen into the hands of Sir Thomas More, he would have perhaps been
+prematurely sacrificed. But, fortunately, he found a fresh protector in the
+king. Henry heard of him, sent for him, and, with instinctive recognition
+of his character, appointed him one of the royal chaplains. He now left
+Cambridge and removed to Windsor, but only to treat his royal patron as
+freely as he had treated the Cambridge doctors--not with any absence of
+respect, for he was most respectful, but with that highest respect which
+dares to speak unwelcome truth where the truth seems to be forgotten. He
+was made chaplain in 1530--during the new persecution, for which Henry was
+responsible by a more than tacit acquiescence. Latimer, with no authority
+but his own conscience, and the strong certainty that he was on God's side,
+threw himself between the spoilers and their prey, and wrote to the king,
+protesting against the injustice which was crushing the truest men in his
+dominions. The letter is too long to insert; the close of it may show how a
+poor priest could dare to address the imperious Henry VIII.:
+
+"I pray to God that your Grace may take heed of the worldly wisdom which is
+foolishness before God; that you may do that [which] God commandeth, and
+not that [which] seemeth good in your own sight, without the word of God;
+that your Grace may be found acceptable in his sight, and one of the
+members of his church; and according to the office that he hath called your
+Grace unto, you may be found a faithful minister of his gifts, and not a
+defender of his faith: for he will not have it defended by man or man's
+power, but by his word only, by the which he hath evermore defended it, and
+that by a way far above man's power or reason.
+
+"Wherefore, gracious king, remember yourself; have pity upon your soul; and
+think that the day is even at hand when you shall give account for your
+office, and of the blood that hath been shed by your sword. In which day,
+that your Grace may stand steadfastly, and not be ashamed, but be clear and
+ready in your reckoning, and have (as they say), your _quietus est_ sealed
+with the blood of our Saviour Christ, which only serveth at that day, is my
+daily prayer to Him that suffered death for our sins, which also prayeth to
+his Father for grace for us continually; to whom be all honour and praise
+for ever. Amen. The Spirit of God preserve your Grace."[566]
+
+These words, which conclude an address of almost unexampled grandeur, are
+unfortunately of no interest to us, except as illustrating the character of
+the priest who wrote them, and the king to whom they were written. The hand
+of the persecutor was not stayed. The rack and the lash and the stake
+continued to claim their victims. So far it was labour in vain. But the
+letter remains, to speak for ever for the courage of Latimer; and to speak
+something, too, for a prince that could respect the nobleness of the poor
+yeoman's son, who dared in such a cause to write to him as a man to a man.
+To have written at all in such a strain was as brave a step as was ever
+deliberately ventured. Like most brave acts, it did not go unrewarded; for
+Henry remained ever after, however widely divided from him in opinion, his
+unshaken friend.
+
+In 1531, the king gave him the living of West Kingston, in Wiltshire, where
+for a time he now retired. Yet it was but a partial rest. He had a special
+licence as a preacher from Cambridge, which continued to him (with the
+king's express sanction)[567] the powers which he had received from Wolsey.
+He might preach in any diocese to which he was invited; and the repose of a
+country parish could not be long allowed in such stormy times to Latimer.
+He had bad health, being troubled with headache, pleurisy, colic, stone;
+his bodily constitution meeting feebly the demands which he was forced to
+make upon it.[568] But he struggled on, travelling up and down to London,
+to Kent, to Bristol, wherever opportunity called him; marked for
+destruction by the bishops, if he was betrayed into an imprudent word, and
+himself living in constant expectation of death.[569]
+
+At length the Bishop of London believed that Latimer was in his power. He
+had preached at St. Abb's, in the city, "at the request of a company of
+merchants,"[570] in the beginning of the winter of 1531; and soon after his
+return to his living, he was informed that he was to be cited before
+Stokesley. His friends in the neighbourhood wrote to him, evidently in
+great alarm, and more anxious that he might clear himself, than expecting
+that he would be able to do so;[571] he himself, indeed, had almost made up
+his mind that the end was coming.[572]
+
+The citation was delayed for a few weeks. It was issued at last, on the
+10th of January, 1531-2,[573] and was served by Sir Walter Hungerford, of
+Farley.[574] The offences with which he was charged were certain "excesses
+and irregularities" not specially defined; and the practice of the bishops
+in such cases was not to confine the prosecution to the acts committed; but
+to draw up a series of articles, on which it was presumed that the
+orthodoxy of the accused person was open to suspicion, and to question him
+separately upon each. Latimer was first examined by Stokesley; subsequently
+at various times by the bishops collectively; and finally, when certain
+formulas had been submitted to him, which he refused to sign, his case was
+transferred to convocation. The convocation, as we know, were then in
+difficulty with their premunire; they had consoled themselves in their
+sorrow with burning the body of Tracy; and they would gladly have taken
+further comfort by burning Latimer.[575] He was submitted to the closest
+cross-questionings, in the hope that he would commit himself. They felt
+that he was the most dangerous person to them in the kingdom, and they
+laboured with unusual patience to ensure his conviction.[576] With a common
+person they would have rapidly succeeded. But Latimer was in no haste to be
+a martyr; he would be martyred patiently when the time was come for
+martyrdom; but he felt that no one ought "to consent to die," as long as he
+could honestly live;[577] and he baffled the episcopal inquisitors with
+their own weapons. He has left a most curious account of one of his
+interviews with them.
+
+"I was once in examination," he says,[578] "before five or six bishops,
+where I had much turmoiling. Every week, thrice, I came to examination, and
+many snares and traps were laid to get something. Now, God knoweth, I was
+ignorant of the law; but that God gave me answer and wisdom what I should
+speak. It was God indeed, for else I had never escaped them. At the last, I
+was brought forth to be examined into a chamber hanged with arras, where I
+was before wont to be examined, but now, at this time, the chamber was
+somewhat altered: for whereas before there was wont ever to be a fire in
+the chimney,[579] now the fire was taken away, and an arras hanging hanged
+over the chimney; and the table stood near the chimney's end, so that I
+stood between the table and the chimney's end. There was among these
+bishops that examined me one with whom I had been very familiar, and took
+him for my great friend, an aged man, and he sate next the table end. Then,
+among all other questions, he put forth one, a very subtle and crafty one,
+and such one indeed as I could not think so great danger in. And when I
+would make answer, 'I pray you, Master Latimer,' said he, 'speak out; I am
+very thick of hearing, and here be many that sit far off.' I marvelled at
+this, that I was bidden to speak out, and began to misdeem, and gave an ear
+to the chimney; and, sir, there I heard a pen walking in the chimney,
+behind the cloth. They had appointed one there to write all mine answers;
+for they made sure work that I should not start from them: there was no
+starting from them: God was my good Lord, and gave me answer; I could never
+else have escaped it. The question was this: 'Master Latimer, do you not
+think, on your conscience, that you have been suspected of heresy?'--a
+subtle question--a very subtle question. There was no holding of peace
+would serve. To hold my peace had been to grant myself faulty. To answer
+was every way full of danger. But God, which hath always given rile answer,
+helped me, or else I could never have escaped it. _Ostendite mihi numisma_
+_censūs_. Shew me, said he, a penny of the tribute money. They laid snares
+to destroy him, but he overturneth them in their own traps."[580]
+
+The bishops, however, were not men who were nice in their adherence to the
+laws; and it would have gone ill with Latimer, notwithstanding his
+dialectic ability. He was excommunicated and imprisoned, and would soon
+have fallen into worse extremities; but at the last moment he appealed to
+the king, and the king, who knew his value, would not allow him to be
+sacrificed. He had refused to subscribe the articles proposed to him.[581]
+Henry intimated to the convocation that it was not his pleasure that the
+matter should be pressed further; they were to content themselves with a
+general submission, which should be made to the archbishop, without
+exacting more special acknowledgments. This was the reward to Latimer for
+his noble letter. He was absolved, and returned to his parish, though
+snatched as a brand out of the fire.
+
+Soon after, the tide turned, and the Reformation entered into a new phase.
+
+Such is a brief sketch of the life of Hugh Latimer, to the time when it
+blended with the broad stream of English history. With respect to the other
+very great man whom the exigencies of the state called to power
+simultaneously with him, our information is far less satisfactory. Though
+our knowledge of Latimer's early story comes to us in fragments only, yet
+there are certain marks in it by which the outline can be determined with
+certainty. A cloud rests over the youth and early manhood of Thomas
+Cromwell, through which, only at intervals, we catch glimpses of authentic
+facts; and these few fragments of reality seem rather to belong to a
+romance than to the actual life of a man.
+
+Cromwell, the malleus monachorum, was of good English family, belonging to
+the Cromwells of Lincolnshire. One of these, probably a younger brother,
+moved up to London and conducted an ironfoundry, or other business of that
+description, at Putney. He married a lady of respectable connections, of
+whom we know only that she was sister of the wife of a gentleman in
+Derbyshire, but whose name does not appear.[582] The old Cromwell dying
+early, the widow was re-married to a cloth-merchant; and the child of the
+first husband, who made himself so great a name in English story, met with
+the reputed fortune of a stepson, and became a vagabond in the wide world.
+The chart of his course wholly fails us. One day in later life he shook by
+the hand an old bell-ringer at Sion House before a crowd of courtiers, and
+told them that "this man's father had given him many a dinner in his
+necessities." And a strange random account is given by Foxe of his having
+joined a party in an expedition to Rome to obtain a renewal from the pope
+of certain immunities and indulgences for the town of Boston; a story which
+derives some kind of credibility from its connection with Lincolnshire, but
+is full of incoherence and unlikelihood. Following still the popular
+legend, we find him in the autumn of 1515 a ragged stripling at the door of
+Frescobaldi's banking-house in Florence, begging for help. Frescobaldi had
+an establishment in London,[583] with a large connection there; and seeing
+an English face, and seemingly an honest one, he asked the boy who and what
+he was. "I am, sir," quoth he, "of England, and my name is Thomas Cromwell;
+my father is a poor man, and by occupation a cloth-shearer; I am strayed
+from my country, and am now come into Italy with the camp of Frenchmen that
+were overthrown at Garigliano, where I was page to a footman, carrying
+after him his pike and burganet." Something in the boy's manner was said to
+have attracted the banker's interest; he took him into his house, and after
+keeping him there as long as he desired to stay, he gave him a horse and
+sixteen ducats to help him home to England.[584] Foxe is the first English
+authority for the story; and Foxe took it from Bandello, the novelist; but
+it is confirmed by, or harmonises with, a sketch of Cromwell's early life
+in a letter of Chappuys, the imperial ambassador, to Chancellor Granvelle.
+"Master Cromwell," wrote Chappuys in 1535, "is the son of a poor
+blacksmith, who lived in a small village four miles from London, and is
+buried in a common grave in the parish churchyard. In his youth, for some
+offence, he was imprisoned, and had to leave the country. He went to
+Flanders, and thence to Rome and other places in Italy."[585]
+
+Returning to England, he married the daughter of a woollen-dealer, and
+became a partner in the business, where he amassed or inherited a
+considerable fortune.[586] Circumstances afterwards brought him, while
+still young, in contact with Wolsey, who discovered his merit, took him
+into service, and in 1525, employed him in the most important work of
+visiting and breaking up the small monasteries, which the pope had granted
+for the foundation of the new colleges. He was engaged with this business
+for two years, and was so efficient that he obtained an unpleasant
+notoriety, and complaints of his conduct found their way to the king.
+Nothing came of these complaints, however, and Cromwell remained with the
+cardinal till his fall.[587]
+
+It was then that the truly noble nature which was in him showed itself. He
+accompanied his master through his dreary confinement at Esher,[588] doing
+all that man could do to soften the outward wretchedness of it; and at the
+meeting of parliament, in which he obtained a seat, he rendered him a still
+more gallant service. The Lords had passed a bill of impeachment against
+Wolsey, violent, vindictive, and malevolent. It was to be submitted to the
+Commons, and Cromwell prepared to attempt an opposition. Cavendish has left
+a most characteristic description of his leaving Esher at this trying time.
+A cheerless November evening was closing in with rain and storm. Wolsey was
+broken down with sorrow and sickness; and had been unusually tried by
+parting with his retinue, whom he had sent home, as unwilling to keep them
+attached any longer to his fallen fortunes. When they were all gone, "My
+lord," says Cavendish, "returned to his chamber, lamenting the departure of
+his servants, making his moan unto Master Cromwell, who comforted him the
+best he could, and desired my lord to give him leave to go to London, where
+he would either make or mar before he came again, which was always his
+common saying. Then after long communication with my lord in secret, he
+departed, and took his horse and rode to London; at whose departing I was
+by, whom he bade farewell, and said, ye shall hear shortly of me, and if I
+speed well I will not fail to be here again within these two days."[589] He
+did speed well. "After two days he came again with a much pleasanter
+countenance, and meeting with me before he came to my lord, said unto me,
+that he had adventured to put in his foot where he trusted shortly to be
+better regarded or all were done." He had stopped the progress of the
+impeachment in the Lower House, and was answering the articles one by one.
+In the evening he rode down to Esher for instructions. In the morning he
+was again at his place in Parliament; and he conducted the defence so
+skilfully, that finally he threw out the bill, saved Wolsey, and himself
+"grew into such estimation in every man's opinion, for his honest behaviour
+in his master's cause, that he was esteemed the most faithfullest servant,
+[and] was of all men greatly commended."[590]
+
+Henry admired his chivalry, and perhaps his talent. The loss of Wolsey had
+left him without any very able man, unless we may consider Sir Thomas More
+such, upon his council, and he could not calculate on More for support in
+his anti-Roman policy; he was glad, therefore, to avail himself of the
+service of a man who had given so rare a proof of fidelity, and who had
+been trained by the ablest statesman of the age.[591]
+
+To Wolsey Cromwell could render no more service except as a friend, and his
+warm friend he remained to the last. He became the king's secretary,
+representing the government in the House of Commons, and was at once on the
+high road to power. I cannot call him ambitious; an ambitious man would
+scarcely have pursued so refined a policy, or have calculated on the
+admiration which he gained by adhering to a fallen minister. He did not
+seek greatness--greatness rather sought him as the man in England most fit
+to bear it. His business was to prepare the measures which were to be
+submitted to Parliament by the government. His influence, therefore, grew
+necessarily with the rapidity with which events were ripening; and when the
+conclusive step was taken, and the king was married, the virtual conduct of
+the Reformation passed into his hands. His Protestant tendencies were
+unknown as yet, perhaps, even to his own conscience; nor to the last could
+he arrive at any certain speculative convictions. He was drawn towards the
+Protestants as he rose into power by the integrity of his nature, which
+compelled him to trust only those who were honest like himself.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI
+
+WILL OF THOMAS CROMWELL--1529.
+
+In the name of God, Amen. The 12th day of July, in the year of our Lord God
+MCCCCCXXIX., and in the 21st year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord, King
+Henry VIII., I, Thomas Cromwell, of London, Gentleman, being whole in body
+and in good and perfect memory, lauded be the Holy Trinity, make, ordain,
+and declare this my present testament, containing my last will, in manner
+as following:--First I bequeath my soul to the great God of heaven, my
+Maker, Creator, and Redeemer, beseeching the most glorious Virgin and
+blessed Lady Saint Mary the Virgin and Mother, with all the holy company of
+heaven, to be mediators and intercessors for me to the Holy Trinity, so
+that I may be able, when it shall please Almighty God to call me out of
+this miserable world and transitory life, to inherit the kingdom of heaven
+amongst the number of good Christian people; and whensoever I shall depart
+this present life I bequeath my body to be buried where it shall please God
+to ordain me to die, and to be ordered after the discretion of mine
+executors undernamed. And for my goods which our Lord hath lent me in this
+world, I will shall be ordered and disposed in manner and form as hereafter
+shall ensue. First I give and bequeath unto my son Gregory Cromwell six
+hundred threescore six pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence, of lawful
+money of England, with the which six hundred threescore six pounds,
+thirteen shillings, and fourpence, I will mine executors undernamed
+immediately or as soon as they conveniently may after my decease, shall
+purchase lands, tenements, and hereditaments to the clear yearly value of
+£33 6s. 8d. by the year above all charges and reprises to the use of my
+said son Gregory, for term of his life; and after the decease of the said
+Gregory to the heirs male of his body lawfully to be begotten, and for lack
+of heirs male of the body of the said Gregory, lawfully begotten, to the
+heirs general of his body lawfully begotten. And for lack of such heirs to
+the right heirs of me the said Thomas Cromwell, in fee. I will also that
+immediately and as soon as the said lands, tenements, and hereditaments
+shall be so purchased after my death as is aforesaid by mine executors,
+that the yearly profits thereof shall be wholly spent and employed in and
+about the education and finding honestly of my said son Gregory, in virtue,
+good learning, and manners, until such time as he shall come to the full
+age of 24 years. During which time I heartily desire and require my said
+executors to be good unto my said you Gregory, and to see he do lose no
+time, but to see him virtuously ordered and brought up according to my
+trust.
+
+Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory, (when he shall come to
+his full age of 24 years), two hundred pounds of lawful English money to
+order them as our Lord shall give him grace and discretion, which £200 I
+will shall be put in surety to the intent the same may come to his hands at
+his said age of 24 years. Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory
+of such household stuff as God hath lent me, three of my best featherbeds
+with their bolsters; and, the best pair of blankets of fustian, my best
+coverlet of tapestry, and my quilt of yellow Turkey satin; one pair of my
+best sheets, four pillows of down, with four pair of the best pillowberes,
+four of my best table-cloths, four of my best towels, two dozen of my
+finest napkins, and two dozen of my other napkins, two garnish of my best
+vessel, three of my best brass pots, three of my best brass pans, two of my
+best kettles, two of my best spits, my best joined bed of Flanders work,
+with the best ---- and tester, and other the appurtenances thereto
+belonging; my best press, carven of Flanders work, and my best cupboard,
+carven of Flanders work, with also six joined stools of Flanders work, and
+six of my best cushions. Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory a
+basin with an ewer parcel-gilt, my best salt gilt, my best cup gilt, three
+of my best goblets; three other of my goblets parcel-gilt, twelve of my
+best silver spoons, three of my best drinking ale-pots gilt; all the which
+parcels of plate and household stuff I will shall be safely kept to the use
+of my said you Gregory till he shall come to his said full age of 24. And
+all the which plate, household stuff, napery, and all other the premises, I
+will mine executors do put in safe keeping until my said son come to the
+said years or age of 24. And if he die before the age of 24, then I will
+all the said plate, vessel, and household stuff shall be sold by mine
+executors. And the money thereof coming to be given and equally divided
+amongst my poor kinsfolk, that is to say, amongst the children as well of
+mine own sisters Elizabeth and Katherine, as of my late wife's sister Joan,
+wife to John Williamson;[592] and if it happen that all the children of my
+said sisters and sister-in-law do die before the partition be made, and
+none of them be living, then I will that all the said plate, vessel, and
+household stuff shall be sold and given to other my poor kinsfolk then
+being in life, and other poor and indigent people, in deeds of charity for
+my soul, my father and mother their souls, and all Christian souls.
+
+[[593] Item. I give and bequeath to my daughter Anne an hundred marks of
+lawful money of England when she shall come to her lawful age or happen to
+be married, and £40 toward her finding until the time that she shall be of
+lawful age or be married, which £40 I will shall be delivered to my friend
+John Cook, one of the six Clerks of the King's Chancery, to the intent he
+may order the same and cause the same to be employed in the best wise he
+can devise about the virtuous education and bringing up of my said daughter
+till she shall come to her lawful age or marriage. Then I will that the
+said 100 marks, and so much of the said £40 as then shall be unspent and
+unemployed at the day of the death of my said daughter Anne, I will it
+shall remain to Gregory my son, if he then be in life; and if he be dead,
+the same hundred marks, and also so much of the said £40 as then shall be
+unspent, to be departed amongst my sisters' children, in manner and form
+aforesaid. And if it happen my said sisters' children then to be all dead,
+then I will the said 100 marks and so much of the said £40 as shall be
+unspent, shall be divided amongst my kinsfolk, such as then, shall be in
+life.] Item. I give and bequeath unto my sister Elizabeth Wellyfed £40,
+three goblets without a cover, a mazer, and a nut. Item. I give and
+bequeath to my nephew Richard Willyams [[594] servant with my Lord Marquess
+Dorset, £66 13s. 4d.], £40 sterling, my [[594] fourth] best gown, doublet,
+and jacket. Item. I give and bequeath to my nephew, Christopher Wellyfed
+£40, [[594] £20] my fifth gown, doublet, and jacket. Item. I give and
+bequeath to my nephew William Wellyfed the younger £20, [[594] £40]. Item.
+I give and bequeath to my niece Alice Wellyfed, to her marriage, £20. And
+if it happen her to die before marriage, then I will that the said £20
+shall remain to her brother Christopher. And if it happen him to die, the
+same £20 to remain to Wm. Wellyfed the younger, his brother. And if it
+happen them all to die before their lawful age or marriage, then I will
+that all their parts shall remain to Gregory my son. And if it happen him
+to die before them, then I will all the said parts shall remain [[594] to
+Anne and Grace, my daughters] to Richard Willyams and Walter Willyams, my
+nephews. And if it happen them to die, then I will that all the said parts
+shall be distributed in deeds of charity for my soul, my father's and
+mother's souls, and all Christian souls. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+mother-in-law Mercy Prior, £40 of lawful English money, and her chamber,
+with certain household stuff; that is to say, a featherbed, a bolster, two
+pillows with their beres, six pair of sheets, a pair of blankets, a garnish
+of vessel, two pots, two pans, two spits, with such other of my household
+stuff as shall be thought meet for her by the discretion of mine executors,
+and such as she will reasonably desire, not being bequeathed to other uses
+in this my present testament and last will. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+said mother-in-law a little salt of silver, a mazer, six silver spoons, and
+a drinking-pot of silver. And also I charge mine executors to be good unto
+her during her life. Item. I give and bequeath to my brother-in-law William
+Wellyfed, £20, my third gown, jacket, and doublet. Item. I give and
+bequeath to John Willyams my brother-in-law, 100 marks, a gown, a doublet,
+a jacket, a featherbed, a bolster, six pair of sheets, two table-cloths,
+two dozen napkins, two towels, two brass pots, two brass pans, a silver
+pot, a nut parcel-gilt; and to Joan, his wife, £40. Item. I give and
+bequeath to Joan Willyams, their daughter, to her marriage, £20, and to
+every other of their children, £12 13s. 4d. Item. I bequeath to Walter
+Willyams, my nephew, £20. item. I give and bequeath to Ralph Sadler, my
+servant, 200 marks of lawful English money, my second gown, jacket, and
+doublet, and all my books. Item. I give and bequeath to Hugh Whalley, my
+servant, £6 13s. 4d. Item. I give and bequeath to Stephen Vaughan, sometime
+my servant, 100 marks, a gown, jacket, and doublet. Item. I give and
+bequeath to Page, my servant, otherwise called John De Fount, £6 13s. 4d.
+[[594] Item. I give and bequeath to Elizabeth Gregory, sometime my servant,
+£20, six pair of sheets, a featherbed, a pair of blankets, a coverlet, two
+table-cloths, one dozen napkins, two brass pots, two pans, two spits.] And
+also to Thomas Averey, my servant, £6 13s. 4d. [[594] Item. I give and
+bequeath to John Cooke, one of the six Master Clerks of the Chancery, £10,
+my second gown, doublet, and jacket. Item. I give and bequeath to Roger
+More, servant of the King's bakehouse, £6 13s. 4d., three yards of satin;
+and to Maudelyn, his wife, £3 6s. 8d.] Item. I give and bequeath to John
+Horwood, £6 13s. 4d. [[594] Item. I give and bequeath to my little daughter
+Grace 100 marks of lawful English money when she shall come to her lawful
+age or marriage; and also £40 towards her exhibition and finding until such
+time she shall be of lawful age or be married, which £40 I will shall be
+delivered to my brother-in-law, John Willyams, to the intent he may order
+and cause the same to be employed in and about the virtuous education and
+bringing up of my said daughter, till she shall come to her lawful age of
+marriage. And if it happen my said daughter to die before she come to her
+lawful age or marriage, then I will that the said 100 marks, and so much of
+the said £40 as shall then be unspent and unemployed about the finding of
+my said daughter at the day of the death of my said daughter shall remain
+and be delivered to Gregory my son, if he then shall happen to be in life;
+and if he be dead, then the said 100 marks, and the said residue of the
+said £40, to be evenly departed among my grown kinsfolk--that is to say, my
+sisters' children aforesaid.] Item. That the rest of mine apparel before
+not given or bequeathed in this my testament and last will shall be given
+and equally departed amongst my servants after the order and discretion of
+mine executors. Item. I will also that mine executors shall take the yearly
+profits above the charges of my farm of Carberry, and all other things
+contained in my said lease of Carberry, in the county of Middlesex, and
+with the profits thereof shall yearly pay unto my brother-in-law William
+(Wellyfed) and Elizabeth his wife, mine only sister, twenty pounds; give
+and distribute for my soul quarterly 40 shillings during their lives and
+the longer of them; and after the decease of the said William and
+Elizabeth, the profits of the said farm over and above the yearly rent to
+be kept to the use of my son Gregory till he be come to the age of 24
+years. And at the years of 24 the said lease and farm of Carberry, I do
+give and bequeath to my son Gregory, to have the same to him, his executors
+and assigns. And if it fortune the said Gregory my son to die before, my
+said brother-in-law and sister being dead, he shall come to the age of 24
+years, then I will my said cousin Richard Willyams shall have the farm with
+the appurtenances to him and to his executors and assigns; and if it happen
+my said brother-in-law, my sister, my son Gregory, and my said cousin
+Richard, to die before the accomplishment of this my will touching the said
+farm, then I will mine executors shall sell the said farm, and the money
+thereof coming to employ in deeds of charity, to pray for my soul and all
+Christian souls. Item. I will mine executors shall conduct and hire a
+priest, being an honest person of continent and good living, to sing for my
+soul by the space of seven years next after my death, and to give him for
+the same £6 13s. 4d. for his stipend. Item. I give and bequeath towards the
+making of highways in this realm, where it shall be thought most necessary,
+£20 to be disposed by the discretion of mine executors. Item. I give and
+bequeath to every the five orders of Friars within the City of London, to
+pray for my soul, 20 shillings. Item. I give and bequeath to 60 poor
+maidens in marriage, £40, that is to say, 13s. 4d. to every of the said
+poor maidens, to be given and distributed by the discretion of mine
+executors. Item. I will that there shall be dealt and given after my
+decease amongst poor people householders, to pray for my soul, £20, such as
+by mine executors shall be thought most needful. Item. I give and bequeath
+to the poor parishioners of the parish where God shall ordain me to have my
+dwellingplace at the time of my death, £10, to be truly distributed amongst
+them by the discretion of mine executors. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+parish church for my tithes forgotten, 20 shillings. Item. To the poor
+prisoners of Newgate, Ludgate, King's Bench, and Marshalsea, to be equally
+distributed amongst them, £10. Willing, charging, and desiring mine
+executors underwritten, that they shall see this my will performed in every
+point according to my true meaning and intent as they will answer to God,
+and discharge their consciences. The residue of all my goods, chattels, and
+debts not bequeathed, my funeral and burial performed, which I will shall
+be done without any earthly pomp, and my debts paid, I will shall be sold,
+and the money thereof coming, to be distributed in works of charity and
+pity, after the good discretion of mine executors undernamed. Whom I make
+and ordain, Stephen Vaughan, Ralph Sadler, my servants, and John Willyams
+my brother-in-law. Praying and desiring the same mine executors to be good
+unto my son Gregory, and to all other my poor friends and kinsfolk and
+servants aforenamed in this my testament. And of this my present testament
+and last will I make Roger More mine overseer; unto whom and also to every
+of the other mine executors I give and bequeath £6 13s. 4d. for their pains
+to be taken in the execution of this my last will and testament, over and
+above such legacies as herebefore I have bequeathed them in this same
+testament and will. In witness whereof, to this my present testament and
+last will I have set to my hand in every leaf contained in this book, the
+day and year before limited.
+
+THOMAS CROMWELL.
+
+Item. I give and bequeath to William Brabazon, my servant, £20 8s., a gun,
+a doublet, a jacket, and my second gelding.
+
+It. to John Avery, Yeoman of the Bedchamber with the King's Highness, £6
+13s. 4d., and a doublet of satin.
+
+It. to Thurston, my cook. £6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to William Body, my servant, £6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to Peter Mewtas, my servant, £6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to Ric. Sleysh, my servant, £6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to George Wilkinson, my servant, £6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to my friend, Thomas Alvard. £10, and my best gelding.
+
+It. to my friend, Thomas Rush, £10.
+
+It. to my servant, John Hynde, my horsekeeper, £3 6s. 8d.
+
+Item. I will that mine executors shall safely keep the patent of the manor
+of Romney to the use of my son Gregory, and the money growing thereof, till
+he shall come to his lawful age, to be yearly received to the use of my
+said son, and the whole revenue thereof coming to be truly paid unto him at
+such time as he shall come to the age of 24 years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY
+
+I have now to resume the thread of the political history where it was
+dropped at the sentence of divorce pronounced by Cranmer, and the
+coronation of the new queen. The effect was about to be ascertained of
+these bold measures upon Europe; and of what their effect would be, only so
+much could be foretold with certainty, that the time for trifling was past,
+and the pope and Francis of France would be compelled to declare their true
+intentions. If these intentions were honest, the subordination of England
+to the papacy might be still preserved in a modified form. The papal
+jurisdiction was at end, but the spiritual supremacy of the Bishop of Rome,
+with a diminished but considerable revenue attached to it, remained
+unaffected; and it was for the pope to determine whether, by fulfilling at
+last his original engagements, he would preserve these remnants of his
+power and privileges, or boldly take up the gage, excommunicate his
+disobedient subjects, and attempt by force to bring them back to their
+allegiance.
+
+The news of what had been done did not take him wholly by surprise. It was
+known at Brussels at the end of April that the king had married. The queen
+regent[595] spoke of it to the ambassador sternly and significantly, not
+concealing her expectation of the mortal resentment which would be felt by
+her brothers;[596] and the information was forwarded with the least
+possible delay to the cardinals of the imperial faction at Rome. The true
+purposes which underlay the contradiction of Clement's language are
+undiscoverable. Perhaps in the past winter he had been acting out a deep
+intrigue--perhaps he was drifting between rival currents, and yielded in
+any or all directions as the alternate pressure varied; yet whatever had
+been the meaning of his language, whether it was a scheme to deceive Henry,
+or was the expression only of weakness and good-nature desiring to avoid a
+quarrel to the latest moment, the decisive step which had been taken in the
+marriage, even though it was nominally undivulged, obliged him to choose
+his course and openly adhere to it. After the experience of the past, there
+could be no doubt what that course would be.
+
+On the 12th of May a citation was issued against the King of England,
+summoning him to appear by person or proxy at a stated day. It had been
+understood that no step of such a kind was to be taken before the meeting
+of the pope and Francis; Bennet, therefore, Henry's faithful secretary,
+hastily inquired the meaning of this measure. The pope told him that it
+could not be avoided, and the language which he used revealed to the
+English agent the inevitable future. The king, he said, had defied the
+inhibitory brief which had been lately issued, and had incurred
+excommunication; the imperialists insisted that he should be proceeded
+against for contempt, and that the excommunication should at once be
+pronounced. However great might be his own personal reluctance, it was not
+possible for him to remain passive; and if he declined to resort at once to
+the more extreme exercise of his power, the hesitation was merely until the
+emperor was prepared to enforce the censures of the church with the strong
+hand. It stood not "with his honour to execute such censures," he said,
+"and the same not to be regarded."[597] But there was no wish to spare
+Henry; and if Francis could be detached from his ally, and if the condition
+of the rest of Christendom became such as to favour the enterprise, England
+might evidently look for the worst which the pope, with the Catholic
+powers, could execute. If the papal court was roused into so menacing a
+mood by the mere intimation of the secret marriage, it was easy to foresee
+what would ensue when the news arrived of the proceedings at Dunstable.
+Bennet entreated that the process should be delayed till the interview; but
+the pope answered coldly that he had done his best and could do no more;
+the imperialists were urgent, and he saw no reason to refuse their
+petition.[598] This was Clement's usual language, but there was something
+peculiar in his manner. He had been often violent, but he had never shown
+resolution, and the English agents were perplexed. The mystery was soon
+explained. He had secured himself on the side of France; and Francis, who
+at Calais had told Henry that his negotiations with the see of Rome were
+solely for the interests of England, that for Henry's sake he was marrying
+his son into a family beneath him in rank, that Henry's divorce was to form
+the especial subject of his conference with the pope, had consented to
+allow these dangerous questions to sink into a secondary place, and had
+relinquished his intention, if he had ever seriously entertained it, of
+becoming an active party in the English quarrel.
+
+The long-talked-of interview was still delayed. First it was to have taken
+place in the winter, then in the spring; June was the date last fixed for
+it, and now Bennet had to inform the king that it would not take place
+before September; and that, from the terms of a communication which had
+just passed between the parties who were to meet, the subjects discussed at
+the conference would not be those which he had been led to expect. Francis,
+in answer to a question from the pope, had specified three things which he
+proposed particularly to "intreat." The first concerned the defence of
+Christendom against the Turks, the second concerned the general council,
+and the third concerned "the extinction of the Lutheran sect."[599] These
+were the points which the Most Christian king was anxious to discuss with
+the pope. For the latter good object especially, "he would devise and treat
+for the provision of an army." In the King of England's cause, he trusted
+"some means might be found whereby it might be compounded;"[600] but if
+persuasion failed, there was no fear lest he should have recourse to any
+other method.
+
+It was this which had given back to the pope his courage. It was this which
+Bennet had now to report to Henry. The French alliance, it was too likely,
+would prove a broken reed, and pierce the hand that leant upon it.
+
+Henry knew the danger; but danger was not a very terrible thing either to
+him or to his people. If he had conquered his own reluctance to risk a
+schism in the church, he was not likely to yield to the fear of isolation;
+and if there was something to alarm in the aspect of affairs, there was
+also much to encourage. His parliament was united and resolute. His queen
+was pregnant. The Nun of Kent had assigned him but a month to live after
+his marriage; six months had passed, and he was alive and well; the
+supernatural powers had not declared against him; and while safe with
+respect to enmity from above, the earthly powers he could afford to defy.
+When he finally divorced Queen Catherine, he must have foreseen his present
+position at least as a possibility, and if not prepared for so swift an
+apostasy in Francis, and if not yet wholly believing it, we may satisfy
+ourselves he had never absolutely trusted a prince of metal so
+questionable.
+
+The Duke of Norfolk was waiting at the French court, with a magnificent
+embassy, to represent the English king at the interview. The arrival of the
+pope had been expected in May. It was now delayed till September; and if
+Clement came after all, it would be for objects in which England had but
+small concern. It was better for England that there should be no meeting at
+all, than a meeting to devise schemes for the massacre of Lutherans. Henry
+therefore wrote to the Duke, telling him generally what he had heard from
+Rome; he mentioned the three topics which he understood were to form the
+matter of discussion; but he skilfully affected to regard them as having
+originated with the imperialists, and not with the French king. In a long
+paper of instructions, in which earnestness and irony were strangely
+blended, he directed the ambassador to treat his good brother as if he were
+still exclusively devoted to the interests of England; and to urge upon
+him, on the ground of this fresh delay, that the interview should not take
+place at all.[601]
+
+"Our pleasure is," he wrote, "that ye shall say--that we be not a little
+moved in our heart to see our good brother and us, being such princes of
+Christendom, to be so handled with the pope, so much to our dishonour, and
+to the pope's and the emperor's advancement; seeming to be at the pope's
+commandment to come or tarry as he or his cardinals shall appoint; and to
+depend upon his pleasure when to meet--that is to say, when he list or
+never. If our good brother and we were either suitors to make request, the
+obtaining whereof we did much set by, or had any particular matter of
+advantage to entreat with him, these proceedings might be the better
+tolerated; but our good brother having no particular matter of his own, and
+being ... that [no] more glory nor surety could happen to the emperour than
+to obtain the effect of the three articles moved by the pope and his
+cardinals, we think it not convenient to attend the pleasure of the pope,
+to go or to abyde. We could have been content to have received and taken at
+the pope's hand, jointly with our good brother, pleasure and friendship in
+our great cause; [but] on the other part, we cannot esteem the pope's part
+so high, as to have our good brother an attendant suitor therefore ...
+desiring him, therefore, in anywise to disappoint for his part the said
+interview; and if he have already granted thereto--upon some new good
+occasion, which he now undoubtedly hath--to depart from the same.
+
+"For we, ye may say, having the justness of our cause for us, with such an
+entire and whole consent of our nobility and commons of our realm and
+subjects, and being all matters passed, and in such terms as they now be,
+do not find such lack and want of that the pope might do, with us or
+against us, as we would for the obtaining thereof be contented to have a
+French king our so perfect a friend, to be not only a mediator but a suitor
+therein, and a suitor attendant to have audience upon liking and after the
+advice of such cardinals as repute it among pastymes to play and dally with
+kings and princes; whose honour, ye may say, is above all things, and more
+dear to us in the person of our good brother, than is any piece of our
+cause at the pope's hands. And therefore, if there be none other thing but
+our cause, and the other causes whereof we be advertised, our advice,
+counsel, special desire also and request is, [that our good brother shall]
+break off the interview, unless the pope will make suit to him; and
+[unless] our said good brother hath such causes of his own as may
+particularly tend to his own benefit, honour, and profit--wherein he shall
+do great and singular pleasure unto us; _giving to understand to the pope,
+that me know ourselves and him both, and look to be esteemed accordingly._"
+
+Should it appear that on receipt of this communication, Francis was still
+resolved to persevere, and that he had other objects in view to which Henry
+had not been made privy, the ambassadors were then to remind him of the
+remaining obligations into which he had entered; and to ascertain to what
+degree his assistance might be calculated upon, should the pope pronounce
+Henry deposed, and the emperor attempt to enforce the sentence.
+
+After forwarding these instructions, the king's next step was to anticipate
+the pope by an appeal which would neutralise his judgment should he venture
+upon it; and which offered a fresh opportunity of restoring the peace of
+Christendom, if there was true anxiety to preserve that peace. The hinge of
+the great question, in the form which at last it assumed, was the validity
+or invalidity of the dispensation by which Henry had married his brother's
+widow. Being a matter which touched the limit of the pope's power, the pope
+was himself unable to determine it in his own favour; and the only
+authority by which the law could be ruled, was a general council. In the
+preceding winter, the pope had volunteered to submit the question to this
+tribunal; but Henry believing that it was on the point of immediate
+solution in another way, had then declined, on the ground that it would
+cause a needless delay. He was already married, and he had hoped that
+sentence might be given in his favour in time to anticipate the publication
+of the ceremony. But he was perfectly satisfied that justice was on his
+side; and was equally confident of obtaining the verdict of Europe, if it
+could be fairly pronounced. Now, therefore, under the altered
+circumstances, he accepted the offered alternative. He anticipated with
+tolerable certainty the effect which would be produced at Rome, when the
+news should arrive there of the Dunstable divorce; and on the 29th of June,
+he appealed formally, in the presence of the Archbishop of York, from the
+pope's impending sentence, to the next general council.[602]
+
+Of this curious document the substance was as follows:--It commenced with a
+declaration that the king had no intention of acting otherwise than became
+a good Catholic prince; or of injuring the church or attacking the
+privileges conceded by God to the Holy See. If his words could be lawfully
+shown to have such a tendency he would revoke, emend, and correct them in a
+Catholic spirit.
+
+The general features of the case were then recapitulated. His marriage with
+his brother's wife had been pronounced illegal by the principal
+universities of Europe, by the clergy of the two provinces of the Church of
+England, by the most learned theologians and canonists, and finally, by the
+public judgment of the church.[603] He therefore had felt himself free;
+and, "by the inspiration of the Host High, had lawfully married another
+woman." Furthermore, "for the common weal and tranquillity of the realm of
+England, and for the wholesome rule and government of the same, he had
+caused to be enacted certain statutes and ordinances, by authority of
+parliaments lawfully called for that purpose." "Now, however," he
+continued, "we fearing that his Holyness the Pope ... having in our said
+cause treated us far otherwise than either respect for our dignity and
+desert, or the duty of his own office required at his hands, and having
+done us many injuries which we now of design do suppress, but which
+hereafter we shall be ready, should circumstances so require, to divulge
+... may now proceed to acts of further injustice, and heaping wrong on
+wrong, may pronounce the censures and other penalties of the spiritual
+sword against ourselves, our realm, and subjects, seeking thereby to
+deprive us of the use of the sacraments, and to cut us off, in the sight of
+the world, from the unity of the church, to the no slight hurt and injury
+of our realm and subjects:
+
+"Fearing these things, and desiring to preserve from detriment not only
+ourselves, our own dignity and estimation, but also our subjects, committed
+to us by Almighty God; to keep them in the unity of the Christian faith,
+and in the wonted participation in the sacraments; that, when in truth they
+be not cut off from the integrity of the church, nor can nor will be so cut
+off in any manner, they may not appear to be so cut off in the estimation
+of men; [desiring further] to check and hold back our people whom God has
+given to us, lest, in the event of such injury, they refuse utterly to obey
+any longer the Roman Pontiff, as a hard and cruel pastor: [for these
+causes] and believing, from reasons probable, conjectures likely, and words
+used to our injury by his Holiness the Pope, which in divers manners have
+been brought to our ears, that some weighty act may be committed by him or
+others to the prejudice of ourselves and of our realm;--We, therefore, in
+behalf of all and every of our subjects, and of all persons adhering to us
+in this our cause, do make our appeal to the next general council, which
+shall be lawfully held, in place convenient, with the consent of the
+Christian princes, and of such others as it may concern--not in contempt of
+the Holy See, but for defence of the truth of the Gospel, and for the other
+causes afore rehearsed. And we do trust in God that it shall not be
+interpreted as a thing ill done on our part, if preferring the salvation of
+our soul and the relief of our conscience to any mundane respects or
+favours, we have in this cause regarded more the Divine law than the laws
+of man, and have thought it rather meet to obey God than to obey man."[604]
+
+By the appeal and the causes which were assigned for it, Henry pre-occupied
+the ground of the conflict; he entrenched himself in the "debateable land"
+of legal uncertainty; and until his position had been pronounced untenable
+by the general voice of Christendom, any sentence which the pope could
+issue would have but a doubtful validity. It was, perhaps, but a slight
+advantage; and the niceties of technical fencing might soon resolve
+themselves into a question of mere strength; yet, in the opening of great
+conflicts, it is well, even when a resort to force is inevitable, to throw
+on the opposing party the responsibility of violence; and Henry had been
+led, either by a refinement of policy, or by the plain straightforwardness
+of his intentions, into a situation where he could expect without alarm the
+unrolling of the future.
+
+The character of that future was likely soon to be decided. The appeal was
+published on the 29th of June; and as the pope must have heard, by the
+middle of the month at latest, of the trial and judgment at Dunstable, a
+few days would bring an account of the manner in which he had received the
+intelligence. Prior to the arrival of the couriers, Bennet, with the
+assistance of Cardinal Tournon, had somewhat soothed down his exasperation.
+Francis, also, having heard that immediate process was threatened, had
+written earnestly to deprecate such a measure;[605] and though he took the
+interference "very displeasantly,"[606] the pope could not afford to lose,
+by premature impatience; the fruit of all his labour and diplomacy, and had
+yielded so far as to promise that nothing of moment should be done. To this
+state of mind he had been brought one day in the second week of June. The
+morning after, Bennet found him "sore altered." The news of "my Lord of
+Canterbury's proceedings" had arrived the preceding night; and "his
+Holiness said that [such] doings were too sore for him to stand still at
+and do nothing."[607] It was "against his duty towards God and the world to
+tolerate them." The imperialist cardinals, impatient before, clamoured that
+the evil had been caused by the dilatory timidity with which the case had
+been handled from the first.[608] The consistory sate day after day with
+closed doors;[609] and even such members of it as had before inclined to
+the English side, joined in the common indignation. "Some extreme process"
+was instantly looked for, and the English agents, in their daily interviews
+with the pope, were forced to listen to language which it was hard to bear
+with equanimity. Bennet's well-bred courtesy carried him successfully
+through the difficulty; his companion Bonner was not so fortunate. Bonner's
+tongue was insolent, and under bad control. He replied to menace by
+impertinence; and on one occasion was so exasperating, that Clement
+threatened to burn him alive, or boil him in a caldron of lead.[610] When
+fairly roused, the old man was dangerous; and the future Bishop of London
+wrote to England in extremity of alarm. His letter has not been found, but
+the character of it may be perceived from the reassuring reply of the king.
+The agents, Henry said, were not to allow themselves to be frightened; they
+were to go on calmly, with their accustomed diligence and dexterity,
+disputing the ground from point to point, and trust to him. Their cause was
+good, and, with God's help, he would be able to defend them from the malice
+of their adversaries.[611]
+
+Fortunately for Bonner, the pope's passion was of brief duration, and the
+experiment whether Henry's arm could reach to the dungeons of the Vatican
+remained untried. The more moderate of the cardinals, also, something
+assuaged the storm; and angry as they all were, the majority still saw the
+necessity of prudence. In the heat of the irritation, final sentence was to
+have been pronounced upon the entire cause, backed by interdict,
+excommunication, and the full volume of the papal thunders. At the close of
+a month's deliberation they resolved to reserve judgement on the original
+question, and to confine themselves for the present to revenging the insult
+to the pope by "my Lord of Canterbury." Both the king and the archbishop
+had disobeyed a formal inhibition. On the 12th of July, the pope issued a
+brief, declaring Cranmer's judgment to have been illegal, the English
+process to have been null and void, and the king, by his disobedience, to
+have incurred, _ipso facto_, the threatened penalties of excommunication.
+Of his clemency he suspended these censures till the close of the following
+September, in order that time might be allowed to restore the respective
+parties to their old positions: if within that period the parties were not
+so restored, the censures would fall.[612] This brief was sent into
+Flanders, and fixed in the usual place against the door of a church in
+Dunkirk.
+
+Henry was prepared for a measure which was no more than natural. He had
+been prepared for it as a possibility when he married. Both he and Francis
+must have been prepared for it on their meeting at Calais, when the French
+king advised him to marry, and promised to support him through the
+consequences. His own measures had been arranged beforehand, and he had
+secured himself in technical entrenchments by his appeal. After the issue
+of the brief, however, he could allow no English embassy to compliment
+Clement by its presence on his visit to France. He "knew the pope," as he
+said. Long experience had shown him that nothing was to be gained by
+yielding in minor points; and the only chance which now remained of
+preserving the established order of Christendom, was to terrify the Vatican
+court into submission by the firmness of his attitude. For the present
+complications, the court of Rome, not he, was responsible. The pope, with a
+culpable complacency for the emperor, had shrunk from discharging a duty
+which his office imposed upon him; and the result had been, that the duty
+was discharged by another. Henry could not blame himself for the
+consequences of Clement's delinquency. He rather felt himself wronged in
+having been driven to so extreme a measure against his will. He resolved,
+therefore, to recall the embassy, and once more, though with no great hope
+that he would be successful, to invite Francis to fulfil his promise, and
+to unite with himself in expressing his resentment at the pope's conduct.
+
+His despatch to the Duke of Norfolk on this occasion was the natural sequel
+of what he had written a few weeks previously. That letter had failed
+wholly of its effect. The interview was resolved upon for quite other
+reasons than those which were acknowledged, and therefore was not to be
+given up. A promise, however, had been extracted, that it should be given
+up, if in the course of the summer the pope "innovated anything" against
+the King of England; and Henry now required, formally, that this engagement
+should be observed. "A notorious and notable innovation" had been made, and
+Francis must either deny his words, or adhere to them. It would be evident
+to all the world, if the interview took place under the present
+circumstances, that the alliance with England was no longer of the
+importance with him which it had been; that his place in the struggle, when
+the struggle came, would be found on the papal side.
+
+The language of Henry throughout this paper was very fine and noble. He
+reminded Francis that substantially the cause at issue was the cause of all
+princes; the pope claiming a right to summon them to plead in the courts of
+Rome, and refusing to admit their exemption as sovereign rulers. He had
+been required not only to undo his marriage, and cancel the sentence of
+divorce, but, as a condition of reconciliation with the Holy See, to undo
+also, the Act of Appeals, and to restore the papal jurisdiction. He desired
+it to be understood, with emphasis, that these points were all equally
+sacred, and the repeal of the act was as little to be thought of as the
+annulling the marriage. "The pope," he said, "did inforce us to excogitate
+some new thing, whereby we might be healed and relieved of that continual
+disease, to care for our cause at Rome, where such defence was taken from
+us, as by the laws of God, nature, and man, is due unto us. Hereupon
+depended the wealth of our realm; hereupon consisted the surety of our
+succession, which by no other means could be well assured." "And
+therefore," he went on, "you [the Duke] shall say to our good brother, that
+the pope persisting in the ways he hath entered, ye must needs despair in
+any meeting between the French king and the pope, to produce any such
+effect as to cause us to meet in concord with the pope; but we shall be
+even as far asunder as is between yea and nay. For to the pope's enterprise
+to revoke or put back anything that is done here, either in marriage,
+statute, sentence, or proclamation[613]--of which four members is knit and
+conjoined the surety of our matter, nor any can be removed from the other,
+lest thereby the whole edifice should be destroyed--we will and shall, by
+all ways and means say nay, and declare our nay in such sort as the world
+shall hear, and the pope feel it. Wherein ye may say our firm trust,
+perfect hope, and assured confidence is, that our good brother will agree
+with us; as well for that it should be partly dishonourable for him to see
+decay the thing that was of his own foundation and planting: as also that
+it should be too much dishonourable for us--having travelled so far in this
+matter, and brought it to this point, that all the storms of the year
+passed, it is now come to harvest, trusting to see shortly the fruit of our
+marriage, to the wealth, joy, and comfort of all our realm, and our own
+singular consolation--that anything should now be done by us to impair the
+same, and to put our issue either in peril of bastardy, or otherwise
+disturb that [which] is by the whole agreement of our realm established for
+their and our commodity, wealth, and benefit. And in this determination ye
+know us to be so fixed, and the contrary hereof to be so infeasible, either
+at our hands, or by the consent of the realm, that ye must needs despair of
+any order to be taken by the French king with the pope. For if any were by
+him taken wherein any of these four pieces should be touched--that is to
+say, the marriage of the queen our wife, the revocation of the Bishop of
+Canterbury's sentence, the statute of our realm, or our late proclamation,
+which be as it were one--and as walls, covering, the foundation make a
+house, so they knit together, establish, and make one matter--ye be well
+assured, and be so ascertained from us, that in no wise we will relent, but
+will, as we have before written, withstand the same. Whereof ye may say
+that ye have thought good to advertise him, to the intent he make no
+farther promise to the pope therein than may be performed."
+
+The ambassadors were the more emphatically to insist on the king's
+resolution, lest Francis, in his desire for conciliation, might hold out
+hopes to the pope which could not be realised. They were to say, however,
+that the King of England still trusted that the interview would not take
+place. The see of Rome was asserting a jurisdiction which, if conceded,
+would encourage an unlimited usurpation. If princes might be cited to the
+papal courts in a cause of matrimony, they might be cited equally in other
+causes at the pope's pleasure; and the free kingdoms of Europe would be
+converted into dependent provinces of the see of Rome. It concerned alike
+the interest and the honour of all sovereigns to resist encroachments which
+pointed to such an issue; and, therefore, Henry said he hoped that his good
+brother would use the pope as he had deserved, "doing him to understand his
+folly, and [that] unless he had first made amends, he could not find in his
+heart to have further amity with him."
+
+If notwithstanding, the instructions concluded, "all these persuasions
+cannot have place to let the said meeting, and the French king shall say it
+is expedient for him to have in his hands the duchess,[614] under pretence
+of marriage for his son, which he cannot obtain but by this means, ye shall
+say that ye remember ye heard him say once he would never conclude that
+marriage but to do us good, which is now infaisible; and now in the voice
+of the world shall do us both more hurt in the diminution of the reputation
+of our amity than it should do otherwise profit. Nevertheless, [if] ye
+cannot let his precise determination, [ye] can but lament and bewail your
+own chance to depart home in this sort; and that yet of the two
+inconvenients, it is to you more tolerable to return to us nothing done,
+than to be present at the interview and to be compelled to look patiently
+upon your master's enemy."
+
+After having entered thus their protest against the French king's conduct,
+the embassy was to return to England, leaving a parting intimation of the
+single condition under which Henry would consent to treat. If the pope
+would declare that "the matrimony with the Lady Catherine was and is
+nought, he should do somewhat not to be refused;" except with this
+preliminary, no offer whatever could be entertained.[615]
+
+This communication, as Henry anticipated, was not more effectual than the
+former in respect of its immediate object. At the meeting of Calais the
+interests of Francis had united him with England, and in pursuing the
+objects of Henry he was then pursuing his own. The pope and the emperor had
+dissolved the coalition by concessions on the least dangerous side. The
+interests of Francis lay now in the other direction, and there are few
+instances in history in which governments have adhered to obligations
+against their advantage from a spirit of honour, when the purposes with
+which they contracted those obligations have been otherwise obtained. The
+English embassy returned as they were ordered; the French court pursued
+their way to Marseilles; not quarrelling with England; intending to abide
+by the alliance, and to give all proofs of amity which did not involve
+inconvenient sacrifices; but producing on the world at large by their
+conduct the precise effect which Henry had foretold. The world at large,
+looking to acts rather than to words, regarded the interview as a
+contrivance to reconcile Francis and the emperor through the intervention
+of the pope, as a preliminary for a packed council, and for a holy war
+against the Lutherans[616]--a combination of ominous augury to Christendom,
+from the consequences of which, if Germany was to be the first sufferer,
+England would be inevitably the second.
+
+Meanwhile, as the French alliance threatened to fail, the English
+government found themselves driven at last to look for a connection among
+those powers from whom they had hitherto most anxiously disconnected
+themselves. At such a time. Protestant Germany, not Catholic France, was
+England's natural friend. The Reformation was essentially a Teutonic
+movement; the Germans, the English, the Scotch, the Swedes, the Hollanders,
+all were struggling on their various roads towards an end essentially the
+same. The same dangers threatened them, the same inspiration moved them;
+and in the eyes of the orthodox Catholics they were united in a black
+communion of heresy. Unhappily, though this identity was obvious to their
+enemies, it was far from obvious to themselves. The odium theologicum is
+ever hotter between sections of the same party which are divided by
+trifling differences, than between the open representatives of antagonist
+principles; and Anglicans and Lutherans, instead of joining hands across
+the Channel, endeavoured only to secure each a recognition of themselves at
+the expense of the other. The English plumed themselves on their orthodoxy.
+They were "not as those publicans," heretics, despisers of the keys,
+disobedient to authority; they desired only the independence of their
+national church, and they proved their zeal for the established faith with
+all the warmth of persecution. To the Germans national freedom was of
+wholly minor moment, in comparison with the freedom of the soul; the
+orthodoxy of England was as distasteful to the disciples of Luther as the
+orthodoxy of Rome--and the interests of Europe were sacrificed on both
+sides to this foolish and fatal disunion. Circumstances indeed would not
+permit the division to remain in its first intensity, and their common
+danger compelled the two nations into a partial understanding. Yet the
+reconciliation, imperfect to the last, was at the outset all but
+impossible. Their relations were already embittered by many reciprocal acts
+of hostility. Henry VIII. had won his spurs as a theologian by an attack on
+Luther. Luther had replied by a hailstorm of invectives. The Lutheran books
+had been proscribed, the Lutherans themselves had' been burnt by Henry's
+bishops. The Protestant divines in Germany had attempted to conciliate the
+emperor by supporting the cause of Catherine; and Luther himself had spoken
+loudly in condemnation of the king. The elements of disunion were so many
+and so powerful, that there was little hope of contending against them
+successfully. Nevertheless, as Henry saw, the coalition of Francis and the
+emperor, if the pope succeeded in cementing it, was a most serious danger,
+to which an opposite alliance would alone be an adequate counterpoise; and
+the experiment might at least be tried whether such an alliance was
+possible. At the beginning of August, therefore, Stephen Vaughan was sent
+on a tentative mission to the Elector of Saxe, John Frederick, at
+Weimar.[617] He was the bearer of letters containing a proposal for a
+resident English ambassador; and if the elector gave his consent, he was to
+proceed with similar offers to the courts of the Landgrave of Hesse and the
+Duke of Lunenberg.[618] Vaughan arrived in due time at the elector's court,
+was admitted to audience and delivered his letters. The prince read them,
+and in the evening of the same day returned for answer a polite but wholly
+absolute refusal. Being but a prince elector, he said, he might not aspire
+to so high an honour as to be favoured with the presence of an English
+ambassador. It was not the custom in Germany, and he feared that if he
+consented he should displease the emperor.[619] The meaning of such a reply
+delivered in a few hours was not to be mistaken, however disguised in
+courteous language. The English emissary saw that he was an unwelcome
+visitor, and that he must depart with the utmost celerity. "The elector,"
+he wrote,[620] "thirsted to have me gone from him, which I right well
+perceived by evident tokens which declared unto me the same." He had no
+anxiety to expose to hazard the toleration which the Protestant dukedoms as
+yet enjoyed from the emperor, by committing himself to a connection with a
+prince with whose present policy he had no sympathy, and whose conversion
+to the cause of the Reformation he had as yet no reason to believe
+sincere.[621]
+
+The reception which Vaughan met with at Weimar satisfied him that he need
+go no further; neither the Landgrave nor the Duke of Lunenberg would be
+likely to venture on a course which the elector so obviously feared. He,
+therefore, gave up his mission, and returned to England.
+
+The first overtures in this direction issued in complete failure, nor was
+the result wholly to be regretted. It taught Henry (or it was a first
+commencement of the lesson) that so long as he pursued a merely English
+policy he might not expect that other nations would embroil themselves in
+his defence. He must allow the Reformation a wider scope, he must permit it
+to comprehend within its possible consequences the breaking of the chains
+by which his subjects' minds were bound--not merely a change of jailors.
+Then perhaps the German princes might return some other answer.
+
+The disappointment, however, fell lightly; for before the account of the
+failure had reached England, an event had happened, which, poor as the king
+might be in foreign alliances, had added most material strength to his
+position in England. The full moment of that event he had no means of
+knowing. In its immediate bearing it was matter for most abundant
+satisfaction. On the seventh of September, between three and four in the
+afternoon, at the palace of Greenwich, was born a princess, named three
+days later in her baptism, after the king's mother, Elizabeth.[622] A son
+had been hoped for. The child was a daughter only; yet at least Providence
+had not pronounced against the marriage by a sentence of barrenness; at
+least there was now an heir whose legitimacy the nation had agreed to
+accept. Te Deums were sung in all the churches; again the river decked
+itself in splendour; again all London steeples were musical with bells. A
+font of gold was presented for the christening. Francis, in compensation
+for his backslidings, had consented to be godfather; and the infant, who
+was soon to find her country so rude a stepmother, was received with all
+the outward signs of exulting welcome. To Catherine's friends the offspring
+of the rival marriage was not welcome, but was an object rather of bitter
+hatred; and the black cloud of a sister's jealousy gathered over the cradle
+whose innocent occupant had robbed her of her title and her expectations.
+To the king, to the parliament, to the healthy heart of England, she was an
+object of eager hope and an occasion for thankful gratitude; but the seeds
+were sown with her birth of those misfortunes which were soon to overshadow
+her, and to form the school of the great nature which in its maturity would
+re-mould the world.
+
+Leaving Elizabeth for the present, we return to the continent, and to the
+long-promised interview, which was now at last approaching. Henry made no
+further attempt to remonstrate with Francis; and Francis assured him, and
+with all sincerity, that he would use his best efforts to move the pope to
+make the necessary concessions. The English embassy meanwhile was
+withdrawn. The excommunication had been received as an act of hostility, of
+which Henry would not even condescend to complain; and it was to be
+understood distinctly that in any exertions which might be made by the
+French king, the latter was acting without commission on his own
+responsibility. The intercession was to be the spontaneous act of a mutual
+friend, who, for the interests of Christendom, desired to heal a dangerous
+wound; but neither directly nor indirectly was it to be interpreted as an
+expression of a desire for a reconciliation on the English side.
+
+It was determined further, on the recal of the Duke of Norfolk, that the
+opportunity of the meeting should be taken to give a notice to the pope of
+the king's appeal to the council; and for this purpose, Bennet and Bonner
+were directed to follow the papal court from Rome. Bennet never
+accomplished this journey, dying on the route, worn out with much
+service.[623] His death delayed Bonner, and the conferences had opened for
+many days before his arrival. Clement had reached Marseilles by ship from
+Genoa, about the 20th of October. As if pointedly to irritate Henry, he had
+placed himself under the conduct of the Duke of Albany.[624] He was
+followed two days later by his fair niece, Catherine de Medici; and the
+preparations for the marriage were commenced with the utmost swiftness and
+secrecy. The conditions of the contract were not allowed to transpire, but
+they were concluded in three days; and on this 25th of October the pope
+bestowed his precious present on the Duke of Orleans, he himself performing
+the nuptial ceremony, and accompanying it with his paternal benediction on
+the young pair, and on the happy country which was to possess them for its
+king and queen. France being thus securely riveted to Rome, other matters
+could be talked of more easily. Francis made all decent overtures to the
+pope in behalf of Henry; if the pope was to be believed indeed, he was
+vehemently urgent.[625] Clement in turn made suggestions for terms of
+alliance between Francis and Charles, "to the advantage of the Most
+Christian king;"[626] and thus parried the remonstrances. The only point
+positively clear to the observers, was the perfect understanding which
+existed between the King of France and his spiritual father.[627] Unusual
+activity was remarked in the dockyards; Italian soldiers of fortune were
+about the court in unusual numbers, and apparently in favour.[628] An
+invasion of Lombardy was talked of among the palace retinue; and the
+emperor was said to distrust the intentions of the conference. Possibly
+experience had taught all parties to doubt each other's faith. Possibly
+they were all in some degree waiting upon events; and had not yet resolved
+upon their conduct.
+
+In the midst of this scene arrived Doctor Bonner, in the beginning of
+November, with Henry's appeal. He was a strange figure to appear in such a
+society. There was little probity, perhaps, either in the court of France,
+or in their Italian visitors: but of refinement, of culture, of those
+graces which enable men to dispense with the more austere excellences of
+character--which transform licentiousness into elegant frailty, and
+treachery and falsehood into pardonable finesse--of these there was very
+much: and when a rough, coarse, vulgar Englishman was plunged among these
+delicate ladies and gentlemen, he formed an element which contrasted
+strongly with the general environment. Yet Banner, perhaps, was not without
+qualifications which fitted him for his mission. He was not, indeed,
+virtuous; but he had a certain downright honesty about him, joined with an
+entire insensibility to those finer perceptions which would have interfered
+with plain speaking, where plain speaking was desirable; he had a broad,
+not ungenial humour, which showed him things and persons in their genuine
+light, and enabled him to picture them for us with a distinctness for which
+we owe him lasting thanks.
+
+He appeared at Marseilles on the 7th of November, and had much difficulty
+in procuring an interview. At length, weary of waiting, and regardless of
+the hot lead with which he had been lately threatened, he forced his way
+into the room where "the pope was standing, with the Cardinals De Lorraine
+and Medici, ready apparelled with his stole to go to the consistory."
+
+"Incontinently upon my coming thither," he wrote to Henry,[629] "the pope,
+whose sight is incredulous quick, eyed me, and that divers times; making a
+good pause in one place; at which time I desired the datary to advertise
+his Holiness that I would speak with him; and albeit the datary made no
+little difficulty therein, yet perceiving that upon refusal I would have
+gone forthwith to the pope, he advertised the pope of my said desire. His
+Holiness dismissing as then the said cardinals, and letting his vesture
+fall, went to a window in the said chamber, calling me unto him. At which
+time I showed unto his Holiness how that your Highness had given me express
+and strait commandment to intimate unto him how that your Grace had
+solemnly provoked and appealed unto the general council; submitting
+yourself to the tuition and defence thereof; which provocation and appeal I
+had under authentic writings then with me, to show for that purpose. And
+herewithal I drew out the said writing, showing his said Holiness that I
+brought the same in proof of the premises, and that his Holiness might see
+and perceive all the same. The pope having this for a breakfast, only
+pulled down his head to his shoulders, after the Italian fashion, and said
+that because he was as then fully ready to go into the consistory, he would
+not tarry to hear or see the said writings, but willed me to come at
+afternoon."
+
+The afternoon came, and Bonner returned, and was admitted. There was some
+conversation upon indifferent matters; the pope making good-natured
+inquiries about Bennet, and speaking warmly and kindly of him.
+
+"Presently," Bonner continues, "falling out of that, he said that he
+marvelled your Highness would use his Holiness after such sort as it
+appears ye did. I said that your Highness no less did marvel that his
+Holiness having found so much benevolence and kindness at your hands in all
+times past, would for acquittal show such unkindness as of late he did. And
+here we entered in communication upon two points: one was that his
+Holiness, having committed in times past, and in most ample form, the cause
+into the realm, promising not to revoke the said commission, and over that,
+to confirm the process and sentence of the commissaries, should not at the
+point of sentence have advoked the cause, retaining it at Rome--forasmuch
+as Rome was a place whither your Highness could not, ne yet ought,
+personally to come unto, and also was not bound to send thither your
+proctor. The second point was, that your Highness's cause being, in the
+opinion of the best learned men in Christendom, approved good and just, and
+so [in] many ways known unto his Holiness, the same should not so long have
+retained it in his hands without judgment.
+
+"His Holiness answering the same, as touching the first point, said that if
+the queen (meaning the late wife of Prince Arthur, calling her always in
+his conversation the queen) had not given an oath refusing the judges as
+suspect, he would not have advoked the matter at all, but been content that
+it should have been determined and ended in your realm. But seeing she gave
+that oath, appealing also to his court, he might and ought to hear her, his
+promise made to your Highness, which was qualified, notwithstanding. As
+touching the second point, his Holiness said that your Highness only was
+the default thereof, because ye would not send a proxy to the cause. These
+matters, however, he said, had been many times fully talked upon at Rome;
+and therefore [he] willed me to omit further communication thereupon, and
+to proceed to the doing of such things that I was specially sent for.
+
+"Whereupon making protestation of your Highness's mind and intent towards
+the see apostolic--not intending anything to do in contempt of the same--I
+exhibited unto his Holiness the commission which your Highness had sent
+unto me; and his Holiness delivering it to the datary, commanded him to
+read it; and hearing in the same the words (referring to the injuries which
+he had done to your Highness), he began to look up after a new sort, and
+said, 'O questo et multo vero! (this is much true!)' meaning that it was
+not true indeed. And verily, sure not only in this, but also in many parts
+of the said commission, he showed himself grievously offended; insomuch
+that, when those words, 'To the next general council which shall be
+lawfully held in place convenient,' were read, he fell in a marvellous
+great choler and rage, not only declaring the same by his gesture and
+manner, but also by words: speaking with great vehemence, and saying, 'Why
+did not the king, when I wrote to my nuncio this year past, to speak unto
+him for this general council, give no answer unto my said nuncio, but
+referred him for answer to the French king? at what time he might perceive
+by my doing, that I was very well disposed, and much spake for it.' 'The
+thing so standing, now to speak of a general council! Oh, good Lord! but
+well! his commission and all his other writings cannot be but welcome unto
+me;' which words methought he spake willing to hide his choler, and make me
+believe that he was nothing angry with their doings, when in vary deed I
+perceived, by many arguments, that it was otherwise. And one among others
+was taken here for infallible with them that knoweth the pope's conditions,
+that he was continually folding up and unwinding of his handkerchief, which
+he never doth but when he is tickled to the very heart with great choler."
+
+At length the appeal was read through; and at the close of it Francis
+entered, and talked to the pope for some time, but in so low a voice that
+Bonner could not hear what was passing. When he had gone, his Holiness said
+that he would deliberate upon the appeal with the consistory, and after
+hearing their judgments would return his answer.
+
+Three days passed, and then the English agent was informed that he might
+again present himself. The pope had recovered his calmness. When he had
+time to collect himself, Clement could speak well and with dignity; and if
+we could forget that his conduct was substantially unjust, and that in his
+conscience he knew it to be unjust, he would almost persuade us to believe
+him honest. "He said," wrote Bonner, "that his mind towards your Highness
+always had been to minister justice, and to do pleasure to you; albeit it
+hath not been so taken: and he never unjustly grieved your Grace that he
+knoweth, nor intendeth hereafter to do. As concerning the appeal, he said
+that, forasmuch as there was a constitution of Pope Pius, his predecessor,
+that did condemn and reprove all such appeals, he did therefore reject your
+Grace's appeal as frivolous, forbidden, and unlawful." As touching the
+council, he said generally, that he would do his best that it should meet;
+but it was to be understood that the calling a general council belonged to
+him, and not to the King of England.
+
+The audience ended, and Bonner left the pope convinced that he intended, on
+his return to Rome, to execute the censures and continue the process
+without delay. That the sentence which he would pronounce would be against
+the king appeared equally certain.
+
+It appeared certain, yet after all no certain conclusion is possible.
+Francis I., though not choosing to quarrel with the see of Rome to do a
+pleasure to Henry, was anxious to please his ally to the extent of his
+convenience; at any rate, he would not have gratuitously deceived him; and
+still less would he have been party to an act of deliberate treachery. When
+Bonner was gone he had a last interview with the pope, in which he urged
+upon him the necessity of complying with Henry's demands; and the pope on
+this occasion said that he was satisfied that the King of England was
+right; that his cause was good; and that he had only to acknowledge the
+papal jurisdiction by some formal act, to find sentence immediately
+pronounced in his favour. Except for his precipitation, and his refusal to
+depute a proxy to plead for him, his wishes would have been complied with
+long before. In the existing posture of affairs, and after the measures
+which had been passed in England with respect to the see of Rome, he
+himself, the pope said, could not make advances without some kind of
+submission; but a single act of acknowledgment was all which he
+required.[630]
+
+Extraordinary as it must seem, the pope certainly bound himself by this
+engagement: and who can tell with what intention? To believe him sincere
+and to believe him false seems equally impossible. If he was persuaded that
+Henry's cause _was_ good, why did he in the following year pronounce
+finally for Catherine? why had he imperilled so needlessly the interests of
+the papacy in England? why had his conduct from the beginning pointed
+steadily to the conclusion at which he at last arrived? and why throughout
+Europe were the ultramontane party, to a man, on Catherine's side? On the
+other hand, what object at such a time can be conceived for falsehood? Can
+we suppose that he designed to dupe Henry into submission by a promise
+which he had predetermined to break? It is hard to suppose even Clement
+capable of so elaborate an act of perfidy; and it is, perhaps, idle to
+waste conjectures on the motives of a weak, much-agitated man. He was,
+probably, but giving a fresh example of his disposition to say at each
+moment whatever would be most agreeable to his hearers. This was his
+unhappy habit, by which he earned for himself a character for dishonesty, I
+labour to think, but half deserved.
+
+If, however, Clement meant to deceive, he succeeded, undoubtedly, in
+deceiving the French king. Francis, in communicating to Henry the language
+which the pope had used, entreated him to reconsider his resolution. The
+objection to pleading at Rome might be overcome; for the pope would meet
+him in a middle course. Judges could be appointed, who should sit at
+Cambray, and pass a sentence in condemnation of the original marriage; with
+a definite promise that their sentence should not again be called in
+question. To this arrangement there could be no reasonable objection; and
+Francis implored that a proposal so liberal should not be rejected.
+Sufficient danger already threatened Christendom, from heretics within and
+from the Turks without; and although the English parliament were agreed to
+maintain the second marriage, it was unwise to provoke the displeasure of
+foreign princes. To allow time for the preliminary arrangements, the
+execution of the censures had been further postponed; and if Henry would
+make up the quarrel, the French monarch was commissioned to offer a league,
+offensive and defensive, between England, France, and the Papacy. He
+himself only desired to be faithful to his engagements to his good brother;
+and as a proof of his good faith, he said that he had been offered the
+Duchy of Milan, if he would look on while the emperor and the pope attacked
+England.[631]
+
+This language bears all the character of sincerity; and when we remember
+that it followed immediately upon a close and intimate communication of
+three weeks with Clement, it is not easy to believe that he could have
+mistaken the extent of the pope's promises. We may suppose Clement for the
+moment to have been honest, or wavering between honesty and falsehood; we
+may suppose further that Francis trusted him because it was undesirable to
+be suspicious, in the belief that he was discharging the duty of a friend
+to Henry, and of a friend to the church, in offering to mediate upon these
+terms.
+
+But Henry was far advanced beyond the point at which fair words could move
+him. He had trusted many times, and had been many times deceived. It was
+not easy to entangle him again. It mattered little whether Clement was weak
+or false; the result was the same--he could not be trusted. To an open
+English understanding there was something monstrous in the position of a
+person professing to be a judge, who admitted that a cause which lay before
+him was so clear that he could bind himself to a sentence upon it, and
+could yet refuse to pronounce that sentence, except upon conditions. It was
+scarcely for the interests of justice to leave the distribution of it in
+hands so questionable.
+
+Instead, therefore, of coming forward, as Francis hoped, instead of
+consenting to entangle himself again in the meshes of diplomatic intrigue,
+the king returned a peremptory refusal.
+
+The Duke of Norfolk, and such of the council as dreaded the completion of
+the schism, assured d'Inteville, the French ambassador, that for themselves
+they considered Francis was doing the best for England which could be done,
+and that they deprecated violent measures as much as possible; but in all
+this party there was a secret leaning to Queen Catherine, a dislike of
+Queen Anne and the whole Boleyn race, and a private hope and belief that
+the pope would after all be firm. Their tongues were therefore tied. They
+durst not speak except alone in whispers to each other; and the French
+ambassador, who did dare, only drew from Henry a more determined expression
+of his resolution.
+
+As to his measures in England, the king said, the pope had begun the
+quarrel by issuing censures and by refusing to admit his reasons for
+declining to plead at Rome. He was required to send a proctor, and was told
+that the cause should be decided in favour of whichever party was so
+represented there. For the sake of all other princes as well as himself, he
+would send no proctor, nor would he seem to acquiesce in the pretences of
+the papal see. The King of France told him that the pope admitted the
+justice of his cause. Let the pope do justice, then. The laws passed in
+parliament were for the benefit of the commonwealth, and he would never
+revoke them. He demanded no reparation, and could make no reparation. He
+asked only for his right, and if he could not obtain it, he had God and
+truth on his side, and that was enough. In vain d'Inteville answered
+feebly, that his master had done all that was in his power; the king
+replied that the French council wished to entangle him with the pope; but
+for his own part he would never more acknowledge the pope in his pretended
+capacity. He might be bishop of Rome, or pope also, if he preferred the
+name; but the see of Rome should have no more jurisdiction in England, and
+he thought he would be none the worse Christian on that account, but rather
+the better. Jesus Christ he would acknowledge, and him only, as the true
+Lord of Christian men, and Christ's word only should be preached in
+England. The Spaniards might invade him as they threatened. He did not fear
+them. They might come, but they might not find it so easy to return.[632]
+
+The King had taken his position and was prepared for the consequences. He
+had foreseen for more than a year the possibility of an attempted invasion;
+and since his marriage, he had been aware that the chances of success in
+the adventure had been discussed on the Continent by the papal and imperial
+party. The pope had spoken of his censures being enforced, and Francis had
+revealed to Henry the nature of the dangerous overtures which had been made
+to himself. The Lutheran princes had hurriedly declined to connect
+themselves in any kind of alliance with England; and on the 25th of
+September, Stephen Vaughan had reported that troops were being raised in
+Germany, which rumour destined for Catherine's service.[633] Ireland, too,
+as we shall hear in the next chapter, was on the verge of an insurrection,
+which had been fomented by papal agents.
+
+Nevertheless, there was no real danger from an invasion, unless it was
+accompanied with an insurrection at home, or with a simultaneous attack
+from Scotland; and while of the first there appeared upon the surface no
+probability, with Scotland a truce for a year had been concluded on the 1st
+of October.[634] The king, therefore, had felt himself reasonably secure.
+Parliament had seemed unanimous; the clergy were submissive; the nation
+acquiescent or openly approving;[635] and as late as the beginning of
+November, 1533, no suspicion seems to have been entertained of the spread
+of serious disaffection. A great internal revolution had been accomplished;
+a conflict of centuries between the civil and spiritual powers had been
+terminated without a life lost or a blow struck. Partial murmurs there had
+been, but murmurs were inevitable, and, so far as the government yet knew,
+were harmless. The Scotch war had threatened to be dangerous, but it had
+been extinguished. Impatient monks had denounced the king from the pulpits,
+and disloyal language had been reported from other quarters, which had
+roused vigilance, but had not created alarm. The Nun of Kent had forced
+herself into the royal presence with menacing prophecies; but she had
+appeared to be a harmless dreamer, who could only be made of importance by
+punishment. The surface of the nation was in profound repose. Cromwell,
+like Walsingham after him, may perhaps have known of the fire which was
+smouldering below, and have watched it silently till the moment came at
+which to trample it out; but no symptom of uneasiness appears either in the
+conduct of the government or in the official correspondence. The
+organisation of the friars, the secret communication of the Nun with
+Catherine and the Princess Mary, with the papal nuncio, or with noble lords
+and reverend bishops, was either unknown, or the character of those
+communications was not suspected. That a serious political conspiracy
+should have shaped itself round the ravings of a seeming lunatic, to all
+appearance had not occurred as a possibility to a single member of the
+council, except to those whose silence was ensured by their complicity.
+
+So far as we are able to trace the story (for the links of the chain which
+led to the discovery of the design's which were entertained, are something
+imperfect), the suspicions of the government were first roused in the
+following manner:
+
+Queen Catherine, as we have already seen, had been called upon, at the
+coronation of Anne Boleyn, to renounce her title, and she had refused. Mary
+had been similarly deprived of her rank as princess; but either her
+disgrace was held to be involved in that of her mother, or some other
+cause, perhaps the absence of immediate necessity, had postponed the demand
+for her own personal submission. As, however, on the publication of the
+second marriage, it had been urged on Catherine that there could not be two
+queens in England, so on the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, an analogous
+argument required the disinheritance of Mary. It was a hard thing; but her
+mother's conduct obliged the king to be peremptory. She might have been
+legitimatised by act of parliament, if Catherine would have submitted. The
+consequences of Catherine's refusal might be cruel, but they were
+unavoidable.
+
+Mary was not with her mother. It had been held desirable to remove her from
+an influence which would encourage her in a useless opposition; and she was
+residing at Beaulieu, afterwards New Hall, in Essex, under the care of Lord
+Hussey and the Countess of Salisbury. Lord Hussey was a dangerous guardian;
+he was subsequently executed for his complicity in the Pilgrimage of Grace,
+the avowed object of which was the restoration of Mary to her place as
+heir-apparent. We may believe, therefore, that while under his surveillance
+she experienced no severe restraint, nor received that advice with respect
+to her conduct which prudence would have dictated. Lord Hussey, however,
+for the present enjoyed the confidence of the king, and was directed to
+inform his charge, that for the future she was to consider herself not as
+princess, but as the king's natural daughter, the Lady Mary Tudor. The
+message was a painful one; painful, we will hope, more on her mother's
+account than on her own; but her answer implied that, as yet, Henry VIII.
+was no object of especial terror to his children.
+
+"Her Grace replied," wrote Lord Hussey to the council in communicating the
+result of his undertaking,[636] that "she could not a little marvel that I
+being alone, and not associate with some other the king's most honourable
+council, nor yet sufficiently authorised neither by commission not by any
+other writing from the King's Highness, would attempt to declare such a
+high enterprise and matter of no little weight and importance unto her
+Grace, in diminishing her said estate and name; her Grace not doubting that
+she is the king's true and legitimate daughter and heir procreate in good
+and lawful matrimony; [and] further adding, that unless she were advertised
+from his Highness by his writing that his Grace was so minded to diminish
+her estate, name, and dignity, which she trusteth his Highness will never
+do, she would not believe it."
+
+Inasmuch as Mary was but sixteen at this time, the resolution which she
+displayed in sending such a message was considerable. The early English
+held almost Roman notions on the nature of parental authority, and the tone
+of a child to a father was usually that of the most submissive reverence.
+Nor was she contented with replying indirectly through her guardian. She
+wrote herself to the king, saying that she neither could nor would in her
+conscience think the contrary, but that she was his lawful daughter born in
+true matrimony, and that she thought that he in his own conscience did
+judge the same.[637]
+
+Such an attitude in so young a girl was singular, yet not necessarily
+censurable. Henry was not her only parent, and if we suppose her to have
+been actuated by affection for her mother, her conduct may appear not
+pardonable only, but spirited and creditable. In insisting upon her
+legitimacy, nevertheless, she was not only asserting the good name and fame
+of Catherine of Arragon, but unhappily her own claim to the succession to
+the throne. It was natural that under the circumstances she should have
+felt her right to assert that claim; for the injury which she had suffered
+was patent not only to herself, but to Europe. Catherine might have been
+required to give way that the king might have a son, and that the
+succession might be established in a prince; but so long as the child of
+the second marriage was a daughter only, it seemed substantially monstrous
+to set aside the elder for the younger. Yet the measure was a harsh
+necessity; a link in the chain which could not be broken. The harassed
+nation insisted above all things that no doubt should hang over the future,
+and it was impossible in the existing complications to recognise the
+daughter of Catherine without excluding Elizabeth, and excluding the prince
+who was expected to follow her. By asserting her title, Mary was making
+herself the nucleus of sedition, which on her father's death would lead to
+a convulsion in the realm. She might not mean it, but the result would not
+be affected by a want of purpose in herself; and it was possible that her
+resolution might create immediate and far more painful complications. The
+king's excommunication was imminent, and if the censures were enforced by
+the emperor, she would be thrust into the unpermitted position of her
+father's rival.
+
+The political consequences of her conduct, notwithstanding, although
+evident to statesmen, might well be concealed from a headstrong, passionate
+girl. There was no suspicion that she herself was encouraging any of these
+dangerous thoughts, and Henry looked upon her answer to Lord Hussey and her
+letter to himself as expressions of petulant folly. Lord Oxford, the Earl
+of Essex, and the Earl of Sussex were directed to repair to Beaulieu, and
+explain to her the situation in which she had placed herself.
+
+"Considering," wrote the king to them, "how highly such contempt and
+rebellion done by our daughter and her servants doth touch not only us, and
+the surety of our honour and person, but also the tranquillity of our
+realm; and not minding to suffer the pernicious example hereof to spread
+far abroad, but to put remedy to the same in due time, we have given you
+commandment to declare to her the great folly, temerity, and indiscretion
+that she hath used herein, with the peril she hath incurred by reason of
+her so doing. By these her ungodly doings hitherto she hath most worthily
+deserved our high indignation and displeasure, and thereto no less pain and
+punition than by the order of the laws of our realm doth appertain in case
+of high treason, unless our mercy and clemency should be shewed in that
+behalf. [If, however, after] understanding our mind and pleasure, [she
+will] conform herself humbly and obediently to the observation of the same,
+according to the office and duty of a natural daughter, and of a true and
+faithful subject, she may give us cause hereafter to incline our fatherly
+pity to her reconciliation, her benefit and advancement."[638]
+
+The reply of Mary to this message is not discoverable; but it is certain
+that she persisted in her resolution, and clung either to her mother's
+"cause" or to her own rank and privilege, in sturdy defiance of her father.
+To punish her insubordination or to tolerate it was equally difficult; and
+the government might have been in serious embarrassment had not a series of
+discoveries, following rapidly one upon the other, explained the mystery of
+these proceedings, and opened a view with alarming clearness into the
+under-currents of the feeling of the country.
+
+Information from time to time had reached Henry from Rome, relating to the
+correspondence between Catherine and the pope. Perhaps, too, he knew how
+assiduously she had importuned the emperor to force Clement to a
+decision.[639] No effort, however, had been hitherto made to interfere with
+her hospitalities, or to oblige her visitors to submit to scrutiny before
+they could be admitted to her presence. She was the mistress of her own
+court and of her own actions; and confidential agents, both from Rome,
+Brussels, and Spain, had undoubtedly passed and repassed with reciprocal
+instructions and directions.
+
+The crisis which was clearly approaching had obliged Henry, in the course
+of this autumn, to be more watchful; and about the end of October, or the
+beginning of November,[640] two friars were reported as having been at
+Bugden, whose movements attracted suspicion from their anxiety to escape
+observation. Secret agents of the government, who had been "set" for the
+purpose, followed the friars to London, and notwithstanding "many wiles and
+cautells by them invented to escape," the suspected persons were arrested
+and brought before Cromwell. Cromwell, "upon examination" could gather
+nothing from them of any moment or great importance; but, "entering on
+further communication," he said, "he found one of them a very seditious
+person, and so committed them to ward." The king was absent from London,
+but had left directions that, in the event of any important occurrence of
+the kind, Archbishop Cranmer should be sent for; but Cranmer not being
+immediately at hand, Cromwell wrote to Henry for instructions; inasmuch as,
+he said, "it is undoubted that they (the monks) have intended, and would
+confess, some great matter, if they might be examined as they ought to
+be--that is to say, by pains."
+
+The curtain here falls over the two prisoners; we do not know whether they
+were tortured, whether they confessed, or what they confessed; but we may
+naturally connect this letter, directly or indirectly, with the events
+which immediately followed. In the middle of November we find a commission
+sitting at Lambeth, composed of Cromwell, Cranmer, and Latimer, ravelling
+out the threads of a story, from which, when the whole was disentangled, it
+appeared that by Queen Catherine, the Princess Mary, and a large and
+formidable party in the country, the king, on the faith of a pretended
+revelation, was supposed to have forfeited the crown; that his death,
+either by visitation of God or by visitation of man, was daily expected;
+and that whether his death took place or not, a revolution was immediately
+looked for, which would place the princess on the throne.
+
+The Nun of Kent, as we remember, had declared that if Henry persisted in
+his resolution of marrying Anne, she was commissioned by God to tell him
+that he should lose his power and authority. She had not specified the
+manner in which the sentence would be carried into effect against him. The
+form of her threats had been also varied occasionally; she said that he
+should die, but whether by the hands of his subjects, or by a providential
+judgment, she left to conjecture;[641] and the period within which his
+punishment was to fall upon him was stated variously at one month or at
+six.[642] She had attempted no secresy with these prophecies; she had
+confined herself in appearance to words; and the publicity which she
+courted having prevented suspicion of secret conspiracy, Henry quietly
+accepted the issue, and left the truth of the prophecy to be confuted by
+the event. He married. The one month passed; the six months passed;
+eight--nine months. His child was born and was baptised, and no divine
+thunder had interposed; only a mere harmless verbal thunder, from a poor
+old man at Rome. The illusion, as he imagined, had been lived down, and had
+expired of its own vanity.
+
+But the Nun and her friar advisers were counting on other methods of
+securing the fulfilment of the prophecy than supernatural assistance. It is
+remarkable that hypocrites and impostors as they knew themselves to be,
+they were not without a half belief that some supernatural intervention was
+imminent; but the career on which they had entered was too fascinating to
+allow them to forsake it when their expectation failed them. They were
+swept into the stream which was swelling to resist the Reformation, and
+allowed themselves to be hurried forward either to victory or to
+destruction.
+
+The first revelation being apparently confuted by facts, a second was
+produced as an interpretation of it; which, however, was not published like
+the other, but whispered in secret to persons whose dispositions were
+known.[643]
+
+"When the King's Grace," says the report of the commissioners, "had
+continued in good health, honour, and prosperity more than a month, Dr.
+Bocking shewed the said Nun, that as King Saul, abjected from his kingdom
+by God, yet continued king in the sight of the world, so her said
+revelations might be taken. And therefore the said Nun, upon this
+information, forged another revelation, that her words should be
+understanded to mean that the King's Grace should not be king in the
+reputation or acceptation of God, not one month or one hour after that he
+married the Queen's Grace that now is. The first revelation had moved a
+great number of the king's subjects, both high and low, to grudge against
+the said marriage before it was concluded and perfected; and also induced
+such as were stiffly bent against that marriage, daily to look for the
+destruction of the King's Grace within a month after he married the Queen's
+Grace that now is. And when they were deluded in that expectation, the
+second revelation was devised not only as an interpretation of the former,
+but to the intent to induce the king's subjects to believe that God took
+the King's Grace for no king of this realm, and that they should likewise
+take him for no righteous king, and themselves not bounden to be his
+subjects; which might have put the King and the Queen's Grace in jeopardy
+of their crown and of their issue, and the people of this realm in great
+danger of destruction."[644]
+
+It was no light matter to pronounce the king to be in the position of Saul
+after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending
+excommunication, the Nun's words could mean nothing but treason. The
+speaker herself was in correspondence with the pope; she had attested her
+divine commission by miracles, and had been recognised as a saint by an
+Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout the
+realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission
+recollected that the king was threatened further with dying "a villain's
+death;" and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written out,
+and were in private circulation through the country, the matter assumed a
+dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain how far, and
+among what classes of the state, these things had penetrated. The Friars
+Mendicant were discovered to be in league with her, and these itinerants
+were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They had privilege of vagrancy
+without check or limit; and owing to their universal distribution and the
+freemasonry among themselves, the secret disposition of every family in
+England was intimately known to them. No movement, therefore, could be
+securely over-looked in which these orders had a share; the country might
+be undermined in secret; and the government might only learn their danger
+at the moment of explosion.
+
+No sooner, therefore, were the commissioners in possession of the general
+facts, than the principal parties--that is to say, the Nun herself and five
+of the monks of Christ Church at Canterbury--with whom her intercourse was
+most constant, were sent to the Tower to be "examined"--the monks it is
+likely by "torture," if they could not otherwise be brought to confession.
+The Nun was certainly not tortured. On her first arrest, she was obstinate
+in maintaining her prophetic character; and she was detected in sending
+messages to her friends, "to animate them to adhere to her and to her
+prophecies."[645] But her courage ebbed away under the hard reality of her
+position. She soon made a full confession, in which her accomplices joined
+her; and the half-completed web of conspiracy was ravelled out. They did
+not attempt to conceal that they had intended, if possible, to create an
+insurrection. The five monks--Father Bocking, Father Rich, Father Rysby,
+Father Dering, and Father Goold--had assisted the Nun in inventing her
+"Revelations;" and as apostles, they had travelled about the country to
+communicate them in whatever quarters they were likely to be welcome. When
+we remember that Archbishop Warham had been a dupe of this woman, and that
+even Wolsey's experience and ability had not prevented him from believing
+in her power, we are not surprised to find high names among those who were
+implicated. Vast numbers of abbots and priors, and of regular and secular
+clergy, had listened eagerly; country gentlemen also, and London merchants.
+The Bishop of Rochester had "wept for joy" at the first utterances of the
+inspired prophetess; and Sir Thomas More, "who at first did little regard
+the said revelations, afterwards did greatly rejoice to hear of them."[646]
+We learn, also, that the Nun had continued to _communicate with "the Lady
+Princess Dowager" and "the Lady Mary, her daughter."_[647]
+
+These were names which might have furnished cause for regret, but little
+for surprise or alarm. The commissioners must have found occasion for other
+feelings, however, when among the persons implicated were found the
+Countess of Salisbury and the Marchioness of Exeter, with their chaplains,
+households, and servants; Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir George Carew, and "many
+of the nobles of England."[648] A combination headed by the Countess of
+Salisbury, if she were supported even by a small section of the nobility,
+would under any circumstances have been dangerous; and if such a
+combination was formed in support of an invasion, and was backed by the
+blessings of the pope and the fanaticism of the clergy, the result might be
+serious indeed. So careful a silence is observed in the official papers on
+this feature of the Nun's conspiracy, that it is uncertain how far the
+countess had committed herself; but she had listened certainly to avowals
+of treasonable intentions without revealing them, which of itself was no
+slight evidence of disloyalty; and that the government were really alarmed
+may be gathered from the simultaneous arrest of Sir William and Sir George
+Neville, the brothers of Lord Latimer. The connection and significance of
+these names I shall explain presently; in the meantime I return to the
+preparations which had been made by the Nun.
+
+As the final judgment drew near--which, unless the king submitted, would be
+accompanied, with excommunication, and a declaration that the English
+nation was absolved from allegiance,--"the said false Nun," says the
+report, "surmised herself to have made a petition to God to know, when
+fearful war should come, whether any man should take my Lady Mary's part or
+no; and she feigned herself to have answer by revelation that no man should
+fear but that she should have succour and help enough; and that no man
+should put her from her right that she was born unto. And petitioning next
+to know when it was the pleasure of God that her revelations should be put
+forth to the world, she had answer that knowledge should be given to her
+ghostly father when it should be time."[649]
+
+With this information Father Goold had hastened down to Bugden, encouraging
+Catherine to persevere in her resistance;[650] and while the imperialists
+at Rome were pressing the pope for sentence (we cannot doubt at Catherine's
+instance), the Nun had placed herself in readiness to seize the opportunity
+when it offered, and to blow the trumpet of insurrection in the panic which
+might be surely looked for when that sentence should be published.
+
+For this purpose she had organised, with considerable skill, a corps of
+fanatical friars, who, when the signal was given, were simultaneously to
+throw themselves into the midst of the people, and call upon them to rise
+in the name of God. "To the intent," says the report, "to set forth this
+matter, certain spiritual and religious persons were appointed, as they had
+been chosen of God, to preach the false revelations of the said Nun, when
+the time should require, if warning were given them; and some of these
+preachers have confessed openly, and subscribed their names to their
+confessions, that if the Nun had so sent them word, they would have
+preached to the king's subjects that the pleasure of God was that they
+should take him no longer for their king; and some of these preachers were
+such as gave themselves to great fasting, watching, long prayers, wearing
+of shirts of hair and great chains of iron about their middle, whereby the
+people had them in high estimation of their great holiness,--and this
+strait life they took on them by the counsel and exhortation of the said
+Nun."[651]
+
+Here, then, was the explanation of the attitude of Catherine and Mary.
+Smarting under injustice, and most naturally blending their private quarrel
+with the cause of the church, they had listened to these disordered visions
+as to a message from heaven, and they had lent themselves to the first of
+those religious conspiracies which held England in chronic agitation for
+three quarters of a century. The innocent Saint at Bugden was the
+forerunner of the prisoner at Fotheringay; and the Observant friars, with
+their chain girdles and shirts of hair, were the antitypes of Parsons and
+Campion. How critical the situation of England really was, appears from the
+following letter of the French ambassador. The project for the marriage of
+the Princess Mary with the Dauphin had been revived by the Catholic party;
+and a private arrangement, of which this marriage was to form the
+connecting link, was contemplated between the Ultramontanes in France, the
+pope, and the emperor.
+
+_D'Inteville to Cardinal Tournon._[652]
+
+"MY LORD,--You will be so good as to tell the Most Christian king that the
+emperor's ambassador has communicated with the old queen. The emperor sends
+a message to her and to her daughter, that he will not return to Spain till
+he has seen them restored to their rights.
+
+"The people are so much attached to the said ladies that they will rise in
+rebellion, and join any prince who will undertake their quarrel. You
+probably know from other quarters the intensity of this feeling. It is
+shared by all classes, high and low, and penetrates even into the royal
+household.
+
+"The nation is in marvellous discontent. Every one but the relations of the
+present queen, is indignant on the ladies' account. Some fear the overthrow
+of religion; others fear war and injury to trade. Up to this time, the
+cloth, hides, wool, lead, and other merchandise of England have found
+markets in Flanders, Spain, and Italy; now it is thought navigation will be
+so dangerous that English merchants must equip their ships for war if they
+trade to foreign countries; and besides the risk of losing all to the
+enemy, the expense of the armament will swallow the profits of the voyage.
+In like manner, the emperor's subjects and the pope's subjects will not be
+able to trade with England. The coasts will be blockaded by the ships of
+the emperor and his allies; and at this moment men's fears are aggravated
+by the unseasonable weather throughout the summer, and the failure of the
+crops. There is not corn enough for half the ordinary consumption.
+
+"The common people, foreseeing these inconveniences, are so violent against
+the queen, that they say a thousand shameful things of her, and of all who
+have supported her in her intrigues. On them is cast the odium of all the
+calamities anticipated from the war.
+
+"When the war comes, no one doubts that the people will rebel as much from
+fear of the dangers which I have mentioned, as from the love which is felt
+for the two ladies, and especially for the Princess. She is so entirely
+beloved that, notwithstanding the law made at the last Parliament, and the
+menace of death contained in it, they persist in regarding her as Princess.
+No Parliament, they say, can make her anything but the king's daughter,
+born in marriage; and so the king and every one else regarded her before
+that Parliament.
+
+"Lately, when she was removed from Greenwich, a vast crowd of women, wives
+of citizens and others, walked before her at their husbands' desire,
+weeping and crying that notwithstanding all she was Princess. Some of them
+were sent to the Tower, but they would not retract.
+
+"Things are now so critical, and the fear of war is so general, that many
+of the greatest merchants in London have placed themselves in communication
+with the emperor's ambassador, telling him, that if the emperor will
+declare war, the English nation will join him for the love they bear the
+Lady Mary.
+
+"You, my Lord, will remember that when you were here, it was said you were
+come to tell the king that he was excommunicated, and to demand the hand of
+the Princess for the Dauphin. The people were so delighted that they have
+never ceased to pray for you. We too, when we arrived in London, were told
+that the people were praying for us. They thought our embassy was to the
+Princess. They imagined her marriage with the Dauphin had been determined
+on by the two kings, and the satisfaction was intense and universal.
+
+"They believe that, except by this marriage, they cannot possibly escape
+war; whereas, can it be brought about, they will have peace with the
+emperor and all other Christian princes. They are now so disturbed and so
+desperate that, although at one time they would have preferred a husband
+for her from among themselves, that they might not have a foreign king,
+there now is nothing which they desire more. Unless the Dauphin will take
+her, they say she will continue disinherited; or, if she come to her
+rights, it can only be by battle, to the great incommodity of the country.
+The Princess herself says publicly that the Dauphin is her husband, and
+that she has no hope but in him. I have been told this by persons who have
+heard it from her own lips.
+
+"The emperor's ambassador inquired, after you came, whether we had seen
+her. He said he knew she was most anxious to speak with us; she thought we
+had permission to visit her, and she looked for good news. He told us,
+among other things, that she had been more strictly guarded of late, by the
+orders of the queen that now is, who, knowing her feeling for the Dauphin,
+feared there might be some practice with her, or some attempt to carry her
+off.
+
+"The Princess's ladies say that she calls herself the Dauphin's wife. A
+time will come, she says, when God will see that she has suffered pain and
+tribulation sufficient; the Dauphin will then demand her of the king her
+father, and the king her father will not be able to refuse.
+
+"The lady who was my informant heard, also, from the Princess, that her
+governess, and the other attendants whom the queen had set to watch her,
+had assured her that the Dauphin was married to the daughter of the
+emperor; but she, the Princess, had answered it was not true--the Dauphin
+could not have two wives, and they well knew that she was his wife: they
+told her that story, she said, to make her despair, and agree to give up
+her rights; but she would never part with her hopes.
+
+"You may have heard of the storm that broke out between her and her
+governess when we went to visit her little sister. She was carried off by
+force to her room, that she might not speak with us; and they could neither
+pacify her nor keep her still, till the gentleman who escorted us told her
+he had the king's commands that she was not to show herself while we were
+in the house. You remember the message the same gentleman brought to you
+from her, and the charge which was given by the queen.
+
+"Could the king be brought to consent to the marriage, it could be a fair
+union of two realms, and to annex Britain to the crown of France would be a
+great honour to our Sovereign; the English party desire nothing better; the
+pope will be glad of it; the pope fears that, if war break out again,
+France will draw closer to England on the terms which the King of England
+desires; and he may thus lose the French tribute as he has lost the
+English. He therefore will urge the emperor to agree, and the emperor will
+assist gladly for the love which he bears to his cousin.
+
+"If the emperor be willing, the King of England can then be informed; and
+he can be made to feel that, if he will avoid war, he must not refuse his
+consent. The king, in fact, has no wish to disown the Princess, and he
+knows well that the marriage with the Dauphin was once agreed on.
+
+"Should he be unwilling, and should his wife's persuasions stil have
+influence with him, he will hesitate before he will defy, for her sake, the
+King of France and the emperor united. His regard for the queen is less
+than it was, and diminishes every day. He has a new fancy,[653] as you are
+aware."
+
+The actual conspiracy, in the form which it had so far assumed, was rather
+an appeal to fanaticism than a plot which could have laid hold of the
+deeper mind of the country; but as an indication of the unrest which was
+stealing over the minds of men, it assumed an importance which it would not
+have received from its intrinsic character.
+
+The guilt of the principal offenders admitted of no doubt. As soon as the
+commissioners were satisfied that there was nothing further to be
+discovered, the Nun, with the monks, was brought to trial before the Star
+Chamber; and conviction followed as a matter of course.[654]
+
+The unhappy girl finding herself at this conclusion, after seven years of
+vanity, in which she had played with popes, and queens, and princesses, and
+archbishops, now, when the dream was thus rudely broken, in the revulsion
+of feeling could see nothing in herself but a convicted impostor. We need
+not refuse to pity her. The misfortunes of her sickness had exposed her to
+temptations far beyond the strength of an ordinary woman: and the guilt
+which she passionately claimed for herself rested far more truly with the
+knavery of the Christ Church monks and the incredible folly of Archbishop
+Warham.[655] But the times were too stern to admit of nice distinctions. No
+immediate sentence was pronounced, but it was thought desirable for the
+satisfaction of the people that a confession should be made in public by
+the Nun and her companions. The Sunday following their trial they were
+placed on a raised platform at Paul's Cross by the side of the pulpit, and
+when the sermon was over they one by one delivered their "bills" to the
+preacher, which by him were read to the crowd.[656]
+
+After an acknowledgment of their imposture the prisoners were remanded to
+the Tower, and their ultimate fate reserved for the consideration of
+parliament, which was to meet in the middle of January.
+
+The chief offenders being thus disposed of, the council resolved next that
+peremptory measures should be taken with respect to the Princess Mary.[657]
+Her establishment was broken up, and she was sent to reside as the Lady
+Mary in the household of the Princess Elizabeth--a hard but not unwholesome
+discipline.[658] As soon as this was done, being satisfied that the leading
+shoot of the conspiracy was broken, and that no immediate danger was now to
+be feared, they proceeded leisurely to follow the clue of the Nun's
+confession, and to extend their inquiries. The Countess of Salisbury was
+mentioned as one of the persons with whom the woman had been in
+correspondence. This lady was the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, brother
+of Edward IV. Her mother was a Neville, a child of Richard the Kingmaker,
+the famous Earl of Warwick, and her only brother had been murdered to
+secure the shaking throne of Henry VII. Margaret Plantagenet, in recompense
+for the lost honours of the house, was made Countess of Salisbury in her
+own right. The title descended from her grandfather, who was Earl of
+Salisbury and Warwick; but the prouder title had been dropped as suggestive
+of dangerous associations. The Earldom of Warwick remained in abeyance, and
+the castle and the estates attached to it were forfeited to the Crown. The
+countess was married after her brother's death to a Sir Richard Pole, a
+supporter and relation[659] of the king; and when left a widow she received
+from Henry VIII. the respectful honour which was due to the most nobly born
+of his subjects, the only remaining Plantagenet of unblemished descent. In
+his kindness to her children the king had attempted to obliterate the
+recollection of her brother's wrongs, and she had been herself selected to
+preside over the household of the Princess Mary. During the first twenty
+years of Henry's reign the countess seems to have acknowledged his
+attentions with loyal regard, and if she had not forgotten her birth and
+her childhood, she never connected herself with the attempts which during
+that time were made to revive the feuds of the houses. Richard de la Pole,
+nephew of Edward IV.,[660] and called while he lived "the White Rose," had
+more than once endeavoured to excite an insurrection in the eastern
+counties; but Lady Salisbury was never suspected of holding intercourse
+with him; she remained aloof from political disputes, and in lofty
+retirement she was contented to forget her greatness for the sake of the
+Princess Mary, to whom she and her family were deeply attached. Her
+relations with the king had thus continued undisturbed until his second
+marriage. As the representative of the House of York she was the object of
+the hopes and affections of the remnants of their party, but she had
+betrayed no disposition to abuse her influence, or to disturb the quiet of
+the nation for personal ambition of her own.
+
+If it be lawful to interpret symptoms in themselves trifling by the light
+of later events, it would seem as if her attitude now underwent a material
+change. Her son Reginald had already quarrelled with the king upon the
+divorce. He was in suspicious connection with the pope, and having been
+required to return home upon his allegiance, had refused obedience. His
+mother, and his mother's attached friend, the Marchioness of Exeter, we now
+find among those to whom the Nun of Kent communicated her prophecies and
+her plans. It does not seem that the countess thought at any time of
+reviving her own pretensions; it does seem that she was ready to build a
+throne for the Princess Mary out of the ruined supporters of her father's
+family. The power which she could wield might at any moment become
+formidable. She had two sons in England, Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey
+Pole. Her cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, a grandson himself of Edward
+IV.,[661] was, with the exception of the Duke of Norfolk, the most powerful
+nobleman in the realm; and he, to judge by events, was beginning to look
+coldly on the king.[662] We find her surrounded also by the representatives
+of her mother's family--Lord Abergavenny, who had been under suspicion when
+the Duke of Buckingham was executed, Sir Edward Neville, afterwards
+executed, Lord Latimer, Sir George and Sir William Neville, all of them
+were her near connections, all collateral heirs of the King-maker,
+inheriting the pride of their birth, and resentfully conscious of their
+fallen fortunes. The support of a party so composed would have added
+formidable strength to the preaching friars of the Nun of Kent; and as I
+cannot doubt that the Nun was endeavouring to press her intrigues in a
+quarter where disaffection if created would be most dangerous, so the lady
+who ruled this party with a patriarchal authority had listened to her
+suggestions; and the repeated interviews with her which were sought by the
+Marchioness of Exeter were rendered more than suspicious by the secresy
+with which these interviews were conducted.[663]
+
+These circumstances explain the arrest, to which I alluded above, of Sir
+William and Sir George Neville, brothers of Lord Latimer. They were not
+among "the many noblemen" to whom the commissioners referred; for their
+confessions remain, and contain no allusion to the Nun; but they were
+examined at this particular time on general suspicion; and the arrest,
+under such circumstances, of two near relatives of Lady Salisbury,
+indicates clearly an alarm in the council, lest she might be contemplating
+some serious movements. At any rate, either on her account or on their own,
+the Nevilles fell under suspicion, and while they had no crimes to reveal,
+their depositions, especially that of Sir William Neville, furnish singular
+evidence of the temper of the times.
+
+The confession of the latter begins with an account of the loss of certain
+silver spoons, for the recovery of which Sir William sent to a wizard who
+resided in Cirencester. The wizard took the opportunity of telling Sir
+William's fortune: his wife was to die, and he himself was to marry an
+heiress, and be made a baron; with other prospective splendours. The wizard
+concluded, however, with recommending him to pay a visit to another dealer
+in the dark art more learned than himself, whose name was Jones, at Oxford.
+
+"So after that," said Sir William [Midsummer, 1532], "I went to Oxford,
+intending that my brother George and I should kill a buck with Sir Simon
+Harcourt, which he had promised me; and there at Oxford, in the said
+Jones's chamber, I did see certain stillatories, alembics, and other
+instruments of glass, and also a sceptre and other things, which he said
+did appertain to the conjuration of the four kings; and also an image of
+white metal; and in a box, a serpent's skin, as he said, and divers books
+and things, whereof one was a book which he said was my Lord Cardinal's,
+having pictures in it like angels. He told me he could make rings of gold,
+to obtain favour of great men; and said that my Lord Cardinal had such; and
+promised my said brother and me, either of us, one of them; and also he
+showed me a round thing like a ball of crystal.
+
+"He said that if the King's Grace went over to France [the Calais visit of
+October, 1532], his Grace should marry my Lady Marchioness of Pembroke
+before that his Highness returned again; and that it would be dangerous to
+his Grace, and to the most part of the noblemen that should go with him;
+saying also that he had written to one of the king's council to advise his
+Highness not to go over, for if he did, it should not be for his Grace's
+profit."
+
+The wizard next pretended that he had seen a vision of a certain room in a
+tower, in which a spirit had appeared with a coat of arms in his hand, and
+had "delivered the same to Sir William Neville." The arms being described
+as those of the Warwick family, Sir William, his brother, and Jones rode
+down from Oxford to Warwick, where they went over the castle. The wizard
+professed to recognise in a turret chamber the room in which he had seen
+the spirit, and he prophesied that Sir William should recover the earldom,
+the long-coveted prize of all the Neville family.
+
+On their return to Oxford, Jones, continues Sir William, said further,
+"That there should be a field in the north about a se'n-night before
+Christmas, in which my Lord my brother [Lord Latimer] should be slain; the
+realm should be long without a king; and much robbery would be within the
+realm, specially of abbeys and religious houses, and of rich men, as
+merchants, graziers, and others; so that, if I would, he at that time would
+advise me to find the means to enter into the said castle for mine own
+safeguard, and divers persons would resort unto me. _None of Cadwallader's
+blood_, he told me, _should reign more than twenty-four years;_ and also
+that Prince Edward [son of Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou, killed at
+Tewkesbury], had issue a son which was conveyed over sea; and there had
+issue a son which was yet alive, either in Saxony or Almayne; and that
+either he or the King of Scots should reign next after the King's Grace
+that now is. To all which I answered," Sir William concluded, "that there
+is nothing which the will of God is that a man shall obtain, but that he of
+his goodness will put in his mind the way whereby he shall come by it; and
+that surely I had no mind to follow any such fashion; and that, also, the
+late Duke of Buckingham and others had cast themselves away by too much
+trust in prophecies, and other jeoparding of themselves, and therefore I
+would in no wise follow any such way. He answered, if I would not, it would
+be long ere I obtained it. Then I said I believed that well, and if it
+never came, I trusted to God to live well enough."[664]
+
+Sir George Neville confirmed generally his brother's story, protesting that
+they had never intended treason, and that "at no time had he been of
+counsel" when any treason was thought of.[665]
+
+The wizard himself was next sent for. The prophecies about the king he
+denied wholly. He admitted that he had seen an angel in a dream giving Sir
+William Neville the shield of the earldom in Warwick Castle, and that he
+had accompanied the two brothers to Warwick, to examine the tower. Beyond
+that, he said that he knew nothing either of them or of their intentions.
+He declared himself a good subject, and he would "jeopard his life" to make
+the philosopher's stone for the king in twelve months if the king pleased
+to command him. He desired "no longer space than twelve months upon silver
+and twelve and a half upon gold;" to be kept in prison till he had done it;
+and it would be "better to the King's Grace than a thousand men."[666]
+
+The result of these examinations does not appear, except it be that the
+Nevilles were dismissed without punishment; and the story itself may be
+thought too trifling to have deserved a grave notice. I see in it, however,
+an illustration very noticeworthy of the temper which was working in the
+country. The suspicion of treason in the Neville family may not have been
+confirmed, although we see them casting longing looks on the lost
+inheritance of Warwick; but their confessions betray the visions of
+impending change, anarchy, and confusion, which were haunting the popular
+imagination. A craving after prophecies, a restless eagerness to search
+into the future by abnormal means, had infected all ranks from the highest
+to the lowest; and such symptoms, when they appear, are a sure evidence of
+approaching disorder, for they are an evidence of a present madness which
+has brought down wisdom to a common level with folly. At such times, the
+idlest fancy is more potent with the mind than the soundest arguments of
+reason. The understanding abdicates its functions; and men are given over,
+as if by magic, to the enchantments of insanity.
+
+Phenomena of this eccentric kind always accompany periods of intellectual
+change. Most men live and think by habit; and when habit fails them, they
+are like unskilful sailors who have lost the landmarks of their course, and
+have no compass and no celestial charts by which to steer. In the years
+which preceded the French Revolution, Cagliostro was the companion of
+princes--at the dissolution of paganism the practicers of curious arts, the
+watches and the necromancers, were the sole objects of reverence in the
+Roman world;--and so, before the Reformation, archbishops and cardinals saw
+an inspired prophetess in a Kentish servant girl; Oxford heads of colleges
+sought out heretics with the help of astrology; Anne Boleyn blessed a basin
+of rings, her royal fingers pouring such virtue into the metal that no
+disorder could resist it;[667] Wolsey had a magic crystal; and Cromwell,
+while in Wolsey's household, "did haunt to the company of a wizard."[668]
+These things were the counterpart of a religion which taught that slips of
+paper, duly paid for, could secure indemnity for sin. It was well for
+England that the chief captain at least was proof against the epidemic--no
+random scandal seems ever to have whispered that such delusions had touched
+the mind of the king.[669]
+
+While the government were prosecuting these inquiries at home, the law at
+the Vatican had run its course; November passed, and as no submission had
+arrived, the sentence of the 12th of July came into force, and the king,
+the queen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury were declared to have incurred
+the threatened censures.
+
+The privy council met on the 2nd of December, and it was determined in
+consequence that copies of the "Act of Appeals," and of the king's
+"provocation" to a general council, should be fixed without delay on every
+church door in England. Protests were at the same time to be drawn up and
+sent into Flanders, and to the other courts in Europe, "to the intent the
+falsehood and injustice of the Bishop of Rome might appear to all the
+world." The defences of the country were to be looked to; and "spies" to be
+sent into Scotland to see "what they intended there," "and whether they
+would confeder themselves with any outward princes." Finally, it was
+proposed that the attempt to form an alliance with the Lutheran powers
+should be renewed on a larger scale; that certain discreet and grave
+persons should be appointed to conclude "some league or amity with the
+princes of Germany"--"that is to say, the King of Poland, the King of
+Hungary,[670] the Duke of Saxony, the Duke of Bavaria, the Duke of
+Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse, and other potentates."[671] Vaughan's
+mission had been merely tentative, and had failed. Yet the offer of a
+league, offensive and defensive, the immediate and avowed object of which
+was a general council at which the Protestants should be represented, might
+easily succeed where vague offers of amity had come to nothing. The
+formation of a Protestant alliance, however, would have been equivalent to
+a declaration of war against Catholic Europe; and it was a step which could
+not be taken, consistently with the Treaty of Calais,--without first
+communicating with Francis.
+
+Henry, therefore, by the advice of the council, wrote a despatch to Sir
+John Wallop, the ambassador at Paris, which was to be laid before the
+French court. He explained the circumstances in which he was placed, with
+the suggestion which the council had made to him. He gave a list of the
+princes with whom he had been desired by his ministers to connect
+himself--and the object was nothing less than a coalition of Northern
+Europe. He recapitulated the injuries which he had received from the pope,
+who at length was studying "to subvert the rest and peace of the realm;"
+"yea, and so much as in him was, utterly to destroy the same." The nobles
+and council, he said, for their own sake as well as for the sake of the
+kingdom, had entreated him to put an end, once for all, to the pope's
+usurpation; and to invite the Protestant princes, for the universal weal of
+Christendom, to unite in a common alliance. In his present situation he was
+inclined to act upon this advice. "As concerning his own realm, he had
+already taken such order with his nobles and subjects, as he would shortly
+be able to give to the pope such a buffet as he never had heretofore;" but
+as a German alliance was a matter of great weight and importance,
+"although," he concluded, "we consider it to be right expedient to set
+forth the same with all diligence, yet we intend nothing to do therein
+without making our good brother first privy thereunto. And for this cause
+and consideration only, you may say that we have at this time addressed
+these letters unto you, commanding you to declare our said purpose unto our
+good brother, and to require of him on our behalf his good address and best
+advice. Of his answer we require you to advertise us with all diligence,
+for according thereunto we intend to attemper our proceedings. We have
+lately had advertisements how that our said good brother should, by the
+labour of divers affectionate Papists, be minded to set forth something
+with his clergy in advancement of the pope and his desires. This we cannot
+believe that he will do."[672]
+
+The meaning of this letter lies upon the surface. If the European powers
+were determined to leave him no alternative, the king was prepared to ally
+himself with the Lutherans. But however he might profess to desire that
+alliance, it was evident that he would prefer, if possible, a less extreme
+resource. The pope had ceased to be an object of concern to him; but he
+could not contemplate, without extreme unwillingness, a separation from the
+orderly governments who professed the Catholic faith. The pope had injured
+him; Francis had deceived him; they had tempted his patience because they
+knew his disposition. The limit of endurance had been reached at length;
+yet, on the verge of the concluding rupture, he turned once more, as if to
+offer a last opportunity of peace.
+
+The reply of Francis was an immediate mission of the Bishop of Bayonne (now
+Bishop of Paris), first into England, and from England to Rome, where he
+was to endeavour, to the best of his ability, to seam together the already
+gaping rent in the church with fair words--a hopeless task--the results of
+which, however, were unexpectedly considerable, as will be presently seen.
+
+Meanwhile, on the side of Flanders, the atmosphere was dubious and
+menacing. The refugee friars, who were reported to be well supplied with
+money from England, were labouring to exasperate the people, Father Peto
+especially distinguishing himself upon this service.[673] The English
+ambassador, Sir John Hacket, still remained at Brussels, and the two
+governments were formally at peace; but when Hacket required the
+queen-regent to forbid the publication of the brief of July in the
+Netherlands, he was met with a positive refusal. "M. Ambassador," she said,
+"the Emperor, the King of Hungary, the Queen of France, the King of
+Portugal, and I, understand what are the rights of our aunt--our duty is to
+her--and such letters of the pope as come hither in her favour we shall
+obey. Your master has no right to complain either of the emperor or of
+myself, if we support our aunt in a just cause."[674] At the same time,
+formal complaints were made by Charles of the personal treatment of Queen
+Catherine, and the clouds appeared to be gathering for a storm. Yet here,
+too, there was an evident shrinking from extremities. A Welsh gentleman had
+been at Brussels to offer his services against Henry, and had met with
+apparent coldness. Sir John Hacket wrote, on the 15th of December, that he
+was assured by well-informed persons, that so long as Charles lived, he
+would never be the first to begin a war with England, "which would rebound
+to the destruction of the Low Countries."[675] A week later, when the
+queen-regent was suffering from an alarming illness, he said it was
+reported that, should she die, Catherine or Mary, if either of them was
+allowed to leave England, would be held "meet to have governance of the Low
+Countries."[676] This was a generous step, if the emperor seriously
+contemplated it. The failure of the Nun of Kent had perhaps taught him that
+there was no present prospect of a successful insurrection. In his conduct
+towards England, he was seemingly governing himself by the prospect which
+might open for a successful attack upon it. If occasion offered to strike
+the government in connection with an efficient Catholic party in the nation
+itself, he would not fail to avail himself of it.[677] Otherwise, he would
+perhaps content himself with an attitude of inactive menace; unless menaced
+himself by a Protestant confederation.
+
+Amidst these uneasy symptoms at home and abroad, parliament re-assembled on
+the 15th of January. It was a changed England since these men first came
+together on the fall of Wolsey. Session after session had been spent in
+clipping the roots of the old tree which had overshadowed them for
+centuries. On their present meeting they were to finish their work, and lay
+it prostrate for ever. Negotiations were still pending with the See of
+Rome, and this momentous session had closed before the final catastrophe.
+The measures which were passed in the course of it are not, therefore, to
+be looked upon as adopted hastily, in a spirit of retaliation, but as the
+consistent accomplishment of a course which had been deliberately adopted,
+to reverse the positions of the civil and spiritual authority within the
+realm, and to withdraw the realm itself from all dependence on a foreign
+power.
+
+The Annates and Firstfruits' Bill had not yet received the royal assent;
+but the pope had refused to grant the bulls for bishops recently appointed,
+and he was no longer to receive payment for services which he refused to
+render. Peter's pence were still paid, and might continue to be paid, if
+the pope would recollect himself; but, like the Sibyl of Cuma, Henry
+destroyed some fresh privilege with each delay of justice, demanding the
+same price for the preservation of what remained. The secondary streams of
+tribute now only remained to the Roman See; and communion with the English
+church, which it was for Clement to accept or refuse.
+
+The circumstances under which the session opened were, however, grave and
+saddening. Simultaneously with the concluding legislation on the church,
+the succession to the throne was to be determined in terms which might,
+perhaps, be accepted as a declaration of war by the emperor; and the affair
+of the Nun of Kent had rendered necessary an inquiry into the conduct of
+honoured members of the two Houses, who were lying under the shadow of high
+treason. The conditions were for the first time to be plainly seen under
+which the Reformation was to fight its way. The road which lay before it
+was beset not merely with external obstacles, which a strong will and a
+strong hand could crush, but with the phantoms of dying faiths, which
+haunted the hearts of all living men; the superstitions, the prejudices,
+the hopes, the fears, the passions, which swayed stormily and fitfully
+through the minds of every actor in the great drama.
+
+The uniformity of action in the parliament of 1529, during the seven years
+which it continued, is due to the one man who saw his way distinctly,
+Thomas Cromwell. The nation was substantially united in the divorce
+question, could the divorce be secured without a rupture with the European
+powers. It was united also on the necessity of limiting the jurisdiction of
+the clergy, and cutting short the powers of the consistory courts. But in
+questions of "opinion" there was the most sensitive jealousy; and from the
+combined instincts of prejudice and conservatism, the majority of the
+country in a count of heads would undoubtedly have been against a
+separation from Rome.
+
+The clergy professed to approve the acts of the government, but it was for
+the most part with the unwilling acquiescence of men who were without
+courage to refuse. The king was divided against himself. Nine days in ten
+he was the clear-headed, energetic, powerful statesman; on the tenth he was
+looking wistfully to the superstition which he had left, and the clear
+sunshine was darkened with theological clouds, which broke in lightning and
+persecution. Thus there was danger at any moment of a reaction, unless
+opportunity was taken at the flood, unless the work was executed too
+completely to admit of reconsideration, and the nation committed to a
+course from which it was impossible to recede. The action of the
+conservatives was paralysed for the time by the want of a fixed purpose.
+The various parts of the movement were so skilfully linked together, that
+partial opposition to it was impossible; and so long as the people had to
+choose between the pope and the king, their loyalty would not allow them to
+hesitate. But very few men actively adhered to Cromwell. Cromwell had
+struck the line on which the forces of nature were truly moving--the
+resultant, not of the victory of either of the extreme parties, but of the
+joint action of their opposing forces. To him belonged the rare privilege
+of genius, to see what other men could not see; and therefore he was
+condemned to rule a generation which hated him, to do the will of God, and
+to perish in his success. He had no party. By the nobles he was regarded
+with the same mixed contempt and fear which had been felt for Wolsey. The
+Protestants, perhaps, knew what he was, but he could only purchase their
+toleration by himself checking their extravagance. Latimer was the only
+person of real power on whose friendship he could calculate, and Latimer
+was too plain spoken on dangerous questions to be useful as a political
+supporter.
+
+The session commenced on the 15th of January.
+
+The first step was to receive the final submission of convocation. The
+undignified resistance was at last over, and the clergy had promised to
+abstain for the future from unlicensed legislation. To secure their
+adherence to their engagements, an act[678] was passed to make the breach
+of that engagement penal; and a commission of thirty-two persons, half of
+whom were to be laymen, was designed for the revision of the Canon
+law.[679]
+
+The next most important movement was to assimilate the trials for heresy
+with the trials for other criminal offences. I have already explained at
+length the manner in which the bishops abused their judicial powers. These
+powers were not absolutely taken away, but ecclesiastics were no longer
+permitted to arrest _ex officio_ and examine at their pleasure. Where a
+charge of heresy was to be brought against a man, presentments were to be
+made by lawful witnesses before justices of the peace; and then, and not
+otherwise, he might fall under the authority of the "ordinary." Secret
+examinations were declared illegal. The offender was to be tried in open
+court, and, previous to his trial, had a right to be admitted to bail,
+unless the bishop could show cause to the contrary to the satisfaction of
+two magistrates.[680]
+
+This was but a slight instalment of lenity; but it was an indication of the
+turning tide. Limited as it was, the act operated as an effective check
+upon persecution till the passing of the Six Articles Bill.
+
+Turning next to the relations between England and Rome, the parliament
+reviewed the Annates Act,[681] which had been left unratified in the hope
+that the pope might have consented to a compromise, and that "by some
+gentle ways the said exaction might have been redressed and reformed." The
+expectation had been disappointed. The pope had not condescended to reply
+to the communication which had been made to him, and the act had in
+consequence received the royal assent. An alteration had thus become
+necessary in the manner of presentation to vacant bishoprics. The anomalies
+of the existing practice have been already described. By the Great Charter
+the chapters had acquired the right of free election. A _congé d'élire_ was
+granted by the king on the occurrence of a vacancy, with no attempt at a
+nomination. The chapters were supposed to make their choice freely, and the
+name of the bishop-elect was forwarded to the pope, who returned the
+Pallium and the Bulls, receiving the Annates in exchange. The pope's part
+in the matter was now terminated. No Annates would be sent any longer to
+Rome, and no Bulls would be returned from Rome. The appointments lay
+between the chapters and the crown; and it might have seemed, at first
+sight, as if it would have been sufficient to omit the reference to the
+papacy, and as if the remaining forms might continue as they were. The
+chapters, however, had virtually long ceased to elect freely; the crown had
+absorbed the entire functions of presentation, sometimes appointing
+foreigners,[682] sometimes allowing the great ecclesiastical ministers to
+nominate themselves;[683] while the rights of the chapters, though existing
+in theory, were not officially recognised either by the pope or by the
+crown. The king affected to accept the names of the prelates-elect, when
+returned to him from Rome, as nominations by the pope; and the pope, in
+communicating with the chapters, presented them with their bishops as from
+himself.[684] The papal share in the matter was a shadow, but it was
+acknowledged under the forms of courtesy; the share of the chapters was
+wholly and absolutely ignored. The crisis of a revolution was not the
+moment at which their legal privileges could be safely restored to them.
+The problem of re-arrangement was a difficult one, and it was met in a
+manner peculiarly English. The practice of granting the _congé d'élire_ to
+the chapters on the occurrence of a vacancy, which had fallen into
+desuetude, was again adopted, and the church resumed the forms of liberty:
+but the licence to elect a bishop was to be accompanied with the name of
+the person whom the chapter was required to elect; and if within twelve
+days the person so named had not been chosen, the nomination of the crown
+was to become absolute, and the chapter would incur a Premunire.[685]
+
+This act, which I conceive to have been more arbitrary in form than in
+intention, was followed by a closing attack upon the remaining "exactions"
+of the Bishop of Rome. The Annates were gone. There were yet to go,
+"Pensions, Censes, Peter's Pence, Procurations, Fruits, Suits for
+Provision, Delegacies and Rescripts in causes of Contention and Appeals,
+Jurisdictions legatine--also Dispensations, Licenses, Faculties, Grants,
+Relaxations, Writs called Perinde valere, Rehabilitations, Abolitions,"
+with other unnamed (the parliament being wearied of naming them) "infinite
+sorts of Rules, Briefs, and instruments of sundry natures, names, and
+kinds." All these were perennially open sluices, which had drained England
+of its wealth for centuries, returning only in showers of paper, and the
+Commons were determined that streams so unremunerative should flow no
+longer. They conceived that they had been all along imposed upon, and that
+the "Bishop of Rome was to be blamed for having allured and beguiled the
+English nation, persuading them that he had power to dispense with human
+laws, uses, and customs, contrary to right and conscience." If the king so
+pleased, therefore, they would not be so beguiled any more. These and all
+similar exactions should cease; and all powers claimed by the Bishop of
+Rome within the realm should cease, and should be transferred to the crown.
+At the same time they would not press upon the pope too hardly; they would
+repeat the same conditions which they had offered with the Annates. He had
+received these revenues as the supreme judge in the highest court in
+Europe, and he might retain his revenues or receive compensation for them,
+if he dared to be just. It was for himself to resolve, and three months
+were allowed for a final decision.
+
+In conclusion, the Commons thought it well to assert that they were
+separating, not from the church of Christ, but only from the papacy. A
+judge who allowed himself to be overawed against his conscience by a
+secular power, could not any longer be recognised; but no thing or things
+contained in the act should be afterwards "interpreted or expounded, that
+his Grace (the king), his nobles and subjects, intended by the same to
+decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's church in anything
+concerning the articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom, or in any
+other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary
+for salvation; but only to make an ordinance, by policies necessary and
+convenient, to repress vice, and for the good conservation of the realm in
+peace, unity, and tranquillity, from ravin and spoil--ensuing much the old
+antient customs of the realm in that behalf."[686]
+
+The most arduous business was thus finished--the most painful remained. The
+Nun of Kent and her accomplices were to be proceeded against by act of
+parliament; and the bill of their attainder was presented for the first
+time in the House of Lords, on the 18th of February. The offence of the
+principal conspirators was plainly high treason; their own confessions
+removed uncertainty; the guilt was clear--the sentence was inevitable. But
+the fault of those who had been listeners only was less easy of
+measurement, and might vary from comparative innocence to a definite breach
+of allegiance.
+
+The government were unwilling to press with severity on the noble lords and
+ladies whose names had been unexpectedly brought to light; and there were
+two men of high rank only, whose complicity it was thought necessary to
+notice. The Bishop of Rochester's connection with the Nun had been culpably
+encouraging; and the responsibility of Sir Thomas More was held also to be
+very great in having countenanced, however lightly, such perilous schemers.
+
+In the bill, therefore, as it was first read, More and Fisher found
+themselves declared guilty of misprision of treason. But the object of this
+measure was rather to warn than to punish, nor was there any real intention
+of continuing their prosecution. Cromwell, under instructions from the
+king, had communicated privately with both of them. He had sent a message
+to Fisher through his brother, telling him that he had only to ask for
+forgiveness to receive it;[687] and he had begged More through his
+son-in-law, Mr. Roper, to furnish him with an explicit account of what had
+passed at any time between himself and the Nun,[688] with an intimation
+that, if honestly made, it would be accepted in his favour.
+
+These advances were met by More in the spirit in which they were offered.
+He heartily thanked Cromwell, "reckoning himself right deeply beholden to
+him;"[689] and replied with a long, minute, and evidently veracious story,
+detailing an interview which he had held with the woman in the chapel of
+Sion Monastery. He sent at the same time a copy of a letter which he had
+written to her, and described various conversations with the friars who
+were concerned in the forgery. He did not deny that he had believed the Nun
+to have been inspired, or that he had heard of the language which she was
+in the habit of using respecting the king. He protested, however, that he
+had himself never entertained a treasonable thought. He told Cromwell that
+"he had done a very meritorious deed in bringing forth to light such
+detestable hypocrisy, whereby every other wretch might take warning, and be
+feared to set forth their devilish dissembled falsehoods under the manner
+and colour of the wonderful work of God."[690] More's offence had not been
+great. His acknowledgments were open and unreserved; and Cromwell laid his
+letter before the king, adding his own intercession that the matter might
+be passed over. Henry consented, expressing only his grief and concern that
+Sir Thomas More should have acted so unwisely.[691] He required,
+nevertheless, as Cromwell suggested, that a formal letter should be
+written, with a confession of fault, and a request for forgiveness. More
+obeyed; he wrote, gracefully reminding the king of a promise when he
+resigned the chancellorship, that in any suit which he might afterwards
+have to his Grace, either touching his honour or his profit, he should find
+his Highness his good and gracious lord.[692] Henry acknowledged his claim;
+his name was struck out of the bill, and the prosecution against him was
+dropped.
+
+Fisher's conduct was very different; his fault had been far greater than
+More's, and promises more explicit had been held out to him of forgiveness.
+He replied to these promises by an elaborate and ridiculous defence--not
+writing to the king, as Cromwell desired him, but vindicating himself as
+having committed no fault; although he had listened eagerly to language
+which was only pardonable on the assumption that it was inspired, and had
+encouraged a nest of fanatics by his childish credulity. The Nun "had
+showed him not," he said, "that any prince or temporal lord should put the
+king in danger of his crown." He knew nothing of the intended insurrection.
+He believed the woman to have been a saint; he supposed that she had
+herself told the king all which she had told to him; and therefore he said
+that he had nothing for which to reproach himself.[693] He was unable to
+see that the exposure of the imposture had imparted a fresh character to
+his conduct, which he was bound to regret. Knowingly or unknowingly, he had
+lent his countenance to a conspiracy; and so long as he refused to
+acknowledge his indiscretion, the government necessarily would interpret
+his actions in the manner least to his advantage.
+
+If he desired that his conduct should be forgotten, it was indispensable
+that he should change his attitude, and so Cromwell warned him. "Ye
+desire," the latter wrote, "for the passion of Christ, that ye be no more
+quickened in this matter; for if ye be put to that strait ye will not lose
+your soul, but ye will speak as your conscience leadeth you; with many more
+words of great courage. My Lord, if ye had taken my counsel sent unto you
+by your brother, and followed the same, submitting yourself by your letter
+to the King's Grace for your offences in this behalf, I would have trusted
+that ye should never be quickened in the matter more. But now where ye take
+upon you to defy the whole matter as ye were in no default, I cannot so far
+promise you. Wherefore, my Lord, I would eftsoons advise you that, laying
+apart all such excuses as ye have alleged in your letters, which in my
+opinion be of small effect, ye beseech the King's Grace to be your gracious
+lord and to remit unto you your negligence, oversight, and offence
+committed against his Highness in this behalf; and I dare undertake that
+his Highness shall benignly accept you into his gracious favour, all matter
+of displeasure past afore this time forgotten and forgiven."[694]
+
+Fisher must have been a hopelessly impracticable person. Instead of
+following More's example, and accepting well-meant advice, he persisted in
+the same tone, and drew up an address to the House of Lords, in which he
+repeated the defence which he had made to Cromwell. He expressed no sorrow
+that he had been engaged in a criminal intrigue, no pleasure that the
+intrigue had been discovered; and he doggedly adhered to his assertions of
+his own innocence.[695]
+
+There was nothing to be done except to proceed with his attainder. The bill
+passed three readings, and the various prisoners were summoned to the Star
+Chamber to be heard in arrest of judgment. The Bishop of Rochester's
+attendance was dispensed with on the ground of illness, and because he had
+made his defence in writing.[696] Nothing of consequence was urged by
+either of the accused. The bill was most explicit in its details, going
+carefully through the history of the imposture, and dwelling on the
+separate acts of each offender. They were able to disprove no one of its
+clauses, and on the 12th of March it was read a last time. On the 21st it
+received the royal assent, and there remained only to execute the sentence.
+The Nun herself, Richard Masters, and the five friars being found guilty of
+high treason, were to die; the Bishop of Rochester, Father Abel, Queen
+Catherine's confessor, and four more, were sentenced for misprision of
+treason to forfeiture of goods and imprisonment. All other persons
+implicated whose names did not appear, were declared pardoned at the
+intercession of Queen Anne.[697]
+
+The chief offenders suffered at Tyburn on the 21st of April, meeting death
+calmly, as it appears; receiving a fate most necessary and most
+deserved,[698] yet claiming from us that partial respect which is due to
+all persons who will risk their lives in an unselfish cause. For the Nun
+herself, we may feel even a less qualified regret. Before her death she was
+permitted to speak a few words to the people, which at the distance of
+three centuries will not be read without emotion.
+
+"Hither am I come to die," she said, "and I have not been the only cause of
+mine own death, which most justly I have deserved; but also I am the cause
+of the death of all these persons which at this time here suffer. And yet I
+am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known unto these
+learned men that I was a poor wench without learning; and therefore they
+might have easily perceived that the things which were done by me could not
+proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning could right well
+judge that they were altogether feigned. But because the things which I
+feigned were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me, and bare
+me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost and not I that did them. And I being
+puffed up with their praises, fell into a pride and foolish fantasye with
+myself, and thought I might feign what I would, which thing hath brought me
+to this case, and for the which I now cry God and the King's Highness most
+heartily mercy, and desire all you good people to pray to God to have mercy
+on me, and on all them that here suffer with me."[699]
+
+And now the closing seal was to be affixed to the agitation of the great
+question of the preceding years. I have said that throughout these years
+the uncertainty of the succession had been the continual anxiety of the
+nation. The birth of a prince or princess could alone provide an absolute
+security; and to beget a prince appeared to be the single feat which Henry
+was unable to accomplish. The marriage so dearly bought had been followed
+as yet only by a girl; and if the king were to die, leaving two daughters
+circumstanced as Mary and Elizabeth were circumstanced, a dispute would
+open which the sword only could decide. To escape the certainty of civil
+war, therefore, it was necessary to lay down the line of inheritance by a
+peremptory order; to cut off resolutely all rival claims; and in
+legislating upon a matter so vital, and hitherto so uncertain and
+indeterminate, to enforce the decision with the most stringent and exacting
+penalties. From the Heptarchy downwards English history furnished no fixed
+rule of inheritance, but only a series of precedents of uncertainty; and
+while at no previous time had the circumstances of the succession been of a
+nature so legitimately embarrassing, the relations of England with the pope
+and with foreign powers doubly enhanced the danger. But I will not use my
+own language on so important a subject. The preamble of the Act of
+Succession is the best interpreter of the provisions of that act.
+
+"In their most humble wise show unto your Majesty your most humble and
+obedient subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons, in
+this present parliament assembled; that since it is the natural inclination
+of every man gladly and willingly to provide for the safety of both his
+title and succession, although it touch only his private cause; we
+therefore, most rightful and dreadful Sovereign Lord, reckon ourselves much
+more bounden to beseech and intreat your Highness (although we doubt not of
+your princely heart and wisdom, mixed with a natural affection to the same)
+to foresee and provide for the most perfect surety of both you and of your
+most lawful successors and heirs, upon which dependeth all our joy and
+wealth; in whom also is united and knit the only mere true inheritance and
+title of this realm without any contradiction. We, your said most humble
+and obedient servants, call to our remembrance the great divisions which in
+times past hath been in this realm by reason of several titles pretended to
+the imperial crown of the same; which some time and for the most part
+ensued by occasion of ambiguity, and [by] doubts then not so perfectly
+declared but that men might upon froward intents expound them to every
+man's sinister appetite and affection after their senses; whereof hath
+ensued great destruction and effusion of man's blood, as well of a great
+number of the nobles as of other the subjects and specialty inheritors in
+the same. The greatest occasion thereof hath been because no perfect and
+substantial provision by law hath been made within this realm itself when
+doubts and questions have been moved; by reason whereof the Bishops of Rome
+and See Apostolic have presumed in times past to invest who should please
+them to inherit in other men's kingdoms and dominions, which thing we your
+most humble subjects, both spiritual and temporal, do much abhor and
+detest. And sometimes other foreign princes and potentates of sundry
+degrees, minding rather dissension and discord to continue in the realm
+than charity, equity, or unity, have many times supported wrong titles,
+whereby they might the more easily and facilly aspire to the superiority of
+the same.
+
+"The continuance and sufferance of these things, deeply considered and
+pondered, is too dangerous and perilous to be suffered any longer; and too
+much contrary to unity, peace, and tranquillity, being greatly reproachable
+and dishonourable to the whole realm. And in consideration thereof, your
+said subjects, calling further to their remembrance, that the good unity,
+peace, and wealth of the realm, specially and principally, above all
+worldly things, consisteth in the surety and certainty of the procreation
+and posterity of your Highness, in whose most Royal person at this time is
+no manner of doubt, do therefore most humbly beseech your Highness that it
+may be enacted, with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and
+the Commons in this present parliament assembled--
+
+"1. That the marriage between your Highness and the Lady Catherine, widow
+of the late Prince Arthur, be declared to have been from the beginning,
+null, the issue of it illegitimate, and the separation pronounced by the
+Archbishop of Canterbury good and valid.
+
+"2. That the marriage between your Highness and your most dear and entirely
+beloved wife, Queen Anne, be established and held good, and taken for
+undoubtful, true, sincere, and perfect, ever hereafter."[701]
+
+The act then assumed a general character, laying down a table of prohibited
+degrees, within which marriage might not under any pretence be in future
+contracted; and demanding that any marriage which might already exist
+within those degrees should be at once dissolved. After this provision, it
+again returned to the king, and fixed the order in which his children by
+Queen Anne were to succeed. The details of the regulations were minute and
+elaborate, and the rule to be observed was the same as that which exists at
+present. First, the sons were to succeed with their heirs. If sons failed,
+then the daughters, with their heirs; and, in conclusion, it was resolved
+that any person who should maliciously do anything by writing, printing, or
+other external act or deed to the peril of the king, or to the prejudice of
+his marriage with Queen Anne, or to the derogation of the issue of that
+marriage, should be held guilty of high treason; and whoever should speak
+against that marriage, should be held guilty of misprision of
+treason--severe enactments, such as could not be justified at ordinary
+times, and such as, if the times had been ordinary, would not have been
+thought necessary--but the exigencies of the country could not tolerate an
+uncertainty of title in the heir to the crown; and the title could only be
+secured by prohibiting absolutely the discussion of dangerous questions.
+
+The mere enactment of a statute, whatever penalties were attached to the
+violation of it, was still, however, an insufficient safeguard. The recent
+investigation had revealed a spirit of disloyalty, where such a spirit had
+not been expected. The deeper the inquiry had penetrated, the more clearly
+appeared tokens, if not of conspiracy, yet of excitement, of doubt, of
+agitation, of alienated feeling, if not of alienated act. All the symptoms
+were abroad which provide disaffection with its opportunity; and in the
+natural confusion which attended the revolt from the papacy, the
+obligations of duty, both political and religious, had become indefinite
+and contradictory, pointing in all directions, like the magnetic needle in
+a thunderstorm.
+
+It was thought well, therefore, to vest a power in the crown, of trying the
+tempers of suspected persons, and examining them upon oath, as to their
+willingness to maintain the decision of parliament. This measure was a
+natural corollary of the statute, and depended for its justification on the
+extent of the danger to which the state was exposed. If a difference of
+opinion on the legitimacy of the king's children, or of the pope's power in
+England, was not dangerous, it was unjust to interfere with the natural
+liberty of speech or thought. If it was dangerous, and if the state had
+cause for supposing that opinions of the kind might spread in secret so
+long as no opportunity was offered for detecting their progress, to require
+the oath was a measure of reasonable self-defence, not permissible only,
+but in a high degree necessary and right.
+
+Under the impression, then, that the circumstances of the country demanded
+extraordinary precautions, a commission was appointed, consisting of the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, and the
+Duke of Suffolk; and these four, or any three of them, were empowered to
+administer, at the pleasure of the king, "to all and singular liege
+subjects of the realm," the following oath:--
+
+"Ye shall swear to bear your faith, truth, and obedience only to the King's
+Majesty, and to the heirs of his body, according to the limitation and
+rehearsal within the statute of succession; and not to any other within
+this realm, or foreign authority, prince, or potentate: and in case any
+oath be made or hath been made by you to any other person or persons, that
+then you do repute the same as vain and annihilate: and that to your
+cunning, wit, and utmost of your power, without guile, fraud, or other
+undue means, ye shall observe, keep, maintain, and defend this act above
+specified, and all the whole contents and effects thereof; and all other
+acts and statutes made since the beginning of this present parliament, in
+confirmation or for due execution of the same, or of anything therein
+contained. And thus ye shall do against all manner of persons, of what
+estate, dignity, degree, or condition soever they be; and in no wise do or
+attempt, or to your power suffer to be done or attempted, directly or
+indirectly, any thing or things, privily or apertly, to the let, hindrance,
+damage, or derogation thereof, by any manner of means, or for any pretence
+or cause, so help you God and all saints."[702]
+
+With this last resolution the House rose, having sat seventy-five days, and
+despatched their business swiftly. A week later, the news arrived from Rome
+that there too all was at length over; that the cause was decided, and
+decided against the king. The history of the closing catastrophe is as
+obscure as it is strange, and the account of the manner in which it was
+brought about is unfortunately incomplete in many important particulars.
+The outline only can be apprehended, and that very imperfectly.
+
+On the receipt in Paris of the letter in which Henry threatened to organise
+a Protestant confederacy, Du Bellay, in genuine anxiety for the welfare of
+Christendom, had volunteered his services for a final effort. Not a moment
+was to be lost, for the courts of Rome were already busy with the great
+cause; but the king's evident reluctance to break with the Catholic powers,
+gave room for hope that something might still be done; and going in person
+to England, the bishop had induced Henry, at the last extremity, either to
+entrust him with representative powers, or else to allow him after all to
+make some kind of concession. I am unable to learn the extent to which
+Henry yielded, but that an offer was made of some kind is evident from the
+form of the story.[703] The winter was very cold, but the bishop made his
+way to Rome with the haste of good will, and arrived in time to stay
+judgment, which was on the point of being pronounced. It seemed, for the
+moment, as if he would succeed. He was permitted to make engagements on the
+part of Henry; and that time might be allowed for communication with
+England, the pope agreed to delay sentence till the 23rd of March. This
+bishop's terms were approved by the king, and a courier was sent off with
+letters of confirmation; Sir Edward Karne and Dr. Revett following
+leisurely, with a more ample commission. The stone which had been
+laboriously rolled to the summit of the hill was trembling on the brink,
+and in a moment might rebound into the plain.
+
+But this was not to be the end. Some accidental cause delayed the courier;
+the 23rd of March came, and he had not arrived. Du Bellay implored a
+further respite. The King of England, he said, had waited six years; it was
+not a great thing for the papal council to wait six days. The cardinals
+were divided; but the Spanish party were the strongest, and when the votes
+were taken carried the day. The die was cast, and the pope, in spite of
+himself, his promises, and his conscience, drove at length upon the rocks
+to which he had been so long drifting.[704] In deference to the opinion of
+the majority of the cardinals, he pronounced the original marriage to have
+been valid, the dispensation by which it was permitted to have been legal;
+and, as a natural consequence, Henry, King of England, should he fail in
+obedience to this judgment, was declared to be excommunicate from the
+fellowship of the church, and to have forfeited the allegiance of his
+subjects.
+
+Lest the censures should be discredited by a blank discharge, engagements
+were entered into, that within four months of the promulgation of the
+sentence, the emperor would invade England, and Henry should be
+deposed.[705] The imperialists illuminated Rome; cannon were fired;
+bonfires blazed; and great bodies of men paraded the streets with shouts of
+"the Empire and Spain."[706] Already, in their eager expectation, England
+was a second Netherlands, a captured province under the regency of
+Catherine or Mary.
+
+Two days later, the courier arrived. The pope, at the entreaties of the
+Bishop of Paris, re-assembled the consistory, to consider whether the steps
+which had been taken should be undone. They sat debating all night, and the
+result was nothing. No dependence could be placed on the cardinals, Du
+Bellay said, for they spoke one way, and voted another.[707]
+
+Thus all was over. In a scene of general helplessness the long drama
+closed, and, what we call accident, for want of some better word, cut the
+knot at last over which human incapacity had so vainly laboured. The Bishop
+of Paris retired from Rome in despair. On his way back, he met the English
+commissioners at Bologna, and told them that their errand was hopeless, and
+that they need not proceed. "When we asked him," wrote Sir Edward Karne to
+the king, "the cause of such hasty process, he made answer that the
+imperialists at Rome had strengthened themselves in such a manner, that
+they coacted the said Bishop of Rome to give sentence contrary to his own
+mind, and the expectation of himself and of the French king. He showed us
+also that the Lady Princess Dowager sent lately, in the month of March
+past, letters to the Bishop of Rome, and also to her proctors, whereby the
+Bishop of Rome was much moved for her part. The imperials, before the
+sentence was given, promised, in the emperor's behalf, that he would be the
+executor of the sentence."[708]
+
+This is all which we are able to say of the immediate catastrophe which
+decided the fate of England, and through England, of the world. The deep
+impenetrable falsehood of the Roman ecclesiastics prevents us from
+discovering with what intentions the game of the last few weeks or months
+had been played; it is sufficient for Englishmen to remember that, whatever
+may have been the explanation of his conduct, the pope, in the concluding
+passage of his connection with this country, furnished the most signal
+justification which was ever given for the revolt from an abused authority.
+The supreme judge in Christendom had for six years trifled with justice,
+out of fear of an earthly prince; he concluded these years with uniting the
+extreme of folly with the extreme of improbity, and pronounced a sentence,
+willingly or unwillingly, which he had acknowledged to be unjust.
+
+Charity may possibly acquit Clement of conscious duplicity. He was one of
+those men who waited upon fortune, and waited always without success; who
+gave his word as the interest of the moment suggested, trusting that it
+might be convenient to observe it; and who was too long accustomed to break
+his promises to look with any particular alarm on that contingency. It is
+possible, also,--for of this Clement was capable--that he knew from the
+beginning the conclusion to which he would at last be driven; that he had
+engaged himself with Charles to decide in Catherine's favour as distinctly
+as he had engaged himself with Francis to decide against her; and that all
+his tortuous scheming was intended either to weary out the patience of the
+King of England, or to entangle him in acknowledgments from which he would
+not be able to extricate himself.
+
+He was mistaken, certainly, in the temper of the English nation; he
+believed what the friars told him; and trusting to the promises of
+disaffection, insurrection, invasion--those _ignes fatui_ which for sixty
+years floated so delusively before the Italian imagination, he imagined,
+perhaps, that he might trifle with Henry with impunity. This only is
+impossible, that, if he had seriously intended to fulfil the promises which
+he had made to the French king, the accidental delay of a courier could
+have made so large a difference in his determination. It is not possible
+that, if he had assured himself, as he pretended, that justice was on the
+side against which he had declared, he would not have availed himself of
+any pretext to retreat from a position which ought to have been intolerable
+to him.
+
+The question, however, had ended, "as all things in this world do have
+their end." The news of the sentence arrived in England at the beginning of
+April, with an intimation of the engagements which had been entered upon by
+the imperial ambassador for an invasion. Du Bellay returned to Paris at the
+same time, to report the failure of his undertaking; and Francis,
+disappointed, angry, and alarmed, sent the Duke of Guise to London with
+promises of support if an attempt to invade was really made, and with a
+warning at the same time to Henry to prepare for danger. Troops were
+gathering in Flanders; detachments were on their way out of Italy, Germany,
+and Bohemia, to be followed by three thousand Spaniards, and perhaps many
+more; and the object avowed for these preparations was wholly
+incommensurate with their magnitude.[709] For his own sake Francis could
+not permit a successful invasion of England, unless, indeed, he himself was
+to take part in it; and therefore, with entire sincerity, he offered his
+services. The cordial understanding for which Henry had hoped was at an
+end; but the political confederacy remained, which the interests of the two
+countries combined for the present to preserve unbroken.
+
+Guise proposed another interview at Calais between the sovereigns. The king
+for the moment was afraid to leave England,[710] lest the opportunity
+should be made use of for an insurrection; but prudence taught him, though
+disappointed in Francis, to make the best of a connection too convenient to
+be sacrificed. The German league was left in abeyance till the immediate
+danger was passed, and till the effect of the shock in England itself had
+been first experienced. He gladly accepted, in lieu of it, an offer that
+the French fleet should guard the Channel through the summer; and
+meanwhile, he collected himself resolutely, to abide the issue, whatever
+the issue was to be.
+
+The Tudor spirit was at length awake in the English sovereign. He had
+exhausted the resources of patience; he had stooped even to indignity to
+avoid the conclusion which had come at last. There was nothing left but to
+meet defiance by defiance, and accept the position to which the pope had
+driven him. In quiet times occasionally wayward and capricious, Henry, like
+Elizabeth after him, reserved his noblest nature for the moment of danger,
+and was ever greatest when peril was most immediate. Woe to those who
+crossed him now, for the time was grown stern, and to trifle further was to
+be lost. The suspended act of parliament was made law on the day (it would
+seem) of the arrival of the sentence. Convocation, which was still sitting,
+hurried through a declaration that the pope had no more power in England
+than any other bishop.[711] Five years before, if a heretic had ventured so
+desperate an opinion, the clergy would have shut their ears and run upon
+him: now they only contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness.
+The houses of the Observants at Canterbury and Greenwich, which had been
+implicated with the Nun of Kent, were suppressed, and the brethren were
+scattered among monasteries where they could be under surveillance. The Nun
+and her friends were sent to execution.[712] The ordnance stores were
+examined, the repairs of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were
+strengthened along the coast. Everywhere the realm armed itself for the
+struggle, looking well to the joints of its harness and to the temper of
+its weapons.
+
+The commission appointed under the Statute of Succession opened its
+sittings to receive the oaths of allegiance. Now, more than ever, was it
+necessary to try men's dispositions, when the pope had challenged their
+obedience. In words all went well: the peers swore; bishops, abbots,
+priors, heads of colleges swore[713] with scarcely an exception,--the
+nation seemed to unite in an unanimous declaration of freedom. In one
+quarter only, and that a very painful one, was there refusal. It was found
+solely among the persons who had been implicated in the late conspiracy.
+Neither Sir Thomas More nor the Bishop of Rochester could expect that their
+recent conduct would exempt them from an obligation which the people
+generally accepted with good will. They had connected themselves, perhaps
+unintentionally, with a body of confessed traitors. An opportunity was
+offered them of giving evidence of their loyalty, and escaping from the
+shadow of distrust. More had been treated leniently; Fisher had been
+treated far more than leniently. It was both fair and natural that they
+should be called upon to give proof that their lesson had not been learnt
+in vain; and, in fact, no other persons, if they had been passed over,
+could have been called upon to swear, for no other persons had laid
+themselves open to so just suspicion.
+
+Their conduct so exactly tallied, that they must have agreed beforehand on
+the course which they would adopt; and in following the details, we need
+concern ourselves only with the nobler figure.
+
+The commissioners sate at the archbishop's palace at Lambeth; and at the
+end of April, Sir Thomas More received a summons to appear before
+them.[714] He was at his house at Chelsea, where for the last two years he
+had lived in deep retirement, making ready for evil times. Those times at
+length were come. On the morning on which he was to present himself, he
+confessed and received the sacrament in Chelsea church; and "whereas," says
+his great-grandson, "at other times, before he parted from his wife and
+children, they used to bring him to his boat, and he there kissing them
+bade them farewell, at this time he suffered none of them to follow him
+forth of his gate, but pulled the wicket after him, and with a heavy heart
+he took boat with his son Roper."[715] He was leaving his home for the last
+time, and he knew it. He sat silent for some minutes, and then, with a
+sudden start, said, "I thank our Lord, the field is won." Lambeth Palace
+was crowded with people who had come on the same errand with himself. More
+was called in early, and found Cromwell present with the four
+commissioners, and also the Abbot of Westminster. The oath was read to him.
+It implied that he should keep the statute of succession in all its parts,
+and he desired to see the statute itself. He read it through, and at once
+replied that others might do as they pleased; he would blame no one for
+taking the oath; but for himself it was impossible. He would swear
+willingly to the part of it which secured the succession to the children of
+Queen Anne.[716] That was a matter on which parliament was competent to
+decide, and he had no right to make objections. If he might be allowed to
+take an oath to this portion of the statute in language of his own, he
+would do it; but as the words stood, he would "peril his soul" by using
+them. The Lord Chancellor desired him to re-consider his answer. He retired
+to the garden, and in his absence others were called in; among them the
+Bishop of Rochester, who refused in the same terms. More was then recalled.
+He was asked if he persisted in his resolution; and when he replied that he
+did, he was requested to state his reasons. He said that he was afraid of
+increasing the king's displeasure, but if he could be assured that he might
+explain himself safely he was ready to do so. If his objection could then
+be answered to his satisfaction, he would swear; in the meantime, he
+repeated, very explicitly, that he judged no one--he spoke only for
+himself.
+
+An opening seemed to be offered in these expressions which was caught at by
+Cranmer's kind-hearted casuistry. If Sir Thomas More could not condemn
+others for taking the oath, the archbishop said, Sir Thomas More could not
+be sure that it was sin to take it; while his duty to his king and to the
+parliament was open and unquestioned.
+
+More hesitated for an instant, but he speedily recovered his firmness. He
+had considered what he ought to do, he said; his conscience was clear about
+it, and he could say no more than he had said already. They continued to
+argue with him, but without effect; he had made up his mind; the victory,
+as he said, had been won.
+
+Cromwell was deeply affected. In his passionate regret, he exclaimed, that
+he had rather his only son had lost his head than that More should have
+refused the oath. No one knew better than Cromwell that intercession would
+be of no further use; that he could not himself advise the king to give
+way. The parliament, after grave consideration, had passed a law which they
+held necessary to secure the peace of the country; and two persons of high
+rank refused obedience to it, whose example would tell in every English
+household. Either, therefore, the act was not worth the parchment on which
+it was written, or the penalties of it must be enforced: no middle way, no
+compromise, no acquiescent reservations, could in such a case be admitted.
+The law must have its way.
+
+The recusants were committed for four days to the keeping of the Abbot of
+Westminster; and the council met to determine on the course to be pursued.
+Their offence, by the act, was misprision of treason. On the other hand,
+they had both offered to acknowledge the Princess Elizabeth as the lawful
+heir to the throne; and the question was raised whether this offer should
+be accepted. It was equivalent to a demand that the form should be altered,
+not for them only, but for every man. If persons of their rank and
+notoriety were permitted to swear with a qualification, the same privilege
+must be conceded to all. But there was so much anxiety to avoid
+extremities, and so warm a regard was personally felt for Sir Thomas More,
+that this objection was not allowed to be fatal. It was thought that
+possibly an exception might be made, yet kept a secret from the world; and
+the fact that they had sworn under any form might go far to silence
+objectors and reconcile the better class of the disaffected.[717] This view
+was particularly urged by Cranmer, always gentle, hoping, and
+illogical.[718] But, in fact, secresy was impossible. If More's discretion
+could have been relied upon, Fisher's babbling tongue would have trumpeted
+his victory to all the winds. Nor would the government consent to pass
+censure on its own conduct by evading the question whether the act was or
+was not just. If it was not just, it ought not to be: maintained at all; if
+it was just, there must be no respect of persons.
+
+The clauses to which the bishop and the ex-chancellor declined to bind
+themselves were those which declared illegal the marriage of the king with
+Catherine, and the marriage legal between the king and Queen Anne. To
+refuse these was to declare Mary legitimate, to declare Elizabeth
+illegitimate, and would do more to strengthen Mary's claims than could be
+undone by a thousand oaths. However large might be More's estimate of the
+power of parliament, he could have given no clear answer--and far less
+could Fisher have given a clear answer--if they had been required to say
+the part which they would take, should the emperor invade the kingdom under
+the pope's sanction. The emperor would come to execute a sentence which in
+their consciences they believed to be just; how could they retain their
+allegiance to Henry, when their convictions must be with the invading army?
+
+What ought to have been done let those say who disapprove of what was
+actually done. The high character of the prisoners, while it increased the
+desire, increased the difficulty of sparing them; and to have given way
+would have been a confession of a doubtful cause, which at such a time
+would not have been dangerous, but would have been fatal. Anne Boleyn is
+said to have urged the king to remain peremptory;[719] but the following
+letter of Cromwell's explains the ultimate resolution of the council in a
+very reasonable manner. It was written to Cranmer in reply to his
+arguments for concession.
+
+"My Lord, after mine humble commendation, it may please your Grace to be
+advertised that I have received your letter, and showed the same to the
+King's Highness; who, perceiving that your mind and opinion is, that it
+were good that the Bishop of Rochester and Master More should be sworn to
+the act of the king's succession, and not to the preamble of the same,
+thinketh that if their oaths should be taken, it were an occasion to all
+men to refuse the whole, or at least the like. For, in case they be sworn
+to the succession, and not to the preamble, it is to be thought that it
+might be taken not only as a confirmation of the Bishop of Rome's
+authority, but also as a reprobation of the king's second marriage.
+Wherefore, to the intent that no such things should be brought into the
+heads of the people, by the example of the said Bishop of Rochester and
+Master More, the King's Highness in no wise willeth but that they shall be
+sworn as well to the preamble as to the act. Wherefore his Grace specially
+trusteth that ye will in no wise attempt to move him to the contrary; for
+as his Grace supposeth, that manner of swearing, if it shall be suffered,
+may be an utter destruction to his whole cause, and also to the effect of
+the law made for the same."[720]
+
+Thus, therefore, with much regret the council decided--and, in fact, why
+should they have decided otherwise? They were satisfied that they were
+right in requiring the oath; and their duty to the English nation obliged
+them to persevere. They must go their way; and those who thought them wrong
+must go theirs; and the great God would judge between them. It was a hard
+thing to suffer for an opinion; but there are times when opinions are as
+dangerous as acts; and liberty of conscience was a plea which could be
+urged with a bad grace for men who, while in power, had fed the stake with
+heretics. They were summoned for a last time, to return the same answer as
+they had returned before; and nothing remained but to pronounce against
+them the penalties of the statute, imprisonment at the king's pleasure, and
+forfeiture. The latter part of the sentence was not enforced. More's family
+were left in the enjoyment of his property. Fisher's bishoprick was not
+taken from him. They were sent to the Tower, where for the present we leave
+them.
+
+Meanwhile, in accordance with the resolution taken in council on the and of
+December,[721] but which seems to have been suspended till the issue of the
+trial at Rome was decided, the bishops, who had been examined severally on
+the nature of the papal authority, and whose answers had been embodied in
+the last act of parliament, were now required to instruct the clergy
+throughout their dioceses--and the clergy in turn to instruct the
+people--in the nature of the changes which had taken place. A bishop was to
+preach each Sunday at Paul's Cross, on the pope's usurpation. Every secular
+priest was directed to preach on the same subject week after week, in his
+parish church. Abbots and priors were to teach their convents; noblemen and
+gentlemen their families and servants; mayors and aldermen the boroughs. In
+town and country, in all houses, at all dinner-tables, the conduct of the
+pope and the causes of the separation from Rome were to be the one subject
+of conversation; that the whole nation might be informed accurately and
+faithfully of the grounds on which the government had acted. No wiser
+method could have been adopted. The imperial agents would be busy under the
+surface; and the mendicant friars, and all the missionaries of
+insurrection. The machinery of order was set in force to counteract the
+machinery of sedition.
+
+Further, every bishop, in addition to the oath of allegiance, had sworn
+obedience to the king as Supreme Head of the Church;[722] and this was the
+title under which he was to be spoken of in all churches of the realm. A
+royal order had been issued, "that all manner of prayers, rubrics, canons
+of Mass books, and all other books in the churches wherein the Bishop of
+Rome was named, or his presumptuous and proud pomp and authority preferred,
+should utterly be abolished, eradicated, and rased out, and his name and
+memory should be never more, except to his contumely and reproach,
+remembered; but perpetually be suppressed and obscured."[723]
+
+Nor were these mere idle sounds, like the bellow of unshotted cannon; but
+words with a sharp, prompt meaning, which the king intended to be obeyed.
+He had addressed his orders to the clergy, because the clergy were the
+officials who had possession of the pulpits from which the people were to
+be taught; but he knew their nature too well to trust them. They were too
+well schooled in the tricks of reservation; and, for the nonce, it was
+necessary to reverse the posture of the priest and of his flock, and to set
+the honest laymen to overlook their pastors.
+
+With the instructions to the bishops circulars went round to the sheriffs
+of the counties, containing a full account of these instructions, and an
+appeal to their loyalty to see that the royal orders were obeyed. "We," the
+king wrote to them, "seeing, esteeming, and reputing you to be of such
+singular and vehement zeal and affection towards the glory of Almighty God,
+and of so faithful, loving, and obedient heart towards us, as you will
+accomplish, with all power, diligence, and labour, whatsoever shall be to
+the preferment and setting forth of God's word, have thought good, not only
+to signify unto you by these our letters, the particulars of the charge
+given by us to the bishops, but also to require and straitly charge you,
+upon pain of your allegiance, and as ye shall avoid our high indignation
+and displeasure, [that] at your uttermost peril, laying aside all vain
+affections, respects, and other carnal considerations, and setting only
+before your eyes the mirrour of the truth, the glory of God, the dignity of
+your Sovereign Lord and King, and the great concord and unity, and
+inestimable profit and utility, that shall by the due execution of the
+premises ensue to yourselves and to all other faithful and loving subjects,
+ye make or cause to be made diligent search and wait, whether the said
+bishops do truly and sincerely, without all manner of cloke, colour, or
+dissimulation, execute and accomplish our will and commandment, as is
+aforesaid. And in case ye shall hear that the said bishops, or any other
+ecclesiastical person, do omit and leave undone any part or parcel of the
+premises, or else in the execution and setting forth of the same, do coldly
+and feignedly use any manner of sinister addition, wrong interpretation, or
+painted colour, then we straitly charge and command you that you do make,
+undelayedly, and with all speed and diligence, declaration and
+advertisement to us and to our council of the said default.
+
+"And forasmuch as we upon the singular trust which we have in you, and for
+the special love which we suppose you bear towards us, and the weal and
+tranquillity of this our realm, have specially elected and chosen you among
+so many for this purpose, and have reputed you such men as unto whose
+wisdom and fidelity we might commit a matter of such great weight and
+importance: if ye should, contrary to our expectation and trust which we
+have in you, and against your duty and allegiance towards us, neglect, or
+omit to do with all your diligence, whatsoever shall be in your power for
+the due performance of our pleasure to you declared, or halt or stumble at
+any part or specialty of the same; Be ye assured that we, like a prince of
+justice, will so extremely punish you for the same, that all the world
+beside shall take by you example, and beware contrary to their allegiance
+to disobey the lawful commandment of their Sovereign Lord and Prince.
+
+"Given under our signet, at our Palace of Westminster, the 9th day of June,
+1534."[724]
+
+So Henry spoke at last. There was no place any more for nice distinctions
+and care of tender consciences. The general, when the shot is flying,
+cannot qualify his orders with dainty periods. Swift command and swift
+obedience can alone be tolerated; and martial law for those who hesitate.
+
+This chapter has brought many things to a close. Before ending it we will
+leap over three months, to the termination of the career of the pope who
+has been so far our companion. Not any more was the distracted Clement to
+twist his handkerchief, or weep, or flatter, or wildly wave his arms in
+angry impotence; he was to lie down in his long rest, and vex the world no
+more. He had lived to set England free--an exploit which, in the face of so
+persevering an anxiety to escape a separation, required a rare genius and a
+combination of singular qualities. He had finished his work, and now he was
+allowed to depart.
+
+In him, infinite insincerity was accompanied with a grace of manner which
+regained confidence as rapidly as it was forfeited. Desiring sincerely, so
+far as he could be sincere in anything, to please every one by turns, and
+reckless of truth to a degree in which he was without a rival in the world,
+he sought only to escape his difficulties by inactivity, and he trusted to
+provide himself with a refuge against all contingencies by waiting upon
+time. Even when at length he was compelled to act, and to act in a distinct
+direction, his plausibility long enabled him to explain away his conduct;
+and, honest in the excess of his dishonesty, he wore his falsehood with so
+easy a grace that it assumed the character of truth. He was false,
+deceitful, treacherous; yet he had the virtue of not pretending to be
+virtuous. He was a real man, though but an indifferent one; and we can
+refuse to no one, however grave his faults, a certain ambiguous sympathy,
+when in his perplexities he shows us features so truly human in their
+weakness as those of Clement VII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTES.
+
+[1] Printed in FOXE, vol. iv. p. 659, Townsend's edition.
+
+[2] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 4.
+
+[3] Bishop Latimer, in a sermon at Paul's Cross, suggested another purpose
+which this act might answer. One of his audience, writing to the Mayor of
+Plymouth, after describing the exceedingly disrespectful language in which
+he spoke of the high church dignitaries, continues, "The king," quoth he,
+"made a marvellous good act of parliament that certain men should sow every
+of them two acres of hemp; but it were all too little were it so much more
+to hang the thieves that be in England."--_Suppression of the Monasteries_,
+Camden Society's publications, p. 38.
+
+[4] 32 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.
+
+[5] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.
+
+[6] _Antiquities of Hengrave_, by Sir T. GAGE.
+
+[7] See especially 2 Hen. VII. capp. 16 and 19.
+
+[8] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[9] See especially the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth.
+
+[10] 10 Ed. III. cap. 3.
+
+[11] Statutes of the Realm, vol. i. (edit. 1817), pp. 227-8.
+
+[12] "The artificers and husbandmen make most account of such meat as they
+may soonest come by and have it quickliest ready. Their food consisteth
+principally in beef, and such meat as the butcher selleth, that is to say,
+mutton, veal, lamb, pork, whereof the one findeth great store in the
+markets adjoining; besides souse, brawn, bacon, fruit, pies of fruit, fowls
+of sundry sorts, as the other wanteth it not at home by his own provision,
+which is at the best hand and commonly least charge. In feasting, this
+latter sort--I mean the husbandmen--do exceed after their manner,
+especially at bridals and such odd meetings, where it is incredible to tell
+what meat is consumed and spent."--HARRISON'S _Description of England_, p.
+282.
+
+The Spanish nobles who came into England with Philip were astonished at the
+diet which they found among the poor.
+
+"These English," said one of them, "have their houses made of sticks and
+dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king."--Ibid. p. 313.
+
+[13] _State Papers_, Hen. VIII. vol. ii. p. 10.
+
+[14] HALL, p. 646.
+
+[15] 25 Ed. III. cap. I.
+
+[16] _Statutes of the Realm_, vol. i. p. 199.
+
+[17] 3 Ed. IV. cap. 2.
+
+[18] 10 Hen. VI. cap. 2.
+
+[19] STOW'S _Chronicle._
+
+[20] _Statutes of Philip and Mary._
+
+[21] From 1565 to 1575 there was a rapid and violent rise in the prices of
+all kinds of grain. Wheat stood at four and five times its earlier rates;
+and in 1576, when Harrison wrote, was entirely beyond the reach of the
+labouring classes. "The poor in some shires," he says, "are enforced to
+content themselves with rye or barley, yea, and in time of dearth many with
+bread made either of peas, beans, or oats, or of all together and some
+acorns among, of which scourge the poorest do soonest taste, sith they are
+least able to provide themselves of better. I will not say that this
+extremity is oft so well seen in time of plenty as of dearth, but if I
+should I could easily bring my trial. For, albeit that there be much more
+ground eared now almost in every place than hath been of late years, yet
+such a price of corn continues in each town and market, that the artificer
+and poor labouring man is not able to reach to it, but is driven to content
+himself with beans, peas, oats, tares, and lentils."--HARRISON, p. 283. The
+condition of the labourer was at this period deteriorating rapidly. The
+causes will be described in the progress of this history.
+
+[22] _Chronicle_, p.568.
+
+[23] 33 Hen. VIII. cap. II. The change in the prices of such articles
+commenced in the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., and continued till
+the close of the century. A discussion upon the subject, written in 1581 by
+Mr. Edward Stafford, and containing the clearest detailed account of the
+alteration, is printed in the _Harleian Miscellany_, vol. ix. p.139, etc.
+
+[24] Leland, _Itin._, vol. vi. p.17. In large households beef used to be
+salted in great quantities for winter consumption. The art of fatting
+cattle in the stall was imperfectly understood, and the loss of substance
+in the destruction of fibre by salt was less than in the falling off of
+flesh on the failure of fresh grass. The Northumberland Household Book
+describes the storing of salted provision for the earl's establishment at
+Michaelmas; and men now living can remember the array of salting tubs in
+old-fashioned country houses. So long as pigs, poultry, and other articles
+of food, however, remained cheap and abundant, the salt diet could not, as
+Hume imagines, have been carried to an extent injurious to health; and
+fresh meat, beef as well as mutton, was undoubtedly sold in all markets the
+whole year round in the reign of Henry VIII., and sold at a uniform price,
+which it could not have been if there had been so much difficulty in
+procuring it. Latimer (_Letters_, p.412), writing to Cromwell on Christmas
+Eve, 1538, speaks of his winter stock of "beeves" and muttons as a thing of
+course.
+
+[25] STAFFORD'S _Discourse on the State of the Realm_. It is to be
+understood, however, that these rates applied only to articles of ordinary
+consumption. Capons fatted for the dinners of the London companies were
+sometimes provided at a shilling apiece. Fresh fish was also extravagantly
+dear, and when two days a week were observed strictly as fasting days, it
+becomes a curious question to know how the supply was kept up. The inland
+counties were dependent entirely on ponds and rivers. London was provided
+either from the Thames or from the coast of Sussex. An officer of the
+Fishmongers' Company resided at each of the Cinque Ports whose business it
+was to buy the fish wholesale from the boats and to forward it on
+horseback. Three hundred horses were kept for this service at Rye alone.
+And when an adventurous fisherman, taking advantage of a fair wind, sailed
+up the Thames with his catch and sold it first hand at London Bridge, the
+innovation was considered dangerous, and the Mayor of Rye petitioned
+against it.
+
+Salmon, sturgeon, porpoise, roach, dace, flounders, eels, etc., were caught
+in considerable quantities in the Thames, below London Bridge, and further
+up, pike and trout. The fishermen had great nets that stretched all across
+Limehouse-reach four fathoms deep.
+
+Fresh fish, however, remained the luxury of the rich, and the poor were
+left to the salt cod, ling, and herring brought in annually by the Iceland
+fleet.
+
+Fresh herrings sold for five or six a penny in the time of Henry VIII., and
+were never cheaper. Fresh salmon five and six shillings apiece. Roach,
+dace, and flounders from two to four shillings a hundred. Pike and barbel
+varied with their length. The barbel a foot long sold for five-pence, and
+twopence was added for each additional inch: a pike a foot long sold for
+sixteen pence, and increased a penny an inch.--_Guildhall MSS. Journals_
+12, 13, 14, 15.
+
+[26] "When the brewer buyeth a quarter of malt for two shillings, then he
+shall sell a gallon of the best ale for two farthings; when he buyeth a
+quarter malt for four shillings, the gallon shall be four farthings, and so
+forth... and that he sell a quart of ale upon his table for a farthing."--
+Assize of Brewers: from a MS. in Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+By an order of the Lord Mayor and Council of the City of London, in
+September, 1529, the price of a kilderkin of single beer was fixed at a
+shilling, the kilderkin of double beer at two shillings; but this included
+the cask; and the London brewers replied with a remonstrance, saying that
+the casks were often destroyed or made away with, and that an allowance had
+to be made for bad debts. "Your beseechers," they said, "have many city
+debtors, for many of them which have taken much beer into their houses
+suddenly goeth to the sanctuary, some keep their houses--some purchase the
+king's protection, and some, when they die, be reckoned poor, and of no
+value, and many of your said beseechers be for the most part against such
+debtors remediless and suffer great losses."
+
+They offered to supply then: customers with sixteen gallon casks of single
+beer for eleven pence, and the same quantity of double beer for a shilling,
+the cask included. And this offer was accepted.
+
+The corporation, however, returned two years after to their original order.
+_Guildhall Records_, MS. Journal 13, pp. 210, 236.
+
+[27] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 14.
+
+The prices assessed, being a maximum, applied to the best wines of each
+class. In 1531, the mayor and corporation "did straitly charge and command
+that all such persons as sold wines by retail within the city and liberties
+of the same, should from henceforth sell two gallons of the best red wine
+for eightpence, and not above; the gallon of the best white wine for
+eightpence, and not above; the pottle, quart, and pint after the same rate,
+upon pain of imprisonment."
+
+The quality of the wine sold was looked into from time to time, and when
+found tainted, or unwholesome, "according to the antient customs of the
+city," the heads of the vessels were broken up, and the wines in them put
+forth open into the kennels, in example of all other offenders. _Guildhall
+MS._ Journals 12 and 13.
+
+[28] _Sermons_, p.101.
+
+[29] See HARRISON, p. 318. At the beginning of the century farms let for
+four pounds a year, which in 1576 had been raised to forty, fifty, or a
+hundred. The price of produce kept pace with the rent. The large farmers
+prospered; the poor forfeited their tenures.
+
+[30] The wages were fixed at a maximum, showing that labour was scarce, and
+that its natural tendency was towards a higher rate of remuneration.
+Persons not possessed of other means of subsistence were punishable if they
+refused to work at the statutable rate of payment; and a clause in the act
+of Hen. VIII. directed that where the practice had been to give lower
+wages, lower wages should be taken. This provision was owing to a
+difference in the value of money in different parts of England. The price
+of bread at Stratford, for instance, was permanently twenty-five per cent.
+below the price in London. (Assize of Bread in England: _Balliol MS_.) The
+statute, therefore, may be taken as a guide sufficiently conclusive as to
+the practical scale. It is of course uncertain how far work was constant.
+The ascending tendency of wages is an evidence, so far as it goes, in the
+labourer's favour; and the proportion between the wages of the household
+farm servant and those of the day labourer, which furnishes a further
+guide, was much the same as at present. By the same statute of Henry VIII.
+the common servant of husbandry, who was boarded and lodged at his master's
+house, received 16s. 8d. a year in money, with 4s. for his clothes; while
+the wages of the out-door labourer, supposing his work constant, would have
+been £5 a year. Among ourselves, on an average of different counties, the
+labourer's wages are £25 to £30 a year, supposing his work constant. The
+farm servant, unless in the neighbourhood of large towns, receives about
+£6, or from that to £8.
+
+Where meat and drink was allowed it was calculated at 2d. a day, or 1s. 2d.
+a week. In the household of the Earl of Northumberland the allowance was
+2-1/2d. Here, again, we observe an approach to modern proportions. The
+estimated cost of the board and lodging of a man servant in an English
+gentleman's family is now about £25 a year.
+
+[31] Mowers, for instance, were paid 8d. a day.--_Privy Purse Expenses of
+Henry VIII._
+
+[32] In 1581 the agricultural labourer, as he now exists, was only
+beginning to appear. "There be such in the realm," says Stafford, "as live
+only by the labour of their hands and the profit which they can make upon
+the commons."--STAFFORD'S _Discourse_. This novel class had been called
+into being by the general raising of rents, and the wholesale evictions of
+the smaller tenantry which followed the Reformation. The progress of the
+causes which led to the change can be traced from the beginning of the
+century. Harrison says he knew old men who, comparing things present with
+things past, spoke of two things grown to be very grievous--to wit, "the
+enhancing of rents, and the daily oppression of copyholders, whose lords
+seek to bring their poor tenants almost into plain servitude and misery,
+daily devising new means, and seeking up all the old, how to cut them
+shorter and shorter; doubling, trebling, and now and then seven times
+increasing their fines; driving them also for every trifle to lose and
+forfeit their tenures, by whom the greatest part of the realm doth stand
+and is maintained, to the end they may fleece them yet more: which is a
+lamentable hearing."--_Description of England_, p.318.
+
+[33] HALL, p. 581. Nor was the act in fact observed even in London itself,
+or towards workmen employed by the Government. In 1538, the Corporation of
+London, "for certain reasonable and necessary considerations," assessed the
+wages of common labourers at 7d. and 8d. the day, classing them with
+carpenters and masons.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 14, fol. 10. Labourers
+employed on Government works in the reign of Hen. VIII. never received less
+than 6d. a day, and frequently more.--_Chronicle of Calais_, p. 197, etc.
+Sixpence a day is the usual sum entered as the wages of a day's labour in
+the innumerable lists of accounts in the Record Office. And 6d. a day again
+was the lowest pay of the common soldier, not only on exceptional service
+in the field, but when regularly employed in garrison duty. Those who doubt
+whether this was really the practice, may easily satisfy themselves by
+referring to the accounts of the expenses of Berwick, or of Dover, Deal, or
+Walmer Castles, to be found in the Record Office in great numbers. The
+daily wages of the soldier are among the very best criteria for determining
+the average value of the unskilled labourer's work. No government gives
+higher wages than it is compelled to give by the market rate.
+
+[34] The wages of the day labourer in London, under this act of Elizabeth,
+were fixed at 9d. the day, and this, after the restoration of the
+depreciated currency.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 18, fol. 157, etc.
+
+[35] 4 Hen. VII. cap. 16. By the same parliament these provisions were
+extended to the rest of England. 4 Hen. VII. cap. 19.
+
+[36] HALL, p. 863.
+
+[37] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 22.
+
+[38] There is a cause of difficulty "peculiar to England, the increase of
+pasture, by which sheep may be now said to devour men and unpeople not only
+villages but towns. For wherever it is found that the sheep yield a softer
+and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even
+those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old rents which their
+farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do
+no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the
+course of agriculture.... One shepherd can look after a flock which will
+stock an extent of ground that would require many hands if it were ploughed
+and reaped. And this likewise in many places raises the price of corn. The
+price of wool is also risen ... since, though sheep cannot be called a
+monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person; yet they are in so
+few hands, and these are so rich, that as they are not prest to sell them
+sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it till they have
+raised the price as high as possible."--Sir THOMAS MORE'S _Utopia_,
+Burnet's Translation, pp. 17-19.
+
+[39] I find scattered among the _State Papers_ many loose memoranda,
+apparently of privy councillors, written on the backs of letters, or on
+such loose scraps as might be at hand. The following fragment on the
+present subject is curious. I do not recognise the hand:--
+
+"Mem. That an act may be made that merchants shall employ their goods
+continually in the traffic of merchandise, and not in the purchasing of
+lands; and that craftsmen, also, shall continually use their crafts in
+cities and towns, and not leave the same and take farms in the country; and
+that no merchant shall hereafter purchase above £40 lands by the
+year."--_Cotton MS._ Titus, b. i. 160.
+
+[40] When the enclosing system was carried on with greatest activity and
+provoked insurrection. In expressing a sympathy with the social policy of
+the Tudor government, I have exposed myself to a charge of opposing the
+received and ascertained conclusions of political economy. I disclaim
+entirely an intention so foolish; but I believe that the science of
+political economy came into being with the state of things to which alone
+it is applicable. It ought to be evident that principles which answer
+admirably when a manufacturing system capable of indefinite expansion
+multiplies employment at home--when the soil of England is but a fraction
+of its empire, and the sea is a highway to emigration--would have produced
+far different effects, in a condition of things which habit had petrified
+into form, when manufactures could not provide work for one additional
+hand, when the first colony was yet unthought of, and where those who were
+thrown out of the occupation to which they had been bred could find no
+other. The tenants evicted, the labourers thrown out of employ, when the
+tillage lands were converted into pastures, had scarcely an alternative
+offered them except to beg, to rob, or to starve.
+
+[41] _Lansdowne MS._ No. I. fol. 26.
+
+[42] GIUSTINIANI'S _Letters from the Court of Henry VIII_.
+
+[43] Ibid.
+
+[44] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.
+
+[45] Under Hen. VI. the household expenses were £23,000 a year--Cf.
+_Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council_, vol. vi. p. 35. The
+particulars of the expenses of the household of Hen. VIII. are in an MS. in
+the Rolls House. They cover the entire outlay except the personal
+expenditure of the king, and the sum total amounts to £14,365 10s. 7d. This
+would leave above £5000 a year for the privy purse, not, perhaps,
+sufficient to cover Henry's gambling extravagances in his early life.
+Curious particulars of his excesses in this matter will be found in a
+publication wrongly called _The Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the Eighth_.
+It is a diary of general payments, as much for purposes of state as for the
+king himself. The high play was confined for the most part to Christmas or
+other times of festivity, when the statutes against unlawful games were
+dispensed with for all classes.
+
+[46] 18 Hen. VI. cap. 11.
+
+[47] 4 Hen. VII. cap. 12.
+
+[48] During the quarter sessions time they were allowed 4s. a day.--Ric.
+II. xii. 10.
+
+[49] The rudeness of the furniture in English country houses has been dwelt
+upon with much emphasis by Hume and others. An authentic inventory of the
+goods and chattels in a parsonage in Kent proves that there has been much
+exaggeration in this matter. It is from an MS. in the Rolls House.
+
+_The Inventory of the Goods and Catales of Richd. Master, Clerk, Parson of
+Aldington, being in his Parsonage on the 20th Day of April, in the 25th
+Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King Henry VIII._
+
+  _Plate_
+  Silver spoons, twelve.
+
+  _In the Hall_
+  Two tables and two forms.
+  Item, a painted cloth hanging at the upper part of the hall.
+  Item, a green banker hung on the bench in the hall.
+  Item, a laver of laten.
+
+  _In the Parlour_
+  A hanging of old red and green saye.
+  Item, a banker of woven carpet of divers colours.
+  Item, two cushions.
+  Item, one table, two forms, one cupboard, one chair.
+  Item, two painted pictures and a picture of the names of kings of England
+      pinned on the said hanging.
+
+  _In the Chamber on the North Side of the said Parlour_
+  A painted hanging.
+  Item, a bedstedyll with a feather bed, one bolster, two pillows, one
+      blanket,
+      one roulett of rough tapestry, a testner of green and red saye.
+  Item, two forms.
+  Item, one jack to set a basin on.
+
+  _In the Chamber over the Parlour_
+  Two bedsteads.
+  Item, another testner of painted cloth.
+  Item, a painted cloth.
+  Item, two forms.
+
+  _At the Stairs' Hed beside the Parson's Bedchamber_
+  One table, two trestylls, four beehives.
+
+  _In the Parson's Lodging-chamber_
+  A bedstedyll and a feather bed, two blankets, one payr of sheets, one
+      coverlet of tapestry lined with canvas, one bolster, one pillow with
+      a pillocote.
+  Item, one gown of violet cloth lined with red saye.
+  Item, a gown of black cloth, furred with lamb.
+  Item, two hoods of violet cloth, whereof one is lined with green
+      sarsenet.
+  Item, one jerkyn of tawny camlet.
+  Item, a jerkyn of cloth furred with white.
+  Item, a jacket of cloth furred.
+  Item, a sheet to put in cloth.
+  Item, one press.
+  Item, a leather mail.
+  Item, one table, two forms, four chairs, two trestylls.
+  Item, a tester of painted cloth.
+  Item, a pair of hangings of green saye, with two pictures thereupon.
+  Item, one cupboard, two chests.
+  Item, a little flock bed, with a bolster and a coverlet.
+  Item, one cushion, one mantell, one towel, and, by estimation, a pound
+      of wax candles.
+  Item, Greek books covered with boards, 42.
+  Item, small books covered with boards, 33.
+  Item, books covered with leather and parchment, 38.
+
+  _In the said Chest in the said Chamber_
+  Three pieces of red saye and green.
+  Item, one tyke for a bolster, two tykes for pillows.
+  Item, a typpett of cloth.
+  Item, diaper napkins, 4, diaper towels, 2.
+  Item, four pairs of sheets, and one shete, two tablecloths.
+
+  _In the other Chest in the same Chamber_
+  One typpett of sarsenett.
+  Item, two cotes belonging to the crosse of Underbill, whereupon hang
+      thirty-three pieces of money, rings, and other things, and three
+      crystal stones closed in silver.
+
+  _In the Study_
+  Two old boxes, a wicker hamper full of papers.
+
+  _In the Chamber behind the Chimney_
+  One seam and a half of old malt.
+  Item, a trap for rats.
+  Item, a board of three yards length.
+
+  _In the Chamber next adjoining westwards_
+  One bedstedyll, one flock bed, one bolster.
+  One form, two shelf boards, one little table, two trestylls, two awgyes,
+      one
+      nett, called a stalker, a well rope, five quarters of hemp.
+
+  _In the Buttery_
+  Three basins of pewter, five candlesticks, one ewer of lateen, one
+      chafing
+      dish, two platters, one dish, one salter, three podingers [?
+          porringer],
+      a saltseller of pewter, seven kilderkyns, three keelers, one form,
+          five
+      shelves, one byn, one table, one glasse bottell.
+
+  _In the Priest's Chamber_
+  One bedstedyll, one feather bed, two forms, one press.
+
+  _In the Woman's Keeping_
+  Two tablecloths, two pairs of sheets.
+
+  _In the Servant's Chamber_
+  One painted hanging, a bedstedyll, one feather bed, a press, and a shelf.
+
+  _In the Kitchen_
+  Eight bacon flitches, a little brewing lead, three brass pots, three
+      kettles,
+      one posnett, one frying-pan, a dripping-pan, a great pan, two
+          trivetts,
+      a chopping knife, a skimmer, one fire rake, a pothanger, one
+          pothooke,
+      one andiron, three spits, one gridiron, one firepan, a coal rake of
+          iron,
+      two bolts [? butts], three wooden platters, six boldishes, three
+          forms,
+      two stools, seven platters, two pewter dishes, four saucers, a
+          covering
+      of a saltseller, a podynger, seven tubbs, a caldron, two syffs, a
+          capon
+      cope, a mustard quern, a ladder, two pails, one beehive.
+
+  _In the Mill-house_
+  Seven butts, two cheeses, an old sheet, an old brass pan, three
+      podyngers,
+      a pewter dish.
+
+  _In the Boulting-house_
+  One brass pan, one quern, a boulting hutch, a boulting tub, three little
+      tubbys, two keelers, a tolvett, two boulters, one tonnell.
+
+  _In the Larder_
+  One sieve, one bacon trough, a cheese press, one little tub, eight
+      shelves,
+      one graper for a well.
+
+  _Wood_
+  Of tall wood ten load, of ash wood a load and a half.
+
+  _Poultry_
+  Nine hens, eight capons, one cock, sixteen young chickens, three old
+      geese, seventeen goslings, four ducks.
+
+  _Cattle_
+  Five young hoggs, two red kyne, one red heifer two years old, one bay
+      gelding lame of spavins, one old grey mare having a mare colt.
+
+  _In the Entries_
+  Two tubbs, one trough, one ring to bear water and towel, a chest to keep
+  cornes.
+
+  _In the same House_
+  Five seams of lime.
+
+  _In the Woman's Chamber_
+  One bedstedyll of hempen yarn, by estimation 20 lbs.
+
+  _Without the House_
+  Of tyles, ----, of bricks, ----, seven planks, three rafters, one ladder.
+
+  _In the Gate-house_
+  One form, a leather sack, three bushels of wheat.
+
+  _In the Still beside the Gate_
+  Two old road saddles, one bridle, a horse-cloth.
+
+  _In the Barn next the Gate_
+  Of wheat unthrashed, by estimation, thirty quarters, of barley
+      unthrashed,
+      by estimation, five quarters.
+
+  _In the Cartlage_
+  One weene with two whyles, one dung-cart without whyles, two shod-whyles,
+      two yokes, one sledge.
+
+  _In the Barn next the Church_
+  Of oats unthrashed, by estimation, one quarter.
+
+  _In the Garden-house_
+  Of oats, by estimation, three seams four bushels.
+
+  _In the Court_
+      Two racks, one ladder.
+
+[50] Two hundred poor were fed daily at the house of Tomas Cromwell. This
+fact is perfectly authenticated. Stowe the historian, who did not like
+Cromwell, lived in an adjoining house, and reports it as an eye
+witness.--_See_ STOWE'S _Survey of London._
+
+[51] HARRISON'S _Description of Britain_.
+
+[52] The Earl and Countess of Northumberland breakfasted together alone at
+seven. The meal consisted of a quart of ale, a quart of wine, and a chine
+of beef: a loaf of bread is not mentioned, but we hope it may be presumed.
+On fast days the beef was exchanged for a dish of sprats or herrings, fresh
+or salt.--_Northumberland Household Book_, quoted by Hume.
+
+[53] Some notice of the style of living sometimes witnessed in England in
+the old times may be gathered from the details of a feast given at the
+installation of George Neville, brother of Warwick the King Maker, when
+made Archbishop of York.
+
+The number of persons present including servants was about 3500.
+
+The provisions were as follow--
+
+  Wheat, 300 quarters.
+  Ale, 300 tuns.
+  Wine, 104 tuns.
+  Ipocras, 1 pipe.
+  Oxen, 80.
+  Wild bulls, 6.
+  Muttons, 1004.
+  Veal, 300.
+  Porkers, 300.
+  Geese, 3000.
+  Capons, 2300.
+  Pigs, 2000.
+  Peacocks, 100.
+  Cranes, 200.
+  Kids, 200.
+  Chickens, 2000.
+  Pigeons, 4000.
+  Conies, 4000.
+  Bitterns, 204.
+  Mallards and teals, 4000.
+  Heronshaws, 4000.
+  Fesants, 200.
+  Partridges, 500.
+  Woodcocks, 400.
+  Plovers, 400.
+  Curlews, 100.
+  Quails, 100.
+  Egrets, 1000
+  Rees, 200.
+  Harts, bucks, and roes, 400 and odd.
+  Pasties of venison, cold, 4000.
+  Pasties of venison, hot, 1506.
+  Dishes of jelly, pasted, 1000.
+  Plain dishes of jelly, 4000.
+  Cold tarts, baken, 4000.
+  Cold custards, 4000.
+  Custards, hot, 2000.
+  Pikes, 300.
+  Breams, 300.
+  Seals, 8.
+  Porpoises, 4.
+
+[54] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 64.
+
+[55] _Statutes of the Realm_, 1 Ed. VI. cap. 12.
+
+[56] HOOKER'S _Life of Sir Peter Carew_.
+
+[57] In a subsequent letter he is described as learning French, etymology,
+casting of accounts, playing at weapons, and other such exercises.--ELLIS,
+third series, vol. i. p. 342-3.
+
+[58] It has been objected that inasmuch as the Statute Book gives evidence
+of extensive practices of adulteration, the guild system was useless, nay,
+it has been even said that it was the cause of the evil. Cessante causā
+cessat effectus;--when the companies lost their authority, the adulteration
+ought to have ceased, which in the face of recent exposures will be
+scarcely maintained. It would be as reasonable to say that the police are
+useless because we have still burglars and pickpockets among us.
+
+[59] Throughout the old legislation, morality went along with politics and
+economics, and formed the life and spirit of them. The fruiterers in the
+streets were prohibited from selling plums and apples, because the
+apprentices played dice with them for their wares, or because the
+temptation induced children and servants to steal money to buy. When
+Parliament came to be held regularly in London, an order of Council fixed
+the rates which the hotel-keeper might charge for dinners. Messes were
+served for four at twopence per head; the bill of fare providing bread,
+fish, salt and fresh, two courses of meat, ale, with fire and candles. And
+the care of the Government did not cease with their meals, and in an
+anxiety that neither the burgesses nor their servants should be led into
+sin, stringent orders were issued against street-walkers coming near their
+quarters.--_Guildhall MSS. Journals_ 12 and 15.
+
+The sanitary regulations for the city are peculiarly interesting. The
+scavengers, constables and officers of the wards were ordered, "on pain of
+death," to see all streets and yards kept clear of dung and rubbish and all
+other filthy and corrupt things. Carts went round every Monday, Wednesday,
+and Saturday, to carry off the litter from the houses, and on each of those
+days twelve buckets of water were drawn for "every person," and used in
+cleaning their rooms and passages.
+
+Particular pains were taken to keep the Thames clean, and at the mouth of
+every sewer or watercourse there was a strong iron grating two feet
+deep.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 15.
+
+[60] And not in England alone, but throughout Europe.
+
+[61] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
+
+[62] Ibid.
+
+[63] Ibid.
+
+[64] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 4; 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 5.
+
+[65] _Statut. Winton._ 13 Edw. I. cap. 6.
+
+[66] 12 Rich. II. cap. 6: 11 Hen. IV. cap. 4.
+
+[67] ELLIS'S _Original Letters_, first series, vol. i. p. 226.
+
+[68] It has been stated again and again that the policy of Henry the Eighth
+was to make the crown despotic by destroying the remnants of the feudal
+power of the nobility. How is such a theory to be reconciled with statutes
+the only object of which was the arming and training of the country
+population, whose natural leaders were the peers, knights, and gentlemen?
+We have heard too much of this random declamation.
+
+[69] 33 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[70] From my experience of modern archery I found difficulty in believing
+that these figures were accurately given. Few living men could send the
+lightest arrow 220 yards, even with the greatest elevation, and for
+effective use it must be delivered nearly point blank. A passage in
+HOLINSHED'S _Description of Britain_, however, prevents me from doubting
+that the words of the statute are correct. In his own time, he says that
+the strength of the English archers had so notoriously declined that the
+French soldiers were in the habit of disrespectfully turning their backs,
+at long range, "bidding them shoot," whereas, says Holinshed, "had the
+archers been what they were wont to be, these fellows would have had their
+breeches nailed unto their buttocks." In an order for bowstaves, in the
+reign of Henry the Eighth, I find this direction: "Each bowstave ought to
+be _three fingers thick_ and squared, and _seven feet long_: to be got up
+well polished and without knots."--Butler to Bullinger: _Zurich Letters_.
+
+[71] Page 735, quarto edition.
+
+[72] The Personages, Dresses, and Properties of a Mystery Play, acted at
+Greenwich, by command of Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[73] Hall says "collar of the _garter_ of St. Michael," which, however, I
+venture to correct.
+
+[74] Rich. II. 12, cap. 7, 8, 9; Rich. II. 15, cap. 6.
+
+[75] _Lansdowne MSS._ 1, fol. 26.
+
+[76] Injunctions to the Monasteries: BURNET'S _Collect._ pp. 77-8.
+
+[77] Letter of Thomas Dorset to the Mayor of Plymouth: _Suppression of the
+Monasteries_, p. 36.
+
+[78] "Divers of your noble predecessors, kings of this realm, have given
+lands to monasteries, to give a certain sum of money yearly to the poor
+people, whereof for the ancienty of the time they never give one penny.
+Wherefore, if your Grace will build to your poor bedemen a sure hospital
+that shall never fail, take from them these things.... Tie the holy idle
+thieves to the cart to be whipped, naked, till they fall to labour, that
+they, by their importunate begging take not away the alms that the good
+charitable people would give unto us sore, impotent, miserable people, your
+bedemen."--FISH'S _Supplication_: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 664.
+
+[79] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
+
+[80] Roads, harbours, embankments, fortifications at Dover and at Berwick,
+etc.--STRYPE's _Memorials_, vol. 1. p. 326 and 419.
+
+[81] It is to be remembered that the criminal law was checked on one side
+by the sanctuary system, on the other by the practice of benefit of clergy.
+Habit was too strong for legislation, and these privileges continued to
+protect criminals long after they were abolished by statute. There is
+abundant evidence that the execution of justice was as lax in practice as
+it was severe in theory.
+
+[82] 27 Ed. III. stat. 1; 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 16 Rich. cap. 5.
+
+[83] 25 Ed. III. stat. 4; stat. 5, cap. 22; 13 Rich. II. stat. 2, cap. 2; 2
+Hen. IV. cap. 3; 9 Hen. IV. cap. 8.
+
+[84] See p. 42.
+
+[85] _Lansdowne MS._ 1, fol. 26; STOW'S _Chron._ ed. 1630, p. 338.
+
+[86] 2 Hen. IV. cap. 3; 9 Hen. IV. cap. 8.
+
+[87] 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.
+
+[88] Hen. VII. cap. 4. Among the miscellaneous publications of the Record
+Commission, there is a complaint presented during this reign, by the
+gentlemen and the farmers of Carnarvonshire, accusing the clergy of
+systematic seduction of their wives and daughters.
+
+[89] Hen. IV. cap. 15.
+
+[90] MORTON'S _Register_, MS. Lambeth. See vol. ii. cap. 10, of the second
+edition of this work for the results of Morton's investigation.
+
+[91] MORTON'S _Register_; and see WILKINS'S _Concilia_, vol. iii. pp.
+618-621.
+
+[92] Quibus Dominus intimavit qualis infamia super illos in dictā civitate
+crescit quod complures eorundem tabernas pandoxatorias, sive caupones
+indies exerceant ibidem expectando fere per totum diem. Quare Dominus
+consuluit et monuit eosdem quod in posterum talia dimittant, et quod
+dimittant suos longos crines et induantur togis non per totum apertis.
+
+[93] The expression is remarkable. They were not to dwell on the offences
+of their brethren coram laicis qui semper clericis sunt infesti.--WILKINS,
+vol. iii. p. 618.
+
+[94] Johannes permissione divinā Cantuar. episcop. totius Anglię primas cum
+in pręsenti convocatione pie et salubriter consideratum fuit quod nonnulli
+sacerdotes et alii clerici ejusdem nostrę provincię in sacris ordinibus
+constituti honestatem clericalem in tantum abjecerint ac in comā tonsurāque
+et superindumentis suis quę in anteriori sui parte totaliter aperta
+existere dignoscuntur, sic sunt dissoluti et adeo insolescant quod inter
+eos et alios laicos et sęculares viros nulla vel modica comę vel habituum
+sive vestimentorum distinctio esse videatur quo fiet in brevi ut a multis
+verisimiliter formidatur quod sicut populus ita et sacerdos erit, et nisi
+celeriori remedio tantę lascivię ecclesiasticarum personarum quanto ocyus
+obviemus et clericorum mores hujusmodi maturius compescamus, _Ecclesia
+Anglicana quę superioribus diebus vitā famā et compositis moribus floruisse
+dignoscitur nostris temporibus quod Deus avertat, pręcipitanter ruet_;
+
+Desiring, therefore, to find some remedy for these disorders, lest the
+blood of those committed to him should be required at his hands, the
+archbishop decrees and ordains,--
+
+Ne aliquis sacerdos vel clericus in sacris ordinibus constitutus togam
+gerat nisi clausam a parte anteriori et non totaliter apertam neque utatur
+ense nec sicā nec zonā aut marcipio deaurato vel auri ornatum habente.
+Incedent etiam omnes et singuli presbyteri et clerici ejusdem nostrę
+provincię coronas et tonsuras gerentes aures patentes ostendendo juxta
+canonicas sanctiones.--WILKINS, vol. iii. p. 619.
+
+[95] See WARHAM'S _Register_, MS. Lambeth.
+
+[96] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.
+
+[97] ROY'S _Satire against the Clergy_, written about 1528, is so
+plain-spoken, and goes so directly to the point of the matter, that it is
+difficult to find a presentable extract. The following lines on the bishops
+are among the most moderate in the poem:--
+
+  "What are the bishops divines--
+  Yea, they can best skill of wines
+  Better than of divinity;
+  Lawyers are they of experience,
+  And in cases against conscience
+  They are parfet by practice.
+  To forge excommunications,
+  For tythes and decimations
+  Is their continual exercise.
+  As for preaching they take no care,
+  They would rather see a course at a hare;
+  Rather than to make a sermon
+  To follow the chase of wild deer,
+  Passing the time with jolly cheer.
+  Among them all is common
+  To play at the cards and dice;
+  Some of them are nothing nice
+  Both at hazard and momchance;
+  They drink in golden bowls
+  The blood of poor simple souls
+  Perishing for lack of sustenance.
+  Their hungry cures they never teach,
+  Nor will suffer none other to preach," etc.
+
+[98] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, pp. 70, 71.
+
+[99] A peculiarly hateful form of clerical impost, the priests claiming the
+last dress worn in life by persons brought to them for burial.
+
+[100] Fitz James to Wolsey, FOXE, vol. iv. p. 196.
+
+[101] _Supplication of the Beggars_; FOXE, vol. iv. p. 661. The glimpses
+into the condition of the monasteries which had been obtained in the
+imperfect visitation of Morton, bear out the pamphleteer too completely.
+See chapter x. of this work, second edition.
+
+[102] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 658.
+
+[103] 13 Ric. II. stat. ii. c. 2; 2 Hen. IV. c. 3; 9 Hen. IV. c. 8. Lingard
+is mistaken in saying that the Crown had power to dispense with these
+statutes. A dispensing power was indeed granted by the 12th of the 7th of
+Ric. II. But by the 2nd of the 13th of the same reign, the king is
+expressly and by name placed under the same prohibitions as all other
+persons.
+
+[104] HALL, p. 784.
+
+[105] 25 Hen. VIII. c. 22.
+
+[106] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24. Speech of Sir Ralph Sadler in parliament,
+_Sadler Papers_, vol. iii. p. 323.
+
+[107] Nor was the theory distinctly admitted, or the claim of the house of
+York would have been unquestionable.
+
+[108] 25 Hen. VIII. c. 22, Draft of the Dispensation to be granted to Henry
+VIII. _Rolls House MS._ It has been asserted by a writer in the _Tablet_
+that there is no instance in the whole of English history where the
+ambiguity of the marriage law led to a dispute of title. This was not the
+opinion of those who remembered the wars of the fifteenth century. "Recens
+in quorundam vestrorum animis adhuc est illius cruenti temporis memoria,"
+said Henry VIII. in a speech in council, "quod a Ricardo tertio cum avi
+nostri materni Edwardi quarti statum in controversiam vocāsset ejusque
+heredes regno atque vitā privāsset illatum est."-WILKINS'S _Concilia_, vol.
+iii. p. 714. Richard claimed the crown on the ground that a precontract
+rendered his brother's marriage invalid, and Henry VII. tacitly allowed the
+same doubt to continue. The language of the 22nd of the 25th of Hen. VIII.
+is so clear as to require no additional elucidation; but another distinct
+evidence of the belief of the time upon the subject is in one of the papers
+laid before Pope Clement.
+
+"Constat, in ipso regno quam plurima gravissima bella sępe exorta,
+confingentes ex justis et legitimis nuptiis quorundam Anglię regum
+procreatos illegitimos fore propter aliquod consangunitatis vel affinitatis
+confictum impedimentum et propterea inhabiles esse ad regni
+successionem."--_Rolls House MS._; WILKINS'S _Concilia_, vol. iii. p. 707.
+
+[109] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.
+
+[110] _Appendix 2 to the Third Report of the Deputy-Keeper of the Public
+Records_, p. 241.
+
+[111] _Sadler Papers_, vol. iii. p. 323.
+
+[112] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.
+
+[113] _Four Years at the Court of Henry the Eighth_, vol. ii. pp. 315-16.
+
+[114] Sir Charles Brandon, created Duke of Suffolk, and married to Mary
+Tudor, widow of Louis XII.
+
+[115] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.
+
+[116] The treaty was in progress from Dec. 24, 1526, to March 2, 1527 [LORD
+HERBERT, pp. 80, 81], and during this time the difficulty was raised. The
+earliest intimation which I find of an intended divorce was in June, 1527,
+at which time Wolsey was privately consulting the bishops.--_State Papers_
+vol. i. p. 189.
+
+[117] It was for some time delayed; and the papal agent was instructed to
+inform Ferdinand that a marriage which was at variance a jure et
+laudabilibus moribus could not be permitted nisi maturo consilio et
+necessitatis causā.--Minute of a brief of Julius the Second, dated March
+13, 1504, _Rolls House MS_.
+
+[118] LORD HERBERT, p. 114.
+
+[119] LORD HERBERT, p. 117, Kennett's edition. The act itself is printed in
+BURNET'S _Collectanea_, vol. iv. (Nares' edition) pp. 5, 6. It is dated
+June 27, 1505. Dr. Lingard endeavours to explain away the renunciation as a
+form. The language of Moryson, however, leaves no doubt either of its
+causes or its meaning. "Non multo post sponsalia contrahuntur," he says,
+"Henrico plus minus tredecim annos jam nato. Sed rerum non recte inceptarum
+successus infelicior homines non prorsus oscitantes plerumque docet quid
+recte gestum quid perperam, quid factum superi volunt quid infectum.
+Nimirum Henricus Septimus nullā ęgritudinis prospecta causā repente in
+deteriorem valetudinem prolapsus est, nec unquam potuit affectum corpus
+pristinum statum recuperare. Uxor in aliud ex alio malum regina omnium
+laudatissimia non multo post morbo periit. Quid mirum si Rex tot irati
+numinis indiciis admonitus coeperit cogitare rem male illis succedere qui
+vellent hoc nomine cum Dei legibus litem instituere ut diutius cum homine
+amicitiam gerere possent. Quid deinceps egit? Quid aliud quam quod decuit
+Christianissimum regem? Filium ad se accersiri jubet, accersitur. Adest,
+adsunt et multi nobilissimi homines. Rex filium regno natum hortatur ut
+secum una cum doctissimis ac optimis viris cogitavit nefarium esse putare
+leges Dei leges Dei non esse cum papa volet. Non ita longā oratione usus
+filium patri obsequentissimum a sententiā nullo negotio abduxit. Sponsalia
+contracta infirmantur, pontificięque auctoritatis beneficio palam
+renunciatum est. Adest publicus tabellio--fit instrumentum. Rerum gestarum
+testes rogati sigilla apponunt. Postremo filius patri fidem se illam uxorem
+nunquam ducturum."--_Apomaxis_ RICARDI MORYSINI. Printed by Berthelet,
+1537.
+
+[120] See LINGARD, sixth edition, vol. iv. p. 164.
+
+[121] HALL, p. 507.
+
+[122] He married Catherine, June 3, 1509. Early in the spring of 1510 she
+miscarried.--_Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII._ vol. i. p. 83.
+
+Jan. 1, 1511. A prince was born, who died Feb. 22.--HALL.
+
+Nov. 1513. Another prince was born, who died immediately.--LINGARD, vol.
+iv, p. 290.
+
+Dec. 1514. Badoer, the Venetian ambassador, wrote that the queen had been
+delivered of a still-born male child, to the great grief of the whole
+nation.
+
+May 3, 1515. The queen was supposed to be pregnant. If the supposition was
+right, she must have miscarried.--_Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII._
+vol. i. p. 81.
+
+Feb. 18, 1516. The Princess Mary was born.
+
+July 3, 1518. "The Queen declared herself quick with child." (Pace to
+Wolsey: _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 2,) and again miscarried.
+
+These misfortunes we are able to trace accidentally through casual letters,
+and it is probable that these were not all. Henry's own words upon the
+subject are very striking:--
+
+"All such issue male as I have received of the queen died incontinent after
+they were born, so that I doubt the punishment of God in that behalf. Thus
+being troubled in waves of a scrupulous conscience, and partly in despair
+of any issue male by her, it drove me at last to consider the estate of
+this realm, and the danger it stood in for lack of issue male to succeed me
+in this imperial dignity."--CAVENDISH, p. 220.
+
+[123] "If a man shall take his brother's wife it is an unclean
+thing. He hath uncovered his brother's nakedness. They shall be
+childless."--_Leviticus_ xx. 21. It ought to be remembered, that if the
+present law of England be right, the party in favour of the divorce was
+right.
+
+[124] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[125] Legates to the Pope, printed in BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 40.
+
+[126] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 117.
+
+[127] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.; HALL, 669.
+
+[128] They were shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo.
+
+[129] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 18, 19.
+
+[130] The fullest account of Wolsey's intentions on church reform will be
+found in a letter addressed to him by Fox, the old blind Bishop of
+Winchester, in 1528. The letter is printed in STRYPE'S _Memorials Eccles._
+vol. i. Appendix 10.
+
+[131] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii. It is not
+uncommon to find splendid imaginations of this kind haunting statesmen of
+the 16th century; and the recapture of Constantinople always formed a
+feature in the picture. _A Plan for the Reformation of Ireland_, drawn up
+in 1515, contains the following curious passage: "The prophecy is, that the
+King of England shall put this land of Ireland into such order that the
+wars of the land, whereof groweth the vices of the same, shall cease for
+ever; and after that God shall give such grace and fortune to the same king
+that he shall with the army of England and of Ireland subdue the realm of
+France to his obeysance for ever, and shall rescue the Greeks, and recover
+the great city of Constantinople, and shall vanquish the Turks and win the
+Holy Cross and the Holy Land, and shall die Emperor of Rome, and eternal
+blisse shall be his end."--_State Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 30, 31.
+
+[132] Knight to Henry: _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 2, 3.
+
+[133] Wolsey to Cassalis: Ibid. p. 26.
+
+[134] The dispensing power of the popes was not formally limited. According
+to the Roman lawyers, a faculty lay with them of granting extraordinary
+dispensations in cases where dispensations would not be usually
+admissible--which faculty was to be used, however, dummodo causa cogat
+urgentissima ne regnum aliquod funditus pereat; the pope's business being
+to decide on the question of urgency.--Sir Gregory Cassalis to Henry VIII.,
+Dec. 26, 1532. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[135] Knight and Cassalis to Wolsey: BURNET'S _Collect._ p. 12.
+
+[136] STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i., Appendix p. 66.
+
+[137] Sir F. Bryan and Peter Vannes to Henry; _State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+144.
+
+[138] STRYPE'S _Memorials_, Appendix, vol. i. p. 100.
+
+[139] Ibid. Appendix, vol. i. pp. 105-6; BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 13.
+
+[140] Wolsey to the Pope, BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 16: Vereor quod tamen
+nequeo tacere, ne Regia Majestas, humano divinoque jure quod habet ex omni
+Christianitate suis his actionibus adjunctum freta, postquam viderit sedis
+Apostolicę gratiam et Christi in terris Vicarii clementiam desperatam
+Cęsaris intuitu, in cujus manu neutiquam est tam sanctos conatus reprimere,
+ea tunc moliatur, ea suę causę perquirat remedia, quę non solum huic Regno
+sed etiam aliis Christianis principibus occasionem subministrarent sedis
+Apostolicę auctoritatem et jurisdictionem imminuendi et vilipendendi.
+
+[141] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 20. Wolsey to John Cassalis: "If his
+Holyness, which God forbid, shall shew himself unwilling to listen to the
+king's demands, to me assuredly it will be but grief to live longer, for
+the innumerable evils which I foresee will then follow. One only sure
+remedy remains to prevent the worst calamities. If that be neglected, there
+is nothing before us but universal and inevitable ruin."
+
+[142] Gardiner and Fox to Wolsey; STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i. Appendix,
+p. 92.
+
+[143] His Holiness being yet in captivity, as he esteemed himself to be, so
+long as the Almayns and Spaniards continue in Italy, he thought if he
+should grant this commission that he should have the emperour his perpetual
+enemy without any hope of reconciliation. Notwithstanding he was content
+rather to put himself in evident ruin, and utter undoing, than the king or
+your Grace shall suspect any point of ingratitude in him; heartily desiring
+with sighs and tears that the king and your Grace which have been always
+fast and good to him, will not now suddenly precipitate him for ever: which
+should be done if immediately on receiving the commission your Grace should
+begin process. He intendeth to save all upright thus. If M. de Lautrec
+would set forwards, which he saith daily that he will do, but yet he doth
+not, at his coming the Pope's Holiness may have good colour to say, "He was
+required of the commission by the ambassador of England, and denying the
+same, he was, eftsoons, required by M. de Lautrec to grant the said
+commission, inasmuch as it was but a letter of justice." And by this colour
+he would cover the matter so that it might appear unto the emperour that
+the pope did it not as he that would gladly do displeasure unto the
+emperour, but as an indifferent judge, that could not nor might deny
+justice, specially being required by such personages; and immediately he
+would despatch a commission bearing date after the time that M. de Lautrec
+had been with him or was nigh unto him. The pope most instantly beseecheth
+your Grace to be a mean that the King's Highness may accept this in a good
+part, and that he will take patience for this little time, which, as it is
+supposed, will be but short.--Knight to Wolsey and the King, Jan. 1,
+1527-8: BURNET _Collections_, 12, 13.
+
+[144] Such at least was the ultimate conclusion of a curious discussion.
+When the French herald declared war, the English herald accompanied him
+into the emperor's presence, and when his companion had concluded, followed
+up his words with an intimation that unless the French demands were
+complied with, England would unite to enforce them. The Emperor replied to
+Francis with defiance. To the English herald he expressed a hope that peace
+on that side would still be maintained. For the moment the two countries
+were uncertain whether they were at war or not. The Spanish ambassador in
+London did not know, and the court could not tell him. The English
+ambassador in Spain did not leave his post, but he was placed under
+surveillance. An embargo on Spanish and English property was laid
+respectively in the ports of the two kingdoms; and the merchants and
+residents were placed under arrest. Alarmed by the outcry in London, the
+king hastily concluded a truce with the Regent of the Netherlands, the
+language of which implied a state of war; but when peace was concluded
+between France and Spain, England appeared only as a contracting party, not
+as a principal, and in 1542 it was decided that the antecedent treaties
+between England and the empire continued in force.--See LORD HERBERT;
+HOLINSHED; _State Papers_, vols. vii. viii. and ix.; with the treaties in
+RYMER, vol. vi. part 2.
+
+[145] Gardiner to the King: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 426.
+
+[146] Duke of Suffolk to Henry the Eighth: _State Papers_, vol. vii, p.
+183.
+
+[147] Duke of Suffolk to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 183.
+
+[148] HALL, p. 744.
+
+[149] When the clothiers of Essex, Kent, Wiltshire, Suffolk, and other
+shires which are clothmaking, brought cloths to London to be sold, as they
+were wont, few merchants or none bought any cloth at all. When the
+clothiers lacked sale, then they put from them their spinners, carders,
+tuckers, and such others that lived by clothworking, which caused the
+people greatly to murmur, and specially in Suffolk, for if the Duke of
+Norfolk had not wisely appeased them, no doubt but they had fallen to some
+rioting. When the king's council was advertised of the inconvenience, the
+cardinal sent for a great number of the merchants of London, and to them
+said, "Sirs, the king is informed that you use not yourselves like
+merchants, but like graziers and artificers; for where the clothiers do
+daily bring cloths to the market for your ease, to their great cost, and
+then be ready to sell them, you of your wilfulness will not buy them, as
+you have been accustomed to do. What manner of men be you?" said the
+cardinal. "I tell you that the king straitly commandeth you to buy their
+cloths as beforetime you have been accustomed to do, upon pain of his high
+displeasure."--HALL, p. 746.
+
+[150] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 157. By manners and customs he was referring
+clearly to his intended reformation of the church. See the letter of Fox,
+Bishop of Winchester (STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. ii. p. 25), in which
+Wolsey's intentions are dwelt upon at length.
+
+[151] Ibid. pp. 136, 7.
+
+[152] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 96, 7.
+
+[153] Wolsey to Cassalis: Ibid. p. 100.
+
+[154] State Papers, vol. vii. pp. 106, 7
+
+[155] Ibid. p. 113.
+
+[156] Ibid. vii. p. 113.
+
+[157] Take the veil.
+
+[158] Instruction to the Ambassadours at Rome: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+136.
+
+[159] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayanne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[160] LEGRAND, vol. iii. 231.
+
+[161] Instrucion para Gonzalo Fernandez que se envoie a Ireland al Conde de
+Desmond, 1529.--MS. Archives at Brussels.--_The Pilgrim_, note 1, p. 169.
+
+[162] Henrici regis octavi de repudiandā dominā Catherinā oratio Idibus
+Novembris habita 1528.
+
+Veneranda et chara nobis pręsulum procerum atque consiliariorum cohors quos
+communis reipublicę atque regni nostri administrandi cura conjunxit. Haud
+vos latet divinā nos Providentiā viginti jam ferme annis hanc nostram
+patriam tantā felicitate rexisse ut in illā ab hostilibus incursionibus
+tuta semper interea fuerit et nos in his bellis quę suscepimus victores
+semper evasimus; et quanquam in eo gloriāri jure possumus majorem
+tranquillitatem opes et honores prioribus huc usque ductis socculis,
+nunquam subditis a majoribus parentibusque nostris Angliā regibus quam a
+nobis provenisse, tamen quando cum hāc gloriā in mentem una venit ac
+concurrit mortis cogitatio, veremur ne nobis sine prole legitimā
+decedentibus majorem ex morte nostrā patiamini calamitatem quam ex vitā
+fructum ac emolumentum percepistis. Recens enim in quorundam vestrorum
+animis adhuc est illius cruenti temporis memoria quod a Ricardo tertio cum
+avi nostri materni Edwardi Quarti statum in controversiam vocasset ejusque
+heredes regno atque vitā privāsset illatum est. Tum ex historiis notę sunt
+illę dirę strages quę a clarissimis Anglię gentibus Eboracensi atque
+Lancastrensi, dum inter se de regno et imperio multis ęvis contenderent,
+populo evenerunt. Ac illę ex justis nuptiis inter Henricum Septimum et
+dominam Elizabetham clarissimos nostros parentes contractis in nobis inde
+legitimā natā sobole sopitę tandem desierunt. Si vero quod absit, regalis
+ex nostris nuptiis stirps quę jure deinceps regnare possit non nascatur,
+hoc regnum civilibus atque intestinis se versabit tumultibus aut in
+exterorum dominationem atque potestatem veniet. Nam quanquam formā atque
+venustate singulari, quę magno nobis solatio fuit filiam Dominam Mariam ex
+nobilissimā foeminā Dominā Catherinā procreavimus, tamen a piis atque
+eruditis theologis nuper accepimus quia eam quę Arturi fratris nostri
+conjux ante fuerat uxorem duximus nostras nuptias jure divino esse vetitas,
+partumque inde editum non posse censeri legitimum. Id quod eo vehementius
+nos angit et excruciat, quod cum superiori anno legatos ad conciliandas
+inter Aureliensem ducem et filiam nostram Mariam nuptias ad Franciscum
+Gallorum regem misissemus a quodam ejus consiliario responsum est,
+"antequam de hujusmodi nuptiis agatum inquirendum esse prius an Maria
+fuerit filia nostra legitima; constat enim 'inquit,' quod exdominā
+Catherinā fratris sui viduā cujusmodi nuptię jure divino interdictę sunt
+suscepta est." Quę oratio quanto metu ac horrore animum nostrum turbaverit
+quia res ipsa ęternę tam animi quam corporis salutis periculum in se
+continet, et quam perplexis cogitationibus conscientiam occupat, vos quibus
+et capitis aut fortunę ac multo magis animarum jactura immineret, remedium
+nisi adhibere velitis, ignorare non posse arbitror. Hęc una res--quod Deo
+teste et in Regis oraculo affirmamus--nos impulit ut per legatos
+doctissimorum per totum orbem Christianum theologorum sententias
+exquireremus et Romani Pontificis legatum verum atque ęquum judicium de
+tantā causā laturum ut tranquillā deinceps et intergā conscientiā in
+conjugio licito vivere possimus accerseremus. In quo si ex sacris litteris
+hoc quo viginti jam fere annis gavisi sumus matrimonium jure divino
+permissum esse manifeste liquidoque constabit, non modo ob conscientię
+tranquillitatem, verum etiam ob amabiles mores virtutesque quibus regina
+prędita et ornata est, nihil optatius nihilque jucundius accidere nobis
+potest. Nam pręterquam quod regali atque nobili genere prognata est, tantā
+pręterea comitate et obsequio conjugali tum cęteris animi morumque
+ornamentis quę nobilitatem illustrant omnes foeminas his viginti annis sic
+mihi anteire visa est ut si a conjugio liber essem ac solutus, si jure
+divino liceret, hanc solam prę cęteris foeminis stabili mihi jure ac
+foedere matrimoniali conjungerem. Si vero in hoc judicio matrimonium
+nostrum jure divino prohibitum, ideoque ab initio nullum irritumque fuisse
+pronuncietur, infelix hic meus casus multis lacrimis lugendus ac
+deplorandus erit. Non modo quod a tam illustris et amabilis mulieris
+consuetudine et consortio divertendum sit, sed multo magis quod specie ad
+similitudinem veri conjugii decepti in amplexibus plusquam fornicariis tam
+multos annos trivimus nullā legitimā prognatā nobis sobole quę nobis
+mortuis hujus inclyti regni hereditatem capessat.
+
+Hę nostrę curę istęque solicitudines sunt quę mentem atque conscientiam
+nostram dies noctesque torquent et excurciant, quibus auferendis et
+profligandis remedium ex hāc legatione et judicio opportunum quęrimus.
+Ideoque vos quorum virtuti atque fidei multum attribuimus rogamus ut certum
+atque genuinum nostrum de hāc re sensum quem ex nostro sermone percepistis
+populo declaretis: eumque excitetis ut nobiscum una oraret ut ad
+conscientię nostrę pacem atque tranquillitatem in hoc judicio veritas
+multis jam annis tenebris involuta tandem patefiat.--WILKINS'S _Concilia_,
+vol. iii. p. 714.
+
+[163] HALL, _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[164] LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[165] Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 232, 3.
+
+[166] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 120; Ibid. p. 186.
+
+[167] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 41.
+
+[168] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 193.
+
+[169] The Emperor could as little trust Clement as the English, and to the
+last moment could not tell how he would act.
+
+"Il me semble," wrote Inigo di Mendoza to Charles on the 17th of June,
+1529,--"il me semble que Sa Sainteté differe autant qu'il peut ce qu'
+auparavant il avoit promis, et je crains qu'il n'ait ordonné aux legatz ce
+qui jusques ą present avoit resté en suspens qu'ils procedent par la
+premičre commission. Ce qui faisant votre Majesté peut tenir la Reine
+autant que condamné."--_MS. Archives at Brussels._
+
+The sort of influence to which the See of Rome was amenable appears in
+another letter to the Emperor, written from Rome itself on the 4th of
+October. The Pope and cardinals, it is to be remembered, were claiming to
+be considered the supreme court of appeal in Christendom.
+
+"Si je ne m'abuse tous ou la pluspart du Saint College sont plus
+affectionnez ą vostre dite Majesté que ą autre Prince Chrestien: de vous
+escrire, Sire, particuličrement toutes leurs responses seroit chose trop
+longue. Tant y a que elles sont telles que votre Majesté a raison doubt
+grandement se contenter d'icelles.
+
+"... Seulement diray derechief ą vostre Majesté, et me souvient l'avoir
+dict plusieurs fois, qu'il est en vostre Majesté gaigner et entretenir
+perpetuellement ce college en vostre devotion en distribuant seulement
+entre les principaulx d'eulx en pensions et benefices la somme de vingt
+mille ducas, l'ung mille, l'autre deulx ou trois mille. Et est cecy chose,
+Sire, que plus vous touche que ą autre Prince Chrestien pour les affaires
+que vostre Majesté a journellement ą despescher en ceste court."--M. de
+Pręt to Charles V. August 5th, 1529. MS. Ibid.
+
+[170] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 377.
+
+[171] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 374.
+
+[172] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 355.
+
+[173] Ibid.
+
+[174] Memorandum relating to the Society of Christian Brethren. _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[175] DALABER'S _Narrative_, printed in FOXE, vol. iv. Seeley's Ed.
+
+[176] All authorities agree in the early account of Henry, and his letters
+provide abundant proof that it is not exaggerated. The following
+description of him in the despatches of the Venetian ambassador shows the
+effect which he produced on strangers in 1515:--
+
+"Assuredly, most serene prince, from what we have seen of him, and in
+conformity, moreover, with the report made to us by others, this most
+serene king is not only very expert in arms and of great valour and most
+excellent in his personal endowments, but is likewise so gifted and adorned
+with mental accomplishments of every sort, that we believe him to have few
+equals in the world. He speaks English, French, Latin, understands Italian
+well; plays almost on every instrument; sings and composes fairly; is
+prudent, and sage, and free from every vice."--_Four Years at the Court of
+Henry VIII._ vol. i. p. 76.
+
+Four years later, the same writer adds,--
+
+"The king speaks good French, Latin, and Spanish; is very religious; hears
+three masses a day when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days; he
+hears the office every day in the queen's chamber--that is to say, vespers
+and complins."--Ibid. vol. ii. p. 312. William Thomas, who must have seen
+him, says,
+
+"Of personage he was one of the goodliest men that lived in his time; being
+high of stature, in manner more than a man, and proportionable in all his
+members unto that height; of countenance he was most amiable; courteous and
+benign in gesture unto all persons and specially unto strangers; seldom or
+never offended with anything; and of so constant a nature in himself that I
+believe few can say that ever he changed his cheer for any novelty how
+contrary or sudden so ever it were. Prudent he was in council and
+forecasting; most liberal in rewarding his faithful servants, and even unto
+his enemies, as it behoveth a prince to be. He was learned in all sciences,
+and had the gift of many tongues. He was a perfect theologian, a good
+philosopher, and a strong man at arms, a jeweller, a perfect builder as
+well of fortresses as of pleasant palaces, and from one to another there
+was no necessary kind of knowledge, from a king's degree to a carter's, but
+he had an honest sight in it."--_The Pilgrim_ p. 78.
+
+[177] Exposition of the Commandments, set forth by Royal authority, 1536.
+This treatise was drawn up by the bishops, and submitted to, and revised
+by, the king.
+
+[178] SAGUDINO'S _Summary. Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII._ vol. ii.
+P. 75.
+
+[179] "The truth is, when I married my wife, I had but fifty pounds to live
+on for me and my wife so long as my father lived, and yet she brought me
+forth every year a child."--Earl of Wiltshire to Cromwell: ELLIS, third
+series, vol. iii. pp. 22, 3.
+
+[180] BURNET, vol. i. p. 69.
+
+[181] Thomas Allen to the Earl of Shrewsbury: LODGE'S _Illustrations_, vol.
+i. p. 20.
+
+[182] Earl of Northumberland to Cromwell: printed by LORD HERBERT and by
+BURNET.
+
+[183] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 7.
+
+[184] Since these words were written, I have discovered among the Archives
+of Simancas what may perhaps be some clue to the mystery, in an epitome of
+a letter written to Charles V. from London in May, 1536:---
+
+"His Majesty has letters from England of the 11th of May, with certain news
+that the paramour of the King of England, who called herself queen, has
+been thrown into the Tower of London for adultery. The partner of her guilt
+was an organist of the Privy Chamber, who is in the Tower as well. An
+officer of the King's wardrobe has been arrested also for the same offence
+with her, and one of her brothers for having been privy to her offences
+without revealing them. They say, too, that if the adultery had not been
+discovered, the King was determined to put her away, having been informed
+by competent witnesses that she was married and had consummated her
+marriage nine years before, with the Earl of Northumberland."
+
+[185] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 131.
+
+[186] Wyatt's Memorials, printed in Singer's CAVENDISH, p. 420.
+
+[187] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 132.
+
+[188] ELLIS, first series, vol. i. p. 135. "My Lord, in my most humblest
+wise that my poor heart can think, I do thank your Grace for your kind
+letter, and for your rich and goodly present; the which I shall never be
+able to deserve without your great help; of the which I have hitherto had
+so great plenty, that all the days of my life I am most bound of all
+creatures, next to the King's Grace, to love and serve your Grace. Of the
+which I beseech you never to doubt that ever I shall vary from this thought
+as long as any breath is in my body."
+
+[189] CAVENDISH _Life of Wolsey,_ p. 316. Singer's edition.
+
+[190] CAVENDISH, pp. 364, 5.
+
+[191] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii. pp. 368, 378,
+etc.
+
+[192] See HALE'S _Criminal Causes from the Records of the Consistory Court
+of London._
+
+[193] Petition of the Commons, infra, p. 191, etc.
+
+[194] Reply of the Ordinaries to the petition of the Commons, infra, p.
+202, etc.
+
+[195] Petition of the Commons. 23 Hen. VIII. c. 9.
+
+[196] HALE'S _Criminal Causes,_ p.4.
+
+[197] An Act that no person committing murder, felony, or treason should be
+admitted to his clergy under the degree of sub-deacon.
+
+[198] In May, 1528, the evil had become so intolerable, that Wolsey drew
+the pope's attention to it. Priests, he said, both secular and regular,
+were in the habit of committing atrocious crimes, for which, if not in
+orders, they would have been promptly executed; and the laity were
+scandalised to see such persons not only not degraded, but escaping with
+complete impunity. Clement something altered the law of degradation in
+consequence of this representation, but quite inadequately.--RYMER, vol.
+vi. part 2, p. 96.
+
+[199] Thomas Cowper et ejus uxor Margarita pronubę horribiles, et instigant
+mulieres ad fornicandum cum quibuscunque laicis, religiosis, fratribus
+minoribus, et nisi fornicant in domo suā ipsi diffamabunt nisi voluerint
+dare eis ad voluntatem eorum; et vir est pronuba uxori, et vult relinquere
+eam apud fratres minores pro peccatis habendis.--HALE, _Criminal Causes,_
+p. 9.
+
+Joanna Cutting communis pronuba at pręsertim inter presbyteros fratres
+monachos et canonicos et etiam inter Thomam Peise et quandam Agnetam,
+etc.--HALE, _Criminal Causes,_ p. 28.
+
+See also Ibid. pp. 15, 22, 23, 39, etc.
+
+In the first instance the parties accused "made their purgation" and were
+dismissed. The exquisite corruption of the courts, instead of inviting
+evidence and sifting accusations, allowed accused persons to support their
+own pleas of not guilty by producing four witnesses, not to disprove the
+charges, but to swear that they believed the charges untrue. This was
+called "purgation."
+
+Clergy, it seems, were sometimes allowed to purge themselves simply on
+their own word.--HALE, p. 22; and see the Preamble of the 1st of the 23rd
+of Henry VIII.
+
+[200] Complaints of iniquities arising from confession were laid before
+Parliament as early as 1394.
+
+"Auricularis confessio quę dicitur tam necessaria ad salvationem hominis,
+cum fictā potestate absolutionis exaltat superbiam sacerdotum, et dat illis
+opportunitatem secretarum sermocinationum quas nos nolumus dicere, quia
+domini et dominę attestantur quod pro timore confessorum suorum non audent
+dicere veritatem; et in tempore confessionis est opportunum tempus
+procationis id est of wowing et aliarum secretarum conventionum ad
+peccata mortalia. Ipsi dicunt quod sunt commissarii Dei ad judicandum de
+omni peccato perdonandum et mundandum quemcunque eis placuerint. Dicunt
+quod habent claves coeli et inferni et possunt excommunicare et benedicere
+ligare et solvere in voluntatem eorum; in tantum quod pro bussello vel 12
+denariis volunt vendere benedictionem coeli per chartam et clausulam de
+warrantiā sigillitā sigillo communi. Ista conclusio sic est in usu quod non
+eget probatione aliquā."--Extract from a Petition presented to Parliament:
+WILKINS, vol. iii. p. 221.
+
+This remarkable paper ends with the following lines:--
+
+  "Plangunt Anglorum gentes crimen Sodomorum
+  Paulus fert horum sunt idola causa malorum
+  Surgunt ingrati Giezitę Simone nati
+  Nomine pręlati hoc defensare parati
+  Qui reges estis populis quicunque pręstis
+  Qualiter his gestis gladios prohibere potestis."
+
+See also HALE, p. 42, where an abominable instance is mentioned, and a
+still worse in the _Suppression of the Monasteries,_ pp. 45-50.
+
+[201] HALE, p. 12.
+
+[202] Ibid. pp. 75, 83; _Suppression of the Monasteries,_ p. 47.
+
+[203] Ibid. p. 80.
+
+[204] Ibid. p. 83.
+
+[205] I have been taunted with my inability to produce more evidence. For
+the present I will mention two additional instances only, and perhaps I
+shall not be invited to swell the list further.
+
+1. In the State Paper Office is a report to Cromwell by Adam Bekenshaw, one
+of his diocesan visitors, in which I find this passage:--
+
+"There be knights and divers gentlemen in the diocese of Chester who do
+keep concubines and do yearly compound with the officials for a small sum
+without monition to leave their naughty living."
+
+2. In another report I find also the following:--
+
+"The names of such persons as be permitted to live in adultery and
+fornication for money:--
+
+  "The Vicar of Ledbury.
+  The Vicar of Brasmyll.
+  The Vicar of Stow.
+  The Vicar of Cloune.
+  The Parson of Wentnor.
+  The Parson of Rusbury.
+  The Parson of Plowden.
+  The Dean of Pountsbury.
+  The Parson of Stratton.
+  Sir Matthew of Montgomery.
+  Sir ---- of Lauvange.
+  Sir John Brayle.
+  Sir Morris of Clone.
+  Sir Adam of Clone.
+  Sir Pierce of Norbury.
+  Sir Gryffon ap Egmond.
+  Sir John Orkeley.
+  Sir John of Mynton.
+  Sir John Reynolds.
+  Sir Morris of Knighton, priest.
+  Hugh Davis.
+  Cadwallader ap Gern.
+  Edward ap Meyrick.
+  With many others of the diocese of Hereford."
+
+The originals of both these documents are in the State Paper Office. There
+are copies in the Bodleian Library.--_MS. Tanner,_ 105.
+
+[206] Skelton gives us a specimen of the popular criticisms:--
+
+  "Thus I, Colin Clout,
+  As I go about,
+  And wondering as I walk,
+  I hear the people talk:
+  Men say for silver and gold
+  Mitres are bought and sold:
+  A straw for Goddys curse,
+  What are they the worse?
+
+  "What care the clergy though Gill sweat,
+  Or Jack of the Noke?
+  The poor people they yoke
+  With sumners and citacions,
+  And excommunications.
+  About churches and markets
+  The bishop on his carpets
+  At home soft doth sit.
+  This is a fearful fit,
+  To hear the people jangle.
+  How wearily they wrangle!
+  But Doctor Bullatus
+
+  "Parum litteratus,
+  Dominus Doctoratus
+  At the broad gate-house.
+  Doctor Daupatus
+  And Bachelor Bacheleratus,
+  Drunken as a mouse
+  At the ale-house,
+  Taketh his pillion and his cap
+  At the good ale-tap,
+  For lack of good wine.
+  As wise as Robin Swine,
+  Under a notary's sign,
+  Was made a divine;
+  As wise as Waltham's calf,
+  Must preach in Goddys half;
+  In the pulpit solemnly;
+  More meet in a pillory;
+  For by St. Hilary
+  He can nothing smatter
+  Of logic nor school matter.
+
+  "Such temporal war and bate
+  As now is made of late
+  Against holy church estate,
+  Or to mountain good quarrels;
+  The laymen call them barrels
+  Full of gluttony and of hypocrisy,
+  That counterfeits and paints
+  As they were very saints.
+
+  "By sweet St. Marke,
+  This is a wondrous warke,
+  That the people talk this.
+  Somewhat there is amiss.
+  The devil cannot stop their mouths,
+  But they will talk of such uncouths
+  All that ever they ken
+  Against spiritual men."
+
+I am unable to quote more than a few lines from ROY'S _Satire_. At the
+close of a long paragraph of details an advocate of the clergy ventures to
+say that the bad among them are a minority. His friend answers:--
+
+  "Make the company great or small,
+  Among a thousand find thou shall
+  Scant one chaste of body or mind."
+
+[207] Answer of the Bishops to the Commons' Petition: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[208] Joanna Leman notatur officio quod non venit ad ecclesiam parochialem;
+et dicit se nolle accipere panem benedictum a manibus rectoris; et vocavit
+eum "horsyn preste."--HALE, p. 99.
+
+[209] HALE, p. 63.
+
+[210] Ibid. p. 98.
+
+[211] Ibid. p. 38.
+
+[212] Ibid. p. 67.
+
+[213] Ibid. p. 100.
+
+[214] CAVENDISH, _Life of Wolsey_, p. 251.
+
+[215] HALL, p. 764.
+
+[216] Ibid. p. 764.
+
+[217] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 361.
+
+[218] 6 Hen. VIII. cap. 16.
+
+[219] The session lasted six weeks only, and several of the subjects of the
+petition were disposed of in the course of it, as we shall see.
+
+[220] The MS. from which I have transcribed this copy is itself imperfect,
+as will be seen in the "reply of the Bishops," which supplies several
+omitted articles. See p. 137, et seq. It is in the Rolls House.
+
+[221] The penny, as I have shown, equalled, in terms of a poor man's
+necessities, a shilling. See chap. i.
+
+[222] See instance's in HALE: p, 62, _Omnium Sanctorum in muro_.--M.
+Gulielmus Edward curatus notatur officio quod recusat ministrare sacramenta
+ecelesiastica ęgrotantibus nisi prius habitis pecuniis pro suo labore: p.
+64, _St. Mary Magdalen_.--Curatus notatur officio prbpter quod recusavit
+solemnizare matrrimonium quousque habet pro hujusmodi solemnizatione, _3s.
+8d._; and see pp. 52, 75.
+
+[223] I give many instances of this practice in my sixth chapter. It was a
+direct breach of the statute of Henry IV., which insists on all
+examinations for heresy being conducted in open court. "The diocesan and
+his commissaries," says that act, "shall openly and judicially proceed
+against persons arrested."--2 Hen. IV. c. 15.
+
+[224] Again breaking the statute of Hen. IV., which limited the period of
+imprisonment previous to public trial to three months.--2 Hen. IV. c. 15.
+
+[225] To be disposed of at Smithfield. Abjuration was allowed once. For a
+second offence there was no forgiveness.
+
+[226] Petition of the Commons. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[227] See STRYPE, _Eccles. Memorials_, vol. i. p. 191-2,--who is very
+eloquent in his outcries upon his subject.
+
+[228] _Answer of the Bishops_, p. 204, etc.
+
+[229] Explanations are not easy; but the following passage may suggest the
+meaning of the House of Commons:--"The holy Father Prior of Maiden Bradley
+hath but six children, and but one daughter married yet of the goods of the
+monastery; trusting shortly to marry the rest."--Dr. Leyton to Cromwell:
+_Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 58.
+
+[230] Reply of the Bishops, infra.
+
+[231] CAVENDISH, _Life of Wolsey_, p. 390. MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 109.
+
+[232] Populus diu oblatrans. Fox to Wolsey. STRYPE, _Eccl. Mem._ vol. i.
+Appendix, p. 27.
+
+[233] RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 119.
+
+[234] The answer of the Ordinaries to the supplication of the worshipful
+the Commons of the Lower House of Parliament offered to our Sovereign Lord
+the King's most noble Grace.--_Rolls House MS._
+
+[235] The terms of the several articles of complaint are repeated verbally
+from the petition. I condense them to spare recapitulation.
+
+[236] 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15; 2 Hen. V. cap. 7.
+
+[237] An Act that no person shall be cited out of the diocese in which he
+dwells, except in certain cases. It received the Royal assent two years
+later. See 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[238] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 5. An Act concerning fines and sums of money to be
+taken by the ministers of bishops and other ordinaries of holy church for
+the probate of testaments.
+
+[239] HALE, _Precedents_, p. 86.
+
+[240] Ibid.
+
+[241] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 6. An Act concerning the taking of mortuaries, or
+demanding, receiving, or claiming the same.
+
+In Scotland the usual mortuary was, a cow and the uppermost cloth or
+counterpane on the bed in which the death took place. A bishop reprimanding
+a suspected clergyman for his leaning toward the Reformation, said to
+him:--
+
+"My joy, Dean Thomas, I am informed that ye preach the epistle and gospel
+every Sunday to your parishioners, and that ye take not the cow nor the
+upmost cloth from your parishioners; which thing is very prejudicial to the
+churchmen. And therefore, Dean Thomas, I would ye took your cow and upmost
+cloth, or else it is too much to preach every Sunday, for in so doing ye
+may make the people think we should preach likewise."--CALDERWOOD, vol. i.
+p. 126.
+
+The bishop had to burn Dean Thomas at last, being unable to work conviction
+into him in these matters.
+
+[242] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 13. An Act that no spiritual person shall take
+farms; or buy and sell for lucre and profit; or keep tan-houses or
+breweries. And for pluralities of benefices and for residence.
+
+[243] HALL, p. 767.
+
+[244] Ibid. 766
+
+[245] Ibid. 767.
+
+[246] Ibid. 766.
+
+[247] Ibid. 768.
+
+[248] So reluctant was he, that at one time he had resolved, rather than
+compromise the unity of Christendom, to give way. When the disposition of
+the court of Rome was no longer doubtful, "his difficultatibus permotus,
+cum in hoc statu res essent, dixerunt qui ejus verba exceperunt, post
+profundam secum de universo negotio deliberationem et mentis agitationem,
+tandem in hęc verba prorupisse, se primum tentāsse illud divortium
+persuasum ecclesiam Romanam hoc idem probaturum--quod si ita ilia
+abhorreret ab illā sententiā ut nullo modo permittendum censeret se nolle
+cum eā contendere neque amplius in illo negotio progredi."
+
+Pole, on whose authority we receive these words, says that they were heard
+with almost unanimous satisfaction at the council board. The moment of
+hesitation was, it is almost certain, at the crisis which preceded or
+attended Wolsey's fall. It endured but for three days, and was dispelled by
+the influence of Cromwell, who tempted both the king and parliament into
+their fatal revolt.--POLI _Apologia ad Carolum Quintum_.
+
+[249] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 446. The censures were threatened in the first
+brief, but the menace was withdrawn under the impression that it was not
+needed.
+
+[250] Ibid. The second brief is dated March 7, and declares that the king,
+if he proceeds, shall incur ipso facto the greater excommunication; that
+the kingdom will fall under an interdict.
+
+[251] Cranmer was born in 1489, and was thus forty years old when he first
+emerged into eminence.
+
+[252] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 226.
+
+[253] Je croy qu'il ne feist en sa vie ceremonie qui luy touchast si prés
+du coeur, ne dont je pense qu'il luy doive advenir moins du bien. Car
+aucunes fois qu'il pensoit qu'on ne le regardast, il faisoit de si grands
+soupirs que pour pesante que fust sa chappe, il la faisoit bransler ą bon
+escient.--_Lettre de M. de Gramont, Evźque de Tarbčs._ LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+p. 386.
+
+[254] ELLIS, _Third Series_, vol. ii. p. 98. "In the letters showed us by
+M. de Buclans from the emperor, of the which mention was made in ciphers,
+it was written in terms that the French king would offer unto your Grace
+the papalite of France vel Patriarchate, for the French men would no more
+obey the Church of Rome."--Lee to Wolsey.
+
+[255] A ce qu'il m'en a declaré des fois plus de trois en secret, il seroit
+content que le dit mariage fust ja faict, ou par dispense du Legat
+d'Angleterre ou autrement; mais que ce ne fust par son autorité, in aussi
+diminuant sa puissance, quant aux dispenses, et limitation de droict
+divin.--_Dechiffrement de Lettres de M. de Tarbčs._--LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+408.
+
+[256] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 408.
+
+[257] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 230.
+
+[258] The Bishop of Tarbčs to the King of France. LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+401.
+
+[259] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 234.
+
+[260] Ibid. p. 235.
+
+[261] We demand a service of you which it is your duty to concede; and your
+first thought is lest you should offend the emperor. We do not blame _him_.
+That in such a matter he should be influenced by natural affection is
+intelligible and laudable. But for that very reason we decline to submit to
+so partial a judgment.--Henry VIII. to the Pope: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p.
+431.
+
+[262] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 394.
+
+[263] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 317.
+
+[264] For Croke's Mission, see BURNET, vol. i. p. 144 e.
+
+[265] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 241.
+
+[266] Friar Pallavicino to the Bishop of Bath. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[267] Croke and Omnibow to the King. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[268] Generalis magister nostri ordinis mandavit omnibus suę religionis
+professoribus, ut nullus audeat de auctoritate Pontificis quicquam loqui.
+Denique Orator Cęsareus in talia verba prorupit, quibus facile cognovi ut
+me a Pontifice vocari studeat et tunc timendum esset saluti meę. Father
+Omnibow to Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[269] BURNET'S _Collect._ p. 50. Burnet labours to prove that on Henry's
+side there was no bribery, and that the emperor was the only offender; an
+examination of many MS. letters from Croke and other agents in Italy leads
+me to believe that, although the emperor only had recourse to intimidation,
+because he alone was able to practise it, the bribery was equally shared
+between both parties.
+
+[270] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 458. The Grand Master to the King of
+France:--De l'autre part, adventure il n'est moins a craindre, que le Roy
+d'Angleterre, irrité de trop longues dissimulations, trouvast moyen de
+parvenir a ses intentions du consentement de l'Empereur, et que par
+l'advenement d'un tiers _se fissent ami, Herode et Pilate_.
+
+[271] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 467, etc.
+
+[272] Letter from the King of France to the President of the Parliament of
+Paris. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[273] Letter from Reginald Pole to Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[274] Pole to Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[275] BURNET, _Collectanea_, p. 429.
+
+[276] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 377.
+
+[277] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 436; _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 378.
+
+[278] It is not good to stir a hornet's nest.
+
+[279] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 431.
+
+[280] Ibid. p. 48.
+
+[281] Preface to LATIMER'S _Sermons_. Parker Society's edition, p. 3.
+
+[282] "King Harry loved a man," was an English proverb to the close of the
+century. See SIR ROBERT NAUNTON'S _Fragmenta Regalia_, London, 1641, p. 14.
+
+[283] Sir George Throgmorton, who distinguished himself by his opposition
+to the Reformation in the House of Commons.
+
+[284] BURNET'S _Collect_, p. 429.
+
+[285] _A Glasse of Truth._
+
+[286] Ibid. p. 144.
+
+[287] 35 Ed. I.; 25 Ed. III. stat. 4; stat. 5, cap. 22; 27 Ed. III. stat.
+1; 13 Ric. II. stat. 2, cap. 2; 16 Ric. II. cap. 5; 9 Hen. IV. cap. 8.
+
+[288] CAVENDISH, p. 276.
+
+Gardiner has left some noticeable remarks on this subject.
+
+"Whether," he says, "a king may command against a common law or an act of
+parliament, there is never a judge or other man in the realm ought to know
+more by experience of that the laws have said than I.
+
+"First, my Lord Cardinal, that obtained his legacy by our late Sovereign
+Lord's requirements at Rome, yet, because it was against the laws of the
+realm, the judges concluded the offence of Premunire, which matter I bare
+away, and took it for a law of the realm, because the lawyers said so, but
+my reason digested it not. The lawyers, for confirmation of their doings,
+brought in the case of Lord Tiptoft. An earl he was, and learned in the
+civil laws, who being chancellor, because in execution of the king's
+commandment he offended the laws of the realm, suffered on Tower Hill. They
+brought in examples of many judges that had fines set on their heads in
+like cases for transgression of laws by the king's commandment, and this I
+learned in that case.
+
+"Since that time being of the council, when many proclamations were devised
+against the carriers out of corn, when it came to punish the offender, the
+judges would answer it might not be by the law, because the Act of
+Parliament gave liberty, wheat being under a price. Whereupon at last
+followed the Act of Proclamations, in the passing whereof were many large
+words spoken."
+
+After mentioning other cases, he goes on:--
+
+"I reasoned once in the parliament house, where there was free speech
+without danger, and the Lord Audely, to satisfy me, because I was in some
+secret estimation, as he knew, 'Thou art a good fellow, Bishop,' quoth he;
+'look at the Act of Supremacy, and there the king's doings be restrained to
+spiritual jurisdiction; and in another act no spiritual law shall have
+place contrary to a common law, or an act of parliament. And this were
+not,' quoth he, 'you bishops would enter in with the king, and by means of
+his supremacy order the laws as ye listed. But we will provide,' quoth he,
+'that the premunire shall never go off your heads.' This I bare away then,
+and held my peace."--Gardiner to the Protector Somerset: _MS. Harleian_,
+417.
+
+[289] 13 Ric. II. stat. 2, cap. 2. Et si le Roi envoie par lettre on en
+autre maniere a la Courte du Rome al excitacion dascune person, parount que
+la contrarie de cest estatut soit fait touchant ascune dignité de Sainte
+Eglise, si celuy qui fait tiel excitacion soit Prelate de Sainte Eglise,
+paie au Roy le value de ses temporalitees dun an. The petition of
+parliament which occasioned the statute is even more emphatic: Perveuz tout
+foitz que par nulle traite ou composition a faire entre le Seint Pere le
+Pape et notre Seigneur le Roy que riens soit fait a contraire en prejudice
+de cest Estatute a faire. Et si ascune Seigneur Espirituel ou Temporel ou
+ascune persone quiconque de qu'elle condition q'il soit, enforme, ensence
+ou excite le Roi ou ses heirs, l'anientiser, adnuller ou repeller cest
+Estatut a faire, et de ceo soit atteint par due proces du loy que le
+Seigneur Espirituel eit la peyne sus dite, etc.--_Rolls of Parliament_,
+Ric. II. 13.
+
+[290] Even further, as chancellor the particular duty had been assigned to
+him of watching over the observance of the act.
+
+Et le chancellor que pur le temps serra a quelle heure que pleint a luy ou
+a conseill le Roy soit fait d'ascunes des articles sus ditz par ascune
+persone que pleindre soy voudra granta briefs sur le cas ou commissions a
+faire au covenables persones, d'oier et terminer les ditz articles sur
+peyne de perdre son office et jamais estre mys en office le Roy et perdre
+mille livres a lever a l'oeps le Roy si de ce soit atteint par du
+proces.--_Rolls of Parliament_, Ric. II. 13.
+
+[291] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 77. See a summary of the acts of this
+Convocation in a sermon of Latimer's preached before the two Houses in
+1536. LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 45.
+
+[292] The king, considering what good might come of reading of the New
+Testament and following the same; and what evil might come of the reading
+of the same if it were evil translated, and not followed; came into the
+Star Chamber the five-and-twentieth day of May; and then communed with his
+council and the prelates concerning the cause. And after long debating, it
+was alleged that the translations of Tyndal and Joy were not truly
+translated, and also that in them were prologues and prefaces that sounded
+unto heresy, and railed against the bishops uncharitably. Wherefore all
+such books were prohibited, and commandment given by the king to the
+bishops, that they, calling to them the best learned men of the
+universities, should cause a new translation to be made, so that the people
+should not be ignorant of the law of God.--HALL, p. 771. And see WARHAM'S
+_Register_ for the years 1529-1531. MS. Lambeth.
+
+[293] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 15.
+
+[294] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 78.
+
+[295] _State Papers_, vol. vii. 457.
+
+[296] Memoranda relating to the Clergy: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[297] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 80.
+
+[298] The King's Highness, having always tender eyes with mercy and pity
+and compassion towards his spiritual subjects, minding of his high goodness
+and great benignity so always to impart the same unto them, as justice
+being duly administered, all rigour be excluded; and the great benevolent
+minds of his said subjects [having been] largely and many times approved
+towards his Highness, and specially in their Convocation and Synod now
+presently being in the Chapter House of Westminster, his Highness, of his
+said benignity and high liberality, in consideration that the said
+Convocation has given and granted unto him a subsidy of one hundred
+thousand pounds, is content to grant his general pardon to the clergy and
+the province of Canterbury, for all offences against the statute and
+premunire.--22 Hen. VIII. cap. 15.
+
+[299] BURNET, vol. 1. p. 185.
+
+[300] An instance is reported in the Chronicle of the Grey Friars ten years
+previously. The punishment was the same as that which was statutably
+enacted in the case of Rouse.
+
+[301] HALL, p. 781.
+
+[302] Most shocking when the _wrong persons_ were made the victims; and
+because clerical officials were altogether incapable of detecting the
+_right persons_, the memory of the practice has become abhorrent to all
+just men. I suppose, however, that, if the _right persons_ could have been
+detected, even the stake itself would not have been too tremendous a
+penalty for the destroying of human souls.
+
+[303] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 10.
+
+[304] See a very curious pamphlet on this subject, by SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE.
+It is called _The Confessions of Richard Bishop, Robert Seymour, and Sir
+Edward Neville, before the Privy Council, touching Prophecie, Necromancy,
+and Treasure-trove_.
+
+[305] Miscellaneous Depositions on the State Of the Country: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[306] See the Preamble of the Bill against conjurations, witchcraft,
+sorceries, and enchantments.--33 Hen. VIII. cap. 8.
+
+Also "the Bill touching Prophecies upon Arms and Badges."--33 Hen. VIII.
+cap. 14.
+
+A similar edict expelled the gipsies from Germany. At the Diet of Spires,
+June 10, 1544.
+
+Statutum est ne vagabundum hominum genus quos vulgo Saracenos vocant per
+Germaniam oberrare sinatur _usu enim compertum est eos exploratores et
+proditores esse.--State Papers_, vol. ix. p. 705.
+
+[307] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 101.
+
+[308] Bulla pro Johanne Scot, qui sine cibo et potu per centum et sex dies
+vixerat.--RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 176.
+
+[309] BUCHANAN, _History of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 156.
+
+[310] _Letter of Archbishop Cranmer._--ELLIS, second series, vol. ii. p.
+314.
+
+[311] _Statutes of the Realm._ 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[312] Extracts from a Narrative containing an Account of Elizabeth Barton:
+_Rolls House MS._
+
+[313] _Statutes of the Realm._
+
+[314] _Rolls House MS._
+
+[315] Ibid.
+
+[316] _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 19.
+
+[317] Ibid.
+
+[318] Proceedings connected with Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[319] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[320] Ibid.
+
+[321] Ibid.
+
+[322] _Cranmer's Letter._ ELLIS, third series, vol. iii. p. 315.
+
+[323] More to Cromwell: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 350.
+
+[324] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[325] Confessions of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._ Sir Thomas More
+gave her a double ducat to pray for him and his. BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p.
+352. Moryson, in his _Apomaxis_, declares that she had a regular
+understanding with the confessors at the Priory. When penitents came to
+confess, they were detained while a priest conveyed what they had
+acknowledged to the Nun; and when afterwards they were admitted to her
+presence, she amazed them with repeating their own confessions.
+
+[326] The said Elizabeth subtilly and craftily conceiving the opinion and
+mind of the said Edward Bocking, willing to please him, revealed and showed
+unto the said Edward that God was highly displeased with our said sovereign
+lord the king for this matter; and in case he desisted not from his
+proceeding in the said divorce and separation, but pursued the same and
+married again, that then within one month after such marriage, he should no
+longer be king of this realm; and in the reputation of Almighty God he
+should not be a king one day nor one hour, and that he should die a
+villain's death. Saying further, that there was a root with three branches,
+and till they were plucked up it should never be merry in England:
+interpreting the root to be the late lord cardinal, and the first branch to
+be the king our sovereign lord, the second the Duke of Norfolk, and the
+third the Duke of Suffolk.--25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[327] Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._ In the epitome of
+the book of her Revelations it is stated that there was a story in it "of
+an angel that appeared, and bade the Nun go unto the king, that infidel
+prince of England, and say that I command him to amend his life, and that
+he leave three things which he loveth and pondereth upon, _i.e._, that he
+take none of the pope's right nor patrimony from him; the second that he
+destroy all these new folks of opinion and the works of their new learning;
+the third, that if he married and took Anne to wife, the vengeance of God
+should plague him; and as she sayth she shewed this unto the king."--Paper
+on the Nun of Kent: _MS. Cotton, Cleopatra_, E 4.
+
+[328] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 137. Warham had promised to marry
+Henry to Anne Boleyn. The Nun frightened him into a refusal by a pretended
+message from an angel.--_MS._ ibid.
+
+[329] The Nun hath practised with two of the pope's ambassadors within this
+realm, and hath sent to the pope that if he did not do his duty in
+reformation of kings, God would destroy him at a certain day which he had
+appointed. By reason whereof it is supposed that the pope hath showed
+himself so double and so deceivable to the King's Grace in his great cause
+of marriage as he hath done, contrary to all truth, justice, and equity. As
+likewise the late cardinal of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury,
+being very well-minded to further and set at an end the marriage which the
+King's Grace now enjoyeth, according to their spiritual duty, were
+prevented by the false revelations of the said Nun. And that the said
+Bishop of Canterbury was so minded may be proved by divers which knew then
+his towardness.--Narrative of the Proceedings of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[330] Note of the Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[331] HALL, p. 780.
+
+[332] RYMER, vol. vi. p. 160. We are left to collateral evidence to fix the
+place of this petition, the official transcriber having contented himself
+with the substance, and omitted the date. The original, as appears from the
+pope's reply (LORD HERBERT, p. 145), bore the date of July 13; and unless a
+mistake was made in transcribing the papal brief, this was July, 1530. I
+have ventured to assume a mistake, and to place the petition in the
+following year, because the judgment of the universities, to which it
+refers, was not completed till the winter of 1530; they were not read in
+parliament till March 30, 1531; and it seems unlikely that a petition of so
+great moment would have been presented on an incomplete case, or before the
+additional support of the House of Commons had been secured. I am far from
+satisfied, however, that I am right in making the change. The petition must
+have been drawn up (though it need not have been presented) in 1530; since
+it bears the signature of Wolsey, who died in the November of that year.
+
+[333] Mademoiselle de Boleyn est venue; et l'a le Roy logée en fort beau
+logis; et qu'il a faict bien accoustrer tout auprés du sien. Et luy est la
+cour faicte ordinairement tous les jours plus grosse que de long temps elle
+ne fut faicte a la Royne. Je crois bien qu'on veult accoutumer par les
+petie ce peuple ą l'endurer, afin que quand ivendra ą donner les grands
+coups, il ne les trouve si estrange. Toutefois il demeure tous jours
+endurcy, et croy bien qu'il feroit plus qu'il ne faict si plus il avoit de
+puissance; mais grand ordre se donne par tout.--Bishop of Bayonne to the
+Grand Master: LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 231.
+
+[334] HALL, p. 781.
+
+[335] It seems to have been his favourite place of retirement. The gardens
+and fishponds were peculiarly elaborate and beautiful.--Sir John Russell to
+Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office._
+
+[336] Also it is a proverb of old date--"The pride of France, the treason
+of England, and the war of Ireland, shall never have end." _State Papers_,
+vol. ii. p. 11
+
+[337] There was a secret ambassador with the Scots king from the emperour,
+who had long communicated with the king alone in his privy chamber. And
+after the ambassador's departure the king, coming out into his outer
+chamber, said to his chancellor and the Earl Bothwell, "My lords, how much
+are we bounden unto the emperour that in the matter concerning our style,
+which so long he hath set about for our honour, that shall be by him
+discussed on Easter day, and that we may lawfully write ourself Prince of
+England and Duke of York." To which the chancellor said, "I pray God the
+pope confirm the same." The Scots king answered, "Let the emperour
+alone."--Earl of Northumberland to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. iv. p.
+599.
+
+[338] HALL, p. 783.
+
+[339] "The bishop was brought in desperation of his life."--_Rolls House
+MS._, second series, 532. This paper confirms Hall's account in every
+point.
+
+[340] HALL, p. 796.
+
+[341] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 115.
+
+[342] Warham was however fined £300 for it.--HALL, 796. A letter of Richard
+Tracy, son of the dead man, is in the _MS. State Paper Office_, first
+series, vol. iv. He says the King's Majesty had committed the investigation
+of the matter to Cromwell.
+
+[343] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 46.
+
+[344] Cap. iii.
+
+[345] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 1.
+
+[346] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[347] Be it further enacted that no archbishop or bishop, official,
+commissary, or any other minister, having spiritual jurisdiction, shall
+ask, demand, or receive of any of the king's subjects any sum or sums of
+money for the seal of any citizen, but only threepence sterling.--23 Hen.
+VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[348] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 10.--By a separate clause all covenants to defraud
+the purposes of this act were declared void, and the act itself was to be
+interpreted "as beneficially as might be, to the destruction and utter
+avoiding of such uses, intents, and purposes."
+
+[349] Annates or firstfruits were first suffered to be taken within the
+realm for the only defence of Christian people against infidels; and now
+they be claimed and demanded as mere duty only for lucre, against all right
+and conscience.--23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[350] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[351] It hath happened many times by occasion of death unto archbishops or
+bishops newly promoted within two or three years after their consecration,
+that their friends by whom they have been holpen to make payment have been
+utterly undone and impoverished.--23 Henry VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[352] _M. de la Pomeroy to Cardinal Tournon._
+
+"London, March 23, 1531-2.
+
+"My Lord,--I sent two letters to your lordship on the 20th of this month.
+Since that day Parliament has been prorogued, and will not meet again till
+after Easter.
+
+"It has been determined that the Pope's Holiness shall receive no more
+annates, and the collectors' office is to be abolished. Everything is
+turning against the Holy See, but the King has shown no little skill; the
+Lords and Commons have left the final decision of the question at his
+personal pleasure, and the Pope is to understand that, if he will do
+nothing for the King, the King has the means of making him suffer. The
+clergy in convocation have consented to nothing, nor will they, till they
+know the pleasure of their master the Holy Father; but the other estates
+being agreed, the refusal of the clergy is treated as of no consequence.
+
+"Many other rights and privileges of the Church are abolished also, too
+numerous to mention."--MS. Bibliot. Impér. Paris.
+
+[353] STRYPE, _Eccles. Mem._, vol. i. part 2, p. 158.
+
+[354] Ibid.
+
+[355] Sir George Throgmorton, Sir William Essex, Sir John Giffard, Sir
+Marmaduke Constable, with many others, spoke and voted in opposition to the
+government. They had a sort of club at the Queen's Head by Temple Bar,
+where they held discussions in secret, "and when we did commence," said
+Throgmorton, "we did bid the servants of the house go out, and likewise our
+own servants, because we thought it not convenient that they should hear us
+speak of such matters."--Throgmorton to the King: _MS. State Paper Office._
+
+[356] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[357] Printed in STRYPE, _Eccles. Mem._, vol. i. p. 201. Strype, knowing
+nothing of the first answer, and perceiving in the second an allusion to
+one preceding, has supposed that this answer followed the third and last,
+and was in fact a retractation of it. All obscurity is removed when the
+three replies are arranged in their legitimate order.
+
+[358] STRYPE, _Eccles. Mem._, vol. i. p. 199, etc.
+
+[359] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[360] STOW, p. 562.
+
+[361] "In connection with the Annates Act, the question of appeals to Rome
+had been discussed in the present session. Sir George Throgmorton had
+spoken on the papal side, and in his subsequent confession he mentioned a
+remarkable interview which he had had with More.
+
+"After I had reasoned to the Bill of Appeals," he said, "Sir Thomas More,
+then being chancellor, sent for me to come and speak with him in the
+parliament chamber. And when I came to him he was in a little chamber
+within the parliament chamber, where, as I remember, stood an altar, or a
+thing like unto an altar, whereupon he did lean and, as I do think, the
+same time the Bishop of Bath was talking with him. And then he said this to
+me, I am very glad to hear the good report that goeth of you, and that ye
+be so good a Catholic man as ye be. And if ye do continue in the same way
+that ye begin, and be not afraid to say your conscience, ye shall deserve
+great reward of God, and thanks of the King's Grace at length, and much
+worship to yourself."--Throgmorton to the King: _MS. State Paper Office_.
+
+[362] In part of it he speaks in his own person. Vide supra, cap. 3.
+
+[363] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 435.
+
+[364] Note of the Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[365] It has been thought that the Tudor princes and their ministers
+carried out the spy system to an iniquitous extent,--that it was the great
+instrument of their Machiavellian policy, introduced by Cromwell, and
+afterwards developed by Cecil and Walsingham. That both Cromwell and
+Walsingham availed themselves of secret information, is unquestionable,--as
+I think it is also unquestionable that they would have betrayed the
+interests of their country if they had neglected to do so. Nothing, in
+fact, except their skill in fighting treason with its own weapons, saved
+England from a repetition of the wars of the Roses, envenomed with the
+additional fury of religious fanaticism. But the agents of Cromwell, at
+least, were all volunteers;--their services were rather checked than
+encouraged; and when I am told, by high authority, that in those times an
+accusation was equivalent to a sentence of death, I am compelled to lay so
+sweeping a charge of injustice by the side of a document which forces me to
+demur to it. "In the reign of the Tudors," says a very eminent writer, "the
+committal, arraignment, conviction, and execution of any state prisoner,
+accused or _suspected, or under suspicion of being suspected_ of high
+treason, were only the regular terms in the series of judicial
+proceedings." This is scarcely to be reconciled with the 10th of the 37th
+of Hen. VIII., which shows no desire to welcome accusations, or exaggerated
+readiness to listen to them.
+
+"Whereas," says that Act, "divers malicious and evil disposed persons of
+their perverse, cruel, and malicious intents, minding the utter undoing of
+some persons to whom they have and do bear malice, hatred, and evil will,
+have of late most devilishly practised and devised divers writings, wherein
+hath been comprised that the same persons to whom they bear malice should
+speak traitorous words against the King's Majesty, his crown and dignity,
+or commit divers heinous and detestable treasons against the King's
+Highness, where, in very deed, the persons so accused never spake nor
+committed any such offence; by reason whereof divers of the king's true,
+faithful, and loving subjects have been put in fear and dread of their
+lives and of the loss and forfeiture of their lands and chattels--for
+reformation hereof, be it enacted, that if any person or persons, of what
+estate, degree, or condition he or they shall be, shall at any time
+hereafter devise, make, or write, or cause to be made any manner of writing
+comprising that any person has spoken, committed, or done any offence or
+offences which now by the laws of this realm be made treason, or that
+hereafter shall be made treason, and do not subscribe, or cause to be
+subscribed, his true name to the said writing, and within twelve days next
+after ensuing do not personally come before the king or his council, and
+affirm the contents of the said writings to be true, and do as much as in
+him shall be for the approvement of the same, that then all and every
+person or persons offending as aforesaid, shall be deemed and adjudged a
+felon or felons; and being lawfully convicted of such offence, after the
+laws of the realm, shall suffer pains of death and loss and forfeiture of
+lands, goods, and chattels, without benefit of clergy or privilege of
+sanctuary to be admitted or allowed in that behalf."
+
+[366] Accusation brought by Robert Wodehouse, Prior of Whitby, against the
+Abbot, for slanderous words against Anne Boleyn: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[367] Deposition of Robert Legate concerning the Language of the Monks of
+Furness: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[368] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 254.
+
+[369] Father Forest hath laboured divers manner of ways to expulse Father
+Laurence out of the convent, and his chief cause is, because he knoweth
+that Father Laurence will preach the king's matter whensoever it shall
+please his Grace to command him.--Ibid. p. 250.
+
+[370] Ibid. p. 251.
+
+[371] Lyst to Cromwell. Ibid. p. 255. STRYPE, _Eccles. Memor._, vol. i.
+Appendix, No. 47.
+
+[372] STOW'S _Annals_, p. 562. This expression passed into a proverb,
+although the words were first spoken by a poor friar; they were the last
+which the good Sir Humfrey Gilbert was heard to utter before his ship went
+down.
+
+[373] Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers,_ vol. vii. p. 489-90. "I learn
+that this book was first drawn by the Bishop of Rochester, and so being
+drawn, was by the said bishop afterwards delivered in England to two
+Spaniards, being secular and laymen. They receiving his first draught,
+either by themselves or some other Spaniards, altered and perfinished the
+same into the form that it now is; Peto and one Friar Elstowe of
+Canterbury, being the only men that have and do take upon themselves to be
+conveyers of the same books into England, and conveyers of all other things
+into and out of England. If privy search be made, and shortly, peradventure
+in the house of the same bishop shall be found his first copy. Master More
+hath sent oftentimes and lately books unto Peto, in Antwerp--as his book of
+the confutation of Tyndal, and of Frith's opinion of the sacrament, with
+divers other books. I can no further learn of More's practices, but if you
+consider this well, you may perchance espy his craft. Peto laboureth
+busylier than a bee in the setting forth of this book. He never ceaseth
+running to and from the court here. The king never had in his realm
+traitors like his friars--[Vaughan wrote "clergy." The word in the original
+is dashed through, and "friars" is substituted, whether by Cromwell or by
+himself in an afterthought, I do not know]--and so I have always said, and
+yet do. Let his Grace look well about him, for they seek to devour him.
+They have blinded his Grace."
+
+[374] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 262, etc.
+
+[375] The wishes of the French Court had been expressed emphatically to
+Clement in the preceding January. Original copies of the two following
+letters are in the Bibliothčque Impérial at Paris:--
+
+_The Cardinal of Lorraine to Cardinal ---- at Rome._
+
+"Paris, Jan. 8, 1531-2.
+
+"RIGHT REVEREND FATHER AND LORD IN CHRIST.--After our most humble
+commendations--The King of England complains loudly that his cause is not
+remanded into his own country; he says that it cannot be equitably dealt
+with at Rome, where he cannot be present. He himself, the Queen, and the
+other witnesses, are not to be dragged into Italy to give their evidence;
+and the suits of the Sovereigns of England and France have always hitherto
+been determined in their respective countries.
+
+"Nevertheless, by no entreaty can we prevail on the Pope to nominate
+impartial judges who will decide the question in England.
+
+"The King's personal indignation is not the only evil which has to be
+feared. When these proceedings are known among the people, there will,
+perhaps, be a revolt, and the Apostolic See may receive an injury which
+will not afterwards be easily remedied.
+
+"I have explained these things more at length to his Holiness, as my duty
+requires. Your affection towards him, my lord, I am assured is no less than
+mine. I beseech you, therefore, use your best endeavours with his Holiness,
+that the King of England may no longer have occasion to exclaim against
+him. In so doing you will gratify the Most Christian King, and you will
+follow the course most honourable to yourself and most favourable to the
+quiet of Christendom.
+
+"From Abbeville."
+
+_Francis the First to Pope Clement the Seventh._
+
+"Paris, Jan. 10, 1531-2.
+
+"MOST HOLY FATHER,--You are not ignorant what our good brother and ally the
+King of England demands at your hands. He requires that the cognisance of
+his marriage be remanded to his own realm, and that he be no further
+pressed to pursue the process at Rome. The place is inconvenient from its
+distance, and there are other good and reasonable objections which he
+assures us that he has urged upon your Holiness's consideration.
+
+"Most Holy Father, we have written several times to you, especially of late
+from St. Cloud, and afterwards from Chantilly, in our good brother's
+behalf; and we have further entreated you, through our ambassador residing
+at your Court, to put an end to this business as nearly according to the
+wishes of our said good brother as is compatible with the honour of
+Almighty God. We have made this request of you as well for the affection
+and close alliance which exist between ourselves and our brother, as for
+the filial love and duty with which we both in common regard your Holiness.
+
+"Seeing, nevertheless, Most Holy Father, that the affair in question is
+still far from settlement, and knowing our good brother to be displeased
+and dissatisfied, we fear that some great scandal and inconvenience may
+arise at last which may cause the diminution of your Holiness's authority.
+There is no longer that ready obedience to the Holy See in England which
+was offered to your predecessors; and yet your Holiness persists in citing
+my good brother the King of England to plead his cause before you in Rome.
+Surely it is not without cause that he calls such treatment of him
+unreasonable. We have ourselves examined into the law in this matter, and
+we are assured that your Holiness's claim is unjust and contrary to the
+privilege of kings. For a sovereign to leave his realm and plead as a
+suitor in Rome, is a thing wholly impossible,[377] and therefore, Holy
+Father, we have thought good to address you once more in this matter. Bear
+with us, we entreat you. Consider our words, and recall to your memory what
+by letter and through our ministers we have urged upon you. Look promptly
+to our brother's matter, and so act that your Holiness may be seen to value
+and esteem our friendship. What you do for him, or what you do against him,
+we shall take it as done to ourselves.
+
+"Holy Father, we will pray the Son of God to pardon and long preserve your
+Holiness to rule and govern our Holy Mother the Church.--FRANCIS."
+
+[376] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 428. LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[377] Chose beaucoup plus impossible que possible.
+
+[378] LORD HERBERT, p. 160. RYMER, vol. vi. part ii. p. 171.
+
+[379] Francis seems to have desired that the intention of the interview
+should be kept secret. Henry found this impossible. "Monseigneur," wrote
+the Bishop of Paris to the Grand Master, "quant ą tenir la chose secrette
+comme vous le demandez, il est mal aisé; combien que ce Roy fust bien de
+cest advis, sinon qu'il le treuve impossible; car a cause de ces provisions
+et choses, qu'il fault faire en ce Royaulme, incontinent sera sceu a
+Londres, et de la par tout le monde. Pourquoy ne faictes vostre compte
+qu'on le puisse tenir secret.
+
+"Monseigneur, je sēay veritablement et de bon lieu que le plus grant
+plaisir que le Roy pourroit faire au Roy son frere et a Madame Anne, c'est
+que le dit seigneur m'escripre que je requiere le Roy son dit frere qu'il
+veuille mener la dicte Dame Anne avec luy a Callais pour la veoir et pour
+la festoyer, afin qu'ils ne demeurrent ensembles sans compagnie de dames,
+pour ce que les bonnes cheres en sont tous jours meilleures: mais il
+fauldroit que en pareil le Roy menast la Royne de Navarre ą Boulogne, pour
+festoyer le Roy d'Angleterre.
+
+"Quant ą la Royne pour rien ce Roy ne vouldroit qu'elle vint: Il häit cest
+habillement ą l'Espagnolle, tant qu'il luy semble veoir un diable. Il
+desireroit qu'il pleust au Roy mener ą Boulogne, messeigneurs ses enfans
+pour les veoir.
+
+"Surtout je vous prie que vous ostez de la court deux sortes de gens, ceulx
+qui sont imperiaulx, s'aucuns en y a, et ceux qui ont la reputation d'estre
+mocqueurs et gaudisseurs, car c'est bien la chose en ce monde autant häie
+de ceste nation."--Bishop of Paris to the Grand Master: LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+pp. 555, 556.
+
+[380] Sir Gregory Cassalis to Henry VIII.: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 433.
+Valde existimabam necessarium cum hoc Principe (_i.e._, Francis) agere ut
+duobus Cardinalibus daret in mandatis ut ante omnes Cardinalis de Monte
+meminissent, eique pensionem annuam saltem trium millium aureorum ex
+quadraginta millibus quę mihi dixerat velle in Cardinales distribuere,
+assignaret. Et Rex quidem hęc etiam scribi ad duos Cardinales jussit
+secretario Vitandri. Quicum ego postmodo super iis pensionibus sermonem
+habui, cognovique sic in animo Regem habere ut duo Cardinales cum Romę
+fuerint, videant, qui potissimum digni hāc Regiā sint liberalitate; in
+eosque quum quid in Regno Gallię ecclesiasticum vacare contigerit ex
+meritis uniuscujusque pensiones conferantur. Tunc autem nihil in promptu
+haberi quod Cardinali de Monte dari possit--verum Regio nomine illi de
+futuro esse promittendum quod mihi certe summopere displicuit; et
+secretario Vitandri non reticui ostendens pollicitationes hujusmodi centies
+jam Cardinali de Monte factas fuisse; et modo si iterum fiant nihil
+effecturas nisi ut illius viri quasi ulcera pertractent; id quod Vitandris
+verum esse fatebatur pollicitusque est se, quum Rex a venatu rediisset
+velle ei suadere ut Cardinalem de Monte aliquā presenti pensione
+prosequatur; quā quidem tibi nihil conducibilius aut opportunius fieri
+possit.
+
+[381] _State Papers_, vol. iv. p. 612.
+
+[382] Ibid, p. 616.
+
+[383] The _State Papers_ contain a piteous picture of this business, the
+hereditary feuds of centuries bursting out on the first symptoms of
+ill-will between the two governments, with fire and devastation.--_State
+Papers_, vol. iv. p. 620-644.
+
+[384] If the said Earl of Angus do make unto us oath of allegiance, and
+recognises us as Supreme Lord of Scotland, and as his prince and sovereign,
+we then, the said earl doing the premises, by these presents bind ourself
+to pay yearly to the said earl the sum of one thousand pounds
+sterling.--Henry VIII. to the Earl of Angus: _State Papers_, vol. iv. p.
+613.
+
+[385] A letter of Queen Catherine to the Emperor, written on the occasion
+of this visit, will be read with interest:--
+
+"HIGH AND MIGHTY LORD,--Although your Majesty is occupied with your own
+affairs and with your preparations against the Turk, I cannot,
+nevertheless, refrain from troubling you with mine, which perhaps in
+substance and in the sight of God are of equal importance. Your Majesty
+knows well, that God hears those who do him service, and no greater service
+can be done than to procure an end in this business. It does not concern
+only ourselves--it concerns equally all who fear God. None can measure the
+woes which will fall on Christendom, if his Holiness will not act in it and
+act promptly. The signs are all around us in new printed books full of lies
+and dishonesty--in the resolution to proceed with the cause here in
+England--in the interview of these two princes, where the king, my lord, is
+covering himself with infamy through the companion which he takes with him.
+The country is full of terror and scandal; and evil may be looked for if
+nothing be done, and inasmuch as our only hope is in God's mercy, and in
+the favour of your Majesty, for the discharge of my conscience, I must let
+you know the strait in which I am placed.
+
+"I implore your Highness for the service of God, that you urge his Holiness
+to be prompt in bringing the cause to a conclusion. The longer the delay
+the harder the remedy will be.
+
+"The particulars of what is passing here are so shocking, so outrageous
+against Almighty God, they touch so nearly the honour of my Lord and
+husband, that for the love I bear him, and for the good that I desire for
+him, I would not have your Highness know of them from me. Your ambassador
+will inform you of all."--Queen Catherine to Charles V. September 18.--MS.
+Simancas.
+
+The Emperor, who was at Mantua, was disturbed at the meeting at Boulogne,
+on political grounds as well as personal. On the 24th of October he wrote
+to his sister, at Brussels.
+
+_Charles the Fifth to the Regent Mary._
+
+Mantua, October 16, 1532.
+
+I found your packets on arriving here, with the ambassadors' letters from
+France and England. The ambassadors will themselves have informed you of
+the intended conference of the Kings. The results will make themselves felt
+ere long. We must be on our guard, and I highly approve of your precautions
+for the protection of the frontiers.
+
+As to the report that the King of England means to take the opportunity of
+the meeting to marry Anne Boleyn, I can hardly believe that he will be so
+blind as to do so, or that the King of France will lend himself to the
+other's sensuality. At all events, however, I have written to my ministers
+at Rome, and I have instructed them to lay a complaint before the Pope,
+that, while the process is yet pending, in contempt of the authority of the
+Church, the King of England is scandalously bringing over the said Anne
+with him, as if she were his wife.
+
+His Holiness and the Apostolic See will be the more inclined to do us
+justice, and to provide as the case shall require.
+
+Should the King indeed venture the marriage--as I cannot think he will--I
+have desired his Holiness not only not to sanction such conduct openly, but
+not to pass it by in silence. I have demanded that severe and fitting
+sentence be passed at once on an act so wicked and so derogatory to the
+Apostolic See.--_The Pilgrim_, p. 89.
+
+[386] There can be little doubt of this. He was the child of the only
+intrigue of Henry VIII. of which any credible evidence exists. His mother
+was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Blunt, an accomplished and most
+interesting person; and the offspring of the connection, one boy only, was
+brought up with the care and the state of a prince. Henry FitzRoy, as he
+was called, was born in 1519, and when six years old was created Earl of
+Nottingham and Duke of Richmond and Somerset, the title of the king's
+father.
+
+In 1527, before the commencement of the disturbance on the divorce, Henry
+endeavoured to negotiate a marriage for him with a princess of the imperial
+blood; and in the first overtures gave an intimation which could not be
+mistaken, of his intention, if possible, to place him in the line of the
+succession. After speaking of the desire which was felt by the King of
+England for some connection in marriage of the Houses of England and Spain,
+the ambassadors charged with the negotiation were to say to Charles, that--
+
+"His Highness can be content to bestow the Duke of Richmond and Somerset
+(who is near of his blood, and of excellent qualities, and is already
+furnished to keep the state of a great prince, _and yet may be easily by
+the king's means exalted to higher things_) to some noble princess of his
+near blood."--ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 121.
+
+He was a gallant, high-spirited boy. A letter is extant from him to Wolsey,
+written when he was nine years old, begging the cardinal to intercede with
+the king, "for an harness to exercise myself in arms according to my
+erudition in the Commentaries of Cęsar."--Ibid. p. 119.
+
+He was brought up with Lord Surrey, who has left a beautiful account of
+their boyhood at Windsor--their tournaments, their hunts, their young
+loves, and passionate friendship. Richmond married Surrey's sister, but
+died the year after, when only seventeen; and Surrey revisiting Windsor,
+recalls his image among the scenes which they had enjoyed together, in the
+most interesting of all his poems. He speaks of
+
+  The secret grove, which oft we made resound
+  Of pleasant plaint and of our ladies' praise;
+  Recording oft what grace each one had found,
+  What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.
+  The wild forest; the clothed holts with green;
+  With reins availed, and swift y-breathed horse,
+  With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,
+  Where we did chase the fearful hart of force.
+  The void walls eke that harboured us each night,
+  Wherewith, alas! reviveth in my breast
+  The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight
+  The pleasant dream, the quiet bed of rest;
+  The secret thought imparted with such trust.
+  The wanton talk, the divers change of play,
+  The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,
+  Wherewith we past the winter nights away.
+
+[387] Compare LORD HERBERT with A Paper of Instructions to Lord Rochfort on
+his Mission to Paris: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 427, etc.; and A
+Remonstrance of Francis I. to Henry VIII.: LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 571, etc.
+It would be curious to know whether Francis ever actually wrote to the pope
+a letter of which Henry sent him a draft. If he did, there are expressions
+contained in it which amount to a threat of separation. In case the pope
+was obstinate Francis was to say, "Lors force seroit de pourvoir audict
+affaire, par autres voyes et faēons, qui peut etre, ne vous seroint gueres
+agreable."--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 436.
+
+[388] A nostre derniere entrevue sur la fraternelle et familiere
+communication que nous eusmes ensemble de noz affaires venant aux nostres,
+Luy declarasmes comme a tord et injustment nous estions affligez, dilayez,
+et fort ingratemeut manniez et troublez, en nostre dicte grande et pesante
+matiere de marriage par la particuliere affection de l'empereur et du pape.
+Lesquelz sembloient par leurs longues retardations de nostre dicte matiere
+ne sercher autre chose, sinon par longue attente et laps de temps, nous
+frustrer malicieusement du propoz, qui plus nous induict a poursuivir et
+mettre avant la dicte matiere; c'est davoir masculine succession et
+posterite en laquelle nous etablirons (Dieu voulant) le quiet repoz et
+tranquillite de notre royaulme et dominion. Son fraternel, plain, et entier
+advis (et a bref dire le meilleur qui pourroit estre) fut tel; il nous
+conseilla de ne dilayer ne protractor le temps plus longuement, mais en
+toute celerite proceder effectuellement a laccomplisment et consummation de
+nostre marriage.--Henry VIII. to Rochfort: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+428-9.
+
+[389] The extent of Francis's engagements, as Henry represents them, was
+this:--He had promised qu'en icelle nostre dicte cause jamais ne nous
+abandonneroit quelque chose que sen ensuyst; ainsi de tout son pouvoir
+l'establiroit, supporteroit, aideroit et maintiendroit notre bon droict, et
+le droict de la posterite et succession qui sen pourroit ensuyr; et a tous
+ceulz qui y vouldroyent mettre trouble, empeschement, encombrance, ou y
+procurer deshonneur, vitupere, ou infraction, il seroit enemy et adversaire
+de tout son pouvoir, de quelconque estat qu'il soit, fust pape ou
+empereur,--avecque plusieurs autres consolatives paroles. This he wished
+Francis to commit to paper. Car autant de fois, que les verrions, he says,
+qui seroit tous les jours, nous ne pourrions, si non les liscent, imaginer
+et reduire a notre souvenance la bonne grace facunde et geste, dont il les
+nous prononēait, et estimer estre comme face a face, parlans avecque
+luy.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 437. Evidently language of so wide a
+kind might admit of many interpretations.
+
+[390] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 571, etc.
+
+[391] Note of the Revelations of Eliz. Barton: _Rolls House MS. Suppression
+of the Monasteries_, p. 17.
+
+The intention was really perhaps what the nun said. An agent of the
+government at Brussels, who was watching the conference, reported on the
+12th of November:--"The King of England did really cross with the intention
+of marrying; but, happily for the emperor, the ceremony is postponed. Of
+other secrets, my informant has learned thus much. They have resolved to
+demand as the portion of the Queen of France, Artois, Tournay, and part of
+Burgundy. They have also sent two cardinals to Rome to require the Pope to
+relinquish the tenths, which they have begun to levy for themselves. If his
+Holiness refuse, the King of England will simply appropriate them
+throughout his dominions. Captain ---- heard this from the king's proctor
+at Rome, who has been with him at Calais, and from an Italian named
+Jeronymo, whom the Lady Anne has roughly handled for managing her business
+badly. She trusted that she would have been married in September.
+
+"The proctor told her the Pope delayed sentence for fear of the Emperor.
+The two kings, when they heard this, despatched the cardinals to quicken
+his movements; and the demand for the tenths is thought to have been
+invented to frighten him.
+
+"They are afraid that the Emperor may force his Holiness into giving
+sentence before the cardinals arrive. Jeronymo has been therefore sent
+forward by post to give him notice of their approach, and to require him to
+make no decision till they have spoken with him."--_The Pilgrim_, p. 89.
+
+[392] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[393] Revelations of Eliz. Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[394] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 435, 468.
+
+[395] Letter from ----, containing an account of an interview with his
+Holiness: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[396] This proposal was originally the king's (see chapter 2), but it had
+been dropped because one of the conditions of it had been Catherine's
+"entrance into religion." The pope, however, had not lost sight of the
+alternative, as one of which, in case of extremity, he might avail himself;
+and, in 1530, in a short interval of relaxation, he had definitely offered
+the king a dispensation to have two wives, at the instigation, curiously,
+of the imperialists. The following letter was written on that occasion to
+the king by Sir Gregory Cassalis:--
+
+Serenissime et potentissime domine rex, domine mi supreme humillimā
+commendatione premissā, salutem et felicitatem. Superioribus diebus
+Pontifex secreto, veluti rem quam magni faceret, mihi proposuit conditionem
+hujusmodi; concedi posse vestrę majestati, ut duas uxores habeat; cui dixi
+nolle me provinciam suscipere eā de re scribendi, ob eam causam quod
+ignorarem an inde vestrę conscientię satisfieri posset quam vestra majestas
+imprimis exonerare cupit. Cur autem sic responderem, illud in causā fuit,
+quod ex certo loco, unde quę Cęsariani moliantur aucupari soleo exploratum
+certumque habebam Cęsarianos illud ipsum quęrere et procurare. Quem vero ad
+finem id quęrant pro certo exprimere non ausim. Id certe totum vestrę
+prudentię considerandum relinquo. Et quamvis dixerim Pontifici, nihil me de
+eo scripturum, nolui tamen majestati vestrę hoc reticere; quę sciat omni me
+industriā laborāsse in iis quę nobis mandat exequendis et cum Anconitano
+qui me familiariter uti solet, omnia sum conatus. De omnibus autem me ad
+communes literas rejicio. Optime valeat vestra majestas.--Romę die xviii.
+Septembris, 1530.
+
+Clarissimi vestrai Majestatis, Humillimus servus,
+
+GREGORIUS CASSALIS,
+
+--LORD HERBERT, p. 140.
+
+[397] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 394, etc.
+
+[398] The obtaining the opinion in writing of the late Cardinal of Ancona,
+and submitting it to the emperor. This minister, the most aged as well as
+the most influential member of the conclave, had latterly been supposed to
+be inclined to advise a conciliatory policy towards England; and his
+judgment was of so much weight that it was thought likely that the emperor
+would have been unable to resist the publication of it, if it was given
+against him. At the critical moment of the Bologna interview this cardinal
+unfortunately died: he had left his sentiments, however, in the hands of
+his nephew, the Cardinal of Ravenna, who, knowing the value of his legacy,
+was disposed to make a market of it. It was a knavish piece of business.
+The English ambassadors offered 3000 ducats; Charles bid them out of the
+field with a promise of church benefices to the extent of 6000 ducats; he
+did not know precisely the terms of the judgment, or even on which side it
+inclined, but in either case the purchase was of equal importance to him,
+either to produce it or to suppress it. The French and English ambassadors
+then combined, and bid again with church benefices in the two countries, of
+equal value with those offered by Charles, with a promise of the next
+English bishopric which fell vacant, and the original 3000 ducats as an
+initiatory fee. There was a difficulty in the transaction, for the cardinal
+would not part with the paper till he had received the ducats, and the
+ambassadors would not pay the ducats till they had possession of the paper.
+The Italian, however, proved an overmatch for his antagonists. He got his
+money, and the judgment was not produced after all.--_State Papers_, vol.
+vii. pp. 397-8, 464. BURNET, vol. iii. p. 108.
+
+[399] Bennet to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 402.
+
+[400] Sir Gregory Cassalis to the King: _Rolls House M.S._, endorsed by
+Henry, Litterę in Pontificis dicta declaratorię quę maxime causam nostram
+probant.
+
+[401] There was a tradition (it cannot be called more), that no Englishman
+could be compelled against his will to plead at a foreign tribunal. "Ne
+Angli extra Angliam litigare cogantur."
+
+[402] Henry VIII. to the Ambassadors with the Pope: _Rolls House M.S._
+
+[403] Ibid.
+
+[404] So at least the English government was at last convinced, as appears
+in the circular to the clergy, printed in BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 447,
+etc. I try to believe, however, that the pope's conduct was rather weak
+than treacherous.
+
+[405] So at least Cranmer says; but he was not present, nor was he at the
+time informed that it was to take place.--ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p.
+32. The belief, however, generally was, that the marriage took place in
+November; and though Cranmer's evidence is very strong, his language is too
+vague to be decisive.
+
+[406] Individual interests have to yield necessarily and justly to the
+interests of a nation, provided the conduct or the sacrifice which the
+nation requires is not sinful. That there would have been any sin on Queen
+Catherine's part if she had consented to a separation from the king, was
+never pretended; and although it is a difficult and delicate matter to
+decide how far unwilling persons may be compelled to do what they ought to
+have done without compulsion, yet the will of a single man or woman cannot
+be allowed to constitute itself an irremovable obstacle to a great national
+good.
+
+[407] It is printed by LORD HERBERT, and in LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[408] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 558, etc.
+
+[409] Ye may show unto his Holiness that ye have heard from a friend of
+yours in Flanders lately, that there hath been set up certain writings from
+the See Apostolic, in derogation both of justice and of the affection
+lately showed by his Holiness unto us; which thing ye may say ye can hardly
+believe to be true, but that ye reckon them rather to be counterfeited. For
+if it should be true, it is a thing too far out of the way, specially
+considering that you and other our ambassadors be there, and have heard
+nothing of the matter. We send a copy of these writings unto you, which
+copy we will in no wise that ye shall show to any person which might think
+that ye had any knowledge from us nor any of our council, marvelling
+greatly if the same hath proceeded indeed from the pope; [and] willing you
+expressly not to show that ye had it of us.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+421.
+
+[410] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 454.
+
+[411] Sir John Wallop to Henry: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 422.
+
+[412] Francis represented himself to Henry as having refused with a species
+of bravado. "He told me," says Sir John Wallop, "that he had announced
+previously that he would consent to no such interview, unless your Highness
+were also comprised in the same; and if it were so condescended that your
+Highness and he should be then together, yet you two should go after such a
+sort and with such power that you would not care whether the pope and
+emperor would have peace or else _coups de baston_."--Wallop to Henry, from
+Paris, Feb. 22. But this was scarcely a complete account of the
+transaction; it was an account only of so much of it as the French king was
+pleased to communicate. The emperor was urgent for a council. The pope,
+feeling the difficulty either of excluding or admitting the Protestant
+representatives, was afraid of consenting to it, and equally afraid of
+refusing. The meeting proposed to Francis was for the discussion of this
+difficulty; and Francis, in return, proposed that the great Powers, Henry
+included, should hold an interview, and arrange beforehand the conclusions
+at which the council should arrive. This naļve suggestion was waived by
+Charles, apparently on grounds of religion. LORD HERBERT, Kennet's Edit. p.
+167.
+
+[413] The emperor's answer touching this interview is come, and is, in
+effect, that if the pope shall judge the said interview to be for the
+wealth and quietness of Christendom, he will not be seen to dissuade his
+Holiness from the same; but he desired him to remember what he showed to
+his Holiness when he was with the same, at what time his Holiness offered
+himself for the commonwealth to go to any place to speak with the French
+king.--Bennet to Henry VIII.; _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 464.
+
+[414] The estrapade was an infernal machine introduced by Francis into
+Paris for the better correction of heresy. The offender was slung by a
+chain over a fire, and by means of a crane was dipped up and down into the
+flame, the torture being thus prolonged for an indefinite time. Francis was
+occasionally present in person at these exhibitions, the executioner
+waiting his arrival before commencing the spectacle.
+
+[415] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.
+
+[416] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 12
+
+[417] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 441.
+
+[418] D'Inteville to Francis the First: MS. Bibliothčque Impérial,
+Paris--_Pilgrim_, p. 92.
+
+[419] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[420] He had been selected as Warham's successor; and had been consecrated
+on the 30th of March, 1533. On the occasion of the ceremony when the usual
+oath to the Pope was presented to him, he took it with a declaration that
+his first duty and first obedience was to the crown and laws of his own
+country. It is idle trifling, to build up, as too many writers have
+attempted to do, a charge of insincerity upon an action which was forced
+upon him by the existing relation between England and Rome. The Act of
+Appeals was the law of the land. The separation from communion with the
+papacy was a contingency which there was still a hope might be avoided.
+Such a protest as Cranmer made was therefore the easiest solution of the
+difficulty. See it in STRYPE'S _Cranmer_, Appendix, p. 683.
+
+[421] BURNET, Vol. iii. pp. 122-3
+
+[422] Bennet to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 402. Sir Gregory
+Cassalis to the same: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[423] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 123.
+
+[424] Ibid. vol. i. p. 210.
+
+[425] See _State Papers_, vol. i. pp. 415, 420, etc.
+
+[426] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 22. It is very singular that in the
+original Bull of Julius, the expression is "forsan consummavissetis;" while
+in the brief, which, if it was genuine, was written the same day, and
+which, if forged, was forged by Catherine's friends, there is no forsan.
+The fact is stated absolutely.
+
+[427] LORD HERBERT, p. 163. BURNET. vol. iii. p. 123.
+
+[428] _State Papers_, vol. i. pp. 390. 391.
+
+[429] Ye therefore duly recognising that it becometh you not, being our
+subject, to enterprise any part of your said office in so weighty and great
+a cause pertaining to us being your prince and sovereign, without our
+licence obtained so to do; and therefore in your most humble wise ye
+supplicate us to grant unto you our licence to proceed.--_State Papers_,
+vol. i. p. 392.
+
+[430] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 392.
+
+[431] Cromwell to the King on his Committal to the Tower: BURNET,
+_Collectanea_, p. 500.
+
+[432] So at least she called him a few days later.--_State Papers_, vol. i.
+p. 420. We have no details of her words when she was summoned; but only a
+general account of them.--_State Papers_, vol. i. p. 394-5.
+
+[433] The words of the sentence may be interesting:--"In the name of God,
+Amen. We, Thomas, by Divine permission Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of
+all England, and Legate of the Apostolic See, in a certain cause of inquiry
+of and concerning the validity of the marriage contracted and consummated
+between the most potent and most illustrious Prince, our Sovereign Lord,
+Henry VIII., by the grace of God King of England and France, Defender of
+the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, and the most serene Princess, Catherine,
+daughter of his Most Catholic Majesty, Ferdinand, King of Spain, of
+glorious memory, we proceeding according to law and justice in the said
+cause which has been brought judicially before us in virtue of our office,
+and which for some time has lain under examination, as it still is, being
+not yet finally determined and decided; having first seen all the articles
+and pleas which have been exhibited and set forth of her part, together
+with the answers made thereto on the part of the most illustrious and
+powerful Prince, Henry VIII.; having likewise seen and diligently inspected
+the informations and depositions of many noblemen and other witnesses of
+unsuspected veracity exhibited in the said cause; having also seen and in
+like manner carefully considered not only the censures and decrees of the
+most famous universities of almost the whole Christian world, but likewise
+the opinions and determinations both of the most eminent divines and
+civilians, as also the resolutions and conclusions of the clergy of both
+Provinces of England in Convocation assembled, and many other wholesome
+instructions and doctrines which have been given in and laid before us
+concerning the said marriage; having further seen and in like manner
+inspected all the treaties and leagues of peace and amity on this account
+entered upon and concluded between Henry VII., of immortal fame, late King
+of England, and the said Ferdinand, of glorious memory, late King of Spain;
+having besides seen and most carefully weighed all and every of the acts,
+debates, letters, processes, instruments, writs, arguments, and all other
+things which have passed and been transacted in the said cause at any time;
+in all which thus seen and inspected, our most exact care in examining, and
+our most mature deliberation in weighing them hath by us been used, and all
+other things have been observed by us, which of right in this matter were
+to be observed; furthermore, the said most illustrious Prince, Henry VIII.,
+in the forementioned cause, by his proper Proctor having appeared before
+us, but the said most serene Lady Catherine in contempt absenting herself
+(whose absence we pray that the divine presence may compensate) [cujus
+absentia Divinā repleatur pręsentiā. Lord Herbert translates it, "whose
+absence may the Divine presence attend," missing, I think, the point of the
+Archbishop's parenthesis] by and with the advice of the most learned in the
+law, and of persons of most eminent skill in divinity whom we have
+consulted in the premises, we have found it our duty to proceed to give our
+final decree and sentence in the said cause, which, accordingly, we do in
+this manner.
+
+"Because by acts, warrants, deductions, propositions, exhibitions,
+allegations, proofs and confessions, articles drawn up, answers of
+witnesses, depositions, informations, instruments, arguments, letters,
+writs, censures, determinations of professors, opinions, councils,
+assertions, affirmations, treaties, and leagues of peace, processes, and
+other matters in the said cause, as is above mentioned, before us laid,
+had, done, exhibited, and respectively produced, as also from the same and
+sundry other reasons, causes, and considerations, manifold arguments, and
+various kinds of proof of the greatest evidence, strength, and validity, of
+which in the said cause we have fully and clearly informed ourselves, we
+find, and with undeniable evidence and plainness see that the marriage
+contracted and consummated, as is aforesaid, between the said most
+illustrious Prince, Henry VIII., and the most serene Lady Catherine, was
+and is null and invalid, and that it was contracted and consummated
+contrary to the law of God: therefore, we, Thomas, Archbishop, Primate, and
+Legate aforesaid, having first called upon the name of Christ for direction
+herein, and having God altogether before our eyes, do pronounce sentence,
+and declare for the invalidity of the said marriage, decreeing that the
+said pretended marriage always was and still is null and invalid; that it
+was contracted and consummated contrary to the will and law of God, that it
+is of no force or obligation, but that it always wanted, and still wants,
+the strength and sanction of law; and therefore we sentence that it is not
+lawful for the said most illustrious Prince, Henry VIII., and the said most
+serene Lady Catherine, to remain in the said pretended marriage; and we do
+separate and divorce them one from the other, inasmuch as they contracted
+and consummated the said pretended marriage de facto, and not de jure; and
+that they so separated and divorced are absolutely free from all marriage
+bond with regard to the foresaid pretended marriage, we pronounce, and
+declare by this our definitive sentence and final decree, which we now
+give, and by the tenour of these present writings do publish. May 23rd,
+1533."--BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 68, and LORD HERBERT.
+
+[434] HALL.
+
+[435] Ibid.
+
+[436] Ibid. p. 801. Hall was most likely an eye-witness, and may be
+thoroughly trusted in these descriptions. Whenever we are able to test him,
+which sometimes happens, by independent contemporary accounts, he proves
+faithful in the most minute particulars.
+
+[437] FOXE, vol. v. p. III.
+
+[438] Northumberland to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. iv. pp. 598-9.
+
+[439] Hawkins to Henry VIII.: Ibid. vol. vii. p. 488.
+
+[440] BURNET. vol. iii. p. 115.
+
+[441] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 398.
+
+[442] Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[443] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 43.
+
+[444] _Cotton M.S._ Otho X, p. 199. _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 397.
+
+[445] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 403.
+
+[446] Cromwell had endeavoured to save Frith, or at least had been
+interested for him. Sir Edmund Walsingham, writing to him about the
+prisoners in the Tower, says:--"Two of them wear irons, and Frith weareth
+none. Although he lacketh irons, he lacketh not wit nor pleasant tongue.
+His learning passeth my judgment. Sir, as ye said, it were great pity to
+lose him if he may be reconciled."--Walsingham to Cromwell: _M.S. State
+Paper Office_, second series, vol. xlvi.
+
+[447] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 40.
+
+[448] "The natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and
+not here, it being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one
+time in more places than one." The argument and the words in which it is
+expressed were Frith's.--See FOXE, vol. v. p. 6.
+
+[449] The origin of the word Lollards has been always a disputed question.
+I conceive it to be from Lolium. They were the "tares" in the corn of
+Catholicism.
+
+[450] 35 Ed. I.; Statutes of Carlisle, cap. 1-4.
+
+[451] Ibid.
+
+[452] 25 Ed. III. stat. 4. A clause in the preamble of this act bears a
+significantly Erastian complexion: _come seinte Eglise estoit founde en
+estat de prelacie deins le royaulme Dengleterre par le dit Roi et ses
+progenitours, et countes, barons, et nobles de ce Royaulme et lours
+ancestres, pour eux et le poeple enfourmer de la lei Dieu._ If the Church
+of England was held to have been, founded not by the successors of the
+Apostles, but by the king and the nobles, the claim of Henry VIII. to the
+supremacy was precisely in the spirit of the constitution.
+
+[453] 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3 Ric. II. cap. 3; 12 Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric.
+II. stat. 2. The first of these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the
+blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The
+statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult
+sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions,
+et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces
+choses enfournee. I had regarded this passage as a fiction of courtesy like
+that of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The
+suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the
+statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an
+interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.
+
+[454] The abbots and bishops decently protested. Their protest was read in
+parliament, and entered on the Rolls. _Rot. Parl._ iii. [264] quoted by
+Lingard, who has given a full account of these transactions.
+
+[455] 13 Ric. II. stat. 2.
+
+[456] See 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.
+
+[457] This it will be remembered was the course which was afterwards
+followed by the parliament under Henry VIII. before abolishing the payment
+of first-fruits.
+
+[458] Lingard says, that "there were rumours that if the prelates executed
+the decree of the king's courts, they would be excommunicated."--Vol. iii.
+p. 172. The language of the act of parliament, 16 Ric. II. cap. 5, is
+explicit that the sentence was pronounced.
+
+[459] 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.
+
+[460] Ibid.
+
+[461] Ibid.
+
+[462] LEWIS, _Life of Wycliffe_.
+
+[463] If such _scientia media_ might be allowed to man, which is beneath
+certainty and above conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he
+was born in Durham.--FULLER'S _Worthies_, vol. i. p. 479.
+
+[464] _The Last Age of the Church_ was written in 1356. See LEWIS, p. 3.
+
+[465] LELAND.
+
+[466] LEWIS, p. 287.
+
+[467] 1 Ric. II. cap. 13.
+
+[468] WALSINGHAM, 206-7, apud LINGARD. It is to be observed, however, that
+Wycliffe himself limited his arguments strictly to the property of the
+clergy. See MILMAN'S _History of Latin Christianity_, vol. v. p. 508.
+
+[469] WALSINGHAM, p. 275, apud LINGARD.
+
+[470] 5 Ric. II. cap. 5.
+
+[471] WILKINS, _Concilia_, iii. 160-167.
+
+[472] _De Heretico comburendo._ 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.
+
+[473] STOW, 330, 338.
+
+[474] _Rot. Parl._ iv. 24, 108, apud LINGARD; RYMER, ix. 89, 119, 129, 170,
+193; MILMAN, Vol. v. p. 520-535.
+
+[475] 2 Hen. V. stat. 1, cap. 7.
+
+[476] There is no better test of the popular opinion of a man than the
+character assigned to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth
+century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English
+comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am
+unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French
+wars, served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker
+shade than they deserved: but it is almost certain that Shakspeare, though
+not intending Falstaff as a portrait of Oldcastle, thought of him as he was
+designing the character; and it is altogether certain that by the London
+public Falstaff was supposed to represent Oldcastle. We can hardly suppose
+that such an expression as "my old lad of the castle," should be
+accidental; and in the epilogue to the Second Part of _Henry the Fourth_,
+when promising to reintroduce Falstaff once more, Shakspeare says, "where
+for anything I know he shall die of the sweat, for Oldcastle died a martyr,
+and this is not the man." He had, therefore, certainly been supposed to _be
+the man_, and Falstaff represented the English conception of the character
+of the Lollard hero. I should add, however, that Dean Milman, who has
+examined the records which remain to throw light on the character of this
+remarkable person with elaborate care and ability, concludes emphatically
+in his favour.
+
+[477] Two curious letters of Henry VI. upon the Lollards, written in 1431,
+are printed in the _Archęologia_, vol. xxiii. p. 339, etc. "As God
+knoweth," he says of them, "never would they be subject to his laws nor to
+man's, but would be loose and free to rob, reve, and dispoil, slay and
+destroy all men of thrift and worship, as they proposed to have done in our
+father's days; and of lads and lurdains would make lords."
+
+[478] Proceedings of an organised Society in London called the Christian
+Brethren, supported by voluntary contributions, for the dispersion of
+tracts against the doctrines of the Church: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[479] HALE'S _Precedents_. The London and Lincoln Registers, in FOXE, vol.
+iv.; and the MS. Registers of Archbishops Morton and Warham, at Lambeth.
+
+[480] KNOX'S _History of the Reformation in Scotland_.
+
+[481] Also we object to you that divers times, and specially in Robert
+Durdant's house, of Iver Court, near unto Staines, you erroneously and
+damnably read in a great book of heresy, all [one] night, certain chapters
+of the Evangelists, in English, containing in them divers erroneous and
+damnable opinions and conclusions of heresy, in the presence of divers
+suspected persons.--Articles objected against Richard Butler--London
+Register: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 178.
+
+[482] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 176.
+
+[483] MICHELET, _Life of Luther_, p. 71.
+
+[484] Ibid.
+
+[485] Ibid. p. 41.
+
+[486] WOOD'S _Athenę Oxonienses_.
+
+[487] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 618.
+
+[488] The suspicious eyes of the Bishops discovered Tyndal's visit, and the
+result which was to be expected from it.
+
+On Dec. 2nd, 1525, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, then king's
+almoner, and on a mission into Spain, wrote from Bordeaux to warn Henry.
+The letter is instructive:
+
+"Please your Highness to understand that I am certainly informed as I
+passed in this country, that an Englishman, your subject, at the
+solicitation and instance of Luther, with whom he is, hath translated the
+New Testament into English; and within few days intendeth to return with
+the same imprinted into England. I need not to advertise your Grace what
+infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not withstanded. This is the
+next way to fulfil your realm with Lutherians. For all Luther's perverse
+opinions be grounded upon bare words of Scripture, not well taken, ne
+understanded, which your Grace hath opened in sundry places of your royal
+book. All our forefathers, governors of the Church of England, hath with
+all diligence forbid and eschewed publication of English Bibles, as
+appeareth in constitutions provincial of the Church of England. Nowe, sure,
+as God hath endued your Grace with Christian courage to sett forth the
+standard against these Philistines and to vanquish them, so I doubt not but
+that he will assist your Grace to prosecute and perform the same--that is,
+to undertread them that they shall not now lift up their heads; which they
+endeavour by means of English Bibles. They know what hurt such books hath
+done in your realm in times past."--Edward Lee to Henry VIII.: ELLIS, third
+series, vol. ii. p. 71.
+
+[489] Answer of the Bishops: _Rolls House MS._ See cap. 3.
+
+[490] Answer of the Bishops, vol. i. cap. 3.
+
+[491] See, particularly, _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 302.
+
+[492] Proceedings of the Christian Brethren: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[493] See the letter of Bishop Fox to Wolsey: STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i.
+Appendix.
+
+[494] Particulars of Persons who had dispersed Anabaptist and Lutheran
+Tracts: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[495] Dr. Taylor to Wolsey: _Rolls House MS._ Clark to Wolsey: _State
+Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 80, 81.
+
+[496] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 189.
+
+[497] Memoirs of Latimer prefixed to _Sermons_, pp. 3, 4; and see STRYPE'S
+_Memorials_, vol. i.
+
+[498] FOXE, vol. v. p. 416.
+
+[499] Tunstall, Bishop of London, has had the credit hitherto of this
+ingenious folly, the effect of which, as Sir Thomas More warned him, could
+only be to supply Tyndal with money.--HALL, 762, 763. The following letter
+from the Bishop of Norwich to Warham shows that Tunstall was only acting in
+canonical obedience to the resolution of his metropolitan:--
+
+"In right humble manner I commend me unto your good Lordship, doing the
+same to understand that I lately received your letters, dated at your manor
+of Lambeth, the 26th day of the month of May, by the which I do perceive
+that your Grace hath lately gotten into your hands all the books of the New
+Testament, translated into English, and printed beyond the sea; as well
+those with the glosses joined unto them as those without the glosses.
+
+"Surely, in myn opinion, you have done therein a gracious and a blessed
+deed; and God, I doubt not, shall highly reward you therefore. And when, in
+your said letters, ye write that, insomuch as this matter and the danger
+thereof, if remedy had not been provided, should not only have touched you,
+but all the bishops within your province; and that it is no reason that the
+holle charge and cost thereof should rest only in you; but that they and
+every of them, for their part, should advance and contribute certain sums
+of money towards the same: I for my part will be contented to advance in
+this behalf, and to make payment thereof unto your servant, Master William
+Potkyn.
+
+"Pleaseth it you to understand, I am well contented to give and advance in
+this behalf ten marks, and shall cause the same to be delivered shortly;
+the which sum I think sufficient for my part, if every bishop within your
+province make like contribution, after the rate and substance of their
+benefices. Nevertheless, if your Grace think this sum not sufficient for my
+part in this matter, your further pleasure known, I shall be as glad to
+conform myself thereunto in this, or any other matter concerning the
+church, as any your subject within your province; as knows Almighty God,
+who long preserve you. At Hoxne in Suffolk, the 14th day of June, 1527.
+Your humble obedience and bedeman,
+
+"R. NORWICEN."
+
+[500] FOXE, vol. iv.
+
+[501] The papal bull, and the king's licence to proceed upon it, are
+printed in _Rymer_, vol. vi. part ii. pp. 8 and 17. The latter is explicit
+on Wolsey's personal liberality in establishing this foundation. Ultro et
+ex propriā liberalitate et munificentiā, nec sine gravissimo suo sumptu et
+impensis, collegium fundare conatur.
+
+[502] Would God my Lord his Grace had never been motioned to call any
+Cambridge man to his most towardly college. It were a gracious deed if they
+were tried and purged and restored unto their mother from whence they came,
+if they be worthy to come thither again. We were clear without blot or
+suspicion till they came, and some of them, as Master Dean hath known a
+long time, hath had a shrewd name.--Dr. London to Archbishop Warham: _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[503] Dr. London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[504] DALABER'S _Narrative._
+
+[505] Clark seems to have taken pupils in the long vacation. Dalaber at
+least read with him all one summer in the country.--Dr. London to Warham:
+_Rolls House MS._
+
+[506] The Vicar of Bristol to the Master of Lincoln College, Oxford: _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[507] Dr. London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[508] Radley himself was one of the singers at Christchurch: London to
+Warham. _MS._
+
+[509] Dr. London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[510] On the site of the present Worcester College. It lay beyond the walls
+of the town, and was then some distance from it across the fields.
+
+[511] Christchurch, where Dalaber occasionally sung in the quire. Vide
+infra.
+
+[512] Some part of which let us read with him. "I send you forth as sheep
+in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as
+doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and
+they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before
+governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the
+gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye
+shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall
+speak; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which
+speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death; and
+the father the child; and the children shall rise up against their parents,
+and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my
+name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Whosoever
+shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which
+is in heaven. Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny
+before my Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace
+on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man
+at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and
+the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be
+they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is
+not worthy of me. He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy
+of me. He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of
+me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for
+my sake shall find it."
+
+[513] Rector of Lincoln.
+
+[514] Warden of New College.
+
+[515] The last prayer.
+
+[516] Dr. Maitland, who has an indifferent opinion of the early
+Protestants, especially on the point of veracity, brings forward this
+assertion of Dalaber as an illustration of what he considers their
+recklessness. It seems obvious, however, that a falsehood of this kind is
+something different in kind from what we commonly mean by unveracity, and
+has no affinity with it. I do not see my way to a conclusion; but I am
+satisfied that Dr. Maitland's strictures are unjust. If Garret was taken,
+he was in danger of a cruel death, and his escape could only be made
+possible by throwing the bloodhounds off the scent. A refusal to answer
+would not have been sufficient; and the general laws by which our conduct
+is ordinarily to be directed, cannot be made so universal in their
+application as to meet all contingencies. It is a law that we may not
+strike or kill other men, but occasions rise in which we may innocently do
+both. I may kill a man in defence of my own life or my friend's life, or
+even of my friend's property; and surely the circumstances which dispense
+with obedience to one law may dispense equally with obedience to another.
+_If_ I may kill a man to prevent him from robbing my friend, why may I not
+deceive a man to save my friend from being barbarously murdered? It is
+possible that the highest morality would forbid me to do either. I am
+unable to see why, if the first be permissible, the second should be a
+crime. Rahab of Jericho did the same thing which Dalaber did, and on that
+very ground was placed in the catalogue of saints.
+
+[517] A cell in the Tower, the nature of which we need not inquire into.
+
+[518] FOXE, vol. v. p. 421.
+
+[519] Dr. London to the Bishop of Lincoln: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[520] Ibid.
+
+[521] Dr. Forman, rector of All Hallows, who had himself been in trouble
+for heterodoxy.
+
+[522] Dr. London to the Bishop of Lincoln, Feb. 20, 1528: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[523] Now Cokethorpe Park, three miles from Stanton Harcourt, and about
+twelve from Oxford. The village has disappeared.
+
+[524] Vicar of All Saints, Bristol, to the Rector of Lincoln: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[525] The Vicar of All Saints to the Rector of Lincoln: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[526] Dr. London to the Bishop of Lincoln: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[527] Long extracts from it are printed in FOXE, vol. iv.
+
+[528] Another of the brethren, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, and one of
+the Marian victims.
+
+[529] Bishop of Lincoln to Wolsey, March 5, 1527-8: _Rolls House MS._: and
+see ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 77.
+
+[530] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 77.
+
+[531] With some others he "was cast into a prison where the saltfish lay,
+through the stink whereof the most part of them were infected; and the said
+Clark, being a tender young man, died in the same prison."--FOXE, vol. iv.
+p. 615.
+
+[532] London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[533] Petition of the Commons, vol. i. cap. 3.
+
+[534] Ibid. And, as we saw in the bishops' reply, they considered their
+practice in these respects wholly defensible.--See _Reply of the Bishops_,
+cap. 3.
+
+[535] Petition of the Commons, cap. 3.
+
+[536] Hen. V. stat. 1.
+
+[537] He had been "troublesome to heretics," he said, and he had "done it
+with a little ambition;" for "he so hated this kind of men, that he would
+fie the sorest enemy that they could have, if they would not
+repent."--MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 211.
+
+[538] See FOXE:, vol. iv. pp. 689, 698, 705.
+
+[539] 2 Hen. V. stat. 1.
+
+[540] John Stokesley.
+
+[541] Petition of Thomas Philips to the House of Commons: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[542] Ibid.
+
+[543] FOXE, vol. v. pp. 29, 30.
+
+[544] The circumstances are curious. Philips begged that he might have the
+benefit of the king's writ of corpus cum causā, and be brought to the bar
+of the House of Commons, where the Bishop of London should be subpoenaed to
+meet him. [Petition of Thomas Philips: _Rolls House MS._] The Commons did
+not venture on so strong a measure; but a digest of the petition was sent
+to the Upper House, that the bishop might have an opportunity of reply. The
+Lords refused to receive or consider the case: they replied that it was too
+"frivolous an affair" for so grave an assembly, and that they could not
+discuss it. [_Lords' Journals_, vol. i. p. 66.] A deputation of the Commons
+then waited privately upon the bishop, and being of course anxious to
+ascertain whether Philips had given a true version of what had passed, they
+begged him to give some written explanation of his conduct, which might be
+read in the Commons' House. [_Lords' Journals_, vol. i. p. 71.] The request
+was reasonable, and we cannot doubt that, if explanation had been possible,
+the bishop would not have failed to offer it; but he preferred to shield
+himself behind the judgment of the Lords. The Lords, he said, had decided
+that the matter was too frivolous for their own consideration; and without
+their permission, he might not set a precedent of responsibility to the
+Commons by answering their questions.
+
+This conduct met with the unanimous approval of the Peers. [_Lords'
+Journals_, vol. i. p. 71. Omnes proceres tam spirituales quam temporales
+unā, voce dicebant, quod non consentaneum fuit aliquem procerum prędictorum
+alicui in eo loco responsurum.] The demand for explanation was treated as a
+breach of privilege, and the bishop was allowed to remain silent. But the
+time was passed for conduct of this kind to be allowed to triumph. If the
+bishop could not or would not justify himself, his victim might at least be
+released from unjust imprisonment. The case was referred to the king: and
+by the king and the House of Commons Philips was set at liberty.
+
+[545] Petition of John Field: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[546] Jan. 1529-30.
+
+[547] Illegal. See 2 Hen. V. stat. 1.
+
+[548] Seventh Sermon before King Edward. First Sermon before the Duchess of
+Suffolk.
+
+[549] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 649.
+
+[550] Articles against James Bainham: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 703.
+
+[551] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 702.
+
+[552] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 705.
+
+[553] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 694.
+
+[554] HALL, p. 806; and see FOXE, vol iv. p. 705.
+
+[555] Instructions given by the Bishop of Salisbury: BURNET'S
+_Collectanea_, p. 493.
+
+[556] From a Letter of Robert Gardiner: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 706.
+
+[557] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 101.
+
+[558] Latimer speaks of sons and daughters.--Ibid. p. 101.
+
+[559] Ibid.
+
+[560] Where the Cornish rebels came to an end in 1497.--BACON'S _History of
+Henry the Seventh_.
+
+[561] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 197.
+
+[562] On which occasion, old relations perhaps shook their heads, and made
+objection to the expense. Some such feeling is indicated in the following
+glimpse behind the veil of Latimer's private history:--
+
+"I was once called to one of my kinsfolk," he says ("it was at that time
+when I had taken my degree at Cambridge); I was called, I say, to one of my
+kinsfolk which was very sick, and died immediately after my coming. Now,
+there was an old cousin of mine, which, after the man was dead, gave me a
+wax candle in my hand, and commanded me to make certain crosses over him
+that was dead; for she thought the devil should run away by and bye. Now, I
+took the candle, but I could not cross him as she would have me to do; for
+I had never seen it before. She, perceiving I could not do it, with great
+anger took the candle out of my hand, saying, 'It is pity that thy father
+spendeth so much money upon thee;' and so she took the candle, and crossed
+and blessed him; so that he was sure enough."--LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 499.
+
+[563] "I was as obstinate a papist as any was in England, insomuch that,
+when I should be made Bachelor of Divinity, my whole oration went against
+Philip Melancthon and his opinions."--LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 334.
+
+[564] _Jewel of Joy_, p. 224, et seq.: Parker Society's edition. LATIMER'S
+_Sermons_, p. 3.
+
+[565] LATIMER'S _Remains_, pp. 27-31.
+
+[566] Ibid. pp. 308-9.
+
+[567] LATIMER to Sir Edward Baynton: _Letters_, p. 329.
+
+[568] _Letters_, p. 323.
+
+[569] He thought of going abroad. "I have trust that God will help me," he
+wrote to a friend; "if I had not, I think the ocean sea should have divided
+my Lord of London and me by this day."--_Remains_, p. 334.
+
+[570] Latimer to Sir Edward Baynton.
+
+[571] See Latimer's two letters to Sir Edward Baynton: _Remains_, pp.
+322-351.
+
+[572] "As ye say, the matter is weighty, and ought substantially to be
+looked upon, even as weighty as my life is worth; but how to look
+substantially upon it otherwise know not I, than to pray my Lord God, day
+and night, that, as he hath emboldened me to preach his truth, so he will
+strengthen me to suffer for it.
+
+"I pray you pardon me that I write no more distinctly, for my head is [so]
+out of frame, that it would be too painful for me to write it again. If I
+be not prevented shortly, I intend to make merry with my parishioners, this
+Christmas, for all the sorrow, _lest perchance I never return to them
+again_; and I have heard say that a doe is as good in winter as a buck in
+summer."--Latimer to Sir Edward Baynton, p. 334.
+
+[573] LATIMER'S _Remains_, p. 334.
+
+[574] Ibid. p. 350.
+
+[575] "I pray you, in God's name, what did you, so great fathers, so many,
+so long season, so oft assembled together? What went you about? What would
+ye have brought to pass? Two things taken away--the one that ye (which I
+heard) burned a dead man,--the other, that ye (which I felt) went about to
+burn one being alive. Take away these two noble acts, and there is nothing
+else left that ye went about that I know," etc., etc.--Sermon preached
+before the Convocation: LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 46.
+
+[576] "My affair had some bounds assigned to it by him who sent for me up,
+but is now protracted by intricate and wily examinations, as if it would
+never find a period; while sometimes one person, sometimes another, ask me
+questions, without limit and without end."--Latimer to the Archbishop of
+Canterbury: _Remains_, p. 352.
+
+[577] _Remains_, p. 222.
+
+[578] _Sermons_, p. 294.
+
+[579] The process lasted through January, February, and March.
+
+[580] _Sermons_, p. 294.
+
+[581] He subscribed all except two--one apparently on the power of the
+pope, the other I am unable to conjecture. Compare the Articles
+themselves--printed in LATIMER'S _Remains_, p. 466--with the Sermon before
+the Convocation.--_Sermons_, p. 46; and BURNET, vol. iii. p. 116.
+
+[582] Nicholas Glossop to Cromwell: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 237.
+
+[583] Where he was known among the English of the day as Master Frisky-all.
+
+[584] See FOXE. vol. v. p. 392.
+
+[585] Eustace Chappuys to Chancellor Granvelle: _MS. Archiv. Brussels:
+Pilgrim_, p. 106.
+
+[586] See Cromwell's will in an appendix to this chapter. This document,
+lately found in the Rolls House, furnishes a clue at last to the
+connections of the Cromwell family.
+
+[587] Are we to believe Foxe's story that Cromwell was with the Duke of
+Bourbon at the storming of Rome in May, 1527? See FOXE, vol. v. p. 365. He
+was with Wolsey in January, 1527. See ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 117.
+And he was again with him early in 1528. Is it likely that he was in Italy
+on such an occasion in the interval? Foxe speaks of it as one of the random
+exploits of Cromwell's youth, which is obviously untrue; and the natural
+impression which we gather is, that he was confusing the expedition of the
+Duke of Bourbon with some earlier campaign. On the other hand Foxe's
+authority was Cranmer, who was likely to know the truth; and it is not
+impossible that, in the critical state of Italian politics, the English
+government might have desired to have some confidential agent in the Duke
+of Bourbon's camp. Cromwell, with his knowledge of Italy and Italian, and
+his adventurous ability, was a likely man to have been sent on such an
+employment; and the story gains additional probability from another legend
+about him, that he once saved the life of Sir John Russell, in some secret
+affair at Bologna. See FOXE, vol. v. p. 367. Now, although Sir John Russell
+had been in Italy several times before (he was at the Battle of Pavia, and
+had been employed in various diplomatic missions), and Cromwell might thus
+have rendered him the service in question on an earlier occasion, yet he
+certainly was in the Papal States, on a most secret and dangerous mission,
+in the months preceding the capture of Rome. _State Papers_, vol. vi. p.
+560, etc. The probabilities may pass for what they are worth till further
+discovery.
+
+[588] A damp, unfurnished house belonging to Wolsey, where he was ordered
+to remain till the government had determined upon their course towards him.
+See CAVENDISH.
+
+[589] CAVENDISH, pp. 269-70.
+
+[590] Ibid. p. 276.
+
+[591] Chappuys says, that a quarrel with Sir John Wallop first introduced
+Cromwell to Henry. Cromwell, "not knowing how else to defend himself,
+contrived with presents and entreaties to obtain an audience of the king,
+whom he promised to make the richest sovereign that ever reigned in
+England."--Chappuys to Granvelle: _The Pilgrim_, p. 107.
+
+[592] Or Willyams. The words are used indifferently.
+
+[593] The clause enclosed between brackets is struck through.
+
+[594] Struck through.
+
+[595] Mary, widow of Louis of Hungary, sister of the emperor, and Regent of
+the Netherlands.
+
+[596] She was much affected when the first intimation of the marriage
+reached her. "I am informed of a secret friend of mine," wrote Sir John
+Hacket, "that when the queen here had read the letters which she received
+of late out of England, the tears came to her eyes with very sad
+countenance. But indeed this day when I spake to her she showed me not such
+countenance, but told me that she was not well pleased.
+
+"At her setting forward to ride at hunting, her Grace asked me if I had
+heard of late any tidings out of England. I told her Grace, as it is true,
+that I had none. She gave me a look as that she should marvel thereof, and
+said to me, 'Jay des nouvelles qui ne me semblent point trop bonnes,' and
+told me touching the King's Highness's marriage. To the which I answered
+her Grace and said, 'Madame, je ne me doute point syl est faict, et quand
+le veult prendre et entendre de bonne part et au sain chemyn, sans porter
+faveur parentelle que ung le trouvera tout lente et bien raysonnable par
+layde de Dieu et de bonne conscience.' Her Grace said to me again,
+'Monsieur l'ambassadeur, c'est Dieu qui le scait que je vouldroye que le
+tout allysse bien, mais ne scaye comment l'empereur et le roy mon frere
+entendront l'affaire car il touche a eulx tant que a moy.' I answered and
+said, 'Madame, il me semble estre assuree que l'empereur et le roy vostre
+frere qui sont deux Prinssys tres prudens et sayges, quant ilz auront
+considere indifferentement tout l'affaire qu ilz ne le deveroyent
+prendre que de bonne part.' And hereunto her Grace made me answer,
+saying, 'Da quant de le prendre de bonne part ce la, ne sayge M.
+l'ambassadeur.'"--Hacket to the Duke of Norfolk: _State Papers_, vol. vii.
+p. 452.
+
+[597] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 457.
+
+[598] Sir Gregory Cassalis to the Duke of Norfolk. Ad pontificem accessi et
+mei sermonis illa summa fuit, vellet id pręstare ut serenissimum regem
+nostrum certiorem facere possemus, in suā causā nihil innovatum iri. Hic
+ille, sicut solet, respondit, nescire se quo pacto possit Cęsarianis
+obsistere,--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 461.
+
+[599] Bennet to Henry: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 462.
+
+[600] Ibid.
+
+[601] Letter undated, but written about the middle of June: _State Papers_,
+vol. vii. p. 474
+
+[602] Of the Archbishop of York, not of Canterbury: which provokes a
+question. Conjectures are of little value in history, but inasmuch as there
+must have been some grave reason for the substitution, a suggestion of a
+possible reason may not be wholly out of place. The appeal in itself was
+strictly legal; and it was of the highest importance to avoid any
+illegality of form. Cranmer, by transgressing the inhibition which Clement
+had issued in the winter, might be construed by the papal party to have
+virtually incurred the censures threatened, and an escape might thus have
+been furnished from the difficulty in which the appeal placed them.
+
+[603] Publico ecclesię judicio.
+
+[604] RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 188.
+
+[605] The French king did write unto Cardinal Tournon (not, however, of his
+own will, but under pressure from the Duke of Norfolk), very instantly,
+that he should desire the pope, in the said French king's name, that his
+Holyness would not innovate anything against your Highness any wise till
+the congress: adding, withal, that if his Holyness, notwithstanding his
+said desire, would proceed, he could not less do, considering the great and
+indissoluble amity betwixt your Highnesses, notorious to all the world, but
+take and recognise such proceeding for a fresh injury.--Bennet to Henry
+VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 468.
+
+[606] Ibid. p. 469.
+
+[607] Ibid. p. 469.
+
+[608] Ibid. p. 470.
+
+[609] Ibid. p. 467, note, and p. 470.
+
+[610] BURNET, vol. i. p. 221.
+
+[611] We only desire and pray you to endeavour yourselves in the execution
+of that your charge--easting utterly away and banishing from you such fear
+and timorousness, or rather despair, as by your said letters we perceive ye
+have conceived--reducing to your memories in the lieu and stead thereof, as
+a thing continually lying before your eyes and incessantly sounded in your
+ears, the justice of our cause, which cannot at length be shadowed, but
+shall shine and shew itself to the confusion of our adversaries. And we
+having, as is said, truth for us, with the help and assistance of God,
+author of the same, shall at all times be able to maintain you.--Henry
+VIII. to Bonner: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 485.
+
+[612] Bonner to Cromwell: Ibid. vol. vii. p. 481.
+
+[613] The proclamation ordering that Catherine should be called not queen,
+but Princess Dowager.
+
+[614] Catherine de Medici.
+
+[615] Henry VIII. to the Duke of Norfolk: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 493.
+
+[616] Sir John Racket, writing from Ghent on the 6th of September,
+describes as the general impression that the Pope's "trust was to assure
+his alliance on both sides." "He trusts to bring about that his Majesty the
+French king and he shall become and remain in good, fast, and sure alliance
+together; and so ensuring that they three (the Pope, Francis, and Charles
+V.) shall be able to reform and set good order in the rest of Christendom.
+But whether his Unhappiness's--I mean his Holiness's--intention, is set for
+the welfare and utility of Christendom, or for his own insincerity and
+singular purpose, I remit that to God and to them that know more of the
+world than I do."--Hacket to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 506.
+
+[617] John the Magnanimous, son of John the Steadfast, and nephew of the
+Elector Frederick, Luther's first protector.
+
+[618] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 499-501.
+
+[619] Princeps Elector ducit se imparem ut Regię Celsitudinis vel aliorum
+regum oratores eā lege in aulā suā degerent; vereturque ne ob id apud
+Cęsaream majestatem unicum ejus Dominum et alios male audiret, possetque
+sinistre tale institutum interpretari.--Reply of the Elector: _State
+Papers_, vol. vii. p. 503.
+
+[620] Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol vii. p. 509.
+
+[621] I consider the man, with other two--that is to say, the Landgrave von
+Hesse and the Duke of Lunenberg--to be the chief and principal defenders
+and maintainers of the Lutheran sect: who considering the same with no
+small difficulty to be defended, as well against the emperor and the
+bishops of Germany, his nigh and shrewd neighbours, as against the most
+opinion of all Christian men, feareth to raise any other new matter whereby
+they should take a larger and peradventure a better occasion to revenge the
+same. The King's Highness seeketh to have intelligence with them, as they
+conjecture to have them confederate with him; yea, and that against the
+emperor, if he would anything pretend against the king.--Here is the thing
+which I think feareth the duke.--Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol.
+vii. pp. 509-10.
+
+[622] HALL, p. 805.
+
+[623] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 512.
+
+[624] The Duke of Albany, during the minority of James V., had headed the
+party in Scotland most opposed to the English. He expelled the
+queen-mother, Margaret, sister of Henry; he seized the persons of the two
+young princes, whom he shut up in Stirling, where the younger brother died
+under suspicion of foul play (_Despatches of_ GIUSTINIANI, vol. i. p. 157);
+and subsequently, in his genius for intrigue, he gained over the queen
+dowager herself in a manner which touched her honour.--Lord Thomas Dacre to
+Queen Margaret: ELLIS, second series, vol. i. p. 279.
+
+[625] Ex his tamen, qui hęc a Pontifice, audierunt, intelligo regem
+vehementissime instare, ut vestrę majestatis expectatione satisfiat
+Pontifex.--Peter Vannes to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 518.
+
+[626] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 520.
+
+[627] Hoc dico quod video inter regem et pontificem conjunctissime et
+amicissime hic agi.--Vannes to Cromwell: Ibid.
+
+[628] Vannes to Cromwell: Ibid. pp. 522-3.
+
+[629] BURNET, _Collectanea_, p. 436.
+
+[630] Letter of the King of France: LEGRAND, vol. iii. Reply of Henry:
+FOXE, vol. v. p. 110.
+
+[631] Commission of the Bishop of Paris: LEGRAND, vol. iii; BURNET, vol.
+iii. p. 128; FOXE, vol. v. p. 106-111. The commission of the Bishop of
+Bayonne is not explicit on the extent to which the pope had bound himself
+with respect to the sentence. Yet either in some other despatch, or
+verbally through the Bishop, Francis certainly informed Henry that the Pope
+had promised that sentence should be given in his favour. We shall find
+Henry assuming this in his reply; and the Archbishop of York declared to
+Catherine that the pope "said at Marseilles, that if his Grace would send a
+proxy thither he would give sentence for his Highness against her, because
+that he knew his cause to be good and just."--_State Papers_, vol. i. p.
+421.
+
+[632] MS. Bibl. Impér. Paris.--_The Pilgrim_, pp. 97, 98. Cf. FOXE, vol. v.
+p. 110.
+
+[633] I hear of a number of Gelders which be lately reared; and the opinion
+of the people here is that they shall go into England. All men there speak
+evil of England, and threaten it in their foolish manner.--Vaughan to
+Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 511.
+
+[634] RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 189.
+
+[635] Parties were so divided in England that lookers-on who reported any
+one sentiment as general there, reported in fact by their own wishes and
+sympathies. D'Inteville, the French ambassador, a strong Catholic, declares
+the feeling to have been against the revolt. Chastillon, on the other hand,
+writing at the same time from the same place (for he had returned from
+France, and was present with d'Inteville at the last interview), says, "The
+King has made up his mind to a complete separation from Rome; and the lords
+and the majority of the people go along with him."--Chastillon to the
+Bishop of Paris: _The Pilgrim_, p. 99.
+
+[636] STRYPE, _Eccles. Memor._, vol. i. p. 224.
+
+[637] Instructions to the Earls of Oxford, Essex, and Sussex, to
+remonstrate with the Lady Mary: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[638] Ibid.
+
+[639] On the 15th of November, Queen Catherine wrote to the Emperor, and
+after congratulating him on his successes against the Turks, she continued,
+
+"And as our Lord in his mercy has worked so great a good for Christendom by
+your Highness's hands, so has he enlightened also his Holiness; and I and
+all this realm have now a sure hope that, with the grace of God, his
+Holiness will slay this second Turk, this affair between the King my Lord
+and me. Second Turk, I call it, from the misfortunes which, through his
+Holiness's long delay, have grown out of it, and are now so vast and of so
+ill example that I know not whether this or the Turk be the worst. Sorry am
+I to have been compelled to importune your Majesty so often in this matter,
+for sure I am you do not need my pressing. But I see delay to be so
+calamitous, my own life is so unquiet and so painful, and the opportunity
+to make an end now so convenient, that it seems as if God of his goodness
+had brought his Holiness and your Majesty together to bring about so great
+a good. I am forced to be importunate, and I implore your Highness for the
+passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, that in return for the signal benefits
+which God each day is heaping on you, you will accomplish for me this great
+blessing, and bring his Holiness to a decision. Let him remember what he
+promised you at Bologna. The truth here is known, and he will thus destroy
+the hopes of those who persuade the King my Lord that he will never pass
+judgment."--Queen Catherine to Charles V.: _MS. Simancas_, November 15,
+1533.
+
+[640] Letter to the King, giving an account of certain Friars Observants
+who had been about the Princess Dowager: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[641] We remember the northern prophecy, "In England shall be slain the
+decorate Rose in his mother's belly," which the monks of Furness
+interpreted as meaning that "the King's Grace should die by the hands of
+priests."--Vol. i. cap. 4.
+
+[642] Statutes of the Realm, 25 Henry VIII. cap. 12. State Papers relating
+to Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._ Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury,
+to Cromwell: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 20.
+
+[643] Thus Cromwell writes to Fisher: "My Lord, [the outward evidences
+that she was speaking truth] moved you not to give credence to her, but
+only the very matter whereupon she made her false prophecies, to which
+matter ye were so affected--as ye be noted to be on all matters which
+ye once enter into--that nothing could come amiss that made for that
+purpose."--_Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 30.
+
+[644] Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[645] Ibid.
+
+[646] Ibid.
+
+[647] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[648] Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._ 25 Hen. VIII.
+cap. 12. The "many" nobles are not more particularly designated in the
+official papers. It was not desirable to mention names when the offence was
+to be passed over.
+
+[649] Report of the Commissioners--Papers relating to the Nun of Kent:
+_Rolls House MS._
+
+[650] Goold, says the Act of the Nun's attainder, travelled to Bugden, "to
+animate the said Lady Princess to make commotion in the realm against our
+sovereign lord; surmitting that the said Nun should hear by revelation of
+God that the said Lady Catherine should prosper and do well, and that her
+issue, the Lady Mary, should prosper and reign in the realm."--25 Henry
+VIII. cap. 13.
+
+[651] Report of the Proceedings of the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[652] MS. Bibliot. Impér., Paris. The letter is undated. It was apparently
+written in the autumn of 1533.
+
+[653] Il a des nouvelles amours. In a paper at Simancas, containing Nuevas
+de Inglaterra, written about this time, is a similar account of the dislike
+of Anne and her family, as well as of the king's altered feelings towards
+her. Dicano anchora che la Anna č mal voluta degli Si. di Inghilterra si
+per la sua superbia, si anche per l'insolentia e mali portamenti che fanno
+nel regno li fratelli e parenti di Anna; e che per questo il Re non la
+porta la affezione que soleva per che il Re festeggia una altra Donna della
+quale se mostra esser inamorato, e molti Si. di Inghilterra lo ajutano nel
+seguir el predito amor per deviar questo Re dalla pratica di Anna.
+
+[654] HALL.
+
+[655] "I, dame Elizabeth Barton," she said, "do confess that I, most
+miserable and wretched person, have been the original of all this mischief,
+and by my falsehood I have deceived all these persons (the monks who were
+her accomplices), and many more; whereby I have most grievously offended
+Almighty God, and my most noble sovereign the King's Grace. Wherefore I
+humbly, and with heart most sorrowful, desire you to pray to Almighty God
+for my miserable sins, and make supplication for me to my sovereign for his
+gracious mercy and pardon."--Confession of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[656] Papers relating to Elizabeth Barton: Ibid.
+
+[657] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 415.
+
+[658] A curious trait in Mary's character may be mentioned in connection
+with this transfer. She had a voracious appetite; and in Elizabeth's
+household expenses an extra charge was made necessary of £26 a year for the
+meat breakfasts and meat suppers "served into the Lady Mary's
+chamber."--Statement of the expenses of the Household of the Princess
+Elizabeth: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[659] He is called _frater consobrinus_. See FULLER'S _Worthies_, vol. iii.
+p. 128.
+
+[660] He was killed at the battle of Pavia.
+
+[661] Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, married Catherine, daughter of Edward.
+
+[662] Believe me, my lord, there are some here, and those of the greatest
+in the land, who will be indignant if the Pope confirm the sentence against
+the late Queen.--D'Inteville to Montmorency: _The Pilgrim_, p. 97.
+
+[663] She once rode to Canterbury, disguised as a servant, with only a
+young girl for a companion.--Depositions of Sir Geoffrey Pole: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[664] Confession of Sir William Neville: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[665] Confession of Sir George Neville: Ibid.
+
+[666] Confession of the Oxford Wizard: Ibid.
+
+[667] Queen Anne Boleyn to Gardiner: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 355. Office
+for the Consecration of Cramp Rings: Ibid.
+
+[668] So at least the Oxford Wizard said that Sir William Neville had told
+him.--Confession of the Wizard: _Rolls House MS._ But the authority is not
+good.
+
+[669] Henry alone never listened seriously to the Nun of Kent.
+
+[670] John of Transylvania, the rival of Ferdinand. His designation by the
+title of king in an English state paper was a menace that, if driven to
+extremities, Henry would support him against the empire.
+
+[671] Acts of Council: _State Papers_, vol. i. pp. 414-15.
+
+[672] Henry VIII. to Sir John Wallop: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 524.
+
+[673] Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 517.
+Vaughan describes Peto with Shakespearian raciness. "Peto is an ipocrite
+knave, as the most part of his brethren be; a wolf; a tiger clad in a
+sheep's skin. It is a perilous knave--a raiser of sedition--an evil
+reporter of the King's Highness--a prophecyer of mischief--a fellow I would
+wish to be in the king's hands, and to be shamefully punished. Would God I
+could get him by any policy--I will work what I can. Be sure he shall do
+nothing, nor pretend to do nothing, in these parts, that I will not find
+means to cause the King's Highness to know. I have laid a bait for him. He
+is not able to wear the clokys and cucullys that be sent him out of
+England, they be so many."
+
+[674] Hacket to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 528.
+
+[675] Ibid. p. 530.
+
+[676] Hacket to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 531.
+
+[677] So at least Henry supposed, if we may judge by the resolutions of the
+Council "for the fortification of all the frontiers of the realm, as well
+upon the coasts of the sea as the frontiers foreanenst Scotland." The
+fortresses and havens were to be "fortefyed and munited;" and money to be
+sent to York to be in readiness "if any business should happen."--Ibid.
+vol. i. p. 411.
+
+[678] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 19.
+
+[679] A design which unfortunately was not put in effect. In the hurry of
+the time it was allowed to drop.
+
+[680] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 14.
+
+[681] 23 Henry VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[682] At this very time Campeggio was Bishop of Salisbury, and Ghinucci,
+who had been acting for Henry at Rome, was Bishop of Worcester. The Act by
+which they were deprived speaks of these two appointments as _nominations_
+by the king.--25 Henry VIII. cap. 27.
+
+[683] Wolsey held three bishoprics and one archbishopric, besides the abbey
+of St. Albans.
+
+[684] Thus when Wolsey was presented, in 1514, to the See of Lincoln, Leo
+X. writes to his beloved son Thomas Wolsey how that in his great care for
+the interests of the Church, "Nos hodie Ecclesię Lincolniensi, te in
+episcopum et pastorem pręficere intendimus." He then informs the Chapter of
+Lincoln of the appointment; and the king, in granting the temporalities,
+continues the fiction without seeming to recognise it:--"Cum dominus summus
+Pontifex nuper vacante Ecclesiā cathedrali personam fidelis clerici nostri
+Thomę Wolsey, in ipsius Ecclesię episcopum pręfecerit, nos," etc.--See the
+Acts in RYMER, vol. vi. part 1, pp. 55-7.
+
+[685] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 20. The pre-existing, unrealities with respect to
+the election of bishops explain the unreality of the new arrangement, and
+divest it of the character of wanton tyranny with which it appeared _primā
+facie_ to press upon the Chapters. The history of this statute is curious,
+and perhaps explains the intentions with which it was originally passed. It
+was repealed by the 2nd of the 1st of Edward VI. on the ground that the
+liberty of election was merely nominal, and that the Chapters ought to be
+relieved of responsibility when they had no power of choice. Direct
+nomination by the crown was substituted for the _congé d'élire_, and
+remained the practice till the reaction under Mary, when the indefinite
+system was resumed which had existed before the Reformation. On the
+accession of Elizabeth, the statute of 25 Henry VIII. was again enacted.
+The more complicated process of Henry was preferred to the more simple one
+of Edward, and we are naturally led to ask the reason of so singular a
+preference. I cannot but think that it was this. The Council of Regency
+under Edward VI. treated the Church as an institution of the State, while
+Henry and Elizabeth endeavoured (under difficulties) to regard it under its
+more Catholic aspect of an organic body. So long as the Reformation was in
+progress, it was necessary to prevent the intrusion upon the bench of
+bishops of Romanising tendencies, and the deans and chapters were therefore
+protected by a strong hand from their own possible mistakes. But the form
+of liberty was conceded to them, not, I hope, to place deliberately a body
+of clergymen in a degrading position, but in the belief that at no distant
+time the Church might be allowed without danger to resume some degree of
+self-government.
+
+[686] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 21.
+
+[687] I sent you no heavy words, but words of great comfort; willing your
+brother to shew you how benign and merciful the prince was; and that I
+thought it expedient for you to write unto his Highness, and to recognise
+your offence and to desire his pardon, which his Grace would not deny you
+how in your age and sickness.--Cromwell to Fisher: _Suppression of the
+Monasteries_, p. 27.
+
+[688] Sir Thomas More to Cromwell: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 350.
+
+[689] Ibid.
+
+[690] Ibid.
+
+[691] More to Cromwell: STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i. Appendix, p. 195.
+
+[692] More to the King: ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 47.
+
+[693] Cromwell to Fisher: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 27, et seq.
+
+[694] _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 27, et seq.
+
+[695] John Fisher to the Lords in Parliament: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii.
+p. 289.
+
+[696] _Lords' Journals_, p. 72.
+
+[697] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[698] In a tract written by a Dr. Moryson in defence of the government,
+three years later, I find evidence that a distinction was made among the
+prisoners, and that Dr. Bocking was executed with peculiar cruelty. "Solus
+in crucem actus est Bockingus," are Moryson's words, though I feel
+uncertain of the nature of the punishment which he meant to designate.
+"Crucifixion" was unknown to the English law; and an event so peculiar as
+the "crucifixion" of a monk would hardly have escaped the notice of the
+contemporary chroniclers. In a careful diary kept by a London merchant
+during these years, which is in MS. in the Library of Balliol College,
+Oxford, the whole party are said to have been hanged.--See, however,
+_Morysini Apomaxis_, printed by Berthelet, 1537.
+
+[699] HALL, p. 814.] The inferior confederates were committed to their
+prisons with the exception only of Fisher, who, though sentenced, found
+mercy thrust upon him, till by fresh provocation the miserable old man
+forced himself upon his fate.[700
+
+[700] LORD HERBERT says he was pardoned; I do not find, however, on what
+authority: but he was certainly not imprisoned, nor was the sentence of
+forfeiture enforced against him.
+
+[701] This is the substance of the provisions, which are, of course, much
+abridged.
+
+[702] _Lords' Journals_, vol. i. p. 82. An act was also passed in this
+session "against the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome." We trace it in
+its progress through the House of Lords. (_Lords' Journals_, Parliament of
+1533-4.) It received the royal assent (ibid.), and is subsequently alluded
+to in the both of the 28th of Henry VIII., as well as in a Royal
+Proclamation dated June, 1534; and yet it is not on the Roll, nor do I
+anywhere find traces of it. It is not to be confounded with the act against
+payment of Peter's Pence, for in the _Lords' Journals_ the two acts are
+separately mentioned. It received the royal assent on the 30th of March,
+while that against Peter's Pence was suspended till the 7th of April. It
+contained, also, an indirect assertion that the king was Head of the
+English Church, according to the title which had been given him by
+Convocation. (King's Proclamation: FOXE, vol. v. p. 69.) For some cause or
+other, the act at the last moment must have been withdrawn.
+
+[703] See BURNET, vol. i. pp. 220-1: vol. iii p. 135; and LORD HERBERT. Du
+Bellay's brother, the author of the memoirs, says that the king, at the
+bishop's entreaty, promised that if the pope would delay sentence, and send
+"judges to hear the matter, he would himself forbear to do what he proposed
+to do"--that is, separate wholly from the See of Rome. If this is true, the
+sending "judges" must allude to the "sending them to Cambray," which had
+been proposed at Marseilles.
+
+[704] See the letter of the Bishop of Bayonne, dated March 23, in LEGRAND.
+A paraphrase is given by BURNET, vol. iii. p. 132.
+
+[705] Promisistis predecessori meo quod si sententiam contra regem Anglię
+tulisset, Cęsar illum infra quatuor menses erat invasurus, et regno
+expulsurus.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 579.
+
+[706] Letter of Du Bellay in LEGRAND.
+
+[707] Ibid.
+
+[708] Sir Edward Karne and Dr. Revett to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol.
+vii. pp. 553-4.
+
+[709] State Papers, vol. vii. p. 560, et seq.
+
+[710] His Highness, considering the time and the malice of the emperour,
+cannot conveniently pass out of the realm--since he leaveth behind him
+another daughter and a mother, with their friends, maligning his
+enterprises in this behalf--who bearing no small grudge against his most
+entirely beloved Queen Anne, and his young daughter the princess, might
+perchance in his absence take occasion to excogitate and practise with
+their said friends matters of no small peril to his royal person, realm,
+and subjects.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 559.
+
+[711] LORD HERBERT.
+
+[712] I mentioned their execution in connection with their sentence; but it
+did not take place till the 20th of April, a month after their attainder:
+and delay of this kind was very unusual in cases of high treason. I have
+little doubt that their final sentence was in fact pronounced by the pope.
+
+[713] The oaths of a great many are in RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 195, et
+seq.
+
+[714] His great-grandson's history of him (_Life of Sir Thomas More,_, by
+CRESACRE MORE, written about 1620, published 1627, with a dedication to
+Henrietta Maria) is incorrect in so many instances that I follow it with
+hesitation; but the account of the present matter is derived from Mr.
+Roper, More's son-in-law, who accompanied him to Lambeth, and it is
+incidentally confirmed in various details by More himself.
+
+[715] MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 232.
+
+[716] More held extreme republican opinions on the tenure of kings, holding
+that they might be deposed by act of parliament.
+
+[717] MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 237.
+
+[718] BURNET, vol. i. p. 255.
+
+[719] MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 237.
+
+[720] Cromwell to the Archbishop of Canterbury: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[721] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 411, et seq.
+
+[722] Royal Proclamation, June, 1534.
+
+[723] Ibid.
+
+[724] FOXE, vol. v. p. 70.
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of
+3), by James Anthony Froude, et al</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3)</p>
+<p>Author: James Anthony Froude</p>
+<p>Release Date: April 4, 2005  [eBook #15537]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH, VOLUME 1 (OF 3)***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Deirdre Menchaca, Keith Edkins,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<a href="#pagexxi">CONTENTS</a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>Froude's<br />
+  History Of England</h3>
+
+  <h1>THE REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH</h1>
+  <h2>Volume I</h2>
+  <h4>by</h4>
+  <h2>JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE</h2>
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h2>Introduction by<br />
+  W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS M.P. B.C.L.</h2>
+
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+  <h4>FIRST PUBLISHED 1909</h4>
+  <p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h6>London &amp; Toronto J.M. Dent &amp; Sons Ltd.<br />
+New York E.P. Dutton &amp; Co</h6>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:50%;">
+      <a href="images/003.png"><img width="100%" src="images/003.png"
+      alt="" /></a>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:50%;">
+	  <a href="images/004.png"><img width="100%" src="images/004.png"
+      alt="" /></a>
+  </div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<!-- Page vii --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagevii"></a>[vii]</span>
+
+<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+  <p>James Anthony Froude was born at Dartington Rectory, the youngest son
+  of the Archdeacon of Totnes, on April 23, 1818. His father was a
+  clergyman of the old school, as much squire as parson. In the concluding
+  chapter to his <i>History of England</i>, Froude wrote that "for a
+  hundred and forty years after the Revolution of 1688, the Church of
+  England was able to fulfil with moderate success the wholesome functions
+  of a religious establishment. Theological doctrinalism passed out of
+  fashion; and the clergy, merged as they were in the body of the nation,
+  and no longer endeavouring to elevate themselves into a separate order,
+  were occupied healthily in impressing on their congregations the meaning
+  of duty and moral responsibility to God." Of this sane and orthodox, but
+  not over-spiritual, clergy, Archdeacon Froude was an excellent and
+  altogether wholesome type. He was a stiff Tory; his hatred of Dissent was
+  so uncompromising that he would not have a copy of the <i>Pilgrim's
+  Progress</i> in the rectory. A stern, self-contained, reticent man, he
+  never, in word of deed, confessed his affection for his youngest son. He
+  was a good horseman, and was passionately fond of open-air exercises and
+  especially of hunting. His one accomplishment was drawing, and his
+  sketches in after years earned the praise of Ruskin.</p>
+
+  <p>Cast in the same mould, but fashioned by different circumstances, the
+  archdeacon's eldest son, Richard Hurrell Froude, was a man of greater
+  intellectual brilliance and even more masterful character. He was one of
+  the pioneers of the Oxford Movement, and it was only his early death that
+  deposed him from his place of equality with Newman and Keble and Pusey.
+  Anthony was a sickly child, and from his earliest years lacked the loving
+  care of a mother. He was brought up with Spartan severity by his father
+  and his aunt. The most venial self-indulgence was regarded as criminal.
+  From the age of three he was inured to hardship by being ducked every
+  morning in a trough of ice-cold water. Hurrell Froude felt no tenderness
+  for the ailing lad. Once, in order to rouse a manly spirit in his little
+  brother, he took him by the heels, plunged him like another Achilles into
+  a stream, and <!-- Page viii --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="pageviii"></a>[viii]</span> stirred with his head the mud at the
+  bottom. Froude has been accused, and not without justice, of not feeling
+  a proper aversion to acts of cruelty. The horrible Boiling Act of Henry
+  VIII. excites neither disgust nor hatred in him; and he makes smooth
+  excuses for the illegal tortures of the rack and the screw which were
+  inflicted on prisoners by Elizabeth and her ministers. He had himself
+  been reared in a hardy school; he had been trained to be indifferent to
+  pain. It may well be that his callousness in speaking of Tudor cruelties
+  is to be traced to the influences that surrounded his loveless childhood
+  and youth.</p>
+
+  <p>Hurrell Froude was the idol of his younger brothers. He was a man of
+  brilliant parts, and a born leader of men. His hatred of Radicals and
+  Dissenters transcended even his father's dislike of them. His conception
+  of the Church differed widely from that in which the archdeacon had been
+  reared. To him a clergyman was a priest who belonged to a sacerdotal
+  caste, and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To
+  him the Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than
+  the Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas ą Becket. He wrote a
+  sketch of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His
+  friends ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal
+  ecclesiastical statesman of modern times was Archbishop Laud. Charles I.
+  was a martyr, and the Revolution of 1688 an inglorious blunder. To the
+  day of his death&mdash;in spite of the harsh discipline which he received
+  at his hands in boyhood, in spite of wide divergence of opinion in later
+  years in all matters secular and religious&mdash;Froude never ceased to
+  worship at his brother's shrine. Out of regard for his memory, more than
+  from any passionate personal conviction, he associated himself while at
+  Oxford with the Anglican movement. His affectionate admiration for
+  Newman, neither time nor change served to impair. If Carlyle was his
+  prophet in later years, his influence happily did not affect his style.
+  That was based on the chaste model of Newman. He owed his early
+  friendship with Newman to that great man's association with Hurrell
+  Froude. Many years after, when Freeman had venomously accused him of
+  "dealing stabs in the dark at a brother's almost forgotten
+  fame"&mdash;poor Froude's offence was that he dared to write an essay on
+  Thomas ą Becket&mdash;he defended himself with rare emotion against the
+  charge. "I look back upon my brother," he said, "as on the whole <!--
+  Page ix --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageix"></a>[ix]</span> the
+  most remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I have never seen any
+  person&mdash;not one&mdash;in whom, as I now think him, the excellences
+  of intellect and character were combined in fuller measure."</p>
+
+  <p>As Froude's powers developed and matured, and as his experience of the
+  world broadened, he cast away his brother's yoke, and reverted more to
+  his father's school of thought. As his father was to him the ideal
+  clergyman of the Church of England, so the Church before 1828 remained to
+  him the model of what an established religion should be. He was a
+  thorough Erastian, who believed in the subordination of the Church to the
+  state. He detested theological doctrinalism of all kinds; he revolted
+  against the idea that the clergy should form a separate order. The
+  pretensions of Whitgift and Laud, the High Anglican school of Keble and
+  Pusey, the whole conception of the Church and the priesthood which
+  underlay the Oxford Movement, were things obnoxious to him. In a
+  characteristic passage in the chapter on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew
+  he reveals his hatred and distrust of dogmatism. "Whenever the doctrinal
+  aspect of Christianity has been prominent above the practical," he wrote,
+  "whenever the first duty of the believer has been held to consist in
+  holding particular opinions on the functions and nature of his Master,
+  and only the second in obeying his Master's commands, then always, with a
+  uniformity more remarkable than is obtained in any other historical
+  phenomena, there have followed dissension, animosity, and in later ages
+  bloodshed. Christianity, as a principle of life, has been the most
+  powerful check upon the passions of mankind. Christianity as a
+  speculative system of opinion has converted them into monsters of
+  cruelty."</p>
+
+  <p>Holding such decided views on doctrinalism, it might have been thought
+  that Froude would have visited all the warring sects of the sixteenth
+  century with equal judgment. No Church was more doctrinal than that of
+  Geneva; no Calvinist ever was more dogmatic than John Knox. But the men
+  who fought the battle of the Reformation in England and Scotland were, in
+  the main, the Calvinists; and to Froude the Reformation was the beginning
+  of a new and better era, when the yoke of the priest had been finally
+  cast away. "Calvinism," he said in one of his addresses at St. Andrews,
+  "was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth." John Knox was too
+  heroic a figure not to rouse the artistic sense in <!-- Page x --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="pagex"></a>[x]</span> Froude. "There lies one,"
+  said the Regent Morton over his coffin, "who never feared the face of
+  mortal man." Froude has made this epitaph the text of the noblest eulogy
+  ever delivered on Knox. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire
+  history of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox." He
+  surpassed Cromwell and Burghley in integrity of purpose and in purity of
+  methods. He towered above the Regent Murray in intellect, and he worked
+  on a larger scale than Latimer. "His was the voice that taught the
+  peasant of the Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of
+  God with the proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his
+  forefathers. He was the one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften
+  nor Maitland deceive. He it was who had raised the poor commons of his
+  country into a stern and rugged people, who might be hard, narrow,
+  superstitious, and fanatical, but who nevertheless were men whom neither
+  king, noble, nor priest could force again to submit to tyranny." Yet even
+  here, Froude could not refrain from quoting the sardonic comment of the
+  English ambassador at Edinburgh: Knox behaved, said Randolph, "as though
+  he were of God's privy council."</p>
+
+  <p>It is certain, at least, that other reformers, who were not greatly
+  inferior to Knox in capacity, and not at all in piety and honesty, have
+  not met the same generous treatment at his hands. He sneers at Hooper
+  because he had scruples about wearing episcopal robes at his consecration
+  as Bishop of Worcester, though he himself in a famous passage asserts the
+  anomalous position of bishops in the Church of England. Hooper, as a
+  Calvinist, was in the right in objecting, and though the point upon which
+  he took his stand was nominally one of form, there lay behind it a
+  protest against the Anglican conception of a bishop. He speaks
+  slightingly of Ridley and Ferrars, though he makes ample amends to them
+  and to Hooper, when he comes to describe the manner of their death. To
+  the reformers who fled from the Marian persecution, including men like
+  Jewel and Grindal, he refers with scornful contempt, though he has no
+  word of criticism to apply to Knox for retiring to England and to the
+  continent when the flame of persecution was certainly not more fierce.
+  Latimer is one of his favourites,&mdash;a plain, practical man, not given
+  to abstract speculation or theological subtleties, but one who was
+  content to do his duty day by day without the fear of man before his
+  eyes. Latimer, though he was looked upon <!-- Page xi --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="pagexi"></a>[xi]</span> as a Protestant in the
+  earliest years of the English Reformation, believed in the Real Presence
+  up to a short time before his death. But of all English ecclesiastics
+  Thomas Cranmer was perhaps most to Froude's liking. Cranmer was, like
+  Froude himself, an artist in words. The English liturgy owes its charm
+  and beauty to his sense of style, his grace of expression, and his
+  cultured piety. That he was a great man few will be found in these days
+  to maintain; fewer still will believe that he deserved the scathing
+  invective of Macaulay. But no one can read the account given by Froude of
+  his last years without feeling that the first Protestant Archbishop of
+  Canterbury was neither saint nor martyr. If ever there was one, he was a
+  timeserver. He pronounced the divorce of Catherine of Arragon, though he
+  had sworn fealty to the Pope. He never raised a protest against any of
+  the political murders of Henry VIII.&mdash;with the notable exception of
+  his courageous attempt to save his friend, Thomas Cromwell. Even in that
+  case, however, he lies under the suspicion of having interfered through
+  fear that his own fate was involved in that of the <i>malleus
+  monachorum</i>. In the days of Edward VI. he aimed at the liberty, if not
+  at the life, of Bonner and Gardiner, without semblance of legal right: He
+  recanted in the reign of Mary when he thought he could purchase his
+  miserable life. It was only when all hope of pardon was past that he
+  re-affirmed his belief in the reformed faith. Indeed, he waited until the
+  day of his execution before withdrawing his recantation, and confounded
+  his enemies on the way to the stake. To a master of dramatic narrative
+  the last scene of Cranmer's life came as a relief and an inspiration. "So
+  perished Cranmer," wrote Froude, in a memorable passage: "he was brought
+  out, with the eyes of his soul blinded, to make sport for his enemies,
+  and in his death he brought upon them a wider destruction than he had
+  effected by his teaching while alive. Pole was appointed the next day to
+  the See of Canterbury; but in other respects the court had over-reached
+  themselves by their cruelty. Had they been contented to accept the
+  recantation, they would have left the archbishop to die broken-hearted,
+  pointed at by the finger of pitying scorn; and the Reformation would have
+  been disgraced in its champion. They were tempted, by an evil spirit of
+  revenge, into an act unsanctioned even by their own bloody laws; and they
+  gave him an opportunity of writing his name in the roll of martyrs. The
+  worth of a man must be <!-- Page xii --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="pagexii"></a>[xii]</span> measured by his life, not by his failure
+  under a single and peculiar peril. The Apostle, though forewarned, denied
+  his Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his
+  nature in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which
+  he would build his Church."</p>
+
+  <p>With this conscious and avowed bias in favour of undogmatic
+  Christianity, Froude came to write the story of the transition of England
+  from a Catholic to a Protestant country. He was not without sympathy with
+  the old order of things. We cannot but feel a thrill as we read his
+  incomparable description of the change which was effected in men's
+  thoughts and ideas by the translation of the medięval into the modern
+  world? "For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and
+  direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to
+  era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old
+  things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries
+  were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the
+  castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms,
+  desires, beliefs, convictions, of the old world were passing away, never
+  to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor
+  of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of
+  immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its
+  foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the
+  universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for
+  themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all
+  gone&mdash;like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the
+  old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian
+  will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagination
+  can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the cathedral,
+  only as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some
+  faint conceptions float before us of what these men were when they were
+  alive; and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation
+  of medięval age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished
+  world." Froude was once asked what was the greatest and most essential
+  quality of an historian. He replied that it was imagination. It was a
+  true and a just saying, and Froude himself possessed the faculty in
+  abundance.</p>
+
+  <p>It was not only with the old order that Froude showed his sympathy. He
+  is seldom ungenerous in his references to <!-- Page xiii --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="pagexiii"></a>[xiii]</span> individual
+  Catholics, however mistaken in his sight their opinions may have been.
+  With Wolsey and Warham, Fisher and More, even with Gardiner and Bonner he
+  deals fairly and with some amount of real sympathy. The heroic death of
+  Campian moves him to pity just as much as the death of Latimer; the
+  strenuous labours of Father Parsons to overthrow Elizabeth and
+  Protestantism failed to remove him beyond the pale of Froude's charitable
+  judgment. One English Catholic alone was reserved for the historian's
+  harsh and sometimes petulant criticism. For Cardinal Pole Froude felt the
+  angriest contempt. He was descended from the blood royal, both of England
+  and of Wales. On his father's side he was descended in direct line from
+  the ancient princes of Powis; on his mother's from the Plantagenets and
+  the Nevilles. He was the most learned and illustrious Englishman of his
+  age. He had stood high in King Henry's favour; he was destined for the
+  greatest offices in the state. He was not without natural ambition. Yet
+  he forfeited all that he had&mdash;the favour of his prince, the society
+  of his mother whom he loved, and the kindred who were proud of him, the
+  hope of promotion and of power, his friends, his home, and his country,
+  for conscience' sake. He remained true to the ancient faith in which he
+  was reared. With unerring instinct he foresaw that, once England was
+  severed from the Papacy, it would be impossible for king or parliament to
+  stem the flood of the Reformation. For twenty years he remained an exile
+  on the continent. He returned an old and broken man, to witness the
+  overthrow of his cherished plans. He was repudiated by the Pope whose
+  authority he had sacrificed everything to maintain, and in his old age he
+  suffered the humiliation of being accused of heresy in the court of Rome.
+  He died the same day as Mary died, with the knowledge that all his life's
+  labours and sacrifices were come to naught, and that the dominion of the
+  Roman Church in England was gone for ever. Froude saw none of the pathos
+  or tragedy of Pole's life. To him the cardinal was a renegade, a traitor
+  to his country, a mercenary of the Pope, a foreign potentate, a
+  "hysterical dreamer," who vainly imagined that he was "the champion of
+  heaven, and the destroyer of heresy."</p>
+
+  <p>Froude was, above all, an Englishman. His strongest sympathies went
+  out to the "God's Englishmen" of Elizabeth's reign, who broke the power
+  of Rome and Spain, and <!-- Page xiv --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="pagexiv"></a>[xiv]</span> who made England supreme in Europe. In
+  his first chapter he describes the qualities of Englishmen with a zest
+  and gusto that drew the comment from Carlyle that "this seems to me
+  exaggerated: what we call John Bullish." He described them as "a sturdy,
+  high-hearted race, sound in body and fierce in spirit which, under the
+  stimulus of those great shins of beef, their common diet, were the wonder
+  of the age." Carlyle's advice when he read this passage in proof was
+  characteristic:&mdash;"Modify a little: Frederick the Great was brought
+  up on beer-sops; Robert Burns on oatmeal porridge; and Mahomet and the
+  Caliphs conquered the world on barley meal." But the passage stood
+  unmodified, in spite of Froude's regard for his master.</p>
+
+  <p>How this fierce and turbulent people fought their way to world-wide
+  empire was a problem which Froude thought he was able to solve. It was,
+  in the main, because they broke down the power of the priests, and
+  insisted on the supremacy of state over Church. Therefore all his filial
+  affection, his patriotism, and his ecclesiastical prejudices were arrayed
+  on the same side. If history be an exact science, then Froude can lay no
+  claim to the title of historian. He was a brilliant advocate, a man of
+  letters endowed with a matchless style, writing of matters which
+  interested him deeply, and in the investigation of which he spent twenty
+  years of his life. Froude himself would have been the first to repudiate
+  the idea that history is philosophy teaching by examples, or that an
+  historian has necessarily a greater insight into the problems of the
+  present than any other observant student of affairs. "Gibbon," he once
+  wrote, "believed that the era of conquerors was at an end. Had he lived
+  out the full life of man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of
+  Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed the world had grown too
+  civilised for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the
+  inauguration of a new era. Battles, bloody as Napoleon's, are now the
+  familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have made the greatest
+  progress are the arts of destruction."</p>
+
+  <p>It is absurd to attack Froude on the ground that he was biassed. No
+  man has ever yet written a living history without being biassed.
+  Thucydides detested the radicalism of Cleon as heartily as Gibbon hated
+  the Christianity of Rome. It was once the fashion of the Oxford school to
+  decry Froude as being unworthy of the name of historian. Stubbs, indeed,
+  <!-- Page xv --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexv"></a>[xv]</span>
+  did pay public tribute to Froude's "great work," but he stood almost
+  alone of his school. Freeman for many years pursued and persecuted Froude
+  with a persistent malevolence which happily has no parallel in the story
+  of English scholarship. It is not necessary in this place to do more than
+  refer to that unpleasant episode. Since the publication of the brilliant
+  vindication of Froude in Mr. Herbert Paul's <i>Life</i>, it would be
+  superfluous to go into the details of that unhappy controversy. The only
+  difference between Froude and other historians is that Froude's
+  partisanship is always obvious. He was not more favourable to Henry VIII.
+  than Stubbs was to Thomas ą Becket. But Froude openly avowed his
+  preferences and his dislikes. Catholicism was to him "a dying
+  superstition," Protestantism "a living truth." Freeman went further, and
+  charged Froude with having written a history which was not "<i>un livre
+  de bonne joy.</i>" It is only necessary to recall the circumstances under
+  which the <i>History</i> was written to dispose of that odious charge. In
+  order to obtain material for his <i>History</i>, Froude spent years of
+  his life in the little Spanish village of Simancas. "I have worked in
+  all," he said in his Apologia, "through nine hundred volumes of letters,
+  notes, and other papers, private and official, in five languages and in
+  different handwritings. I am not rash enough to say that I have never
+  misread a word, or overlooked a passage of importance. I profess only to
+  have dealt with my materials honestly to the best of my ability." Few,
+  indeed, have had to encounter such difficulties as met Froude in his
+  exploration of the archives at Simancas. "Often at the end of a page," he
+  wrote many years after, "I have felt as after descending a precipice, and
+  have wondered how I got down. I had to cut my way through a jungle, for
+  no one had opened the road for me. I have been turned into rooms piled to
+  the window-sill with bundles of dust-coloured despatches, and told to
+  make the best of it. Often have I found the sand glistening on the ink
+  where it had been sprinkled when a page was turned. There the letter had
+  lain, never looked at again since it was read and put away." Of these
+  difficulties not a trace is discoverable in Froude's easy and effortless
+  narrative. When he was approaching the completion of his <i>History</i>,
+  he vowed that his account of the Armada should be as interesting as a
+  novel. He succeeded not only with that portion of his task, but with all
+  the stirring story that he set out to narrate. But the ease <!-- Page xvi
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexvi"></a>[xvi]</span> of his style
+  only concealed the real pains which he had taken. Of Freeman's charge
+  Froude has long been honourably acquitted. The Simancas MSS. have since
+  been published in the Rolls Series, and Mr. Martin Hume, in his
+  Introduction, has paid his tribute to the care, accuracy, and good faith
+  of their first transcriber. Long before this testimony could be given,
+  Scottish historians who disagreed with Froude's conclusions on many
+  points,&mdash;men such as Skelton and Burton&mdash;had been profoundly
+  impressed with the care, skill, and conscientiousness with which Froude
+  handled the mass of tangled materials relating to the history of
+  Scotland.</p>
+
+  <p>This does not mean that Froude is free from minor inaccuracies, or
+  that he is innocent of graver faults which flowed from his abundant
+  quality of imagination. He constantly quotes a sentence inaccurately in
+  his text, while it is accurately transcribed in a footnote. He is
+  careless in matters which are important to students of Debrett, as for
+  instance, he indiscriminately describes Lord Howard as Lord William
+  Howard and Lord Howard. But Froude was sometimes guilty of something
+  worse than these trivial "howlers." Lecky exposed, with calm
+  ruthlessness, some of Froude's exaggerations&mdash;to call them by no
+  worse name&mdash;in his <i>Story of the English in Ireland</i>. When his
+  <i>Erasmus</i> was translated into Dutch, the countrymen of Erasmus
+  accused him of constant, if not deliberate, inaccuracy. Lord Carnarvon
+  once sent Froude to South Africa as an informal special commissioner.
+  When he returned to this country he wrote an article on the South African
+  problem in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>. Sir Bartle Frere, who knew South
+  Africa as few men did, said of it that it was an "essay in which for
+  whole pages a truth expressed in brilliant epigrams alternates with
+  mistakes or misstatements which would scarcely be pardoned in a special
+  war correspondent hurriedly writing against time." So dangerous is the
+  quality of imagination in a writer!</p>
+
+  <p>Truth to tell, Froude was a literary man with a fondness for
+  historical investigation, and an artist's passion for the dramatic in
+  life and story. He wrote with a purpose&mdash;that purpose being to
+  defend the English Reformation against the attacks of the
+  neo-Catholic-Anglicans, under whose influence he had himself been for a
+  time in his youth. To him, therefore, Henry VIII. was "the majestic lord
+  who broke the bonds of Rome." This is not the occasion, nor is the
+  present writer the man, to analyse that complex and masterful <!-- Page
+  xvii --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexvii"></a>[xvii]</span>
+  personality. Froude started to defend the English Reformation against the
+  vile charge that it was the outcome of kingly lust. That charge he has
+  finally dispelled. Henry VIII. was not the monster that Lingard painted.
+  He beheaded two queens, but few will be found to assert to-day that
+  either Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard were innocent martyrs. People must
+  agree to differ to the crack of doom as to the justice of Catherine's
+  divorce. It is one of those questions which different men will continue
+  to answer in different ways. But one thing is abundantly clear. If Henry
+  was actuated merely by passion for Anne Boleyn, he would scarcely have
+  waited for years before putting Queen Catherine away. Henry divorced Anne
+  of Cleves, but Anne, who survived the dissolution of her marriage and
+  remained in England for twenty years, made no complaint of her treatment,
+  and she has had no champions either among Catholic or Protestant writers.
+  Her divorce is only remembered as the occasion of the downfall of the
+  greatest statesman of his age, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. But in his
+  eagerness to proclaim the truth, Froude went on to defend a paradox. Once
+  free from the charge of lust,&mdash;and compared with Francis of France
+  or Charles V., Henry was a continent man&mdash;Henry became to Froude the
+  ideal monarch.</p>
+
+  <p>Some one has said that Henry VIII. was the greatest king that ever
+  lived, because he always got his own way. If that be the test, then Henry
+  was indeed "every inch a king." He broke with Rome; he deposed the Pope
+  from his supremacy over England; he dissolved the monasteries; he sent
+  the noblest and wisest in England to the scaffold; he reduced Wales to
+  law and order and gave her a constitution; he married and unmarried as he
+  liked; he disposed of the succession to the throne of England by his
+  will; and his people never murmured. Only once, when the Pilgrimage of
+  Grace broke out, was his throne in any danger, and that insurrection he
+  easily suppressed. He made war with France; he invaded Scotland more than
+  once, and every time with striking success. He played his vigorous part
+  in European politics, and at his death he left his realm inviolate. It is
+  an amazing record, which might well dazzle a writer of Froude's
+  temperament and training. But there are dark shades in the picture, which
+  Froude was content to make little of, if not to ignore. He is fond of
+  contrasting Henry's way with conspirators with that of his <!-- Page
+  xviii --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexviii"></a>[xviii]</span>
+  daughter Elizabeth. He sneers at her "tenderness" towards high-born
+  traitors, and never ceases to reproach her with her one act of repression
+  after the Yorkshire rising. But he had not a word to say against the
+  tyrannical murders of Henry VIII. Elizabeth truly boasted that she never
+  punished opinion: Henry sent to the scaffold better men than himself for
+  holding academical opinions contrary to his own. Cardinal Fisher may have
+  been&mdash;after the publication of Chappuys's letters it is not possible to
+  deny that he was&mdash;technically guilty of treason. But he was a saint
+  and an old man past eighty, and "the earth on the edge of the grave was
+  already crumbling under his feet." The king spared neither age nor worth
+  nor innocence. He had been the familiar friend of More; he had walked
+  through his gardens at Chelsea leaning on his arm; More had been his
+  chancellor; he was still the greatest of his subjects; while frankly
+  admitting that he differed in opinion from the king on the question of
+  the royal supremacy, he promised that he would not try to influence
+  others. Henry was inexorable. He not only condemned him to die a
+  traitor's death,&mdash;he added a callous message, which still rouses the
+  indignation of every generous soul, that he should "not use many words on
+  the scaffold." Thomas Cromwell had served him as few ministers have
+  served a king; to him was due&mdash;or, at least, he was the capable
+  instrument of&mdash;the policy which has given distinction to Henry's
+  reign; but he was delivered over to his enemies when the king's caprice
+  had shifted to another quarter. Even Froude finds it difficult to excuse
+  the execution of More and Cromwell. But, having once made up his mind to
+  make a hero of Henry, he goes on with it bravely to the end. He hides
+  nothing, he excuses nothing, he extenuates nothing. Neither the death of
+  the aged Countess of Salisbury or of the gallant Earl of Surrey, nor the
+  illegal imprisonment of the aged Norfolk, the hero of Flodden, shakes his
+  faith in his hero-king. He even relates, with minute detail, how a few
+  days before the king's death, four poor persons, one of whom was a
+  tailor, were burnt at the stake for denying the Real Presence. But his
+  final comment on it all was: "His personal faults were great, and he
+  shared, besides them, in the errors of his age; but far deeper blemishes
+  would be but scars upon the features of a sovereign who in trying times
+  sustained nobly the honour of the English name, and carried the
+  commonwealth securely through the hardest crisis in its history."</p>
+
+<!-- Page xix --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexix"></a>[xix]</span>
+
+  <p>When a young man Froude had been elected Fellow of Exeter College,
+  Oxford. This entailed his taking holy orders, though he does not seem to
+  have regularly performed the duties of a clergyman. In 1849 he published
+  his first book, <i>The Nemesis of Faith</i>, now happily forgotten. It
+  raised an immediate commotion. It was denounced as heretical, and the
+  senior tutor of Exeter burnt it during a lecture in the College Hall.
+  Froude resigned his Fellowship, and his connection with the university
+  was severed for thirty-three years. He was one of the first to take
+  advantage of the alteration of the law which enabled a clergyman to
+  resign his orders. In 1892 he went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of
+  Modern History. "The temptation of going back to Oxford in a respectable
+  way," he said, "was too much for me." He died on October 20, 1894, and on
+  his tombstone he is simply described, by his own wish, as Professor of
+  Modern History in the University of Oxford.</p>
+
+  <p>The writer is indebted for information with regard to Froude's life to
+  Mr. Pollard's article in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>, and
+  to Mr. Herbert Paul's admirable <i>Life of Froude</i> (Pitman).</p>
+
+  <p>W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS.</p>
+
+  <p><i>November</i> 16, 1908.</p>
+
+  <p>The following is a list of the published works of J.A. Froude:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>Life of St. Neot (Lives of the English Saints, edited by J.H.
+  Newman), 1844; Shadows of the Clouds (Tales), by Zeta (<i>pseud.</i>),
+  1847; A Sermon (on 2 Cor. vii. 10) preached at St. Mary's Church on the
+  Death of the Rev. George May Coleridge, 1847; Article on Spinoza
+  (<i>Oxford and Cambridge Review</i>), 1847; The Nemesis of Faith (Tale),
+  1849; England's Forgotten Worthies (<i>Westminster Review</i>), 1852;
+  Book of Job (<i>Westminster Review)</i>, 1853; Poems of Matthew Arnold
+  (<i>Westminster Review</i>), 1854; Suggestions on the Best Means of
+  Teaching English History (Oxford Essays, etc.), 1855; History of England,
+  12 vols., 1856-70; The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish
+  Character, 1865; Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St.
+  Andrews, March 19, 1869, 1869; Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1867, 2
+  vols., series 2-4, 1871-83 (articles from <i>Fraser's Magazine,
+  Westminster Review</i>, etc.); The Cat's Pilgrimage, 1870; Calvinism:
+  Address at St. Andrews, 1871; The English in Ireland, 3 vols., 1872-74;
+  Bunyan (English Men of Letters), 1878; Cęsar: a Sketch, 1879; Two
+  Lectures on South Africa, 1880; Thomas Carlyle (a history of the first
+  forty years of his life, etc.), 2 vols., 1882; Luther: a Short Biography,
+  1883; Thomas Carlyle (a history of his life in London, 1834-81), 2 vols.,
+  1884; Oceana, 1886; The English in the West Indies, 1888; Liberty and
+  Property: an Address [1888]; The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, 1889; Lord
+  Beaconsfield (a Biography), 1890; The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon,
+  1891; The Spanish Story of the Armada, 1892; Life and Letters of Erasmus,
+  1894; English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, 1895; Lectures on the
+  Council of Trent, 1896; My Relations with Carlyle, 1903.</blockquote>
+
+  <blockquote>EDITED:&mdash;Carlyle's Reminiscences, 1881; Mrs. Carlyle's
+  Letters, 1883.</blockquote>
+
+<hr />
+
+<!-- Page xx blank -->
+
+<!-- Page xxi --><span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexxi"></a>[xxi]</span>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<center>
+<table cellpadding="5">
+<tr><td class="r">
+CHAP.
+</td><td class="l">
+&nbsp;
+</td><td class="r">
+PAGE.
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+I.
+</td><td class="l">
+SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+</td><td class="r">
+<a href="#page1">1</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+II.
+</td><td class="l">
+THE LAST YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSEY.
+</td><td class="r">
+<a href="#page57">57</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+III.
+</td><td class="l">
+THE PARLIAMENT OF 1529.
+</td><td class="r">
+<a href="#page116">116</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+IV.
+</td><td class="l">
+CHURCH AND STATE.
+</td><td class="r">
+<a href="#page176">176</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+V.
+</td><td class="l">
+MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN.
+</td><td class="r">
+<a href="#page224">224</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+VI.
+</td><td class="l">
+THE PROTESTANTS.
+</td><td class="r">
+<a href="#page296">296</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+VII.
+</td><td class="l">
+THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY.
+</td><td class="r">
+<a href="#page369">369</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="r">
+</td><td class="l">
+<a href="#Footnotes">NOTES.</a>
+</td><td class="r">
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+
+<hr />
+
+<!-- Page xxii blank -->
+
+<!-- Page 1 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1"></a>[pg 1]</span>
+
+<h1>HENRY VIII</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY</h3>
+
+  <p>In periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending,
+  and the habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the
+  influence of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves
+  back into a time in which for centuries the European world grew upon a
+  single type, in which the forms of the father's thoughts were the forms
+  of the son's, and the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths
+  the footprints of his distant ancestors. So absolutely has change become
+  the law of our present condition, that it is identified with energy and
+  moral health; to cease to change is to lose place in the great race; and
+  to pass away from off the earth with the same convictions which we found
+  when we entered it, is to have missed the best object for which we now
+  seem to exist.</p>
+
+  <p>It has been, however, with the race of men as it has been with the
+  planet which they inhabit. As we look back over history, we see times of
+  change and progress alternating with other times when life and thought
+  have settled into permanent forms; when mankind, as if by common consent,
+  have ceased to seek for increase of knowledge, and, contented with what
+  they possess, have endeavoured to make use of it for purposes of moral
+  cultivation. Such was the condition of the Greeks through many ages
+  before the Persian war; such was that of the Romans till the world
+  revenged itself upon its conquerors by the introduction among them of the
+  habits of the conquered; and such again became the condition of Europe
+  when the Northern nations grafted the religion and the laws of the
+  Western empire on their own hardy natures, and shaped out that wonderful
+  spiritual and political organisation which remained unshaken for a
+  thousand years.</p>
+
+  <p>The aspirant after sanctity in the fifteenth century of the <!-- Page
+  2 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page2"></a>[pg 2]</span> Christian
+  era found a model which he could imitate in detail in the saint of the
+  fifth. The gentleman at the court of Edward IV. or Charles of Burgundy
+  could imagine no nobler type of heroism than he found in the stories of
+  King Arthur's knights. The forms of life had become more
+  elaborate&mdash;the surface of it more polished&mdash;but the life itself
+  remained essentially the same; it was the development of the same
+  conception of human excellence; just as the last orders of Gothic
+  architecture were the development of the first, from which the idea had
+  worked its way till the force of it was exhausted.</p>
+
+  <p>A condition of things differing alike both outwardly and inwardly from
+  that into which a happier fortune has introduced ourselves, is
+  necessarily obscure to us. In the alteration of our own character, we
+  have lost the key which would interpret the characters of our fathers,
+  and the great men even of our own English history before the Reformation
+  seem to us almost like the fossil skeletons of another order of beings.
+  Some broad conclusions as to what they were are at least possible to us,
+  however; and we are able to determine, with tolerable certainty, the
+  social condition of the people of this country, such as it was before the
+  movements of the sixteenth century, and during the process of those
+  movements.</p>
+
+  <p>The extent of the population can only be rudely conjectured. A rough
+  census was taken at the time of the Armada, when it was found to be
+  something under five millions; but anterior to this I can find no
+  authority on which I can rely with any sort of confidence. It is my
+  impression, however, from a number of reasons&mdash;each in itself
+  insignificant, but which taken together leave little doubt upon my
+  mind&mdash;that it had attained that number by a growth so slow as to be
+  scarcely perceptible, and had nearly approached to it many generations
+  before. Simon Fish, in <i>The Supplication of Beggars</i>,<a
+  name="NtA_1"></a><a href="#Nt_1"><sup>1</sup></a> says that the number of
+  households in England in 1531 was 520,000. His calculation is of the most
+  random kind; for he rates the number of parishes at 52,000, with ten
+  households on an average in each parish. A mistake so preposterous
+  respecting the number of parishes shows the great ignorance of educated
+  men upon the subject. The ten households in each parish may, probably (in
+  some parts of the country), have been a correct computation; but this
+  tells us little with respect to the aggregate numbers, for the households
+  were very large&mdash;the farmers, and the gentlemen also, usually having
+  all the persons whom <!-- Page 3 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page3"></a>[pg 3]</span> they employed residing under their own
+  roof. Neither from this, therefore, nor from any other positive statement
+  which I have seen, can I gather any conclusion that may be depended upon.
+  But when we remember the exceeding slowness with which the population
+  multiplied in a time in which we can accurately measure it&mdash;that is
+  to say, from 1588 to the opening of the last century&mdash;under
+  circumstances in every way more favourable to an increase, I think we may
+  assume that the increase was not so great between 1500 and 1588, and
+  that, previous to 1500, it did not more than keep pace with the waste
+  from civil and foreign war. The causes, indeed, were wholly wanting which
+  lead to a rapid growth of numbers. Numbers now increase with the increase
+  of employment and with the facilities which are provided by the modern
+  system of labour for the establishment of independent households. At
+  present, any able-bodied unskilled labourer earns, as soon as he has
+  arrived at man's estate, as large an amount of wages as he will earn at
+  any subsequent time; and having no connection with his employer beyond
+  the receiving the due amount of weekly money from him, and thinking
+  himself as well able to marry as he is likely to be, he takes a wife, and
+  is usually the father of a family before he is thirty. Before the
+  Reformation, not only were early marriages determinately discouraged, but
+  the opportunity for them did not exist. A labourer living in a cottage by
+  himself was a rare exception to the rule; and the work of the field was
+  performed generally, as it now is in the large farms in America and
+  Australia, by servants who lived in the families of the squire or the
+  farmer, and who, while in that position, commonly remained single, and
+  married only when by prudence they had saved a sufficient sum to enable
+  them to enter some other position.</p>
+
+  <p>Checked by circumstances of this kind, population would necessarily
+  remain almost stationary, and a tendency to an increase was not of itself
+  regarded by the statesmen of the day as any matter for congratulation or
+  as any evidence of national prosperity. Not an increase of population,
+  which would facilitate production and beat down wages by competition, but
+  the increase of the commonwealth, the sound and healthy maintenance of
+  the population already existing, were the chief objects which the
+  government proposed to itself; and although Henry VIII. carefully nursed
+  his manufactures, there is sufficient proof in the grounds alleged for
+  the measures to which he resorted, that there was little redundancy of
+  occupation.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 4 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page4"></a>[pg 4]</span>
+
+  <p>In a statute, for instance, for the encouragement of the linen
+  manufactures, it is said<a name="NtA_2"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_2"><sup>2</sup></a> that&mdash;"The King's Highness, calling to
+  his most blessed remembrance the great number of idle people daily
+  increasing throughout this his Realm, supposeth that one great cause
+  thereof is by the continued bringing into the same the great number of
+  wares and merchandise made, and brought out and from, the parts beyond
+  the sea into this his Realm, ready wrought by manual occupation; amongst
+  the which wares one kind of merchandise in great quantity, which is linen
+  cloth of divers sorts made in divers countries beyond the sea, is daily
+  conveyed into this Realm; which great quantity of linen cloth so brought
+  is consumed and spent within the same; by reason whereof not only the
+  said strange countries where the said linen cloth is made, by the policy
+  and industry of making and vending the same are greatly enriched; and a
+  marvellous great number of their people, men, women, and children, are
+  set on work and occupation, and kept from idleness, to the great
+  furtherance and advancement of their commonwealth; but also contrariwise
+  the inhabitants and subjects of this Realm, for lack of like policy and
+  industry, are compelled to buy all or most part of the linen cloth
+  consumed in the same, amounting to inestimable sums of money. And also
+  the people of this Realm, as well men as women, which should and might be
+  set on work, by exercise of like policy and craft of spinning, weaving,
+  and making of cloth, lies now in idleness and otiosity, to the high
+  displeasure of Almighty God, great diminution of the King's people, and
+  extreme ruin, decay, and impoverishment of this Realm. Therefore, for
+  reformation of these things, the King's most Royal Majesty intending,
+  like a most virtuous Prince, to provide remedy in the premises; nothing
+  so much coveting as the increase of the Commonwealth of this his Realm,
+  with also the virtuous exercise of his most loving subjects and people,
+  and to avoid that most abominable sin of idleness out of the Realm, hath,
+  by the advice and consent of his Lords and Commons in Parliament
+  assembled, ordained and enacted that every person occupying land for
+  tillage, shall for every sixty acres which he hath under the plough, sow
+  one quarter of an acre in flax or hemp."</p>
+
+  <p>This Act was designed immediately to keep the wives and children of
+  the poor in work in their own houses;<a name="NtA_3"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_3"><sup>3</sup></a> but it leaves <!-- Page 5 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page5"></a>[pg 5]</span> no doubt that
+  manufactures in England had not of themselves that tendency to
+  self-development which would encourage an enlarging population. The
+  woollen manufactures similarly appear, from the many statutes upon them,
+  to have been vigorous at a fixed level, but to have shown no tendency to
+  rise beyond that level. With a fixed market and a fixed demand,
+  production continued uniform.</p>
+
+  <p>A few years subsequent, indeed, to the passing of the Act which I have
+  quoted, a very curious complaint is entered in the statute book, from the
+  surface of which we should gather, that so far from increasing,
+  manufactures had alarmingly declined. The fact mentioned may bear another
+  meaning, and a meaning far more favourable to the state of the country;
+  although, if such a phenomenon were to occur at the present time, it
+  could admit of but one interpretation. In the 18th and 19th of the 32nd
+  of Henry VIII., all the important towns in England, from the Tweed to the
+  Land's End, are stated, one by one, to have fallen into serious decay.
+  Usually when we meet with language of this kind, we suppose it to mean
+  nothing more than an awakening to the consciousness of evils which had
+  long existed, and which had escaped notice only because no one was alive
+  to them. In the present instance, however, the language was too strong
+  and too detailed to allow of this explanation; and the great body of the
+  English towns undoubtedly were declining in wealth and in the number of
+  their inhabitants. "Divers and many beautiful houses of habitation,"
+  these statutes say, "built in tyme past within their walls and liberties,
+  now are fallen down and decayed, and at this day remain unre-edified, and
+  do lie as desolate and vacant grounds, many of them nigh adjoining to the
+  High-streets, replenished with much uncleanness and filth, with pits,
+  sellers, and vaults lying open and uncovered, to the great perill and
+  danger of the inhabitants and other the King's subjects passing by the
+  same; and some houses be very weak and feeble, ready to fall down, and
+  therefore dangerous to pass by, to the great decay and hinderance of the
+  said boroughs and towns."<a name="NtA_4"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_4"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>At present, the decay of a town implies the decay of the trade <!--
+  Page 6 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page6"></a>[pg 6]</span> of the
+  town; and the decay of all towns simultaneously would imply a general
+  collapse of the trade of the whole country. Walled towns, however, before
+  the Reformation, existed for other purposes than as the centre points of
+  industry: they existed for the protection of property and life: and
+  although it is not unlikely that the agitation of the Reformation itself
+  did to some degree interrupt the occupation of the people, yet I believe
+  that the true account of the phenomenon which then so much disturbed the
+  parliament, is, that one of their purposes was no longer required; the
+  towns flagged for a time because the country had become secure. The
+  woollen manufacture in Worcestershire was spreading into the open
+  country,<a name="NtA_5"></a><a href="#Nt_5"><sup>5</sup></a> and,
+  doubtless, in other counties as well; and the "beautiful houses" which
+  had fallen into decay, were those which, in the old times of insecurity,
+  had been occupied by wealthy merchants and tradesmen, who were now
+  enabled, by a strong and settled government, to dispense with the shelter
+  of locked gates and fortified walls, and remove their residences to more
+  convenient situations. It was, in fact, the first symptom of the
+  impending social revolution. Two years before the passing of this Act,
+  the magnificent Hengrave Hall, in Suffolk, had been completed by Sir
+  Thomas Kitson, "mercer of London,"<a name="NtA_6"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_6"><sup>6</sup></a> and Sir Thomas Kitson was but one of many
+  of the rising merchants who were now able to root themselves on the land
+  by the side of the Norman nobility, first to rival, and then slowly to
+  displace them.</p>
+
+  <p>This mighty change, however, was long in silent progress before it
+  began to tell on the institutions of the country. When city burghers
+  bought estates, the law insisted jealously on their accepting with them
+  all the feudal obligations. Attempts to use the land as "a commodity"
+  were, as we shall presently see, angrily repressed; while, again, in the
+  majority of instances, such persons endeavoured, as they do at present,
+  to cover the recent origin of their families by adopting the manners of
+  the nobles, instead of transferring the habits of the towns to the parks
+  and chases of the English counties. The old English organisation
+  maintained its full activity; and the duties of property continued to be
+  for another century more considered than its rights.</p>
+
+  <p>Turning, then, to the tenure of land&mdash;for if we would understand
+  the condition of the people, it is to this point that our first attention
+  must be directed&mdash;we find that through the many <!-- Page 7 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page7"></a>[pg 7]</span> complicated varieties
+  of it there was one broad principle which bore equally upon every class,
+  that the land of England must provide for the defence of England. The
+  feudal system, though practically modified, was still the organising
+  principle of the nation, and the owner of land was bound to military
+  service for his country whenever occasion required. Further, the land was
+  to be so administered, that the accustomed number of families supported
+  by it should not be diminished, and that the State should suffer no
+  injury from the carelessness or selfishness of the owners.<a
+  name="NtA_7"></a><a href="#Nt_7"><sup>7</sup></a> Land never was private
+  property in that personal sense of property in which we speak of a thing
+  as our own, with which we may do as we please; and in the administration
+  of estates, as indeed in the administration of all property whatsoever,
+  duty to the State was at all times supposed to override private interest
+  or inclination. Even tradesmen, who took advantage of the fluctuations of
+  the market, were rebuked by parliament for "their greedy and covetous
+  minds," "as more regarding their own singular lucre and profit than the
+  commonweal of the Realm;"<a name="NtA_8"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_8"><sup>8</sup></a> and although in an altered world, neither
+  industry nor enterprise will thrive except under the stimulus of
+  self-interest, we may admire the confidence which in another age expected
+  every man to prefer the advantage of the community to his own. All land
+  was held upon a strictly military principle. It was the representative of
+  authority, and the holder or the owner took rank in the army of the State
+  according to the nature of his connection with it. It was first broadly
+  divided among the great nobility holding immediately under the crown,
+  who, above and beyond the ownership of their private estates, were the
+  Lords of the Fee throughout their presidency, and possessed in right of
+  it the services of knights and gentlemen who held their manors under
+  them, and who followed their standard in war. Under the lords of manors,
+  again, small freeholds and copyholds were held of various extent, often
+  forty shilling and twenty shilling value, tenanted by peasant occupiers,
+  who thus, on their own land, lived as free Englishmen, maintaining by
+  their own free labour themselves and their families. There was thus a
+  descending scale of owners, each of whom possessed his separate right,
+  which the law guarded and none might violate; yet no one of whom, again,
+  was independent of an authority higher than himself; and the entire body
+  of the English free possessors of the soil was interpenetrated by a
+  coherent organisation which <!-- Page 8 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page8"></a>[pg 8]</span> converted them into a perpetually
+  subsisting army of soldiers. The extent of land which was held by the
+  petty freeholders was very large, and the possession of it was jealously
+  treasured; the private estates of the nobles and gentlemen were either
+  cultivated by their own servants, or let out, as at present, to free
+  tenants; or (in earlier times) were occupied by villains, a class who,
+  without being bondmen, were expected to furnish further services than
+  those of the field, services which were limited by the law, and
+  recognised by an outward ceremony, a solemn oath and promise from the
+  villain to his lord. Villanage, in the reign of Henry VIII., had
+  practically ceased. The name of it last appears upon the statute book in
+  the early years of the reign of Richard II., when the disputes between
+  villains and their liege lords on their relative rights had furnished
+  matter for cumbrous lawsuits, and by general consent the relation had
+  merged of itself into a more liberal form. Thus serfdom had merged or was
+  rapidly merging into free servitude; but it did not so merge that
+  labouring men, if they pleased, were allowed to live in idleness. Every
+  man was regimented somewhere; and although the peasantry, when at full
+  age, were allowed, under restrictions, their own choice of masters, yet
+  the restrictions both on masters and servants were so severe as to
+  prevent either from taking advantage of the necessities of the other, or
+  from terminating through caprice or levity, or for any insufficient
+  reason, a connection presumed to be permanent.<a name="NtA_9"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_9"><sup>9</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Through all these arrangements a single aim is visible, that every man
+  in England should have his definite place and definite duty assigned to
+  him, and that no human being should be at liberty to lead at his own
+  pleasure an unaccountable existence. The discipline of an army was
+  transferred to the details of social life, and it issued in a chivalrous
+  perception of the meaning of the word duty, and in the old characteristic
+  spirit of English loyalty.</p>
+
+  <p>From the regulations with respect to land, a coarser advantage was
+  also derived, of a kind which at the present time will be effectively
+  appreciated. It is a common matter of dispute whether landed estates
+  should be large or small; whether it is better that the land should be
+  divided among small proprietors, cultivating their own ground, or that it
+  should follow its present tendency, and be shared by a limited and
+  constantly diminishing number of wealthy landlords. The advocates for a
+  peasant proprietary tell us truly, that a landed monopoly is dangerous;
+  <!-- Page 9 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page9"></a>[pg 9]</span>
+  that the possession of a spot of ground, though it be but a few acres, is
+  the best security for loyalty, giving the state a pledge for its owner,
+  and creating in the body of the nation a free, vigorous, and manly
+  spirit. The advocates for the large estates tell us, that the masses are
+  too ill-educated to be trusted with independence; that without authority
+  over them, these small proprietors become wasteful, careless,
+  improvident; that the free spirit becomes a democratic and dangerous
+  spirit; and finally, that the resources of the land cannot properly be
+  brought out by men without capital to cultivate it. Either theory is
+  plausible. The advocates of both can support their arguments with an
+  appeal to experience; and the verdict of fact has not as yet been
+  pronounced emphatically.</p>
+
+  <p>The problem will be resolved in the future history of this country. It
+  was also nobly and skilfully resolved in the past. The knights and nobles
+  retained the authority and power which was attached to the lordships of
+  the fees. They retained extensive estates in their own hands or in the
+  occupation of their immediate tenants; but the large proportion of the
+  lands was granted out by them to smaller owners, and the expenditure of
+  their own incomes in the wages and maintenance of their vast retinues
+  left but a small margin for indulgence in luxuries. The necessities of
+  their position obliged them to regard their property rather as a revenue
+  to be administered in trust, than as "a fortune" to be expended in
+  indulgence. Before the Reformation, while the differences of social
+  degree were enormous, the differences in habits of life were
+  comparatively slight, and the practice of men in these things was
+  curiously the reverse of our own. Dress, which now scarcely suffices to
+  distinguish the master from his servant, was then the symbol of rank,
+  prescribed by statute to the various orders of society as strictly as the
+  regimental uniform to officers and privates; diet also was prescribed,
+  and with equal strictness; but the diet of the nobleman was ordered down
+  to a level which was then within the reach of the poorest labourer. In
+  1336, the following law was enacted by the Parliament of Edward III.:<a
+  name="NtA_10"></a><a href="#Nt_10"><sup>10</sup></a> "Whereas, heretofore
+  through the excessive and over-many sorts of costly meats which the
+  people of this Realm have used more than elsewhere, many mischiefs have
+  happened to the people of this Realm&mdash;for the great men by these
+  excesses have been sore grieved; and the lesser people, who only
+  endeavour to imitate the great ones in such sort of meats, are much
+  impoverished, <!-- Page 10 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page10"></a>[pg 10]</span> whereby they are not able to aid
+  themselves, nor their liege lord, in time of need, as they ought; and
+  many other evils have happened, as well to their souls as their
+  bodies&mdash;our Lord the King, desiring the common profit as well of the
+  great men as the common people of his Realm, and considering the evils,
+  grievances, and mischiefs aforesaid, by the common assent of the
+  prelates, earls, barons, and other nobles of his said Realm, and of the
+  commons of the same Realm, hath ordained and established that no man, of
+  what estate or condition soever he be, shall cause himself to be served,
+  in his house or elsewhere, at dinner, meal, or supper, or at any other
+  time, with more than two courses, and each mess of two sorts of victuals
+  at the utmost, be it of flesh or fish, with the common sorts of pottage,
+  without sauce or any other sorts of victuals. And if any man choose to
+  have sauce for his mess, he may, provided it be not made at great cost;
+  and if fish or flesh be to be mixed therein, it shall be of two sorts
+  only at the utmost, either fish or flesh, and shall stand instead of a
+  mess, except only on the principal feasts of the year, on which days
+  every man may be served with three courses at the utmost, after the
+  manner aforesaid."</p>
+
+  <p>Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies which we have
+  outgrown, and we smile at the unwisdom which could expect to regulate
+  private habits and manners by statute. Yet some statutes may be of moral
+  authority when they cannot be actually enforced, and may have been
+  regarded, even at the time at which they were issued, rather as an
+  authoritative declaration of what wise and good men considered to be
+  right, than as laws to which obedience could be compelled. This act, at
+  any rate, witnesses to what was then thought to be right by "the great
+  persons" of the English realm; and when great persons will submit
+  themselves of their free will to regulations which restrict their private
+  indulgence, they are in little danger of disloyalty from those whom
+  fortune has placed below them.</p>
+
+  <p>Such is one aspect of these old arrangements; it is unnecessary to say
+  that with these, as with all other institutions created and worked by
+  human beings, the picture admits of being reversed. When by the accident
+  of birth men are placed in a position of authority, no care in their
+  training will prevent it from falling often to singularly unfit persons.
+  The command of a permanent military force was a temptation to ambition,
+  to avarice, or hatred, to the indulgence of private piques and
+  jealousies, to political discontent on private and personal grounds. A
+  combination of three or four of the leading nobles <!-- Page 11 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page11"></a>[pg 11]</span> was sufficient, when
+  an incapable prince sate on the throne, to effect a revolution; and the
+  rival claims of the houses of York and Lancaster to the crown, took the
+  form of a war unequalled in history for its fierce and determined
+  malignancy, the whole nation tearing itself in pieces in a quarrel in
+  which no principle was at stake, and no national object was to be gained.
+  A more terrible misfortune never befel either this or any other country,
+  and it was made possible only in virtue of that loyalty with which the
+  people followed the standard, through good and evil, of their feudal
+  superiors. It is still a question, however, whether the good or the evil
+  of the system predominated; and the answer to such question is the more
+  difficult because we have no criterion by which, in these matters,
+  degrees of good and evil admit of being measured. Arising out of the
+  character of the nation, it reflected this character in all its
+  peculiarities; and there is something truly noble in the coherence of
+  society upon principles of fidelity. Fidelity of man to man is among the
+  rarest excellences of humanity, and we can tolerate large evils which
+  arise out of such a cause. Under the feudal system men were held together
+  by oaths, free acknowledgments, and reciprocal obligations, entered into
+  by all ranks, high and low, binding servants to their masters, as well as
+  nobles to their kings; and in the frequent forms of the language in which
+  the oaths were sworn we cannot choose but see that we have lost something
+  in exchanging these ties for the harsher connecting links of mutual
+  self-interest.</p>
+
+  <p>"When a freeman shall do fealty to his lord," the statute says, "he
+  shall hold his right hand upon the book, and shall say thus:&mdash;Hear
+  you, my lord, that I shall be to you both faithful and true, and shall
+  owe my faith to you for the land that I hold, and lawfully shall do such
+  customs and services as my duty is to you, at the times assigned, so help
+  me God and all his saints."</p>
+
+  <p>"The villain," also, "when he shall do fealty to his lord, shall hold
+  his right hand over the book, and shall say:&mdash;Hear you, my lord,
+  that I from this day forth unto you shall be true and faithful, and shall
+  owe you fealty for the land which I hold of you in villanage; and that no
+  evil or damage will I see concerning you, but I will defend and warn you
+  to my power. So help me God and all his saints."<a name="NtA_11"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_11"><sup>11</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Again, in the distribution of the produce of land, men dealt fairly
+  and justly with each other; and in the material condition of the bulk of
+  the people there is a fair evidence that the system <!-- Page 12 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page12"></a>[pg 12]</span> worked efficiently
+  and well. It worked well for the support of a sturdy high-hearted race,
+  sound in body and fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews and sinews
+  which, under the stimulus of those "great shins of beef,"<a
+  name="NtA_12"></a><a href="#Nt_12"><sup>12</sup></a> their common diet,
+  were the wonder of the age. "What comyn folke in all this world," says a
+  state paper in 1515<a name="NtA_13"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_13"><sup>13</sup></a> "may compare with the comyns of England
+  in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn
+  folke is so mighty, so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?"
+  The relative numbers of the French and English armies which fought at
+  Cressy and Agincourt may have been exaggerated, but no allowance for
+  exaggeration will effect the greatness of those exploits; and in stories
+  of authentic actions under Henry VIII., where the accuracy of the account
+  is undeniable, no disparity of force made Englishmen shrink from enemies
+  wherever they could meet them. Again and again a few thousands of them
+  carried dismay into the heart of France. Four hundred adventurers,
+  vagabond apprentices, from London,<a name="NtA_14"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_14"><sup>14</sup></a> who formed a volunteer corps in the
+  Calais garrison, were for years the terror of Normandy. In the very
+  frolic of conscious power they fought and plundered, without pay, without
+  reward, except what they could win for themselves; and when they fell at
+  last they fell only when surrounded by six times their number, and were
+  cut to pieces in careless desperation. Invariably, by friend and enemy
+  alike, the English are described as the fiercest people in all Europe
+  (the English wild beasts, Benvenuto Cellini calls them); and this great
+  physical power they owed to the profuse abundance in which they lived,
+  and to the soldier's training in which every man of them was bred from
+  childhood. The state of the working classes can, however, be more
+  certainly determined by a comparison of their wages with the prices of
+  food. Both were regulated, so far as regulation was <!-- Page 13 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page13"></a>[pg 13]</span> possible, by act of
+  parliament, and we have therefore data of the clearest kind by which to
+  judge. The majority of agricultural labourers lived, as I have said, in
+  the houses of their employers; this, however, was not the case with all,
+  and if we can satisfy ourselves as to the rate at which those among the
+  poor were able to live who had cottages of their own, we may be assured
+  that the rest did not live worse at their masters' tables.</p>
+
+  <p>Wheat, the price of which necessarily varied, averaged in the middle
+  of the fourteenth century tenpence the bushel;<a name="NtA_15"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_15"><sup>15</sup></a> barley averaging at the same time three
+  shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuation was excessive; a table
+  of its possible variations describes it as ranging from eighteenpence the
+  quarter to twenty shillings; the average, however, being six and
+  eightpence.<a name="NtA_16"></a><a href="#Nt_16"><sup>16</sup></a> When
+  the price was above this sum, the merchants might import to bring it
+  down;<a name="NtA_17"></a><a href="#Nt_17"><sup>17</sup></a> when it was
+  below this price the farmers were allowed to export to the foreign
+  markets.<a name="NtA_18"></a><a href="#Nt_18"><sup>18</sup></a> The same
+  scale, with a scarcely appreciable tendency to rise, continued to hold
+  until the disturbance in the value of the currency. In the twelve years
+  from 1551 to 1562, although once before harvest wheat rose to the
+  extraordinary price of forty-five shillings a quarter, it fell
+  immediately after to five shillings and four.<a name="NtA_19"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_19"><sup>19</sup></a> Six and eightpence continued to be
+  considered in parliament as the average; <a name="NtA_20"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_20"><sup>20</sup></a> and on the whole it seems to have been
+  maintained for that time with little variation.<a name="NtA_21"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_21"><sup>21</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Beef and pork were a halfpenny a pound&mdash;mutton was three
+  farthings. They were fixed at these prices by the 3rd of the 24th of Hen.
+  VIII. But the act was unpopular both with buyers and with sellers. The
+  old practice had been to sell in the gross, and under that arrangement
+  the rates had been generally <!-- Page 14 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page14"></a>[pg 14]</span> lower. Stow says,<a name="NtA_22"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_22"><sup>22</sup></a> "It was this year enacted that butchers
+  should sell their beef and mutton by weight&mdash;beef for a halfpenny
+  the pound, and mutton for three farthings; which being devised for the
+  great commodity of the realm (as it was thought), hath proved far
+  otherwise: for at that time fat oxen were sold for six and twenty
+  shillings and eightpence the piece; fat wethers for three shillings and
+  fourpence the piece; fat calves at a like price; and fat lambs for
+  twelvepence. The butchers of London sold penny pieces of beef for the
+  relief of the poor&mdash;every piece two pound and a half, sometimes
+  three pound for a penny; and thirteen and sometimes fourteen of these
+  pieces for twelvepence; mutton eightpence the quarter, and an hundred
+  weight of beef for four shillings and eightpence." The act was repealed
+  in consequence of the complaints against it,<a name="NtA_23"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_23"><sup>23</sup></a> but the prices never fell again to what
+  they had been, although beef sold in the gross could still be had for a
+  halfpenny a pound in 1570.<a name="NtA_24"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_24"><sup>24</sup></a> Other articles of food were in the same
+  proportion. The best pig or goose in a country market could be bought for
+  fourpence; a good capon for threepence or fourpence; a chicken for a
+  penny; a hen for twopence.<a name="NtA_25"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_25"><sup>25</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 15 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page15"></a>[pg 15]</span>
+
+  <p>Strong beer, such as we now buy for eighteenpence a gallon, was then a
+  penny a gallon;<a name="NtA_26"></a><a href="#Nt_26"><sup>26</sup></a>
+  and table-beer less than a halfpenny. French and German wines were
+  eightpence the gallon. Spanish and Portuguese wines a shilling. This was
+  the highest price at which the best wines might be sold; and if there was
+  any fault in quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four times the
+  amount.<a name="NtA_27"></a><a href="#Nt_27"><sup>27</sup></a> Rent,
+  another important consideration, cannot be <!-- Page 16 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page16"></a>[pg 16]</span> fixed so accurately,
+  for parliament did not interfere with it. Here, however, we are not
+  without very tolerable information. "My father," says Latimer,<a
+  name="NtA_28"></a><a href="#Nt_28"><sup>28</sup></a> "was a yeoman, and
+  had no lands of his own; only he had a <i>farm of three or four pounds by
+  the year</i> at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept
+  half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked
+  thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness with himself
+  and his horse. I remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to
+  Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to
+  have preached before the King's Majesty now. He married my sisters with
+  five pounds, or twenty nobles, each, having brought them up in godliness
+  and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some
+  alms he gave to the poor; and all this he did of the said farm." If
+  "three or four pounds at the uttermost" was the rent of a farm yielding
+  such results, the rent of labourers' cottages is not likely to have been
+  considerable.<a name="NtA_29"></a><a href="#Nt_29"><sup>29</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Some uncertainty is unavoidable in all calculations of the present
+  nature; yet, after making the utmost allowances for errors, we may
+  conclude from such a table of prices that a penny, in terms of the
+  labourer's necessities, must have been nearly equal in the reign of Henry
+  VIII. to the present shilling. For a penny, at the time of which I write,
+  the labourer could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine&mdash;he could
+  do as much towards finding lodging for himself and his family&mdash;as
+  the labourer of the nineteenth century can for a shilling. I do not see
+  that this admits of question. Turning, then, to the table of wages, it
+  will be easy to ascertain his position. By the 3rd of the 6th of Henry
+  VIII. it was enacted that master carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers,
+  plumbers, glaziers, joiners, and other employers of such skilled workmen,
+  should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat or drink was allowed,
+  sixpence a day <!-- Page 17 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page17"></a>[pg 17]</span> for the half year, fivepence a day for
+  the other half; or fivepence-halfpenny for the yearly average. The common
+  labourers were to receive fourpence a day for half the year, for the
+  remaining half, threepence.<a name="NtA_30"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_30"><sup>30</sup></a> In the harvest months they were allowed
+  to work by the piece, and might earn considerably more;<a
+  name="NtA_31"></a><a href="#Nt_31"><sup>31</sup></a> so that, in fact
+  (and this was the rate at which their wages were usually estimated), the
+  day labourer, if in full employment, received on an average fourpence a
+  day for the whole year. Allowing a deduction of one day in a fortnight
+  for a saint's day or a holiday, he received, therefore, steadily and
+  regularly, if well conducted, an equivalent of something near to twenty
+  shillings a week, the wages at present paid in English colonies: and this
+  is far from being a full account of his advantages. Except in rare
+  instances, the agricultural labourer held land in connection with his
+  house, while in most parishes, if not in all, there were large ranges of
+  common and unenclosed forest land, which furnished his fuel to him
+  gratis, where pigs might range, and ducks and geese; where, if he could
+  afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable to feed it; and so
+  important was this privilege considered, that when the commons began to
+  be largely enclosed, parliament insisted that the working man should not
+  be without <!-- Page 18 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page18"></a>[pg
+  18]</span> some piece of ground on which he could employ his own and his
+  family's industry.<a name="NtA_32"></a><a href="#Nt_32"><sup>32</sup></a>
+  By the 7th of the 31st of Elizabeth, it was ordered that no cottage
+  should be built for residence without four acres of land at lowest being
+  attached to it for the sole use of the occupants of such cottage.</p>
+
+  <p>It will, perhaps, be supposed that such comparative prosperity of
+  labour was the result of the condition of the market in which it was
+  sold, that the demand for labour was large and the supply limited, and
+  that the state of England in the sixteenth century was analogous to that
+  of Australia or Canada at the present time. And so long as we confine our
+  view to the question of wages alone, it is undoubted that legislation was
+  in favour of the employer. The Wages Act of Henry VIII. was unpopular
+  with the labourers, and was held to deprive them of an opportunity of
+  making better terms for themselves.<a name="NtA_33"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_33"><sup>33</sup></a> But we shall fall into extreme error if
+  we translate into the language of modern political economy the social
+  features of a state of things <!-- Page 19 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page19"></a>[pg 19]</span> which in no way correspond to our own.
+  There was this essential difference, that labour was not looked upon as a
+  market commodity; the government (whether wisely or not, I do not presume
+  to determine) attempting to portion out the rights of the various classes
+  of society by the rule, not of economy, but of equity. Statesmen did not
+  care for the accumulation of capital; they desired to see the physical
+  well-being of all classes of the commonwealth maintained at the highest
+  degree which the producing power of the country admitted; and population
+  and production remaining stationary, they were able to do it. This was
+  their object, and they were supported in it by a powerful and efficient
+  majority of the nation. On the one side parliament interfered to protect
+  employers against their labourers; but it was equally determined that
+  employers should not be allowed to abuse their opportunities; and this
+  directly appears from the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth, by which, on the
+  most trifling appearance of a depreciation in the currency, it was
+  declared that the labouring man could no longer live on the wages
+  assigned to him by the act of Henry; and a sliding scale was instituted
+  by which, for the future, wages should be adjusted to the price of
+  food.<a name="NtA_34"></a><a href="#Nt_34"><sup>34</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The same conclusion may be gathered also, indirectly, from other acts,
+  interfering imperiously with the rights of property where a disposition
+  showed itself to exercise them selfishly. The city merchants, as I have
+  said, were becoming landowners; and some of them attempted to apply the
+  rules of trade to the management of landed estates. While wages were
+  ruled so high, it answered better as a speculation to convert arable land
+  into pasture; but the law immediately stepped in to prevent a proceeding
+  which it regarded as petty treason to the commonwealth. Self-protection
+  is the first law of life; and the country relying for its defence on an
+  able-bodied population, evenly distributed, ready at any moment to be
+  called into action, either against foreign invasion or civil disturbance,
+  it could not permit the owners of land to pursue for their own benefit a
+  course of action which threatened to weaken its garrisons. It is not
+  often that we are able to test the wisdom of legislation by specific
+  results so clearly as in the present instance. The first attempts of the
+  kind which I have described were made in the Isle of Wight, early in the
+  reign of Henry VII. Lying so <!-- Page 20 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page20"></a>[pg 20]</span> directly exposed to attacks from France,
+  the Isle of Wight was a place which it was peculiarly important to keep
+  in a state of defence, and the following act was therefore the
+  consequence:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Forasmuch as it is to the surety of the Realm of England that the
+  Isle of Wight, in the county of Southampton, be well inhabited with
+  English people, for the defence as well of our antient enemies of the
+  Realm of France as of other parties; the which Isle is late decayed of
+  people by reason that many towns and villages have been let down, and the
+  fields dyked and made pasture for beasts and cattle, and also many
+  dwelling-places, farms, and farmholds have of late time been used to be
+  taken into one man's hold and hands, that of old time were wont to be in
+  many several persons' holds and hands, and many several households kept
+  in them; and thereby much people multiplied, and the same Isle thereby
+  well inhabited, which now, by the occasion aforesaid, is desolate and not
+  inhabited, but occupied with beasts and cattle, so that if hasty remedy
+  be not provided, that Isle cannot long be kept and defended, but open and
+  ready to the hands of the king's enemies, which God forbid. For remedy
+  hereof, it is ordained and enacted that no manner of person, of what
+  estate, degree, or condition soever, shall take any several farms more
+  than one, whereof the yearly value shall not exceed the sum of ten marks;
+  and if any several leases afore this time have been made to any person or
+  persons of divers and sundry farmholds, whereof the yearly value shall
+  exceed that sum, then the said person or persons shall choose one
+  farmhold at his pleasure, and the remnant of his leases shall be utterly
+  void."<a name="NtA_35"></a><a href="#Nt_35"><sup>35</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>An act, tyrannical in form, was singularly justified by its
+  consequences. The farms were rebuilt, the lands reploughed, the island
+  repeopled; and in 1546, when a French army of sixty thousand men
+  attempted to effect a landing at St. Helen's, they were defeated and
+  driven off by the militia of the island and a few levies transported from
+  Hampshire and the adjoining counties.<a name="NtA_36"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_36"><sup>36</sup></a> The money-making spirit, however, lay too
+  deep to be checked so readily. The trading classes were growing rich
+  under the strong rule of the Tudors. Increasing numbers of them were
+  buying or renting land; and the symptoms complained of broke out in the
+  following reign in many parts of <!-- Page 21 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page21"></a>[pg 21]</span> England. They could not choose but break
+  out indeed; for they were the outward marks of a vital change, which was
+  undermining the feudal constitution, and would by and bye revolutionise
+  and destroy it. Such symptoms it was impossible to extinguish; but the
+  government wrestled long and powerfully to hold down the new spirit; and
+  they fought against it successfully, till the old order of things had
+  finished its work, and the time was come for it to depart. By the 1st of
+  the 7th of Henry VIII., the laws of feudal tenure were put in force
+  against the landed traders. Wherever lands were converted from tillage to
+  pasture, the lords of the fee had authority to seize half of all profits
+  until the farm-buildings were reconstructed. If the immediate lord did
+  not do his duty, the lord next above him was to do it; and the evil still
+  increasing, the act, twenty years later, was extended further, and the
+  king had power to seize.<a name="NtA_37"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_37"><sup>37</sup></a> Nor was this all. Sheep-farming had
+  become an integral branch of business; and falling into the hands of men
+  who understood each other, it had been made a monopoly, affecting
+  seriously the prices of wool and mutton.<a name="NtA_38"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_38"><sup>38</sup></a> Stronger measures were therefore now
+  taken, and the class to which the offenders belonged was especially
+  pointed out by parliament.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whereas," says the 13th of the 25th of Henry VIII., "divers and
+  sundry persons of the king's subjects of this Realm, to whom God of his
+  goodness hath disposed great plenty and abundance of moveable substance,
+  now of late, within few years, have daily studied, practised, and
+  invented ways and means how they might accumulate and gather together
+  into few hands, as well great multitude of farms as great plenty of
+  cattle, and in especial, sheep, putting such lands as they can get to
+  pasture and not to tillage; whereby they have not only pulled <!-- Page
+  22 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page22"></a>[pg 22]</span> down
+  churches and towns and enhanced the old rates of the rents of the
+  possessions of this Realm, or else brought it to such excessive fines
+  that no poor man is able to meddle with it, but also have raised and
+  enhanced the prices of all manner of corn, cattle, wool, pigs, geese,
+  hens, chickens, eggs, and such other commodities, almost double above the
+  prices which hath been accustomed, by reason whereof a marvellous
+  multitude of the poor people of this realm be not able to provide meat,
+  drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, and children,
+  but be so discouraged with misery and poverty, that they fall daily to
+  theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for hunger and
+  cold; and it is thought by the king's humble and loving subjects, that
+  one of the greatest occasions that moveth those greedy and covetous
+  people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great portions and
+  parts of the lands of this Realm from the occupying of the poor
+  husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the great
+  profit that cometh of sheep which be now come into a few persons' hands,
+  in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects; it is hereby
+  enacted, that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own
+  inheritance more than 2000 sheep; that no person shall occupy more than
+  two farms; and that the 19th of the 4th of Henry VII., and those other
+  acts obliging the lords of the fees to do their duty, shall be re-enacted
+  and enforced." <a name="NtA_39"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_39"><sup>39</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>By these measures the money-making spirit was for a time driven back,
+  and the country resumed its natural course. I am not concerned to defend
+  the economic wisdom of such proceedings; but they prove, I think,
+  conclusively, that the labouring classes owed their advantages not to the
+  condition of the labour market, but to the care of the state; and that
+  when the state relaxed its supervision, or failed to enforce its
+  regulations, the labourers being left to the market chances, sank
+  instantly in the unequal struggle with capital.</p>
+
+  <p>The government, however, remained strong enough to hold its ground
+  (except during the discreditable interlude of the <!-- Page 23 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page23"></a>[pg 23]</span> reign of Edward VI.)
+  for the first three quarters of the century; and until that time the
+  working classes of this country remained in a condition more than
+  prosperous. They enjoyed an abundance far beyond what in general falls to
+  the lot of that order in long-settled countries; incomparably beyond what
+  the same class were enjoying at that very time in Germany or France. The
+  laws secured them; and that the laws were put in force we have the direct
+  evidence of successive acts of the legislature justifying the general
+  policy by its success: and we have also the indirect evidence of the
+  contented loyalty of the great body of the people at a time when, if they
+  had been discontented, they held in their own hands the means of
+  asserting what the law acknowledged to be their right. The government had
+  no power to compel submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of
+  an attempt to levy a "benevolence" by force, in 1525. The people resisted
+  with a determination against which the crown commissioners were unable to
+  contend, and the scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry,
+  who retired with a good grace from an impossible position. If the
+  peasantry had been suffering under any real grievances we should not have
+  failed to have heard of them when the religious rebellions furnished so
+  fair an opportunity to press those grievances forward. Complaint was loud
+  enough when complaint was just, under the Somerset protectorate. <a
+  name="NtA_40"></a><a href="#Nt_40"><sup>40</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, for they varied
+  probably as much as they vary now. Under Henry IV. the average income of
+  an earl was estimated at £2000 a year.<a name="NtA_41"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_41"><sup>41</sup></a> Under Henry VIII. the great Duke of
+  Buckingham, the wealthiest English peer, had £6000.<a
+  name="NtA_42"></a><a href="#Nt_42"><sup>42</sup></a> And the income of
+  the <!-- Page 24 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page24"></a>[pg
+  24]</span> Archbishop of Canterbury was rated at the same amount.<a
+  name="NtA_43"></a><a href="#Nt_43"><sup>43</sup></a> But the
+  establishments of such men were enormous; their ordinary retinues in time
+  of peace consisting of many hundred persons; and in war, when the duties
+  of a nobleman called him to the field, although in theory his followers
+  were paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament were on so small a
+  scale that the theory was seldom converted into fact, and a large share
+  of the expenses was paid often out of private purses. The Duke of
+  Norfolk, in the Scotch war of 1523, declared (not complaining of it, but
+  merely as a reason why he should receive support) that he had spent all
+  his private means upon the army; and in the sequel of this history we
+  shall find repeated instances of knights and gentlemen voluntarily
+  ruining themselves in the service of their country. The people, not
+  universally, but generally, were animated by a true spirit of sacrifice;
+  by a true conviction that they were bound to think first of England, and
+  only next of themselves; and unless we can bring ourselves to understand
+  this, we shall never understand what England was under the reigns of the
+  Plantagenets and Tudors. The expenses of the court under Henry VII. were
+  a little over £14,000 a year, out of which were defrayed the whole cost
+  of the king's establishment, the expenses of entertaining foreign
+  ambassadors, the wages and maintenance of the yeomen of the guard, the
+  retinues of servants, and all necessary outlay not incurred for public
+  business. Under Henry VIII., of whose extravagance we have heard so much,
+  and whose court was the most magnificent in the world, these expenses
+  were £19,894 16<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i>,<a name="NtA_44"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_44"><sup>44</sup></a> a small sum when compared with the
+  present cost of the royal establishment, even if we adopt the relative
+  estimate of twelve to one, and suppose it equal to £240,000 a year of our
+  money. But indeed it was not equal to £240,000; for, although the
+  proportion held in articles of common consumption, articles of luxury
+  were very dear indeed.<a name="NtA_45"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_45"><sup>45</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 25 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page25"></a>[pg 25]</span>
+
+  <p>Passing down from the king and his nobles, to the body of the people,
+  we find that the income qualifying a country gentleman to be justice of
+  the peace was £20 a year, <a name="NtA_46"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_46"><sup>46</sup></a> and if he did his duty, his office was no
+  sinecure. We remember Justice Shallow and his clerk Davy, with his novel
+  theory of magisterial law; and Shallow's broad features have so English a
+  cast about them, that we may believe there were many such, and that the
+  duty was not always very excellently done. But the Justice Shallows were
+  not allowed to repose upon their dignity. The justice of the peace was
+  required not only to take cognisance of open offences, but to keep
+  surveillance over all persons within his district, and over himself in
+  his own turn there was a surveillance no less sharp, and penalties for
+  neglect prompt and peremptory.<a name="NtA_47"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_47"><sup>47</sup></a> Four times a year he was to make
+  proclamation of his duty, and exhort all persons to complain against him
+  who had occasion.</p>
+
+  <p>Twenty pounds a year, and heavy duties to do for it, represented the
+  condition of the squire of the parish.<a name="NtA_48"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_48"><sup>48</sup></a> By the 2nd of the 2nd of Henry V., "the
+  wages" of a parish priest were limited to £5 6<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i>,
+  except in cases where there was special licence from the bishop, when
+  they might be raised as high as £6. Priests were probably something
+  better off under Henry VIII., but the statute remained in force, and
+  marks an approach at least to their ordinary salary.<a
+  name="NtA_49"></a><a href="#Nt_49"><sup>49</sup></a> The priest had
+  enough, being <!-- Page 26 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page26"></a>[pg 26]</span> unmarried, to supply him in comfort with
+  the necessaries of life. The squire had enough to provide moderate
+  abundance for himself and his family. Neither priest nor squire was able
+  to establish any steep difference in outward advantages between himself
+  and the commons among whom he lived.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 27 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page27"></a>[pg 27]</span>
+
+  <p>The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are two
+  expressions corresponding one to the other, which we frequently meet with
+  in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether
+  the condition of things was or <!-- Page 28 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page28"></a>[pg 28]</span> was not what it ought to be. We read of
+  "merry England;"&mdash;when England was not merry, things were not going
+  well with it. We hear of "the glory of hospitality," England's
+  pre-eminent <!-- Page 29 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page29"></a>[pg 29]</span> boast,-by the rules of which all tables,
+  from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the table in the
+  baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the dinner hour to all
+  comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked:<a
+  name="NtA_50"></a><a href="#Nt_50"><sup>50</sup></a> to every man,
+  according to his degree, who chose to ask for it there was free fee and
+  free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for his dinner; for his lodging,
+  perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall, with a
+  billet of wood for a pillow,<a name="NtA_51"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_51"><sup>51</sup></a> but freely offered and freely taken, the
+  guest probably faring much as his host fared, neither worse nor better.
+  There was little fear of an abuse of such licence, for suspicious
+  characters had no leave to wander at pleasure; and for any man found at
+  large and unable to give a sufficient account of himself, there were the
+  ever-ready parish stocks or town gaol. The "glory of hospitality" lasted
+  far down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, "came in great
+  bravery of building, to the marvellous beautifying of the realm, but to
+  the decay" of what he valued more.</p>
+
+  <p>In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all
+  their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest carrying
+  their hearts high, and having their hands full. The<a
+  name="NtA_52"></a><a href="#Nt_52"><sup>52</sup></a> hour of rising,
+  winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which
+  the labourers went to work and the gentlemen to business, of which they
+  had no little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and
+  examined&mdash;if the account given was insufficient, he was brought
+  before the justice; if the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the
+  village cobbler made "unhonest" shoes, if servants and masters
+  quarrelled, all was to be looked to by the justice; there was no fear
+  lest time should hang heavy with him. At twelve he dined; after dinner he
+  went hunting, or to his farm or to what he pleased.<a
+  name="NtA_53"></a><a href="#Nt_53"><sup>53</sup></a> It was a life
+  unrefined, perhaps, but coloured with a broad, rosy, English health.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 30 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page30"></a>[pg 30]</span>
+
+  <p>Of the education of noblemen and gentlemen we have contradictory
+  accounts, as might be expected. The universities were well filled, by the
+  sons of yeomen chiefly. The cost of supporting them at the colleges was
+  little, and wealthy men took a pride in helping forward any boys of
+  promise.<a name="NtA_54"></a><a href="#Nt_54"><sup>54</sup></a> It seems
+  clear also, as the Reformation drew nearer, while the clergy were sinking
+  lower and lower, a marked change for the better became perceptible in a
+  portion at least of the laity. The more old-fashioned of the higher ranks
+  were slow in moving; for as late as the reign of Edward VI.<a
+  name="NtA_55"></a><a href="#Nt_55"><sup>55</sup></a> there were peers of
+  parliament unable to read; but on the whole, the invention of printing,
+  and the general ferment which was commencing all over the world, had
+  produced marked effects in all classes. Henry VIII. himself spoke four
+  languages, and was well read in theology and history; and the high
+  accomplishments of More and Sir T. Elliott, of Wyatt and Cromwell, were
+  but the extreme expression of a temper which was rapidly spreading, and
+  which gave occasion, among other things to the following reflection in
+  Erasmus. "Oh, strange vicissitudes of human things," exclaims he.
+  "Heretofore the heart of learning was among such as professed religion.
+  Now, while they for the most part give themselves up, <!-- Page 31
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page31"></a>[pg 31]</span> <i>ventri
+  luxui pecunięque</i>, the love of learning is gone from them to secular
+  princes, the court and the nobility. May we not justly be ashamed of
+  ourselves? The feasts of priests and divines are drowned in wine, are
+  filled with scurrilous jests, sound with intemperate noise and tumult,
+  flow with spiteful slanders and defamation of others; while at princes'
+  tables modest disputations are held concerning things which make for
+  learning and piety."</p>
+
+  <p>A letter to Thomas Cromwell from his son's tutor will not be without
+  interest on this subject; Cromwell was likely to have been unusually
+  careful in his children's training, and we need not suppose that all boys
+  were brought up as prudently. Sir Peter Carew, for instance, being a boy
+  at about the same time, and giving trouble at the High School at Exeter,
+  was led home to his father's house at Ottery, coupled between two
+  foxhounds.<a name="NtA_56"></a><a href="#Nt_56"><sup>56</sup></a> Yet the
+  education of Gregory Cromwell is probably not far above what many young
+  men of the middle and higher ranks were beginning to receive. Henry Dowes
+  was the tutor's name, beyond which fact I know nothing of him. His letter
+  is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"After that it pleased your mastership to give me in charge, not only
+  to give diligent attendance upon Master Gregory, but also to instruct him
+  with good letters, honest manners, pastyme of instruments, and such other
+  qualities as should be for him meet and convenient, pleaseth it you to
+  understand that for the accomplishment thereof I have endeavoured myself
+  by all ways possible to excogitate how I might most profit him. In which
+  behalf, through his diligence, the success is such as I trust shall be to
+  your good contentation and pleasure, and to his no small profit. But for
+  cause the summer was spent in the service of the wild gods, [and] it is
+  so much to be regarded after what fashion youth is brought up, in which
+  time that that is learned for the most part will not be wholly forgotten
+  in the older years, I think it my duty to acertain your mastership how he
+  spendeth his time. And first after he hath heard mass he taketh a lecture
+  of a dialogue of Erasmus' <i>Colloquies</i>, called <i>Pietas
+  Puerilis</i>, wherein is described a very picture of one that should be
+  virtuously brought up; and for cause it is so necessary for him, I do not
+  only cause him to read it over, but also to practise the precepts of the
+  same. After this he exerciseth his hand in writing one or two hours, and
+  readeth upon Fabyan's <i>Chronicle</i> as long. The residue of the day he
+  doth spend upon the lute <!-- Page 32 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page32"></a>[pg 32]</span> and virginals. When he rideth, as he
+  doth very oft, I tell him by the way some history of the Romans or the
+  Greeks, which I cause him to rehearse again in a tale. For his recreation
+  he useth to hawk and hunt and shoot in his long bow, which frameth and
+  succeedeth so well with him that he seemeth to be thereunto given by
+  nature."<a name="NtA_57"></a><a href="#Nt_57"><sup>57</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>I have spoken of the organisation of the country population, I have
+  now to speak of that of the towns, of the trading classes and
+  manufacturing classes, the regulations respecting which are no less
+  remarkable and no less illustrative of the national character. If the
+  tendency of trade to assume at last a form of mere self-interest be
+  irresistible, if political economy represent the laws to which in the end
+  it is forced to submit itself, the nation spared no efforts, either of
+  art or policy, to defer to the last moment the unwelcome conclusion.</p>
+
+  <p>The names and shadows linger about London of certain ancient
+  societies, the members of which may still occasionally be seen in quaint
+  gilt barges pursuing their own difficult way among the swarming steamers;
+  when on certain days, the traditions concerning which are fast dying out
+  of memory, the Fishmongers' Company, the Goldsmiths' Company, the
+  Mercers' Company, make procession down the river for civic feastings at
+  Greenwich or Blackwall. The stately tokens of ancient honour still belong
+  to them, and the remnants of ancient wealth and patronage and power.
+  Their charters may be read by curious antiquaries, and the bills of fare
+  of their ancient entertainments. But for what purpose they were called
+  into being, what there was in these associations of common trades to
+  surround with gilded insignia, and how they came to be possessed of broad
+  lands and church preferments, few people now care to think or to inquire.
+  Trade and traders have no dignity any more in the eyes of any one, except
+  what money lends to them; and these outward symbols scarcely rouse even a
+  passing feeling of curiosity. And yet these companies were once something
+  more than names. They are all which now remain of a vast organisation
+  which once penetrated the entire trading life of England&mdash;an
+  organisation set on foot to realise that most necessary, if most
+  difficult, condition of commercial excellence under which man should deal
+  faithfully with his brother, and all wares offered for sale, of whatever
+  kind, should honestly be what they <!-- Page 33 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page33"></a>[pg 33]</span> pretend to be.<a
+  name="NtA_58"></a><a href="#Nt_58"><sup>58</sup></a> I spoke of the
+  military principle which directed the distribution and the arrangements
+  of land. The analogy will best explain a state of things in which every
+  occupation was treated as the division of an army; regiments being
+  quartered in every town, each with its own self-elected officers, whose
+  duty was to exercise authority over all persons professing the business
+  to which they belonged; who were to see that no person undertook to
+  supply articles which he had not been educated to manufacture; who were
+  to determine the prices at which such articles ought justly to be sold;
+  above all, who were to take care that the common people really bought at
+  shops and stalls what they supposed themselves to be buying; that cloth
+  put up for sale was true cloth, of true texture and full weight: that
+  leather was sound and well tanned; wine pure, measures honest; flour
+  unmixed with devil's dust;&mdash;who were generally to look to it that in
+  all contracts between man and man for the supply of man's necessities,
+  what we call honesty of dealing should be truly and faithfully
+  observed.<a name="NtA_59"></a><a href="#Nt_59"><sup>59</sup></a> An
+  organisation for this purpose did once really exist in England,<a
+  name="NtA_60"></a><a href="#Nt_60"><sup>60</sup></a> really trying to do
+  the work which it was intended to do, as half the pages of our early
+  statutes witness. <!-- Page 34 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page34"></a>[pg 34]</span> In London, as the metropolis, a central
+  council sate for every branch of trade, and this council was in
+  communication with the Chancellor and the Crown. It was composed of the
+  highest and most respectable members of the profession, and its office
+  was to determine prices, fix wages, arrange the rules of apprenticeship,
+  and discuss all details connected with the business on which legislation
+  might be required. Further, this council received the reports of the
+  searchers&mdash;high officers taken from their own body, whose business
+  was to inspect, in company with the lord mayor or some other city
+  dignitary, the shops of the respective traders; to receive complaints,
+  and to examine into them. In each provincial town local councils sate in
+  connection with the municipal authorities, who fulfilled in these places
+  the same duties; and their reports being forwarded to the central body,
+  and considered by them, representations on all necessary matters were
+  then made to the privy council; and by the privy council, if requisite,
+  were submitted to parliament. If these representations were judged to
+  require legislative interference, the statutes which were passed in
+  consequence were returned through the Chancellor to the mayors of the
+  various towns and cities, by whom they were proclaimed as law. No person
+  was allowed to open a trade or to commence a manufacture, either in
+  London or the provinces, unless he had first served his apprenticeship;
+  unless he could prove to the satisfaction of the authorities that he was
+  competent in his craft; and unless he submitted as a matter of course to
+  their supervision. The legislature had undertaken not to let that
+  indispensable task go wholly unattempted, of distributing the various
+  functions of society by the rule of capacity; of compelling every man to
+  do his duty in an honest following of his proper calling, securing to him
+  that he in his turn should not be injured by his neighbour's
+  misdoings.</p>
+
+  <p>The state further promising for itself that all able-bodied men should
+  be found in work,<a name="NtA_61"></a><a href="#Nt_61"><sup>61</sup></a>
+  and not allowing any man to work at a business for which he was unfit,
+  insisted as its natural right that children should not be allowed to grow
+  up in idleness, to be returned at mature age upon its hands. Every child,
+  so far as possible, was to be trained up in some business or calling,<a
+  name="NtA_62"></a><a href="#Nt_62"><sup>62</sup></a> idleness "being the
+  mother of all sin," and the essential duty of every man being to provide
+  honestly for himself and his family. The educative theory, for such it
+  was, was simple but effective: it was based on the single principle that,
+  next to the knowledge of a man's duty to God, and as a means towards <!--
+  Page 35 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page35"></a>[pg 35]</span>
+  doing that duty, the first condition of a worthy life was the ability to
+  maintain it in independence. Varieties of inapplicable knowledge might be
+  good, but they were not essential; such knowledge might be left to the
+  leisure of after years, or it might be dispensed with without vital
+  injury. Ability to labour could not be dispensed with, and this,
+  therefore, the state felt it to be its own duty to see provided; so
+  reaching, I cannot but think, the heart of the whole matter. The children
+  of those who could afford the small entrance fees were apprenticed to
+  trades, the rest were apprenticed to agriculture; and if children were
+  found growing up idle, and their fathers or their friends failed to prove
+  that they were able to secure them an ultimate maintenance, the mayors in
+  towns and the magistrates in the country had authority to take possession
+  of such children, and apprentice them as they saw fit, that when they
+  grew up "they might not be driven" by want or incapacity "to dishonest
+  courses."<a name="NtA_63"></a><a href="#Nt_63"><sup>63</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Such is an outline of the organisation of English society under the
+  Plantagenets and Tudors. A detail of the working of the trade laws would
+  be beyond my present purpose. It is obvious that such laws could be
+  enforced only under circumstances when production and population remained
+  (as I said before) nearly stationary; and it would be madness to attempt
+  to apply them to the changed condition of the present. It would be well
+  if some competent person would make these laws the subject of a special
+  treatise. I will run the risk, however, of wearying the reader with two
+  or three illustrative statutes, which I have chosen, not as being more
+  significant than many others, but as specimens merely of the discipline
+  under which, for centuries, the trade and manufactures of England
+  contrived to move; showing on one side the good which the system
+  effected, on the other the inevitable evils under which it finally
+  sank.</p>
+
+  <p>The first which I shall quote concerns simply the sale of specific
+  goods and the means by which tradesmen were prevented from enhancing
+  prices. The Act is the 6th of the 24th of Henry VIII., and concerns the
+  sale of wines, the statute prices of which I have already mentioned.</p>
+
+  <p>"Because," says this Act, "that divers merchants inhabiting within the
+  city of London have of late not only presumed to bargain and sell in
+  gross to divers of the king's subjects great quantities of wines of
+  Gascony, Guienne, and French wines, some for five pounds per tonne, some
+  for more and some for less, and so after the rate of excessive prices
+  contrary to the effect <!-- Page 36 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page36"></a>[pg 36]</span> of a good and laudable statute lately
+  made in this present parliament; that is to say, contrary to and above
+  the prices thereof set by the Right Honourable Lord Chancellor, Lord
+  Treasurer, Lord President of the King's most honourable Council, Lord
+  Privy Seal, and the two Chief Justices of either bench, whereby they be
+  fallen into the penalties limited by the said statute; as by due proof
+  made by examination taken is well known&mdash;but also having in their
+  hands great abundance of wine, by them acquired and bought to be sold,
+  obstinately and maliciously, since their said attemptate and defaults
+  proved, have refused to bargain and sell to many of the king's subjects
+  any of their said wines remaining and being in their hands; purposing and
+  intending thereby their own singular and unreasonable lucres and profits,
+  to have larger and higher prices of their said wines, to be set according
+  to their insatiable appetites and minds; it is therefore ordained and
+  enacted, by authority of this present parliament, that every merchant now
+  having, or which shall hereafter have, wines to be sold, and refusing to
+  sell or deliver, or not selling and delivering any of the said wines for
+  ready money therefore to be paid, according to the price or prices
+  thereof being set, shall forfeit and lose the value of the wine so
+  required to be bought.... For due execution of which provision, and for
+  the relief of the king's subjects, it shall be lawful to all and singular
+  justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head officers in
+  shires, cities, boroughs, towns, etc., at the request of any person to
+  whom the said merchant or merchants have refused to sell, to enter into
+  the cellars and other places where such wines shall lie or be, and to
+  sell and deliver the same wine or wines desired to be bought to the
+  person or persons requiring to buy the same; taking of the buyer of the
+  wine so sold to the use and satisfaction of the proprietor aforesaid,
+  according to the prices determined by the law."</p>
+
+  <p>The next which I select is the eleventh of the second and third of
+  Philip and Mary; and falling in the midst of the smoke of the Smithfield
+  fires, and the cruelties of that melancholy time, it shines like a fair
+  gleam of humanity, which will not lose anything of its lustre because the
+  evils against which it contends have in our times, also, furnished matter
+  for sorrow and calamity&mdash;calamity which we unhappily have been
+  unable even to attempt to remedy. It is termed "An Act touching Weavers,"
+  and runs:</p>
+
+  <p>"Forasmuch as the weavers of this realm have, as well at <!-- Page 37
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page37"></a>[pg 37]</span> this present
+  parliament as at divers other times, complained that the rich and wealthy
+  clothiers do in many ways oppress them&mdash;some by setting up and
+  keeping in their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining them by
+  journeymen and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of
+  artificers which were brought up in the said science of weaving, with
+  their families and their households&mdash;some by engrossing of looms
+  into their hands and possession, and letting them out at such
+  unreasonable rents, as the poor artificers are not able to maintain
+  themselves, much less maintain their wives, families, and
+  children&mdash;some also by giving much less wages and hire for weaving
+  and workmanship than in times past they did, whereby they are enforced
+  utterly to forsake their art and occupation wherein they have been
+  brought up; It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the
+  avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it
+  be not foreseen, ordained and enacted by authority of this present
+  parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making, and
+  dwelling out of a city, borough, market-town, or corporate town, shall
+  keep, or retain, or have in his or their houses or possession, any more
+  than one woollen loom at a time; nor shall by any means, directly or
+  indirectly, receive or take any manner of profit, gain, or commodity, by
+  letting or setting any loom, or any house wherein any loom is or shall be
+  used or occupied, which shall be together by him set or let, upon pain of
+  forfeiture for every week that any person shall do the contrary to the
+  tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings."</p>
+
+  <p>A provision then follows, limiting weavers living in towns to two
+  looms&mdash;the plain intention being to prevent the cloth manufacture
+  from falling into the power of large capitalists employing "hands;" and
+  to enable as many persons as possible to earn all in their own homes
+  their own separate independent living. I suppose that the parliament was
+  aware that by pursuing this policy the cost of production was something
+  increased; that cloth was thus made dearer than it would have been if
+  trade had been left to follow its own course. It considered, however,
+  that the loss was compensated to the nation by retaining its people in
+  the condition not of "hands," but of men; by rendering them independent
+  of masters, who only sought to make their own advantage at the expense of
+  labour; and enabling them to continue to maintain themselves in manly
+  freedom. The weak point of all such provisions did not lie, I think, in
+  the economic aspect of them, but in a far deeper difficulty. The details
+  of <!-- Page 38 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page38"></a>[pg
+  38]</span> trade legislation, it is obvious, could only be determined by
+  persons professionally conversant with those details; and the
+  indispensable condition of success with such legislation is, that it be
+  conducted under the highest sense of the obligations of honesty. No laws
+  are of any service which are above the working level of public morality;
+  and the deeper they are carried down into life, the larger become the
+  opportunities of evasion. That the system succeeded for centuries is
+  evident from the organisation of the companies remaining so long in its
+  vitality; but the efficiency of this organisation for the maintenance of
+  fair dealing could exist only so long as the companies
+  themselves&mdash;their wardens and their other officials, who alone,
+  <i>quisque in suā arte</i>, were competent to judge what was right and
+  what was wrong&mdash;could be trusted, at the same time being interested
+  parties, to give a disinterested judgment. The largeness of the power
+  inevitably committed to the councils was at once a temptation and an
+  opportunity to abuse those powers; and slowly through the statute book we
+  find the traces of the poison as it crept in and in. Already in the 24th
+  of Henry VIII., we meet with complaints in the leather trade of the
+  fraudulent conduct of the searchers, whose duty was to affix their seal
+  upon leather ascertained to be sound, before it was exposed for sale,
+  "which mark or print, for corruption and lucre, is commonly set and put
+  by such as take upon them the search and sealing, as well upon leather
+  insufficiently tanned, as upon leather well tanned, to the great deceit
+  of the buyers thereof." About the same time, the "craft wardens" of the
+  various fellowships, "out of sinister mind and purpose," were levying
+  excessive fees on the admission of apprentices; and when parliament
+  interfered to bring them to order, they "compassed and practised by
+  cautill and subtle means to delude the good and wholesome statutes passed
+  for remedy."<a name="NtA_64"></a><a href="#Nt_64"><sup>64</sup></a> The
+  old proverb, <i>Quis custodiat custodes</i>, had begun to verify itself,
+  and the symptom was a fatal one. These evils, for the first half of the
+  century, remained within compass; but as we pass on we find them
+  increasing steadily. In the 7th and the 8th of Elizabeth, there are
+  indications of the truck system; and towards her later years, the
+  multiplying statutes and growing complaints and difficulties show plainly
+  that the companies had lost their healthy vitality, and, with other
+  relics of feudalism, were fast taking themselves away. There were no
+  longer tradesmen to be found in sufficient numbers who were possessed of
+  the necessary <!-- Page 39 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page39"></a>[pg 39]</span> probity; and it is impossible not to
+  connect such a phenomenon with the deep melancholy which in those years
+  settled down on Elizabeth herself.</p>
+
+  <p>For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and
+  direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to
+  era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old
+  things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries
+  were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the
+  castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms,
+  desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never
+  to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor
+  of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of
+  immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its
+  foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the
+  universe. In the fabric of habit in which they had so laboriously built
+  for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer.</p>
+
+  <p>And now it is all gone&mdash;like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and
+  between us and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the
+  prose of the historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to
+  us, and our imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the
+  aisles of the cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures
+  sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of what
+  these men were when they were alive; and perhaps in the sound of church
+  bells, that peculiar creation of medięval age, which falls upon the ear
+  like the echo of a vanished world.</p>
+
+  <p>The transition out of this old state is what in this book I have
+  undertaken to relate. As yet there were uneasy workings below the
+  surface; but the crust was unbroken, and the nation remained outwardly
+  unchanged as it had been for centuries. I have still some few features to
+  add to my description.</p>
+
+  <p>Nothing, I think, proves more surely the mutual confidence which held
+  together the government and the people, than the fact that all classes
+  were armed. Every man, as I have already said, was a soldier; and every
+  man was ready equipped at all times with the arms which corresponded to
+  his rank. By the great statute of Winchester,<a name="NtA_65"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_65"><sup>65</sup></a> which was repeated and expanded on many
+  occasions in the after reigns, it was enacted, "That every man have
+  harness in his house to keep the peace after the antient
+  assise&mdash;that is to say, every man between <!-- Page 40 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page40"></a>[pg 40]</span> fifteen years of age
+  and sixty years shall be assessed and sworn to armour according to the
+  quantity of his lands and goods&mdash;that is, to wit, for fifteen pounds
+  lands and forty marks goods, a hauberke, a helmet of iron, a sword, a
+  dagger, and a horse. For ten pounds of lands and twenty marks goods, a
+  hauberke, a helmet, a sword, and a dagger. For five pounds lands, a
+  doublet, a helmet of iron, a sword, and a dagger. For forty shillings
+  lands, a sword, a bow and arrows, and a dagger. And all others that may
+  shall have bows and arrows. Review of armour shall be made every year two
+  times, by two constables for every hundred and franchise thereunto
+  appointed; and the constables shall present, to justices assigned for
+  that purpose, such defaults as they do find."</p>
+
+  <p>As the archery was more developed, and the bow became the peculiar
+  weapon of the English, regular practice was ordered, and shooting became
+  at once the drill and the amusement of the people. Every hamlet had its
+  pair of butts; and on Sundays and holidays<a name="NtA_66"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_66"><sup>66</sup></a> all able-bodied men were required to
+  appear in the field, to employ their leisure hours "as valyant Englishmen
+  ought to do," "utterly leaving the play at the bowls, quoits, dice,
+  kails, and other unthrifty games;" magistrates, mayors, and bailiffs
+  being responsible for their obedience, under penalty, if these officers
+  neglected their duty, of a fine of twenty shillings for each offence. On
+  the same days, the tilt-yard at the Hall or Castle was thrown open, and
+  the young men of rank amused themselves with similar exercises. Fighting,
+  or mock fighting&mdash;and the imitation was not unlike the
+  reality&mdash;was at once the highest enjoyment and the noblest
+  accomplishment of all ranks in the state; and over that most terrible of
+  human occupations they had flung the enchanted halo of chivalry,
+  decorating it with all the fairest graces, and consecrating it with the
+  most heroic aspirations.</p>
+
+  <p>The chivalry, with much else, was often perhaps something ideal. In
+  the wars of the Roses it had turned into mere savage ferocity; and in
+  forty years of carnage the fighting propensities had glutted themselves.
+  A reaction followed, and in the early years of Henry VIII. the statutes
+  were growing obsolete, and the "unlawful games" rising again into favour.
+  The younger nobles, or some among them, were shrinking from the
+  tilt-yard, and were backward on occasions even when required for war.
+  Lord Surrey, when waiting on the Border, expecting the Duke of Albany to
+  invade the northern counties, in 1523, complained <!-- Page 41 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page41"></a>[pg 41]</span> of the growing
+  "slowness" of the young lords "to be at such journeys,"<a
+  name="NtA_67"></a><a href="#Nt_67"><sup>67</sup></a> and of their
+  "inclination to dancing, carding, and dicing." The people had followed
+  the example, and were falling out of archery practice, exchanging it for
+  similar amusements. Henry VIII., in his earlier days an Englishman after
+  the old type, set himself resolutely to oppose these downward tendencies,
+  and to brace again the slackened sinews of the nation. In his own person
+  he was the best rider, the best lance, and the best archer in England;
+  and while a boy he was dreaming of fresh Agincourts, and even of fresh
+  crusades. In 1511, when he had been king only three years, parliament
+  re-enacted the Winchester statute, with new and remarkable provisions;
+  and twice subsequently in the course of his reign he returned back upon
+  the subject, insisting upon it with increasing stringency. The language
+  of the Act of 1511 is not a little striking. "The King's Highness," so
+  the words run, "calling to his gracious remembrance that by the feats and
+  exercise of the subjects of his realm in shooting in long bows, there had
+  continually grown and been within the same great numbers and multitudes
+  of good archers, which hath not only defended the realm and the subjects
+  thereof against the cruel malice and dangers of their enemies in times
+  heretofore past, but also, with little numbers and puissance in regard of
+  their opposites, have done many notable acts and discomfitures of war
+  against the infidels and others; and furthermore reduced divers regions
+  and countries to their due obeysance, to the great honour, fame, and
+  surety of this realm and subjects, and to the terrible dread and fear of
+  all strange nations, anything to attempt or do to the hurt or damage of
+  them: Yet nevertheless that archery and shooting in long bows is but
+  little used, but daily does minish and decay, and abate more and more;
+  for that much part of the commonalty and poor people of this realm,
+  whereby of old time the great number and substance of archers had grown
+  and multiplied, be not of power nor ability to buy them long bows of yew
+  to exercise shooting in the same, and to sustain the continual charge
+  thereof; and also because, by means and occasions of customable usage of
+  tennis play, bowles, claish and other unlawful games, prohibited by many
+  good and beneficent statutes, much impoverishment hath ensued: Wherefore,
+  the King's Highness, of his great wisdom and providence, and also for
+  zeal to the public weal, surety, and defence of this his realm, and the
+  antient fame in this behalf to be revived, by <!-- Page 42 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page42"></a>[pg 42]</span> the assent of his
+  Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and his Commons in this present parliament
+  assembled, hath enacted and established that the statute of Winchester
+  for archers be put in due execution; and over that, that every man being
+  the king's subject, not lame, decrepit, or maimed, being within the age
+  of sixty years, except spiritual men, justices of the one bench and of
+  the other, justices of the assize, and barons of the exchequer, do use
+  and exercise shooting in long bows, and also do have a bow and arrows
+  ready continually in his house, to use himself in shooting. And that
+  every man having a man child or men children in his house, shall provide
+  for all such, being of the age of seven years and above, and till they
+  shall come to the age of seventeen years, a bow and two shafts, to learn
+  them and bring them up in shooting; and after such young men shall come
+  to the age of seventeen years, every of them shall provide and have a bow
+  and four arrows continually for himself, at his proper costs and charges,
+  or else of the gift and provision of his friends, and shall use the same
+  as afore is rehearsed." Other provisions are added, designed to suppress
+  the games complained of, and to place the bows more within the reach of
+  the poor, by cheapening the prices of them.</p>
+
+  <p>The same statute<a name="NtA_68"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_68"><sup>68</sup></a> (and if this be a proof that it had
+  imperfectly succeeded, it is a proof also of Henry's confidence in the
+  general attachment of his subjects) was re-enacted thirty years later, at
+  the crisis of the Reformation, when the northern counties were fermenting
+  in a half-suppressed rebellion, and the catholics at home and abroad were
+  intriguing to bring about a revolution. In this subsequent edition of
+  it<a name="NtA_69"></a><a href="#Nt_69"><sup>69</sup></a> some
+  particulars are added which demand notice. In the directions to the
+  villages for the maintaining each "a pair of buttes," it is ordered that
+  no person above the age of twenty-four shall shoot with the light flight
+  arrow at a distance under two hundred and twenty yards. Up to two hundred
+  and twenty yards, therefore, the heavy war arrow was used, and this is to
+  be taken as the effective range for fighting purposes of the old
+  archery.<a name="NtA_70"></a><a href="#Nt_70"><sup>70</sup></a> <!-- Page
+  43 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page43"></a>[pg 43]</span> No
+  measures could have been invented more effective than this vigorous
+  arming to repress the self-seeking tendencies in the mercantile classes
+  which I have mentioned as beginning to show themselves. Capital supported
+  by force may make its own terms with labour; but capital lying between a
+  king on one side resolved to prevent oppression, and a people on the
+  other side in full condition to resist, felt even prudence dictate
+  moderation, and reserved itself for a more convenient season.</p>
+
+  <p>Looking, therefore, at the state of England as a whole, I cannot doubt
+  that under Henry the body of the people were prosperous, well-fed, loyal,
+  and contented. In all points of material comfort they were as well off as
+  they had ever been before; better off than they have ever been in later
+  times.</p>
+
+  <p>Their amusements, as prescribed by statute, consisted in training
+  themselves as soldiers. In the prohibitions of the statutes we see also
+  what their amusements were inclined to be. But besides "the bowles and
+  the claish," field sports, fishing, shooting, hunting, were the delight
+  of every one, and although the forest laws were terrible, they served
+  only to enhance the excitement by danger. Then, as now, no English
+  peasant could be convinced that there was any moral crime in
+  appropriating the wild game. It was an offence against statute law, but
+  no offence against natural law; and it was rather a trial of skill
+  between the noble who sought to monopolise a right which seemed to be
+  common to all, and those who would succeed, if they could, in securing
+  their own share of it. The Robin Hood ballads reflect the popular feeling
+  and breathe the warm genial spirit of the old greenwood adventurers. If
+  deer-stealing was a sin, it was more than compensated by the risk of the
+  penalty to which those who failed submitted, when no other choice was
+  left. They did not always submit, as the old northern poem shows of
+  <i>Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudislee</i>, with its
+  most immoral moral; yet I suppose there was never pedant who could resist
+  the spell <!-- Page 44 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page44"></a>[pg
+  44]</span> of those ringing lines, or refuse with all his heart to wish
+  the rogues success, and confusion to the honest men.</p>
+
+  <p>But the English peasantry had pleasures of less ambiguous propriety,
+  and less likely to mislead our sympathies. The chroniclers have given us
+  many accounts of the masques and plays which were acted in the court, or
+  in the castles of the noblemen. Such pageants were but the most splendid
+  expression of a taste which was national and universal. As in ancient
+  Greece, generations before the rise of the great dramas of Athens,
+  itinerant companies wandered from village to village, carrying their
+  stage furniture in their little carts, and acted in their booths and
+  tents the grand stories of the mythology; so in England the mystery
+  players haunted the wakes and fairs, and in barns or taverns, taprooms,
+  or in the farmhouse kitchen, played at saints and angels, and transacted
+  on their petty stage the drama of the Christian faith. To us, who can
+  measure the effect of such scenes only by the impression which they would
+  now produce upon ourselves, these exhibitions can seem but unspeakably
+  profane; they were not profane when tendered in simplicity, and received
+  as they were given. They were no more profane than those quaint monastic
+  illuminations which formed the germ of Italian art; and as out of the
+  illuminations arose those paintings which remain unapproached and
+  unapproachable in their excellence, so out of the mystery plays arose the
+  English drama, represented in its final completeness by the creations of
+  a poet who, it now begins to be supposed, stands alone among mankind. We
+  allow ourselves to think of Shakspeare or of Raphael or of Phidias, as
+  having accomplished their work by the power of their own individual
+  genius; but greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree
+  of an excellence which prevails widely round it, and forms the
+  environment in which it grows. No single mind in single contact with the
+  facts of nature could have created out of itself a Pallas, a Madonna, or
+  a Lear; such vast conceptions are the growth of ages, the creations of a
+  nation's spirit; and artist and poet, filled full with the power of that
+  spirit, have but given them form, and nothing more than form. Nor would
+  the form itself have been attainable by any isolated talent. No genius
+  can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power, unguided or
+  ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and life is not long
+  enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble conceptions already
+  existing, and a noble school of execution which will launch mind and hand
+  at once upon their true courses, are indispensable <!-- Page 45 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page45"></a>[pg 45]</span> to transcendent
+  excellence; and Shakspeare's plays were as much the offspring of the long
+  generations who had pioneered his road for him, as the discoveries of
+  Newton were the offspring of those of Copernicus.</p>
+
+  <p>No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great
+  statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out of
+  a nation of materialists; no great dramatist except when the drama was
+  the passion of the people. Acting was the especial amusement of the
+  English, from the palace to the village green. It was the result and
+  expression of their power over themselves, and power over circumstances.
+  They were troubled with no subjective speculations; no social problems
+  vexed them with which they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance of
+  vigour and spirits they were able, in the strict and literal sense of the
+  word, to play with the materials of life. The mystery plays came first;
+  next the popular legends; and then the great figures of English history
+  came out upon the stage, or stories from Greek and Roman writers; or
+  sometimes it was an extemporised allegory. Shakspeare himself has left us
+  many pictures of the village drama. Doubtless he had seen many a Bottom
+  in the old Warwickshire hamlets; many a Sir Nathaniel playing
+  "Alissander," and finding himself "a little o'erparted." He had been with
+  Snug the joiner, Quince the carpenter, and Flute the bellows-mender, when
+  a boy we will not question, and acted with them, and written their parts
+  for them; had gone up with them in the winter's evenings to the Lucy's
+  Hall before the sad trouble with the deer-stealing; and afterwards, when
+  he came to London and found his way into great society, he had not failed
+  to see Polonius burlesquing Cęsar on the stage, as in his proper person
+  Polonius burlesqued Sir William Cecil. The strolling players in
+  <i>Hamlet</i> might be met at every country wake or festival; it was the
+  direction in which the especial genius of the people delighted to revel.
+  As I desire in this chapter not only to relate what were the habits of
+  the people, but to illustrate them also, within such compass as I can
+  allow myself, I shall transcribe out of Hall<a name="NtA_71"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_71"><sup>71</sup></a> a description of a play which was acted
+  by the boys of St. Paul's School, in 1527, at Greenwich, adding some
+  particulars, not mentioned by Hall, from another source.<a
+  name="NtA_72"></a><a href="#Nt_72"><sup>72</sup></a> It is a good
+  instance of the fantastic splendour with which exhibitions of this kind
+  were <!-- Page 46 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page46"></a>[pg
+  46]</span> got up, and it possesses also a melancholy interest of another
+  kind, as showing how little the wisest among us can foresee our own
+  actions, or assure ourselves that the convictions of to-day will alike be
+  the convictions of to-morrow. The occasion was the despatch of a French
+  embassy to England, when Europe was outraged by the Duke of Bourbon's
+  capture of Rome, when the children of Francis I. were prisoners in Spain,
+  and Henry, with the full energy of his fiery nature, was flinging himself
+  into a quarrel with Charles V. as the champion of the Holy See.</p>
+
+  <p>At the conclusion of a magnificent supper "the king led the
+  ambassadors into the great chamber of disguisings; and in the end of the
+  same chamber was a fountain, and on one side was a hawthorne tree, all of
+  silk, with white flowers, and on the other side was a mulberry tree full
+  of fair berries, all of silk. On the top of the hawthorne were the arms
+  of England, compassed with the collar of the order<a name="NtA_73"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_73"><sup>73</sup></a> of St. Michael, and in the top of the
+  mulberry tree stood the arms of France within a garter. The fountain was
+  all of white marble, graven and chased; the bases of the same were balls
+  of gold, supported by ramping beasts wound in leaves of gold. In the
+  first work were gargoylles of gold, fiercely faced with spouts running.
+  The second receit of this fountain was environed with winged serpents,
+  all of gold, which griped it; and on the summit of the same was a fair
+  lady, out of whose breasts ran abundantly water of marvellous delicious
+  savour. About this fountain were benches of rosemary, fretted in braydes
+  laid on gold, all the sides set with roses, on branches as they were
+  growing about this fountain. On the benches sate eight fair ladies in
+  strange attire, and so richly apparelled in cloth of gold, embroidered
+  and cut over silver, that I cannot express the cunning workmanship
+  thereof. Then when the king and queen were set, there was played before
+  them, by children, in the Latin tongue, a manner of tragedy, the effect
+  whereof was that the pope was in captivity and the church brought under
+  foot. Whereupon St. Peter appeared and put the cardinal (Wolsey) in
+  authority to bring the pope to his liberty, and to set up the church
+  again. And so the cardinal made intercession with the kings of England
+  and France that they took part together, and by their means the pope was
+  delivered. Then in came the French king's children, and complained to the
+  cardinal how the emperour kept them as hostages, and would not come to
+  reasonable point with their <!-- Page 47 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page47"></a>[pg 47]</span> father, whereupon they desired the
+  cardinal to help for their deliverance; which wrought so with the king
+  his master and the French king that he brought the emperour to a peace,
+  and caused the two young princes to be delivered." So far Hall relates
+  the scene, but there was more in the play than he remembered or cared to
+  notice, and I am able to complete this curious picture of a pageant once
+  really and truly a living spectacle in the old palace at Greenwich, by an
+  inventory of the dresses worn by the boys and a list of the <i>dramatis
+  personę</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>The school-boys of St. Paul's were taken down the river with the
+  master in six boats, at the cost of a shilling a boat&mdash;the cost of
+  the dresses and the other expenses amounting in all to sixty-one
+  shillings.</p>
+
+  <p>The characters were&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>An orator in apparel of cloth of gold.</p>
+
+  <p>Religio, Ecclesia, Veritas, like three widows, in garments of silk,
+  and suits of lawn and Cyprus.</p>
+
+  <p>Heresy and False Interpretation, like sisters of Bohemia, apparelled
+  in silk of divers colours.</p>
+
+  <p>The heretic Luther, like a party friar, in russet damask and black
+  taffety.</p>
+
+  <p>Luther's wife, like a frow of Spiers in Almayn, in red silk.</p>
+
+  <p>Peter, Paul, and James, in habits of white sarsnet, and three red
+  mantles, and lace of silver and damask, and pelisses of scarlet.</p>
+
+  <p>A Cardinal in his apparel.</p>
+
+  <p>Two Sergeants in rich apparel.</p>
+
+  <p>The Dolphin and his brother in coats of velvet embroidered with gold,
+  and capes of satin bound with velvet.</p>
+
+  <p>A Messenger in tinsel satin.</p>
+
+  <p>Six men in gowns of grey sarsnet.</p>
+
+  <p>Six women in gowns of crimson velvet.</p>
+
+  <p>War, in rich cloth of gold and feathers, armed.</p>
+
+  <p>Three Almeyns, in apparel all cut and holed in silk.</p>
+
+  <p>Lady Peace in lady's apparel white and rich.</p>
+
+  <p>Lady Quietness and Dame Tranquillity richly beseen in lady's
+  apparel.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a strange world. This was in November, 1527. In November, 1530,
+  but three brief years after, Wolsey lay dying in misery, a disgraced man,
+  at Leicester Abbey; "the Pope's Holiness" was fast becoming in English
+  eyes plain Bishop of Rome, held guilty towards this realm of unnumbered
+  enormities, <!-- Page 48 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page48"></a>[pg 48]</span> and all England was sweeping with
+  immeasurable velocity towards the heretic Luther. So history repeats the
+  lesson to us, not to boast ourselves of the morrow, for we know not what
+  a day may bring forth.</p>
+
+  <p>Before I conclude this survey, it remains for me to say something of
+  the position of the poor, and of the measures which were taken for the
+  solution of that most difficult of all problems, the distinguishing the
+  truly deserving from the worthless and the vagabond. The subject is one
+  to which in the progress of this work I shall have more than one occasion
+  to return; but inasmuch as a sentimental opinion prevails that an
+  increase of poverty and the consequent enactment of poor-laws was the
+  result of the suppression of the religious houses, and that adequate
+  relief had been previously furnished by these establishments, it is
+  necessary to say a few words for the removal of an impression which is as
+  near as possible the reverse of the truth. I do not doubt that for many
+  centuries these houses fulfilled honestly the intentions with which they
+  were established; but as early as the reign of Richard II. it was found
+  necessary to provide some other means for the support of the aged and
+  impotent; the monasteries not only having then begun to neglect their
+  duty; but by the appropriation of benefices having actually deprived the
+  parishes of their local and independent means of charity.<a
+  name="NtA_74"></a><a href="#Nt_74"><sup>74</sup></a> Licences to beg were
+  at that time granted to deserving persons; and it is noticeable that this
+  measure was in a few years followed by the petition to Henry IV. for the
+  secularisation of ecclesiastical property.<a name="NtA_75"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_75"><sup>75</sup></a> Thus early in our history had the regular
+  clergy forgotten the nature of their mission, and the object for which
+  the administration of the nation's charities had been committed to them.
+  Thus early, while their houses were the nurseries of dishonest
+  mendicancy,<a name="NtA_76"></a><a href="#Nt_76"><sup>76</sup></a> they
+  had surrendered to lay compassion, those who ought to have been their
+  especial care. I shall unhappily have occasion hereafter to illustrate
+  these matters in detail. I mention them in this place only in order to
+  dissipate at once a foolish dream. At the opening of the sixteenth
+  century, before the suppression of the monasteries had suggested itself
+  in a practical form, pauperism was a state question of great difficulty,
+  and as such I have at present to consider it.</p>
+
+  <p>For the able-bodied vagrant, it is well known that the old <!-- Page
+  49 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page49"></a>[pg 49]</span> English
+  laws had no mercy. When wages are low, and population has outgrown the
+  work which can be provided for it, idleness may be involuntary and
+  innocent; at a time when all industrious men could maintain themselves in
+  comfort and prosperity, "when a fair day's wages for a fair day's work"
+  was really and truly the law of the land, it was presumed that if strong
+  capable men preferred to wander about the country, and live upon the
+  labour of others, mendicancy was not the only crime of which they were
+  likely to be guilty; while idleness itself was justly looked upon as a
+  high offence, and misdemeanour. The penalty of God's laws against
+  idleness, as expressed in the system of nature, was starvation; and it
+  was held intolerable that any man should be allowed to escape a divine
+  judgment by begging under false pretences, and robbing others of their
+  honest earnings.</p>
+
+  <p>In a country also the boast of which was its open-handed hospitality,
+  it was necessary to take care that hospitality was not brought to
+  discredit by abuse; and when every door was freely opened to a request
+  for a meal or a night's lodging, there was an imperative duty to keep a
+  strict eye on whatever persons were on the move. We shall therefore be
+  prepared to find "sturdy and valiant beggars" treated with summary
+  justice as criminals of a high order; the right of a government so to
+  treat them being proportioned to the facilities with which the honestly
+  disposed can maintain themselves.</p>
+
+  <p>It might have been expected, on the other hand, that when wages were
+  so high, and work so constant, labourers would have been left to
+  themselves to make provision against sickness and old age. To modern ways
+  of thinking on these subjects, there would have seemed no hardship in so
+  leaving them; and their sufferings, if they had suffered, would have
+  appeared but as a deserved retribution. This, however, was not the temper
+  of earlier times. Charity has ever been the especial virtue of Catholic
+  States, and the aged and the impotent were always held to be the
+  legitimate objects of it. Men who had worked hard while they were able to
+  work were treated like decayed soldiers, as the discharged pensionaries
+  of society; they were held entitled to wear out their age (under
+  restrictions) at the expense of others; and so readily did society
+  acquiesce in this aspect of its obligations, that on the failure of the
+  monasteries to do their duty, it was still sufficient to leave such
+  persons to voluntary liberality, and legislation had to interfere only to
+  direct such liberality into its legitimate channels. In the <!-- Page 50
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page50"></a>[pg 50]</span> 23rd of Edw.
+  III. cap. 7, a prohibition was issued against giving alms to "valiant
+  beggars," and this proving inadequate, and charity being still given
+  indiscriminately, in the twelfth year of Richard II. the system of
+  licences was introduced, and a pair of stocks was erected by order in
+  every town or village, to "justify" persons begging unpermitted. The
+  monasteries growing more and more careless, the number of paupers
+  continued to multiply, and this method received successive expansions,
+  till at length, when the Reformation was concluded, it terminated, after
+  many changes of form, in the famous Act of Elizabeth. We can thus trace
+  our poor law in the whole course of its growth, and into two stages
+  through which it passed I must enter with some minuteness. The 12th of
+  the 22nd of Henry VIII., and the 25th of the 27th, are so remarkable in
+  their tone, and so rich in their detail, as to furnish a complete
+  exposition of English thought at that time upon the subject; while the
+  second of these two acts, and probably the first also, has a further
+  interest for us, as being the composition of Henry himself, and the most
+  finished which he has left to us.<a name="NtA_77"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_77"><sup>77</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"Whereas," says the former of these two Acts, "in all places
+  throughout this realm of England, vagabonds and beggars have of long time
+  increased, and daily do increase in great and excessive numbers, by the
+  occasion of idleness, mother and root of all vices; whereby hath insurged
+  and sprung, and daily insurgeth and springeth, continual thefts, murders,
+  and other heinous offences and great enormities, to the high displeasure
+  of God, the inquietation and damage of the king's people, and to the
+  marvellous disturbance of the common weal of this realm; and whereas,
+  strait statutes and ordinances have been before this time devised and
+  made, as well by the king our sovereign lord, as also by divers his most
+  noble progenitors, kings of England, for the most necessary and due
+  reformation of the premises; yet that notwithstanding, the said number of
+  vagabonds and beggars be not seen in any part to be diminished, but
+  rather daily augmented and increased into great routs or companies, as
+  evidently and manifestly it doth and may appear: Be it therefore enacted
+  by the king our sovereign lord, and by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,
+  and the Commons, in this present parliament assembled, that the justices
+  of the peace of all and singular the shires of England within the limits
+  of their commission, and all other justices of the peace, mayors,
+  sheriffs, <!-- Page 51 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page51"></a>[pg
+  51]</span> bailiffs, and other officers of every city, borough, or
+  franchise, shall from time to time, as often as need shall require, make
+  diligent search and inquiry of all aged, poor, and impotent persons,
+  which live, or of necessity be compelled to live by alms of the charity
+  of the people; and such search made, the said officers, every of them
+  within the limits of their authorities, shall have power, at their
+  discretions, to enable to beg within such limits as they shall appoint,
+  such of the said impotent persons as they shall think convenient; and to
+  give in commandment to every such impotent beggar (by them enabled) that
+  none of them shall beg without the limits so appointed to them. And
+  further, they shall deliver to every such person so enabled a letter
+  containing the name of that person, witnessing that he is authorised to
+  beg, and the limits within which he is appointed to beg, the same letter
+  to be sealed with the seal of the hundred, rape, wapentake, city, or
+  borough, and subscribed with the name of one of the said justices or
+  officers aforesaid. And if any such impotent person do beg in any other
+  place than within such limits, then the justices of the peace, and all
+  other the king's officers and ministers, shall by their discretions
+  punish all such persons by imprisonment in the stocks, by the space of
+  two days and two nights, giving them only bread and water."</p>
+
+  <p>Further, "If any such impotent person be found begging without a
+  licence, at the discretion of the justices of the peace, he shall be
+  stripped naked from the middle upwards, and whipped within the town in
+  which he be found, or within some other town, as it shall seem good. Or
+  if it be not convenient so to punish him, he shall be set in the stocks
+  by the space of three days and three nights."</p>
+
+  <p>Such were the restrictions under which impotency was allowed support.
+  Though not in itself treated as an offence, and though its right to
+  maintenance by society was not denied, it was not indulged, as we may
+  see, with unnecessary encouragement. The Act then proceeds to deal with
+  the genuine vagrant.</p>
+
+  <p>"And be it further enacted, that if any person or persons, being whole
+  and mighty in body and able to labour, be taken in begging in any part of
+  this realm; and if any man or woman, being whole and mighty in body,
+  having no land, nor master, nor using any lawful merchandry, craft, or
+  mystery whereby he might get his living, be vagrant, and can give none
+  account how he doth lawfully get his living, then it shall, be lawful to
+  the constables and all other king's officers, ministers, and <!-- Page 52
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page52"></a>[pg 52]</span> subjects of
+  every town, parish, and hamlet, to arrest the said vagabonds and idle
+  persons, and bring them to any justice of the peace of the same shire or
+  liberty, or else to the high constable of the hundred; and the justice of
+  the peace, high constable, or other officer, shall cause such idle person
+  so to him brought, to be had to the next market town or other place, and
+  there to be tied to the end of a cart, naked, and be beaten with whips
+  throughout the same town till his body be bloody by reason of such
+  whipping; and after such punishment of whipping had, the person so
+  punished shall be enjoined upon his oath to return forthwith without
+  delay, in the next and straight way, to the place where he was born, or
+  where he last dwelled before the same punishment, by the space of three
+  years; and then put himself to labour like a true man ought to do; and
+  after that done, every such person so punished and ordered shall have a
+  letter, sealed with the seal of the hundred, rape, or wapentake,
+  witnessing that he hath been punished according to this estatute, and
+  containing the day and place of his punishment, and the place where unto
+  he is limited to go, and by what time he is limited to come thither: for
+  that within that time, showing the said letter, he may lawfully beg by
+  the way, and otherwise not; and if he do not accomplish the order to him
+  appointed by the said letter, then to be eftsoons taken and whipped; and
+  so often as there be fault found in him, to be whipped till he has his
+  body put to labour for his living, or otherwise truly get his living, so
+  long as he is able to do so."</p>
+
+  <p>Then follow the penalties against the justices of the peace,
+  constables, and all officers who neglect to arrest such persons; and a
+  singularly curious catalogue is added of certain forms of "sturdy
+  mendicancy," which, if unspecified, might have been passed over as
+  exempt, but to which Henry had no intention of conceding further licence.
+  It seems as if, in framing the Act, he had Simon Fish's petition before
+  him, and was commencing at last the rough remedy of the cart's-tail,
+  which Fish had dared to recommend for a very obdurate evil.<a
+  name="NtA_78"></a><a href="#Nt_78"><sup>78</sup></a> The friars of the
+  mendicant orders were tolerated for a few years longer; but <!-- Page 53
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page53"></a>[pg 53]</span> many other
+  spiritual persons may have suffered seriously under the provisions of the
+  present statute.</p>
+
+  <p>"Be it further enacted," the Act continues, "that scholars of the
+  Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, that go about begging, not being
+  authorised under the seal of the said universities, by the commissary,
+  chancellor, or vice-chancellor of the same; and that all and singular
+  shipmen pretending losses of their ships and goods, going about the
+  country begging without sufficient authority, shall be punished and
+  ordered in manner and form as is above rehearsed of strong beggars; and
+  that all proctors and pardoners, and all other idle persons going about
+  in counties or abiding in any town, city, or borough, some of them using
+  divers subtle, crafty, and unlawful games and plays, and some of them
+  feigning themselves to have knowledge in physick, physnamye, and
+  palmistry, or other crafty science, whereby they bear the people in hand
+  that they can tell their destinies, dreams, and fortunes, and such other
+  like fantastical imaginations, to the great deceit of the king's
+  subjects, shall, upon examination had before two justices of the peace,
+  if by provable witness they be found guilty of such deceits, be punished
+  by whipping at two days together, after the manner before rehearsed. And
+  if they eftsoons offend in the same or any like offence, to be scourged
+  two days, and the third day to be put upon the pillory, from nine o'clock
+  till eleven the forenoon of the same day, and to have the right ear cut
+  off; and if they offend the third time, to have like punishment with
+  whipping and the pillory, and to have the other ear cut off."</p>
+
+  <p>It would scarcely have been expected that this Act would have failed
+  for want of severity in its penalties; yet five years later, for this and
+  for some other reasons, it was thought desirable to expand the provisions
+  of it, enhancing the penalties at the same time to a degree which has
+  given a bloody name in the history of English law to the statutes of
+  Henry VIII. Of this expanded statute<a name="NtA_79"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_79"><sup>79</sup></a> we have positive evidence, as I said,
+  that Henry was himself the author. The merit of it, or the guilt of
+  it&mdash;if guilt there be&mdash;originated with him alone. The early
+  clauses contain practical amendments of an undoubtedly salutary kind. The
+  Act of 1531 had been defective in that no specified means had been
+  assigned for finding vagrants in labour, which, with men of broken
+  character, was not immediately easy. The smaller monasteries having been
+  suppressed in the interval, and sufficient funds being thus placed <!--
+  Page 54 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page54"></a>[pg 54]</span> at
+  the disposal of the government, public works<a name="NtA_80"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_80"><sup>80</sup></a> were set on foot throughout the kingdom,
+  and this difficulty was obviated.</p>
+
+  <p>Another important alteration was a restriction upon private charity.
+  Private persons were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to give money to
+  beggars, whether deserving or undeserving. The poor of each parish might
+  call at houses within the boundaries for broken meats; but this was the
+  limit of personal almsgiving; and the money which men might be disposed
+  to offer was to be collected by the churchwardens on Sundays and holidays
+  in the churches. The parish priest was to keep an account of receipts and
+  of expenditure, and relief was administered with some approach to modern
+  formalities. A further excellent but severe enactment empowered the
+  parish officers to take up all idle children above the age of five years,
+  "and appoint them to masters of husbandry or other craft or labour to be
+  taught;" and if any child should refuse the service to which he was
+  appointed, or run away "without cause reasonable being shown for it," he
+  might be publicly whipped with rods, at the discretion of the justice of
+  the peace before whom he was brought.</p>
+
+  <p>So far, no complaint can be urged against these provisions: they
+  display only that severe but true humanity, which, in offering fair and
+  liberal maintenance for all who will consent to be honest, insists, not
+  unjustly, that its offer shall be accepted, and that the resources of
+  charity shall not be trifled away. On the clause, however, which gave to
+  the Act its especial and distinguishing character, there will be large
+  difference of opinion. "The sturdy vagabond," who by the earlier statute
+  was condemned on his second offence to lose the whole or a part of his
+  right ear, was condemned by the amended Act, if found a third time
+  offending, with the mark upon him of his mutilation, "to suffer pains and
+  execution of death, as a felon and as an enemy of the commonwealth." So
+  the letter stands. For an able-bodied man to be caught a third time
+  begging was held a crime deserving death, and the sentence was intended,
+  on fit occasions, to be executed. The poor man's advantages, which I have
+  estimated at so high a rate, were not purchased without drawbacks. He
+  might not change his master at his will, or wander from place to place.
+  He might not keep his children <!-- Page 55 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page55"></a>[pg 55]</span> at his home unless he could answer for
+  their time. If out of employment, preferring to be idle, he might be
+  demanded for work by any master of the "craft" to which he belonged, and
+  compelled to work whether he would or no. If caught begging once, being
+  neither aged nor infirm, he was whipped at the cart's tail. If caught a
+  second time, his ear was slit, or bored through with a hot iron. If
+  caught a third time, being thereby proved to be of no use upon this
+  earth, but to live upon it only to his own hurt and to that of others, he
+  suffered death as a felon. So the law of England remained for sixty
+  years. First drawn by Henry, it continued unrepealed through the reigns
+  of Edward and of Mary, subsisting, therefore, with the deliberate
+  approval of both the great parties between whom the country was divided.
+  Reconsidered under Elizabeth, the same law was again formally passed; and
+  it was, therefore, the expressed conviction of the English nation, that
+  it was better for a man not to live at all than to live a profitless and
+  worthless life. The vagabond was a sore spot upon the commonwealth, to be
+  healed by wholesome discipline if the gangrene was not incurable; to be
+  cut away with the knife if the milder treatment of the cart-whip failed
+  to be of profit.<a name="NtA_81"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_81"><sup>81</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>A measure so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy.
+  The state of the country was critical; and the danger from questionable
+  persons traversing it unexamined and uncontrolled was greater than at
+  ordinary times. But in point of justice, as well as of prudence, it
+  harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it answered well for the
+  government of a fierce and powerful people, in whose hearts lay an
+  intense hatred of rascality, and among whom no one need have lapsed into
+  evil courses except by deliberate preference for them. The moral
+  substance of the English must have been strong indeed when it admitted of
+  such hardy treatment; but on the whole, the people were ruled as they
+  preferred to be ruled; and if wisdom may be tested by success, the manner
+  in which they passed the great crisis of the Reformation is the best
+  justification of their princes.</p>
+
+  <p>The era was great throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of
+  Michael Angelo; the Spaniards who were the contemporaries <!-- Page 56
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page56"></a>[pg 56]</span> of Cortez;
+  the Germans who shook off the pope at the call of Luther; and the
+  splendid chivalry of Francis I. of France, were no common men. But they
+  were all brought face to face with the same trials, and none met them as
+  the English met them. The English alone never lost their self-possession;
+  and if they owed something to fortune in their escape from anarchy, they
+  owed more to the strong hand and steady purpose of their rulers.</p>
+
+  <p>To conclude this chapter then.</p>
+
+  <p>In the brief review of the system under which England was governed, we
+  have seen a state of things in which the principles of political economy
+  were, consciously or unconsciously, contradicted; where an attempt, more
+  or less successful, was made to bring the production and distribution of
+  wealth under the moral rule of right and wrong; and where those laws of
+  supply and demand, which we are now taught to regard as immutable
+  ordinances of nature, were absorbed or superseded by a higher code. It is
+  necessary for me to repeat that I am not holding up the sixteenth century
+  as a model which the nineteenth might safely follow. The population has
+  become too large, employment has become too complicated and fluctuating,
+  to admit of external control; while, in default of control, the relapse
+  upon self-interest as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, and
+  when it ensues is absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these
+  so-called ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended,
+  and duty to his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive
+  of action than the advantages which he may gain in an enemy's market; so
+  it is not uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in a
+  normal condition of militancy against social injustice; when the
+  government was enabled by happy circumstances to pursue into detail a
+  single and serious aim at the well-being&mdash;well-being in its widest
+  sense&mdash;of all members of the commonwealth. The world, indeed, was
+  not made particularly pleasant. Of liberty, in the modern sense of the
+  word, of the supposed right of every man "to do what he will with his
+  own" or with himself, there was no idea. To the question, if ever it was
+  asked, May I not do what I will with my own? there was the brief answer,
+  No man may do what is wrong, either with that which is his own or with
+  that which is another's. Workmen were not allowed to take advantage of
+  the scantiness of the labour market to exact extravagant wages.
+  Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from their holdings,
+  and destroy their healthy independence. <!-- Page 57 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page57"></a>[pg 57]</span> The antagonism of
+  interests was absorbed into a relation of which equity was something more
+  than the theoretic principle, and employers and employed were alike
+  amenable to a law which both were compelled to obey. The working man of
+  modern times has bought the extension of his liberty at the price of his
+  material comfort. The higher classes have gained in luxury what they have
+  lost in power. It is not for the historian to balance advantages. His
+  duty is with the facts.</p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAST YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSEY</h3>
+
+  <p>Times were changed in England since the second Henry walked barefoot
+  through the streets of Canterbury, and knelt while the monks flogged him
+  on the pavement in the Chapter-house, doing penance for Becket's murder.
+  The clergy had won the battle in the twelfth century because they
+  deserved to win it. They were not free from fault and weakness, but they
+  felt the meaning of their profession. Their hearts were in their vows,
+  their authority was exercised more justly, more nobly, than the authority
+  of the crown; and therefore, with inevitable justice, the crown was
+  compelled to stoop before them. The victory was great; but, like many
+  victories, it was fatal to the conquerors. It filled them full with the
+  vanity of power; they forgot their duties in their privileges; and when,
+  a century later, the conflict recommenced, the altering issue proved the
+  altering nature of the conditions under which it was fought. The laity
+  were sustained in vigour by the practical obligations of life; the clergy
+  sunk under the influence of a waning religion, the administration of the
+  forms of which had become their sole occupation; and as character forsook
+  them, the Mortmain Act,<a name="NtA_82"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_82"><sup>82</sup></a> the Acts of Premunire, and the repeatedly
+  recurring Statutes of Provisors mark the successive defeats that drove
+  them back from the high post of command which character alone had earned
+  for them. If the Black Prince had lived, or if Richard II. had inherited
+  the temper of the Plantagenets, the ecclesiastical system would have been
+  spared the misfortune of a longer reprieve. Its worst abuses would have
+  then terminated, and the reformation of <!-- Page 58 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page58"></a>[pg 58]</span> <i>doctrine</i> in
+  the sixteenth century would have been left to fight its independent way
+  unsupported by the moral corruption of the church from which it received
+  its most powerful impetus. The nation was ready for sweeping remedies.
+  The people felt little loyalty to the pope, as the language of the
+  Statutes of Provisors<a name="NtA_83"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_83"><sup>83</sup></a> conclusively proves, and they were
+  prepared to risk the sacrilege of confiscating the estates of the
+  religious houses&mdash;a complete measure of secularisation being then,
+  as I have already said,<a name="NtA_84"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_84"><sup>84</sup></a> the expressed desire of the House of
+  Commons.<a name="NtA_85"></a><a href="#Nt_85"><sup>85</sup></a> With an
+  Edward III. on the throne such a measure would very likely have been
+  executed, and the course of English history would have been changed. It
+  was ordered otherwise, and doubtless wisely. The church was allowed a
+  hundred and fifty more years to fill full the measure of her offences,
+  that she might fall only when time had laid bare the root of her
+  degeneracy, and that faith and manners might be changed together.</p>
+
+  <p>The history of the time is too imperfect to justify a positive
+  conclusion. It is possible, however, that the success of the revolution
+  effected by Henry IV. was due in part to a reaction in the church's
+  favour; and it is certain that this prince, if he did not owe his crown
+  to the support of the church, determined to conciliate it. He confirmed
+  the Statutes of Provisors,<a name="NtA_86"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_86"><sup>86</sup></a> but he allowed them to sink into disuse.
+  He forbade the further mooting of the confiscation project; and to him is
+  due the first permission of the bishops to send heretics to the stake.<a
+  name="NtA_87"></a><a href="#Nt_87"><sup>87</sup></a> If English tradition
+  is to be trusted, the clergy still felt insecure; and the French wars of
+  Henry V. are said to have been undertaken, as we all know from
+  Shakspeare, at the persuasion of Archbishop Chichele, who desired to
+  distract his attention from reverting to dangerous subjects. Whether this
+  be true or not, no prince of the house of Lancaster betrayed a wish to
+  renew the quarrel with the church. The battle of Agincourt, the conquest
+  and re-conquest of France, called off the attention of the people; while
+  the rise of the Lollards, and the intrusion of speculative questions, the
+  agitation of which has ever been the chief aversion of English statesmen,
+  contributed to change the current; and the reforming spirit must have
+  lulled before the outbreak of the wars of the Roses, or one of the two
+  parties in so desperate <!-- Page 59 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page59"></a>[pg 59]</span> a struggle would have scarcely failed to
+  have availed themselves of it. Edward IV. is said to have been lenient
+  towards heresy; but his toleration, if it was more than imaginary, was
+  tacit only; he never ventured to avow it. It is more likely that in the
+  inveterate frenzy of those years men had no leisure to remember that
+  heresy existed.</p>
+
+  <p>The clergy were thus left undisturbed to go their own course to its
+  natural end. The storm had passed over them without breaking; and they
+  did not dream that it would again gather. The immunity which they enjoyed
+  from the general sufferings of the civil war contributed to deceive them;
+  and without anxiety for the consequences, and forgetting the significant
+  warning which they had received, they sank steadily into that condition
+  which is inevitable from the constitution of human nature, among men
+  without faith, wealthy, powerful, and luxuriously fed, yet condemned to
+  celibacy, and cut off from the common duties and common pleasures of
+  ordinary life. On the return of a settled government, they were startled
+  for a moment in their security; the conduct of some among them had become
+  so unbearable, that even Henry VII., who inherited the Lancastrian
+  sympathies, was compelled to notice it; and the following brief act was
+  passed by his first parliament, proving by the very terms in which it is
+  couched the existing nature of church discipline. "For the more sure and
+  likely reformation," it runs, "of priests, clerks, and religious men,
+  culpable, or by their demerits openly noised of incontinent living in
+  their bodies, contrary to their order, be it enacted, ordained, and
+  established, that it be lawful to all archbishops and bishops, and other
+  ordinaries having episcopal jurisdiction, to punish and chastise such
+  religious men, being within the bounds of their jurisdiction, as shall be
+  convict before them, by lawful proof, of adultery, fornication, incest,
+  or other fleshly incontinency, by committing them to ward and prison,
+  there to remain for such time as shall be thought convenient for the
+  quality of their trespasses."<a name="NtA_88"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_88"><sup>88</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Previous to the passing of this act, therefore, the bishops, who had
+  power to arrest laymen on suspicion of heresy, and detain them in prison
+  untried,<a name="NtA_89"></a><a href="#Nt_89"><sup>89</sup></a> had no
+  power to imprison priests, even though convicted of adultery or incest.
+  The legislature were <!-- Page 60 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page60"></a>[pg 60]</span> supported by the Archbishop of
+  Canterbury. Cardinal Morton procured authority from the pope to visit the
+  religious houses, the abominations of which had become notorious;<a
+  name="NtA_90"></a><a href="#Nt_90"><sup>90</sup></a> and in a provincial
+  synod held on the 24th of February, 1486, he laid the condition of the
+  secular clergy before the assembled prelates. Many priests, it was
+  stated, spent their time in hawking or hunting, in lounging at taverns,
+  in the dissolute enjoyment of the world. They wore their hair long like
+  laymen; they were to be seen lounging in the streets with cloak and
+  doublet, sword and dagger. By the scandal of their lives they imperilled
+  the stability of their order.<a name="NtA_91"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_91"><sup>91</sup></a> A number of the worst offenders, in
+  London especially, were summoned before the synod and admonished;<a
+  name="NtA_92"></a><a href="#Nt_92"><sup>92</sup></a> certain of the more
+  zealous among the learned (<i>complures docti</i>) who had preached
+  against clerical abuses were advised to be more cautious, for the
+  avoiding of scandal;<a name="NtA_93"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_93"><sup>93</sup></a> but the archbishop, taking the duty upon
+  himself, sent round a circular among the clergy of his province,
+  exhorting them to general amendment.<a name="NtA_94"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_94"><sup>94</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 61 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page61"></a>[pg 61]</span>
+
+  <p>Yet this little cloud again disappeared. Henry VII. sat too insecurely
+  on his throne to venture on a resolute reform, even if his feelings had
+  inclined him towards it, which they did not. Morton durst not resolutely
+  grapple with the evil. He rebuked and remonstrated; but punishment would
+  have caused a public scandal. He would not invite the inspection of the
+  laity into a disease which, without their assistance, he had not the
+  strength to encounter; and his incipient reformation died away
+  ineffectually in words. The church, to outward appearance, stood more
+  securely than ever. The obnoxious statutes of the Plantagenets were in
+  abeyance, their very existence, as it seemed, was forgotten; and Thomas ą
+  Becket never desired more absolute independence for the ecclesiastical
+  order than Archbishop Warham found established when he succeeded to the
+  primacy. He, too, ventured to repeat the experiment of his predecessor.
+  In 1511 he attempted a second visitation of the monasteries, and again
+  exhorted a reform; but his efforts were even slighter than Morton's, and
+  in their results equally without fruit. The maintenance of his order in
+  its political supremacy was of greater moment to him than its moral
+  purity: a decent veil was cast over the clerical infirmities, and their
+  vices were forgotten as soon as they ceased to be proclaimed.<a
+  name="NtA_95"></a><a href="#Nt_95"><sup>95</sup></a> Henry VIII., a mere
+  boy on his accession, was borne away with the prevailing stream; and
+  trained from his childhood by theologians, he entered upon his reign
+  saturated with theological prepossessions. The intensity of his nature
+  recognising no half measures, he was prepared to make them the law of his
+  life; and so zealous was he, that it seemed as if the church had found in
+  him a new Alfred or a Charlemagne. Unfortunately for the church,
+  institutions may be restored in theory; but theory, be it never so
+  perfect, will not give them back their life; and Henry discovered, at
+  length, that the church of the sixteenth century as little resembled the
+  church of the eleventh, as Leo X. resembled Hildebrand, or Warham
+  resembled St. Anselm.</p>
+
+  <p>If, however, there were no longer saints among the clergy, there could
+  still arise among them a remarkable man; and in Cardinal Wolsey the king
+  found an adviser who was able to retain him longer than would otherwise
+  have been possible in the course which he had entered upon; who, holding
+  a middle place between an English statesman and a catholic of the old
+  order, was essentially a transition minister; and who was qualified,
+  above all men then living, by a combination of talent, <!-- Page 62
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page62"></a>[pg 62]</span> honesty, and
+  arrogance, to open questions which could not again be closed when they
+  had escaped the grasp of their originator. Under Wolsey's influence Henry
+  made war with Louis of France, in the pope's quarrel, entered the polemic
+  lists with Luther, and persecuted the English protestants. But Wolsey
+  could not blind himself to the true condition of the church. He was too
+  wise to be deceived with outward prosperity; he knew well that there lay
+  before it, in Europe and at home, the alternative of ruin or amendment;
+  and therefore he familiarised Henry with the sense that a reformation was
+  inevitable, and dreaming that it could be effected from within, by the
+  church itself inspired with a wiser spirit, he himself fell first victim
+  of a convulsion which he had assisted to create, and which he attempted
+  too late to stay.</p>
+
+  <p>His intended measures were approaching maturity, when all Europe was
+  startled by the news that Rome had been stormed by the Imperial army,
+  that the pope was imprisoned, the churches pillaged, the cardinals
+  insulted, and all holiest things polluted and profaned. A spectator,
+  judging only by outward symptoms, would have seen at that strange crisis
+  in Charles V. the worst patron of heresy, and the most dangerous enemy of
+  the Holy See; while the indignation with which the news of these outrages
+  was received at the English court, would have taught him to look on Henry
+  as the one sovereign in Europe on whom that See might calculate most
+  surely for support in its hour of danger. If he could have pierced below
+  the surface, he would have found that the pope's best friend was the
+  prince who held him prisoner; that Henry was but doubtfully acquiescing
+  in the policy of an unpopular minister; and that the English nation would
+  have looked on with stoical resignation if pope and papacy had been
+  wrecked together. They were not inclined to heresy; but the
+  ecclesiastical system was not the catholic faith; and this system, ruined
+  by prosperity, was fast pressing its excesses to the extreme limit,
+  beyond which it could not be endured. Wolsey talked of reformation, but
+  delayed its coming; and in the mean time, the persons to be reformed
+  showed no fear that it would come at all. The monasteries grew worse and
+  worse. The people were taught only what they could teach themselves. The
+  consistory courts became more oppressive. Pluralities multiplied, and
+  non-residence and profligacy. Favoured parish clergy held as many as
+  eight benefices.<a name="NtA_96"></a><a href="#Nt_96"><sup>96</sup></a>
+  Bishops accumulated sees, and, unable to <!-- Page 63 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page63"></a>[pg 63]</span> attend to all,
+  attended to none. Wolsey himself, the church reformer (so little did he
+  really know what a reformation meant), was at once Archbishop of York,
+  Bishop of Winchester, of Bath, and of Durham, and Abbot of St. Alban's.
+  In Latimer's opinion, even twenty years later, and after no little reform
+  in such matters, there was but one bishop in all England who was ever at
+  his work and ever in his diocese. "I would ask a strange question," he
+  said, in an audacious sermon at Paul's Cross, "Who is the most diligent
+  bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing of
+  his office?<a name="NtA_97"></a><a href="#Nt_97"><sup>97</sup></a> I can
+  tell, for I know him who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see
+  you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that
+  passeth all the others, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in
+  all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you. It is the
+  devil. Among all the pack of them that have cure, the devil shall go for
+  my money, for he applieth his business. Therefore, ye unpreaching
+  prelates, learn of the devil to be diligent in your office. If ye will
+  not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil."<a name="NtA_98"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_98"><sup>98</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Under such circumstances, we need not be surprised to find the clergy
+  sunk low in the respect of the English people. Sternly intolerant of each
+  other's faults, the laity were not likely to be <!-- Page 64 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page64"></a>[pg 64]</span> indulgent to the
+  vices of men who ought to have set an example of purity; and from time to
+  time, during the first quarter of the century, there were explosions of
+  temper which might have served as a warning if any sense or judgment had
+  been left to profit by it.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1514 a London merchant was committed to the Lollards' Tower for
+  refusing to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary;<a
+  name="NtA_99"></a><a href="#Nt_99"><sup>99</sup></a> and a few days after
+  was found dead in his cell. An inquest was held upon the body, when a
+  verdict of wilful murder was returned against the chancellor of the
+  Bishop of London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the
+  bishop applied to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial.
+  "For assured I am," he said, "that if my chancellor be tried by any
+  twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set <i>in favorem hęreticę
+  pravitatis</i>, that they will cast and condemn any clerk, though he were
+  as innocent as Abel."<a name="NtA_100"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_100"><sup>100</sup></a> Fish's famous pamphlet also shows the
+  spirit which was seething; and though we may make some allowance for
+  angry rhetoric, his words have the clear ring of honesty in them; and he
+  spoke of what he had seen and knew. The monks, he tells the king, "be
+  they that have made a hundred thousand idle dissolute women in your
+  realm, who would have gotten their living honestly in the sweat of their
+  faces had not their superfluous riches allured them to lust and idleness.
+  These be they that when they have drawn men's wives to such incontinency,
+  spend away their husbands' goods, make the women to run away from their
+  husbands, bringing both man, wife, and children to idleness, theft, and
+  beggary. Yea, who is able to number the great broad bottomless ocean sea
+  full of evils that this mischievous generation may bring upon us if
+  unpunished?"<a name="NtA_101"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_101"><sup>101</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Copies of this book were strewed about the London streets; Wolsey
+  issued a prohibition against it, with the effect which such prohibitions
+  usually have. Means were found to bring it under the eyes of Henry
+  himself; and the manner in which it was received by him is full of
+  significance, and betrays that the facts of the age were already telling
+  on his understanding. He was always easy of access and easy of manner;
+  and the story, <!-- Page 65 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page65"></a>[pg 65]</span> although it rests on Foxe's authority,
+  has internal marks of authenticity.</p>
+
+  <p>"One Master Edmund Moddis, being with the king in talk of religion,
+  and of the new books that were come from beyond the seas, said that if it
+  might please his Highness to pardon him, and such as he would bring to
+  his Grace, he should see such a book as it was a marvel to hear of. The
+  king demanded who they were? He said 'Two of your merchants&mdash;George
+  Elliot and George Robinson.' The king appointed a time to speak with
+  them. When they came before his presence in a privy closet, he demanded
+  what they had to say or to shew him. One of them said that there was a
+  book come to their hands which they had there to shew his Grace. When he
+  saw it he demanded if any of them could read it. 'Yea,' said George
+  Elliot, 'if it please your Grace to hear it.' 'I thought so,' said the
+  king; 'if need were, thou couldst say it without book.'</p>
+
+  <p>"The whole book being read out, the king made a long pause, and then
+  said, 'If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and should begin at
+  the lower part, the upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his
+  head.' Then he took the book, and put it in his desk, and commanded them,
+  on their allegiance, that they should not tell any man that he had seen
+  it."<a name="NtA_102"></a><a href="#Nt_102"><sup>102</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Symptoms such as these boded ill for a self-reform of the church, and
+  it was further imperilled by the difficulty which it is not easy to
+  believe that Wolsey had forgotten. No measures would be of efficacy which
+  spared the religious houses, and they would be equally useless unless the
+  bishops, as well as the inferior clergy, were comprehended in the scheme
+  of amendment. But neither with monks nor bishops could Wolsey interfere
+  except by a commission from the pope, and the laws were unrepealed which
+  forbade English subjects, under the severest penalties, to accept or
+  exercise within the realm an authority which they had received from the
+  Holy See. Morton had gone beyond the limits of the statute of provisors
+  in receiving powers from Pope Innocent to visit the monasteries. But
+  Morton had stopped short with inquiry and admonition. Wolsey, who was in
+  earnest with the work, had desired and obtained a full commission as
+  legate, but he could only make use of it at his peril. The statute
+  slumbered, but it still existed.<a name="NtA_103"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_103"><sup>103</sup></a> <!-- Page 66 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page66"></a>[pg 66]</span> He was exposing not
+  himself only, but all persons, lay and clerical, who might recognise his
+  legacy to a Premunire; and he knew well that Henry's connivance, or even
+  expressed permission, could not avail him if his conduct was challenged.
+  He could not venture to appeal to parliament. Parliament was the last
+  authority whose jurisdiction a churchman would acknowledge in the
+  concerns of the clergy; and his project must sooner or later have sunk,
+  like those of his two predecessors, under its own internal difficulties,
+  even if the accident had not arisen which brought the dispute to a
+  special issue in its most vital point, and which, fostered by Wolsey for
+  his own purposes, precipitated his ruin.</p>
+
+  <p>It is never more difficult to judge equitably the actions of public
+  men than when private as well as general motives have been allowed to
+  influence them, or when their actions may admit of being represented as
+  resulting from personal inclination, as well as from national policy. In
+  life, as we actually experience it, motives slide one into the other, and
+  the most careful analysis will fail adequately to sift them. In history,
+  from the effort to make our conceptions distinct, we pronounce upon these
+  intricate matters with unhesitating certainty, and we lose sight of truth
+  in the desire to make it truer than itself. The difficulty is further
+  complicated by the different points of view which are chosen by
+  contemporaries and by posterity. Where motives are mixed, men all
+  naturally dwell most on those which approach nearest to themselves:
+  contemporaries whose interests are at stake overlook what is personal in
+  consideration of what is to them of broader moment; posterity, unable to
+  realise political embarrassments which have ceased to concern them,
+  concentrate their attention on such features of the story as touch their
+  own sympathies, and attend exclusively to the private and personal
+  passions of the men and women whose character they are considering.</p>
+
+  <p>These natural, and to some extent inevitable tendencies, explain the
+  difference with which the divorce between Henry VIII. and Catherine of
+  Arragon has been regarded by the English nation in the sixteenth and in
+  the nineteenth centuries. In the former, not only did the parliament
+  profess to desire it, urge it, and further it, but we are told by a
+  contemporary<a name="NtA_104"></a><a href="#Nt_104"><sup>104</sup></a>
+  that "all indifferent and discreet persons" judged that it was right <!--
+  Page 67 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page67"></a>[pg 67]</span> and
+  necessary. In the latter, perhaps, there is not one of ourselves who has
+  not been taught to look upon it as an act of enormous wickedness. In the
+  sixteenth century, Queen Catherine was an obstacle to the establishment
+  of the kingdom, an incentive to treasonable hopes. In the nineteenth, she
+  is an outraged and injured wife, the victim of a false husband's fickle
+  appetite. The story is a long and painful one, and on its personal side
+  need not concern us here further than as it illustrates the private
+  character of Henry. Into the public bearing of it I must enter at some
+  length, in order to explain the interest with which the nation threw
+  itself into the question, and to remove the scandal with which, had
+  nothing been at stake beyond the inclinations of a profligate monarch,
+  weary of his queen, the complaisance on such a subject of the lords and
+  commons of England would have coloured the entire complexion of the
+  Reformation.</p>
+
+  <p>The succession to the throne, although determined in theory by the
+  ordinary law of primogeniture, was nevertheless, subject to repeated
+  arbitrary changes. The uncertainty of the rule was acknowledged and
+  deplored by the parliament,<a name="NtA_105"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_105"><sup>105</sup></a> and there was no order of which the
+  nation, with any unity of sentiment, compelled the observance. An opinion
+  prevailed&mdash;not, I believe, traceable to statute, but admitted by
+  custom, and having the force of statute in the prejudices of the
+  nation&mdash;that no stranger born out of the realm could inherit.<a
+  name="NtA_106"></a><a href="#Nt_106"><sup>106</sup></a> Although the
+  descent in the female line was not formally denied, no female sovereign
+  had ever, in fact, sat upon the throne.<a name="NtA_107"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_107"><sup>107</sup></a> Even Henry VII. refused to strengthen
+  his title by advancing the claims of his wife: and the uncertainty of the
+  laws of marriage, and the innumerable refinements of the Romish canon
+  law, which affected the legitimacy of children,<a name="NtA_108"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_108"><sup>108</sup></a> furnished, in connection <!-- Page 68
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page68"></a>[pg 68]</span> with the
+  further ambiguities of clerical dispensations, perpetual pretexts,
+  whenever pretexts were needed, for a breach of allegiance. So long,
+  indeed, as the character of the nation remained essentially military, it
+  could as little tolerate an incapable king as an army in a dangerous
+  campaign can bear with an inefficient commander; and whatever might be
+  the theory of the title, when the sceptre was held by the infirm hand of
+  an Edward II., a Richard II., or a Henry VI., the difficulty resolved
+  itself by force, and it was wrenched by a stronger arm from a grasp too
+  feeble to retain it. The consent of the nation was avowed, even in the
+  authoritative language of a statute,<a name="NtA_109"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_109"><sup>109</sup></a> as essential to the legitimacy of a
+  sovereign's title; and Sir Thomas More, on examination by the
+  Solicitor-General, declared as his opinion that parliament had power to
+  depose kings if it so pleased.<a name="NtA_110"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_110"><sup>110</sup></a> So many uncertainties on a point so
+  vital had occasioned fearful episodes in English history; the most
+  fearful of them, which had traced its character in blood in the private
+  records of every English family, having been the long struggle of the
+  preceding century, from which the nation was still suffering, and had but
+  recovered sufficiently to be conscious of what it had endured. It had
+  decimated itself for a question which involved no principle and led to no
+  result, and perhaps the history of the world may be searched in vain for
+  any parallel to a quarrel at once so desperate and so unmeaning.</p>
+
+  <p>This very unmeaning character of the dispute increased the difficulty
+  of ending it. In wars of conquest or of principle, when something
+  definite is at stake, the victory is either won, or it is lost; the
+  conduct of individual men, at all events, is overruled by considerations
+  external to themselves which admit of being weighed and calculated. In a
+  war of succession, where the great families were divided in their
+  allegiance, and supported the rival claimants in evenly balanced numbers,
+  the inveteracy of the conflict increased with its duration, and
+  propagated itself from generation to generation. Every family <!-- Page
+  69 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page69"></a>[pg 69]</span> was in
+  blood feud with its neighbour; and children, as they grew to manhood,
+  inherited the duty of revenging their fathers' deaths.</p>
+
+  <p>No effort of imagination can reproduce to us the state of this country
+  in the fatal years which intervened between the first rising of the Duke
+  of York and the battle of Bosworth; and experience too truly convinced
+  Henry VII. that the war had ceased only from general exhaustion, and not
+  because there was no will to continue it. The first Tudor breathed an
+  atmosphere of suspended insurrection, and only when we remember the
+  probable effect upon his mind of the constant dread of an explosion, can
+  we excuse or understand, in a prince not generally cruel, the execution
+  of the Earl of Warwick. The danger of a bloody revolution may present an
+  act of arbitrary or cowardly tyranny in the light of a public duty.</p>
+
+  <p>Fifty years of settled government, however, had not been without their
+  effects. The country had collected itself; the feuds of the families had
+  been chastened, if they had not been subdued; while the increase of
+  wealth and material prosperity had brought out into obvious prominence
+  those advantages of peace which a hot-spirited people, antecedent to
+  experience, had not anticipated, and had not been able to appreciate.
+  They were better fed, better cared for, more justly governed than they
+  had ever been before; and though abundance of unruly tempers remained,
+  yet the wiser portion of the nation, looking back from their new
+  vantage-ground, were able to recognise the past in its true hatefulness.
+  Thenceforward a war of succession was the predominating terror with
+  English statesmen, and the safe establishment of the reigning family bore
+  a degree of importance which it is possible that their fears exaggerated,
+  yet which in fact was the determining principle of their action.</p>
+
+  <p>It was therefore with no little anxiety that the council of Henry
+  VIII. perceived his male children, on whom their hopes were centred,
+  either born dead, or dying one after another within a few days of their
+  birth, as if his family were under a blight. When the queen had advanced
+  to an age which precluded hope of further offspring, and the heir
+  presumptive was an infirm girl, the unpromising prospect became yet more
+  alarming. The life of the Princess Mary was precarious, for her health
+  was weak from her childhood. If she lived, her accession would be a
+  temptation to insurrection; if she did not live, and the king had no
+  other children, a civil war was inevitable. At present such a difficulty
+  would be disposed of by an immediate <!-- Page 70 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page70"></a>[pg 70]</span> and simple reference
+  to the collateral branches of the royal family; the crown would descend
+  with even more facility than the property of an intestate to the next of
+  kin. At that time, if the rule had been recognised, it would only have
+  increased the difficulty, for the next heir in blood was James of
+  Scotland; and, gravely as statesmen desired the union of the two
+  countries, in the existing mood of the people, the very stones in London
+  streets, it was said,<a name="NtA_111"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_111"><sup>111</sup></a> would rise up against a king of
+  Scotland who claimed to enter England as sovereign. Even the parliament
+  itself declared in formal language that they would resist any attempt on
+  the part of the Scottish king "to the uttermost of their power."<a
+  name="NtA_112"></a><a href="#Nt_112"><sup>112</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>As little, however, as the English would have admitted James's claims,
+  would James himself have acknowledged their right to reject them. He
+  would have pleaded the sacred right of inheritance, refusing utterly the
+  imaginary law which disentitled him: he would have pressed his title with
+  all Scotland to back him, and probably with the open support of France.
+  Centuries of humiliation remained unrevenged, which both France and
+  Scotland had endured at English hands. It was not likely that they would
+  waste an opportunity thrust upon them by Providence. The country might,
+  it is true, have encountered this danger, serious as it would have been,
+  if there had been hope that it would itself have agreed to any other
+  choice. England had many times fought successfully against the same odds,
+  and would have cared little for a renewal of the struggle, if united in
+  itself: but the prospect on this side, also, was fatally discouraging.
+  The elements of the old factions were dormant, but still smouldering.
+  Throughout Henry's reign a White Rose agitation had been secretly
+  fermenting; without open success, and without chance of success so long
+  as Henry lived, but formidable in a high degree if opportunity to strike
+  should offer itself. Richard de la Pole, the representative of this
+  party, had been killed at Pavia, but his loss had rather strengthened
+  their cause than weakened it, for by his long exile he was unknown in
+  England; his personal character was without energy; while he made place
+  for the leadership of a far more powerful spirit in the sister of the
+  murdered Earl of Warwick, the Countess of Salisbury, mother of Reginald
+  Pole. This lady had inherited, in no common degree, the fierce nature of
+  the Plantagenets; born to command, she had rallied round her the
+  Courtenays, the Nevilles, and all the powerful kindred of Richard the
+  King <!-- Page 71 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page71"></a>[pg
+  71]</span> Maker, her grandfather. Her Plantagenet descent was purer than
+  the king's; and if Mary died and Henry left no other issue, half England
+  was likely to declare either for one of her sons, or for the Marquis of
+  Exeter, the grandson of Edward IV.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1515, when Giustiniani,<a name="NtA_113"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_113"><sup>113</sup></a> the Venetian ambassador, was at the
+  court, the Dukes of Buckingham, of Suffolk, and of Norfolk, were also
+  mentioned to him as having each of them hopes of the crown. Buckingham,
+  meddling prematurely in the dangerous game, had lost his life for it; but
+  in his death he had strengthened the chance of Norfolk, who had married
+  his daughter. Suffolk was Henry's brother-in-law;<a name="NtA_114"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_114"><sup>114</sup></a> chivalrous, popular, and the ablest
+  soldier of his day; and Lady Margaret Lennox, also, daughter of the Queen
+  of Scotland by her second marriage, would not have wanted supporters, and
+  early became an object of intrigue. Indeed, as she had been born in
+  England, it was held in parliament that she stood next in order to the
+  Princess Mary.<a name="NtA_115"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_115"><sup>115</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Many of these claims were likely to be advanced if Henry died leaving
+  a daughter to succeed him. They would all inevitably be advanced if he
+  died childless; and no great political sagacity was required to foresee
+  the probable fate of the country if such a moment was chosen for a French
+  and Scottish invasion. The very worst disasters might be too surely
+  looked for, and the hope of escape, precarious at the best, hung upon the
+  frail thread of a single life. We may therefore imagine the dismay with
+  which the nation saw this last hope failing them&mdash;and failing them
+  even in a manner more dangerous than if it had failed by death; for it
+  did but add another doubt, when already there were too many. In order to
+  detach France from Scotland, and secure, if possible, its support for the
+  claims of the princess, it had been proposed to marry the Princess Mary
+  to a son of the French king. The negotiations were conducted through the
+  Bishop of Tarbźs,<a name="NtA_116"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_116"><sup>116</sup></a> and at the first conference the Bishop
+  raised a question in the name of his government, on the validity of the
+  papal dispensation granted by Julius the Second, to legalise the marriage
+  from which she was sprung. The abortive marriage Scheme perished <!--
+  Page 72 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page72"></a>[pg 72]</span> in
+  its birth, but the doubt which had been raised could not perish with it.
+  Doubt on such a subject once mooted might not be left unresolved, even if
+  the raising it thus publicly had not itself destroyed the frail chance of
+  an undisputed succession. If the relations of Henry with Queen Catherine
+  had been of a cordial kind, it is possible that he would have been
+  contented with resentment; that he would have refused to reconsider a
+  question which touched his honour and his conscience; and, united with
+  parliament, would have endeavoured to bear down all difficulties with a
+  high hand. This at least he might have himself attempted. Whether the
+  parliament, with so precarious a future before them, would have
+  consented, is less easy to say. Fortunately or unfortunately, the
+  interests of the nation pointed out another road, which Henry had no
+  unwillingness to enter.</p>
+
+  <p>On the death of Prince Arthur, five months after his marriage, Henry
+  VII. and the father of the Princess alike desired that the bond between
+  their families thus broken should be re-united; and, as soon as it became
+  clear that Catherine had not been left pregnant (a point which, tacitly
+  at least, she allowed to be considered uncertain at the time of her
+  husband's decease), it was proposed that she should be transferred, with
+  the inheritance of the crown, to the new heir. A dispensation was
+  reluctantly granted by the pope,<a name="NtA_117"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_117"><sup>117</sup></a> and reluctantly accepted by the English
+  ministry. The Prince of Wales, who was no more than twelve years old at
+  the time, was under the age at which he could legally sue for such an
+  object; and a portion of the English council, the Archbishop of
+  Canterbury among them, were unsatisfied,<a name="NtA_118"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_118"><sup>118</sup></a> both with the marriage itself, and with
+  the adequacy of the forms observed in a matter of so dubious an import.
+  The betrothal took place at the urgency of Ferdinand. In the year
+  following Henry VII. became suddenly ill; Queen Elizabeth died; and
+  superstition working on the previous hesitation, misfortune was construed
+  into an indication of the displeasure of Heaven. The intention was
+  renounced, and the prince, as soon as he had completed his fourteenth
+  year, was invited and required to disown, by a formal act, the
+  obligations contracted in <!-- Page 73 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page73"></a>[pg 73]</span> his name.<a name="NtA_119"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_119"><sup>119</sup></a> Again there was a change. The king
+  lived on, the alarm yielded to the temptations of covetousness. Had he
+  restored Catherine to her father he must have restored with her the
+  portion of her dowry which had been already received; he must have
+  relinquished the prospect of the moiety which had yet to be received. The
+  negotiation was renewed. Henry VII. lived to sign the receipts for the
+  first instalment of the second payment;<a name="NtA_120"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_120"><sup>120</sup></a> and on his death, notwithstanding much
+  general murmuring,<a name="NtA_121"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_121"><sup>121</sup></a> the young Henry, then a boy of
+  eighteen, proceeded to carry out his father's ultimate intentions. The
+  princess-dowager, notwithstanding what had passed, was still on her side
+  willing;&mdash;and the difference of age (she was six years older than
+  Henry) seeming of little moment when both were comparatively young, they
+  were married. For many years all went well; opposition was silenced by
+  the success which seemed to have followed, and the original scruples were
+  forgotten. Though the marriage was dictated by political convenience,
+  Henry was faithful, with but one exception, to his wife's bed&mdash;no
+  slight honour to him, if he is measured by the average royal standard in
+  such matters; and, if his sons had lived to grow up around his throne,
+  there is no reason to believe that the peace of his married life would
+  have been interrupted, or that, whatever might have been his private
+  feelings, he would have appeared in the world's eye other than
+  acquiescent in his condition.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 74 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page74"></a>[pg 74]</span>
+
+  <p>But his sons had not lived; years passed on, bringing with them
+  premature births, children born dead, or dying after a few days or
+  hours,<a name="NtA_122"></a><a href="#Nt_122"><sup>122</sup></a> and the
+  disappointment was intense in proportion to the interests which were at
+  issue. The especial penalty denounced against the marriage with a
+  brother's wife<a name="NtA_123"></a><a href="#Nt_123"><sup>123</sup></a>
+  had been all but literally enforced; and the king found himself growing
+  to middle life and his queen passing beyond it with his prayers unheard,
+  and no hope any longer that they might be heard. The disparity of age
+  also was more perceptible as time went by, while Catherine's constitution
+  was affected by her misfortunes, and differences arose on which there is
+  no occasion to dwell in these pages&mdash;differences which in themselves
+  reflected no discredit either on the husband or the wife, but which were
+  sufficient to extinguish between two infirm human beings an affection
+  that had rested only upon mutual esteem, but had not assumed the
+  character of love.</p>
+
+  <p>The circumstances in which Catherine was placed were of a kind which
+  no sensitive woman could have endured without impatience and
+  mortification; but her conduct, however natural, only widened the breach
+  which personal repugnance and radical opposition of character had already
+  made too wide. So far Henry and she were alike that both had imperious
+  tempers, and both were indomitably obstinate; but Henry was hot and <!--
+  Page 75 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page75"></a>[pg 75]</span>
+  impetuous, Catherine was cold and self-contained&mdash;Henry saw his duty
+  through his wishes; Catherine, in her strong Castilian austerity,
+  measured her steps by the letter of the law; the more her husband
+  withdrew from her, the more she insisted upon her relation to him as his
+  wife; and continued with fixed purpose and immovable countenance<a
+  name="NtA_124"></a><a href="#Nt_124"><sup>124</sup></a> to share his
+  table and his bed long after she was aware of his dislike for her.</p>
+
+  <p>If the validity of so unfortunate a connection had never been
+  questioned, or if no national interests had been dependent on the
+  continuance or the abolition of it, these discomforts were not too great
+  to have been endured in silence. They were not originally occasioned by
+  any latent inclination on the part of the king for another woman. They
+  had arisen to their worst dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn,
+  and were produced by causes of a wholly independent kind; and even if it
+  had not been so, when we remember the tenor of his early life we need not
+  think that he would have been unequal to the restraint which ordinary
+  persons in similar circumstances are able to impose on their caprices.
+  The legates spoke no more than the truth when they wrote to the pope,
+  saying that "it was mere madness to suppose that the king would act as he
+  was doing merely out of dislike of the queen, or out of inclination, for
+  another person; he was not a man whom harsh manners and an unpleasant
+  disposition (<i>duri mores et injucunda consuetudo</i>) could so far
+  provoke; nor could any sane man believe him to be so infirm of character
+  that sensual allurements would have led him to dissolve a connexion in
+  which he had passed the flower of youth without stain or blemish, and in
+  which he had borne himself in his trial so reverently and honourably."<a
+  name="NtA_125"></a><a href="#Nt_125"><sup>125</sup></a> I consider this
+  entirely true in a sense which no great knowledge of human nature is
+  required to understand. The king's personal dissatisfaction was great: if
+  this had been all, however, it would have been extinguished or endured;
+  but the interests of the nation, imperilled as they were by the
+  maintenance of the marriage, entitled him to regard his position under
+  another aspect. Even if the marriage in itself had never been questioned,
+  he might justly have desired the dissolution of it; and when he recalled
+  the circumstances under which it was contracted, the hesitation of the
+  council, the reluctance of the pope, the alarms and vacillation of his
+  father, we may readily perceive how scruples of conscience must have
+  arisen in a soil well prepared to receive <!-- Page 76 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page76"></a>[pg 76]</span> them&mdash;how the
+  loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial sentence on a
+  violation of the Divine law. The divorce presented itself to him as a
+  moral obligation, when national advantage combined with superstition to
+  encourage what he secretly desired; and if he persuaded himself that
+  those public reasons, without which, in truth and fact, he would not have
+  stirred, were those that alone were influencing him, the self-deceit was
+  of a kind with which the experience of most men will probably have made
+  them too familiar. In those rare cases where inclination coincides with
+  right, we cannot be surprised if mankind should mislead themselves with
+  the belief that the disinterested motives weigh more with them than the
+  personal.</p>
+
+  <p>A remarkable and very candid account of Henry's feelings is furnished
+  by himself in one of the many papers of instructions<a
+  name="NtA_126"></a><a href="#Nt_126"><sup>126</sup></a> which he
+  forwarded to his secretary at Rome. Hypocrisy was not among his faults,
+  and in detailing the arguments which were to be laid before the pope he
+  has exhibited a more complete revelation of what was passing in
+  himself&mdash;and indirectly of his own nature in its strength and
+  weakness&mdash;than he perhaps imagined while he wrote. The despatch is
+  long and perplexed; the style that of a man who saw his end clearly, and
+  was vexed with the intricate and dishonest trifling with which his way
+  was impeded, and which nevertheless he was struggling to tolerate. The
+  secretary was to say, "that the King's Highness having above all other
+  things his intent and mind ever founded upon such respect unto Almighty
+  God as to a Christian and catholic prince doth appertain, knowing the
+  fragility and uncertainty of all earthly things, and how displeasant unto
+  God, how much dangerous to the soul, how dishonourable and damageable to
+  the world it were to prefer vain and transitory things unto those that be
+  perfect and certain, hath in this cause, doubt, and matter of matrimony,
+  whereupon depend so high and manifold consequences of greatest
+  importance, always cast from his conceit the darkness and blundering
+  confusion of falsity, and specially hath had and put before his eyes the
+  light and shining brightness of truth; upon which foundation as a most
+  sure base for perpetual tranquillity of his conscience his Highness hath
+  expressly resolved and determined with himself to build and establish all
+  his acts, deeds, and cogitations touching this matter; without God did
+  build the house, in vain they laboured that went about to build it; and
+  all actions grounded upon that immovable fundament of truth, must needs
+  therein be firm, <!-- Page 77 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page77"></a>[pg 77]</span> sound, whole, perfect, and worthy of a
+  Christian man; which if truth were put apart, they could not for the same
+  reason be but evil, vain, slipper, uncertain, and in nowise permanent or
+  endurable." He then laboured to urge on the pope the duty of
+  straightforward dealing; and dwelt in words which have a sad interest for
+  us (when we consider the manner in which the subject of them has been
+  dealt with) on the judgment bar, not of God only, but of human posterity,
+  at which his conduct would be ultimately tried.</p>
+
+  <p>"The causes of private persons dark and doubtful be sometimes," the
+  king said, "pretermitted and passed over as things more meet at some
+  seasons to be dissimuled than by continual strife and plea to nourish
+  controversies. Yet since all people have their eyes conject upon princes,
+  whose acts and doings not only be observed in the mouths of them that now
+  do live, but also remain in such perpetual memory to our posterity [so
+  that] the evil, if any there be, cannot but appear and come to light,
+  there is no reason for toleration, no place for dissimulation; but [there
+  is reason] more deeply, highly, and profoundly to penetrate and search
+  for the truth, so that the same may vanquish and overcome, and all guilt,
+  craft, and falsehood clearly be extirpate and reject."</p>
+
+  <p>I am anticipating the progress of the story in making these
+  quotations; for the main burden of the despatch concerns a forged
+  document which had been introduced by the Roman lawyers to embarrass the
+  process, and of which I shall by-and-bye have to speak directly; but I
+  have desired to illustrate the spirit in which Henry entered upon the
+  general question&mdash;assuredly a more calm and rational one than
+  historians have usually represented it to be. In dealing with the
+  obstacle which had been raised, he displayed a most efficient mastery
+  over himself, although he did not conclude without touching the pith of
+  the matter with telling clearness. The secretary was to take some
+  opportunity of speaking to the pope privately; and of warning him, "as of
+  himself," that there was no hope that the king would give way: he was to
+  "say plainly to his Holiness that the king's desire and intent
+  <i>convolare ad secundas nuptias non patitur negativum</i>; and
+  whatsoever should be found of bull, brief, or otherwise, his Highness
+  found his conscience so inquieted, his succession in such danger, and his
+  most royal person in such perplexity for things unknown and not to be
+  spoken, that other remedy there was not but his Grace to come by one way
+  or other, and specially at his hands, if it might be, to the desired <!--
+  Page 78 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page78"></a>[pg 78]</span> end;
+  and that all concertation to the contrary should be vain and
+  frustrate."</p>
+
+  <p>So peremptory a conviction and so determined a purpose were of no
+  sudden growth, and had been probably maturing in his mind for years, when
+  the gangrene was torn open by the Bishop of Tarbźs, and accident
+  precipitated his resolution. The momentous consequences involved, and the
+  reluctance to encounter a probable quarrel with the emperor, might have
+  long kept him silent, except for some extraneous casualty; but the tree
+  being thus rudely shaken, the ripe fruit fell. The capture of Rome
+  occurring almost at the same moment, Wolsey caught the opportunity to
+  break the Spanish alliance; and the prospect of a divorce was grasped at
+  by him as a lever by which to throw the weight of English power and
+  influence into the papal scale, to commit Henry definitely to the
+  catholic cause. Like his acceptance of legatine authority, the expedient
+  was a desperate one, and if it failed it was ruinous. The nation at that
+  time was sincerely attached to Spain. The alliance with the house of
+  Burgundy was of old date; the commercial intercourse with Flanders was
+  enormous, Flanders, in fact, absorbing all the English exports; and as
+  many as 15,000 Flemings were settled in London. Charles himself was
+  personally popular; he had been the ally of England in the late French
+  war; and when in his supposed character of leader of the anti-papal party
+  in Europe he allowed a Lutheran army to desecrate Rome, he had won the
+  sympathy of all the latent discontent which was fermenting in the
+  population. France, on the other hand, was as cordially hated as Spain
+  was beloved. A state of war with France was the normal condition of
+  England; and the reconquest of it the universal dream from the cottage to
+  the castle. Henry himself, early in his reign, had shared in this
+  delusive ambition; and but three years before the sack of Rome, when the
+  Duke of Suffolk led an army into Normandy, Wolsey's purposed tardiness in
+  sending reinforcements had alone saved Paris.<a name="NtA_127"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_127"><sup>127</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>There could be no doubt, therefore, that a breach with the emperor
+  would in a high degree be unwelcome to the country. The king, and
+  probably such members of the council as were aware of his feelings,
+  shrank from offering an open affront to the Spanish people., and anxious
+  as they were for a settlement of the succession, perhaps trusted that
+  advantage might be taken of some political contingency for a private
+  arrangement; that <!-- Page 79 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page79"></a>[pg 79]</span> Catherine might be induced by Charles
+  himself to retire privately, and sacrifice herself, of her free will, to
+  the interests of the two countries. This, however, is no more than
+  conjecture; I think it probable, because so many English statesmen were
+  in favour at once of the divorce and of the Spanish alliance&mdash;two
+  objects which, only on some such hypothesis, were compatible. The fact
+  cannot be ascertained, however, because the divorce itself was not
+  discussed at the council table until Wolsey had induced the king to
+  change his policy by the hope of immediate relief.</p>
+
+  <p>Wolsey has revealed to us fully his own objects in a letter to Sir
+  Gregory Cassalis, his agent at Rome. He shared with half Europe in an
+  impression that the emperor's Italian campaigns were designed to further
+  the Reformation; and of this central delusion he formed the keystone of
+  his conduct. "First condoling with his Holiness," he wrote, "on the
+  unhappy position in which, with the college of the most reverend
+  cardinals, he is placed,<a name="NtA_128"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_128"><sup>128</sup></a> you shall tell him how, day and night,
+  I am revolving by what means or contrivance I may bring comfort to the
+  church of Christ, and raise the fallen state of our most Holy Lord. I
+  care not whit it may cost me, whether of expense or trouble; nay, though
+  I have to shed my blood, or give my life for it, assuredly so long as
+  life remains to me for this I will labour. And how let me mention the
+  great and marvellous effects which have been wrought by my
+  instrumentality on the mind of my most excellent master the king, whom I
+  have persuaded to unite himself with his Holiness in heart and soul. I
+  urged innumerable reasons to induce him to part him from the emperor, to
+  whom he clung with much tenacity. The most effective of them all was the
+  constancy with which I assured him of the good-will and affection which
+  were felt for him by his Holiness, and the certainty that his Holiness
+  would furnish proof of his friendship in conceding his said Majesty's
+  requests, in such form as the church's treasure and the authority of the
+  Vicar of Christ shall permit, or so far as that authority extends or may
+  extend. I have undertaken, moreover, for all these things in their utmost
+  latitude, pledging my salvation, my faith, my honour and soul upon them.
+  I have said that his demands shall be granted amply and fully, without
+  scruple, without room or occasion being left for after-retractation; and
+  the King's Majesty, in consequence, believing on these my solemn
+  asseverations that the Pope's Holiness is really and indeed well inclined
+  towards him, accepting what is spoken by me as spoken by the <!-- Page 80
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page80"></a>[pg 80]</span> legate of
+  the Apostolic See, and therefore, as in the name of his Holiness, has
+  determined to run the risk which I have pressed upon him; he will spare
+  no labour or expense, he will disregard the wishes of his subjects, and
+  the private interest of his Realm, to attach himself cordially and
+  constantly to the Holy See."<a name="NtA_129"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_129"><sup>129</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>These were the words of a man who loved England well, but who loved
+  Rome better; and Wolsey has received but scanty justice from catholic
+  writers, since he sacrificed himself for the catholic cause. His scheme
+  was bold and well laid, being weak only in that it was confessedly in
+  contradiction to the instincts and genius of the nation, by which, and by
+  which alone, in the long run, either this or any other country has been
+  successfully governed. And yet he might well be forgiven if he ventured
+  on an unpopular course in the belief that the event would justify him;
+  and that, in uniting with France to support the pope, he was not only
+  consulting the true interest of England, but was doing what England
+  actually desired, although blindly aiming at her object by other means.
+  The French wars, however traditionally popular, were fertile only in
+  glory. The rivalry of the two countries was a splendid folly, wasting the
+  best blood of both countries for an impracticable chimera; and though
+  there was impatience of ecclesiastical misrule, though there was jealousy
+  of foreign interference, and general irritation with the state of the
+  church, yet the mass of the people hated protestantism even worse than
+  they hated the pope, the clergy, and the consistory courts. They
+  believed&mdash;and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only leading member of the
+  privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not under the same
+  delusion&mdash;that it was possible for a national church to separate
+  itself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to crush or
+  prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental system
+  could still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those mysteries
+  were dispensed should minister in gilded chains. This was the English
+  historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the second Henry, and
+  the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a thing of words and
+  paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew well that an
+  ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation of doctrine;
+  that plain men could not and would not continue to reverence the office
+  of the priesthood, when the priests were treated as the paid officials of
+  an earthly authority higher than their own. <!-- Page 81 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page81"></a>[pg 81]</span> He was not to be
+  blamed if he took the people at their word; if he believed that, in their
+  doctrinal conservatism, they knew and meant what they were saying: and
+  the reaction which took place under Queen Mary, when the Anglican system
+  had been tried and failed, and the alternative was seen to be absolute
+  between a union with Rome or a forfeiture of catholic orthodoxy, prove
+  after all that he was wiser than in the immediate event he seemed to be;
+  that if his policy had succeeded, and if, strengthened by success, he had
+  introduced into the church those reforms which he had promised and
+  desired,<a name="NtA_130"></a><a href="#Nt_130"><sup>130</sup></a> he
+  would have satisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the
+  nation.</p>
+
+  <p>Like other men of genius, Wolsey also combined practical sagacity with
+  an unmeasured power of hoping. As difficulties gathered round him, he
+  encountered them with the increasing magnificence of his schemes; and
+  after thirty years' experience of public life, he was as sanguine as a
+  boy. Armed with this little lever of the divorce, he saw himself, in
+  imagination, the rebuilder of the catholic faith and the deliverer of
+  Europe. The king being remarried, and the succession settled, he would
+  purge the Church of England, and convert the monasteries into
+  intellectual garrisons of pious and learned men, occupying the land from
+  end to end. The feuds with France should cease for ever, and, united in a
+  holy cause, the two countries should restore the papacy, put down the
+  German heresies, depose the emperor, and establish in his place some
+  faithful servant of the church. Then Europe once more at peace, the
+  hordes of the Crescent, which were threatening to settle the quarrels of
+  Christians in the West as they had settled them in the East&mdash;by the
+  extinction of Christianity itself,&mdash;were to be hurled back into
+  their proper barbarism.<a name="NtA_131"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_131"><sup>131</sup></a> These magnificent visions fell from him
+  in conversations <!-- Page 82 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page82"></a>[pg 82]</span> with the Bishop of Bayonne, and may be
+  gathered from hints and fragments of his correspondence. Extravagant as
+  they seem, the prospect of realising them was, humanly speaking, neither
+  chimerical nor even improbable. He had but made the common mistake of men
+  of the world who are the representatives of an old order of things at the
+  time when that order is doomed and dying. He could not read the signs of
+  the times; and confounded the barrenness of death with the barrenness of
+  a winter which might be followed by a new spring and summer; he believed
+  that the old life-tree of Catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering
+  the ground, might bloom again in its old beauty. The thing which he
+  called heresy was the fire of Almighty God, which no politic congregation
+  of princes, no state machinery, though it were never so active, could
+  trample out; and as in the early years of Christianity the meanest slave
+  who was thrown to the wild beasts for his presence at the forbidden
+  mysteries of the gospel, saw deeper, in the divine power of his faith,
+  into the future even of this earthly world than the sagest of his
+  imperial persecutors, so a truer political prophet than Wolsey would have
+  been found in the most ignorant of those poor men, for whom his myrmidons
+  were searching in the purlieus of London, who were risking death and
+  torture in disseminating the pernicious volumes of the English
+  Testament.</p>
+
+  <p>If we look at the matter, however, from a more earthly point of view,
+  the causes which immediately defeated Wolsey's policy were not such as
+  human foresight could have anticipated. We ourselves, surveying the
+  various parties in Europe with the light of our knowledge of the actual
+  sequel, are perhaps able to understand their real relations; but if in
+  1527 a political astrologer had foretold that within two years of that
+  time the pope and the emperor who had imprisoned him would be cordial
+  allies, that the positions of England and Spain toward the papacy would
+  be diametrically reversed, and that the two countries were on the point
+  of taking their posts, which they would ever afterwards maintain, as the
+  champions respectively of the opposite principles to those which at that
+  time they seemed to represent, the prophecy would have been held scarcely
+  less insane than a prophecy six or even three years before the event,
+  that in the year 1854 England would be united with an Emperor Napoleon
+  for the preservation of European order.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry, then, in the spring of the year 1527, definitively breaking the
+  Spanish alliance, formed a league with Francis I., the avowed object of
+  which was the expulsion of the Imperialists <!-- Page 83 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page83"></a>[pg 83]</span> from Italy; with a
+  further intention&mdash;if it could be carried into effect&mdash;of
+  avenging the outrage offered to Europe in the pope's imprisonment, by
+  declaring vacant the imperial throne. Simultaneously with the congress at
+  Amiens where the terms of the alliance were arranged, confidential
+  persons were despatched into Italy to obtain an interview&mdash;if
+  possible&mdash;with the pope, and formally laying before him the
+  circumstances of the king's position, to request him to make use of his
+  powers to provide a remedy. It is noticeable that at the outset of the
+  negotiation the king did not fully trust Wolsey. The latter had
+  suggested, as the simplest method of proceeding, that the pope should
+  extend his authority as legate, granting him plenary power to act as
+  English vicegerent so long as Rome was occupied by the Emperor's troops.
+  Henry, not wholly satisfied that he was acquainted with his minister's
+  full intentions in desiring so large a capacity, sent his own secretary,
+  unknown to Wolsey, with his own private propositions&mdash;requesting
+  simply a dispensation to take a second wife, his former marriage being
+  allowed to stand with no definite sentence passed upon it; or, if that
+  were impossible, leaving the pope to choose his own method, and settle
+  the question in the manner least difficult and least offensive.<a
+  name="NtA_132"></a><a href="#Nt_132"><sup>132</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Wolsey, however, soon satisfied the king that he had no sinister
+  intentions. By the middle of the winter we find the private messenger
+  associated openly with Sir Gregory Cassalis, the agent of the minister's
+  communications;<a name="NtA_133"></a><a href="#Nt_133"><sup>133</sup></a>
+  and a series of formal demands were presented jointly by these two
+  persons in the names of Henry and the legate; which, though taking many
+  forms, resolved themselves substantially into one. The pope was required
+  to make use of his dispensing power to enable the King of England to
+  marry a wife who could bear him children, and thus provide some better
+  security than already existed for the succession to the throne. This
+  demand could not be considered as in itself unreasonable; and if personal
+  feeling was combined with other motives to induce Henry to press it,
+  personal feeling did not affect the general bearing of the question. The
+  king's desire was publicly urged on public grounds, and thus, and thus
+  only, the pope was at liberty to consider it. The marriages of princes
+  have ever been affected by other considerations than those which
+  influence such relations between private persons. Princes may not, as
+  "unvalued <!-- Page 84 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page84"></a>[pg
+  84]</span> persons" may, "carve for themselves;" they pay the penalty of
+  their high place, in submitting their affections to the welfare of the
+  state; and the same causes which regulate the formation of these ties
+  must be allowed to influence the continuance of them. The case which was
+  submitted to the pope was one of those for which his very power of
+  dispensing had been vested in him; and being, as he called himself, the
+  Father of Christendom, the nation thought themselves entitled to call
+  upon him to make use of that power. A resource of the kind must exist
+  somewhere&mdash;the relation between princes and subjects indispensably
+  requiring it. It had been vested in the Bishop of Rome, because it had
+  been presumed that the sanctity of his office would secure an impartial
+  exercise of his authority. And unless he could have shown (which he never
+  attempted to show) that the circumstances of the succession were not so
+  precarious as to call for his interference, it would seem that the
+  express contingency had arisen which was contemplated in the constitution
+  of the canon law;<a name="NtA_134"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_134"><sup>134</sup></a> and that where a provision had been
+  made by the church of which he was the earthly head, for difficulties of
+  this precise description, the pope was under an obligation either to make
+  the required concessions in virtue of his faculty, or, if he found
+  himself unable to make those concessions, to offer some distinct
+  explanation of his refusal. I speak of the question as nakedly political.
+  I am not considering the private injuries of which Catherine had so deep
+  a right to complain, nor the complications subsequently raised on the
+  original validity of the first marriage. A political difficulty, on which
+  alone he was bound to give sentence, was laid before the pope in his
+  judicial capacity, in the name of the nation; and the painful features
+  which the process afterwards assumed are due wholly to his original
+  weakness and vacillation.</p>
+
+  <p>Deeply, however, as we must all deplore the scandal and suffering
+  which were occasioned by the dispute, it was in a high degree fortunate,
+  that at the crisis of public dissatisfaction in England with the
+  condition of the church, especially in the conduct of its courts of
+  justice, a cause should have arisen which tested the whole question of
+  church authority in its highest <!-- Page 85 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page85"></a>[pg 85]</span> form; where the dispute between the
+  laity and the ecclesiastics was represented in a process in which the
+  pope sat as judge; in which the king was the appellant, and the most
+  vital interests of the nation were at stake upon the issue. It was no
+  accident which connected a suit for divorce with the reformation of
+  religion. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction was upon its trial, and the
+  future relations of church and state depended upon the pope's conduct in
+  a matter which no technical skill was required to decide, but only the
+  moral virtues of probity and courage. The time had been when the clergy
+  feared only to be unjust, and when the functions of judges might safely
+  be entrusted to them. The small iniquities of the consistory courts had
+  shaken the popular faith in the continued operation of such a fear; and
+  the experience of an Alexander VI., a Julius II., and a Leo X. had
+  induced a suspicion that even in the highest quarters justice had ceased
+  to be much considered. It remained for Clement VII. to disabuse men of
+  their alarms, or by confirming them to forfeit for ever the supremacy of
+  his order in England. Nor can it be said for him that the case was one in
+  which it was unusually difficult to be virtuous. Justice, wounded
+  dignity, and the interests of the See pointed alike to the same course.
+  Queen Catherine's relationship to the emperor could not have recommended
+  her to the tenderness of the pope, and the policy of assenting to an act
+  which would infallibly alienate Henry from Charles, and therefore attach
+  him to the Roman interests, did not require the eloquence of Wolsey to
+  make it intelligible. If, because he was in the emperor's power, he
+  therefore feared the personal consequences to himself, his cowardice of
+  itself disqualified him to sit as a judge.</p>
+
+  <p>It does not fall within my present purpose to detail the first stages
+  of the proceedings which followed. In substance they are well known to
+  all readers of English history, and may be understood without difficulty
+  as soon as we possess the clue to the conduct of Wolsey. I shall,
+  however, in a few pages briefly epitomise what passed.</p>
+
+  <p>At the outset of the negotiation, the pope, although he would take no
+  positive steps, was all, in words, which he was expected to be. Neither
+  he nor the cardinals refused to acknowledge the dangers which threatened
+  the country. He discussed freely the position of the different parties,
+  the probabilities of a disputed succession, and the various claimants who
+  would present themselves, if the king died without an heir of undisputed
+  legitimacy.<a name="NtA_135"></a><a href="#Nt_135"><sup>135</sup></a>
+  <!-- Page 86 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page86"></a>[pg 86]</span>
+  Gardiner writes to Wolsey,<a name="NtA_136"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_136"><sup>136</sup></a> "We did even more inculcate what speed
+  and celerity the thing required, and what danger it was to the realm to
+  have this matter hang in suspense. His Holiness confessed the same, and
+  thereupon began to reckon what divers titles might be pretended by the
+  King of Scots and others, and granted that, without an heir male, with
+  provision to be made by consent of the state for his succession, and
+  unless that what shall be done herein be established in such fashion as
+  nothing may hereafter be objected thereto, the realm was like to come to
+  dissolution."</p>
+
+  <p>In stronger language the Cardinal-Governor of Bologna declared that
+  "he knew the gyze of England as well as few men did, and if the king
+  should die without heirs male, he was sure it would cost two hundred
+  thousand men's lives. Wherefore he thought, supposing his Grace should
+  have no more children by the queen, and that by taking of another wife he
+  might have heirs male, the bringing to pass that matter, and by that to
+  avoid the mischiefs afore written, he thought would deserve Heaven."<a
+  name="NtA_137"></a><a href="#Nt_137"><sup>137</sup></a> Whatever doubt
+  their might be, therefore, whether the original marriage with Catherine
+  was legal, it was universally admitted that there was none about the
+  national desirableness of the dissolution of it; and if the pope had been
+  free to judge only by the merits of the case, it is impossible to doubt
+  that he would have cut the knot, either by granting a dispensation to
+  Henry to marry a second wife&mdash;his first being formally, though not
+  judicially, separated from him&mdash;or in some other way.<a
+  name="NtA_138"></a><a href="#Nt_138"><sup>138</sup></a> But the emperor
+  was "a lion in his path;" the question of strength between the French and
+  the Spaniards remained undecided, and Clement would come to no decision
+  until he was assured of the power of the allies to protect him from the
+  consequences. Accordingly he said and unsaid, sighed, sobbed, beat his
+  breast, shuffled, implored, threatened;<a name="NtA_139"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_139"><sup>139</sup></a> in all ways he endeavoured to escape
+  from his dilemma, to say yes and to say no, to do nothing, to offend no
+  one, and above all to gain time, with the weak man's hope that "something
+  might happen" to extricate him. Embassy followed embassy from England,
+  each using language more threatening than its predecessor. The thing, it
+  was said, must be done, and should be done. If it was not done by the
+  pope it would be done at home in some <!-- Page 87 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page87"></a>[pg 87]</span> other way, and the
+  pope must take the consequences.<a name="NtA_140"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_140"><sup>140</sup></a> Wolsey warned him passionately of the
+  rising storm,<a name="NtA_141"></a><a href="#Nt_141"><sup>141</sup></a> a
+  storm which would be so terrible when it burst "that it would be better
+  to die than to live." The pope was strangely unable to believe that the
+  danger could be real, being misled perhaps by other information from the
+  friends of Queen Catherine, and by an over-confidence in the attachment
+  of the people to the emperor. He acted throughout in a manner natural to
+  a timid amiable man, who found himself in circumstances to which he was
+  unequal; and as long as we look at him merely as a man we can pity his
+  embarrassment. He forgot, however, that only because he was supposed to
+  be more than a man had kings and emperors consented to plead at his
+  judgment seat&mdash;a fact of which Stephen Gardiner, then Wolsey's
+  secretary, thought it well to remind him in the following striking
+  language:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Unless," said the future Bishop of Winchester in the council, at the
+  close of a weary day of unprofitable debating, "unless some other
+  resolution be taken than I perceive you intend to make, hereupon shall be
+  gathered a marvellous opinion of your Holiness, of the college of
+  cardinals, and of the authority of this See. The King's Highness, and the
+  nobles of the realm who shall be made privy to this, shall needs think
+  that your Holiness and these most reverend and learned councillors either
+  will not answer in this cause, or cannot answer. If you will not, if you
+  do not choose to point out the way to an erring man, the care of whom is
+  by God committed to you, they will say, 'Oh race of men most ungrateful,
+  and of your proper office most oblivious! You who should be simple as
+  doves are full of all deceit, and craft, and dissembling. If the king's
+  cause be good, we require that you pronounce it good. If it be bad, why
+  will you not say that it is bad, so to hinder a prince to whom you are so
+  much bounden <!-- Page 88 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page88"></a>[pg 88]</span> from longer continuing with it? We ask
+  nothing of you but justice, which the king so loves and values, that
+  whatever sinister things others may say or think of him, he will follow
+  that with all his heart; that, and nothing else, whether it be for the
+  marriage or against the marriage.'</p>
+
+  <p>"But if the King's Majesty," continued Gardiner, hitting the very
+  point of the difficulty, "if the King's Majesty and the nobility of
+  England, being persuaded of your good will to answer if you can do so,
+  shall be brought to doubt of your ability, they will be forced to a
+  harder conclusion respecting this See&mdash;namely, that God has taken
+  from it the key of knowledge; and they will begin to give better ear to
+  that opinion of some persons to which they have as yet refused to listen,
+  that those papal laws which neither the pope himself nor his council can
+  interpret, deserve only to be committed to the flames." "I desired his
+  Holiness," he adds, "to ponder well this matter."<a name="NtA_142"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_142"><sup>142</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Clement was no hero, but in his worst embarrassments his wit never
+  failed him. He answered that he was not learned, and "to speak truth,
+  albeit there was a saying in the canon law, that <i>Pontifex habet omnia
+  jura in scrinio pectoris</i> (the pope has all laws locked within his
+  breast), yet God had never given him the key to open that lock." He was
+  but "seeking pretexts" for delay, as Gardiner saw, till the issue of the
+  Italian campaign of the French in the summer of 1528 was decided. He had
+  been liberated, or had been allowed to escape from Rome, in the fear that
+  if detained longer he might nominate a vicegerent; and was residing at an
+  old ruined castle at Orvieto, waiting upon events, leaving the Holy City
+  still occupied by the Prince of Orange. In the preceding autumn,
+  immediately after the congress at Amiens, M. de Lautrec, accompanied by
+  several English noblemen, had led an army across the Alps. He had
+  defeated the Imperialists in the north of Italy in several minor
+  engagements; and in January his success appeared so probable, that the
+  pope took better heart, and told Sir Gregory Cassalis, that if the French
+  would only approach near enough to enable him to plead compulsion, he
+  would grant a commission to Wolsey, with plenary power to conclude the
+  cause.<a name="NtA_143"></a><a href="#Nt_143"><sup>143</sup></a> De
+  Lautrec, however, <!-- Page 89 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page89"></a>[pg 89]</span> foiled in his desire to bring the
+  Imperialists to a decisive engagement, wasted his time and strength in
+  ineffectual petty sieges; and finally, in the summer, on the unhealthy
+  plains of Naples, a disaster more fatal in its consequences than the
+  battle of Pavia, closed the prospects of the French to the south of the
+  Alps; and with them all Wolsey's hopes of realising his dream. Struck
+  down, not by a visible enemy, but by the silent hand of fever, the French
+  general himself, his English friends, and all his army melted away from
+  off the earth. The pope had been wise in time. He had committed himself
+  in words and intentions; but he had done nothing which he could not
+  recall. He obtained his pardon from the emperor by promising to offend no
+  more; and from that moment never again entertained any real thought of
+  concession. Acting under explicit directions, he made it his object
+  thenceforward to delay and to procrastinate. Charles had no desire to
+  press matters to extremities. War had not yet been declared<a
+  name="NtA_144"></a><a href="#Nt_144"><sup>144</sup></a> against him by
+  Henry; nor was he anxious <!-- Page 90 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page90"></a>[pg 90]</span> himself to precipitate a quarrel from
+  which, if possible, he would gladly escape. He had a powerful party in
+  England, which it was unwise to alienate by hasty, injudicious measures;
+  and he could gain all which he himself desired by a simple policy of
+  obstruction. His object was merely to protract the negotiation and
+  prevent a decision, in the hope either that Henry would be wearied into
+  acquiescence, or that Catherine herself would retire of her own accord,
+  or, finally, that some happy accident might occur to terminate the
+  difficulty. It is, indeed, much to the honour of Charles V. that he
+  resolved to support the queen. She had thrown herself on his protection;
+  but princes in such matters consider prudence more than feeling, and he
+  could gain nothing by defending her: while, both for himself and for the
+  church he risked the loss of much. He over-rated the strength of his
+  English connection, and mistook the English character; but he was not
+  blind to the hazard which he was incurring, and would have welcomed an
+  escape from the dilemma perhaps as warmly as Henry would have welcomed it
+  himself. The pope, who well knew his feelings, told Gardiner, "It would
+  be for the wealth of Christendom if the queen were in her grave; and he
+  thought the emperor would be thereof most glad of all;" saying, also,
+  "that he thought like as the emperor had destroyed the temporalities of
+  the church, so should she be the destruction of the spiritualities."<a
+  name="NtA_145"></a><a href="#Nt_145"><sup>145</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>In the summer of 1528, before the disaster at Naples, Cardinal
+  Campeggio had left Rome on his way to England, where he was to hear the
+  cause in conjunction with Wolsey. An initial measure of this obvious kind
+  it had been impossible to refuse; and the pretexts under which it was for
+  many months delayed, were exhausted before the pope's ultimate course had
+  been made clear to him. But Campeggio was instructed to protract his
+  journey to its utmost length, giving time for the campaign to decide
+  itself. He loitered into the autumn, under the excuse of gout and other
+  convenient accidents, until the news reached him of De Lautrec's death,
+  which took place on the 21st of August; and then at length proceeding, he
+  betrayed to Francis I., on passing through Paris, that he had no
+  intention of allowing judgment to be passed upon the cause.<a
+  name="NtA_146"></a><a href="#Nt_146"><sup>146</sup></a> Even Wolsey was
+  beginning to tremble at what he had attempted, and was doubtful <!-- Page
+  91 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page91"></a>[pg 91]</span> of
+  success.<a name="NtA_147"></a><a href="#Nt_147"><sup>147</sup></a> The
+  seeming relief came in time, for Henry's patience was fast running out.
+  He had been over-persuaded into a course which he had never cordially
+  approved. The majority of the council, especially the Duke of Norfolk and
+  the Duke of Suffolk, were traditionally imperial, and he himself might
+  well doubt whether he might not have found a nearer road out of his
+  difficulties by adhering to Charles. Charles, after all, was not ruining
+  the papacy, and had no intention of ruining it; and his lightest word
+  weighed more at the court of Rome than the dubious threats and prayers of
+  France. The Bishop of Bayonne, resident French ambassador in London,
+  whose remarkable letters transport us back into the very midst of that
+  unquiet and stormy scene, tells us plainly that the French alliance was
+  hated by the country, that the nobility were all for the emperor, and
+  that among the commons the loudest discontent was openly expressed
+  against Wolsey from the danger of the interruption of the trade with
+  Flanders. Flemish ships had been detained in London, and English ships in
+  retaliation had been arrested in the Zealand ports; corn was unusually
+  dear, and the expected supplies from Spain and Germany were cut off;<a
+  name="NtA_148"></a><a href="#Nt_148"><sup>148</sup></a> while the
+  derangement of the woollen trade, from the reluctance of the merchants to
+  venture purchases, was causing distress all over the country, and Wolsey
+  had been driven to the most arbitrary measures to prevent open
+  disturbance.<a name="NtA_149"></a><a href="#Nt_149"><sup>149</sup></a> He
+  had set his hopes upon the chance of a single cast which he would not
+  believe could fail him, but on each fresh delay he was compelled to feel
+  his declining credit, and the Bishop of Bayonne wrote, on the 20th of
+  August, 1528, that the cardinal was in bad spirits, and had told him in
+  confidence, that "if he could only see the <!-- Page 92 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page92"></a>[pg 92]</span> divorce arranged, the
+  king remarried, the succession settled, and the laws and the manners and
+  customs of the country reformed, he would retire from the world and would
+  serve God the remainder of his days."<a name="NtA_150"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_150"><sup>150</sup></a> To these few trifles he would be
+  contented to confine himself&mdash;only to these; he was past sixty, he
+  was weary of the world, and his health was breaking, and he would limit
+  his hopes to the execution of a work for which centuries imperfectly
+  sufficed. It seemed as if he measured his stature by the lengthening
+  shadow, as his sun made haste to its setting. Symptoms of misgiving may
+  be observed in the many anxious letters which he wrote while Campeggio
+  was so long upon his road; and the Bishop of Bayonne, whose less
+  interested eyes could see more deeply into the game, warned him
+  throughout that the pope was playing him false.<a name="NtA_151"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_151"><sup>151</sup></a> Only in a revulsion from violent
+  despondency could such a man as Wolsey have allowed himself, on the mere
+  arrival of the legate, and after a few soft words from him, to write in
+  the following strain to Sir Gregory Cassalis:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"You cannot believe the exultation with which at length I find myself
+  successful in the object for which these many years, with all my
+  industry, I have laboured. At length I have found means to bind my most
+  excellent sovereign and this glorious realm to the holy Roman see in
+  faith and obedience for ever. Henceforth will this people become the most
+  sure pillar of support to bear up the sacred fabric of the church.
+  Henceforth, in recompense for that enduring felicity which he has secured
+  to it, our most Holy Lord has all England at his devotion. In brief time
+  will this noble land make its grateful acknowledgments to his clemency at
+  once for the preservation of the most just, most wise, most excellent of
+  princes, and for the secure establishment of the realm and the protection
+  of the royal succession."<a name="NtA_152"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_152"><sup>152</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This letter was dated on the fourth of October, and was written in the
+  hope that the pope had collected his courage, and that the legate had
+  brought powers to proceed to judgment. In a few days the prospect was
+  again clouded, and Wolsey was once more in despair.<a
+  name="NtA_153"></a><a href="#Nt_153"><sup>153</sup></a> Campeggio had
+  brought with him instructions if possible to arrange a
+  compromise,&mdash;if a compromise <!-- Page 93 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page93"></a>[pg 93]</span> was impossible, to
+  make the best use of his ingenuity, and do nothing and allow nothing to
+  be done. In one of two ways, however, it was hoped that he might effect a
+  peaceful solution. He urged the king to give way and to proceed no
+  further; and this failing, as he was prepared to find, he urged the same
+  thing upon the queen.<a name="NtA_154"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_154"><sup>154</sup></a> He invited Catherine, or he was
+  directed to invite her, in the pope's name,<a name="NtA_155"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_155"><sup>155</sup></a> for the sake of the general interests
+  of Christendom, to take the vows and enter what was called <i>religio
+  laxa</i>, a state in which she might live unincumbered by obligations
+  except the easy one of chastity, and free from all other restrictions
+  either of habit, diet, or order. The proposal was Wolsey's, and was
+  formed when he found the limited nature of Campeggio's instructions;<a
+  name="NtA_156"></a><a href="#Nt_156"><sup>156</sup></a> but it was
+  adopted by the latter; and I cannot but think (though I have no proof of
+  it) that it was not adopted without the knowledge of the emperor.
+  Whatever were his own interests, Charles V. gave Catherine his unwavering
+  support: he made it his duty to maintain her in the ignominious position
+  in which she was placed, and submitted his own conduct to be guided by
+  her wishes. It cannot be doubted, however, from the pope's words, and
+  also from the circumstances of the case, that if she could have prevailed
+  upon herself to yield, it would have relieved him from a painful
+  embarrassment. As a prince, he must have felt the substantial justice of
+  Henry's demand, and in refusing to allow the pope to pass a judicial
+  sentence of divorce, he could not but have known that he was compromising
+  the position of the Holy See: while Catherine herself, on the other hand,
+  if she had yielded, would have retired without a stain; no opinion would
+  have been pronounced upon her marriage; the legitimacy of the Princess
+  Mary would have been left without impeachment; and her right to the
+  succession, in the event of no male heir following from any new
+  connection which the king might form, would have been readily secured to
+  her by act of parliament. It may be asked why she did not yield, and it
+  is difficult to answer the question. She was not a person who would have
+  been disturbed by the loss of a few court vanities. Her situation as
+  Henry's wife could not have had many charms for her, nor can it be
+  thought that she retained a personal affection for him. If she had loved
+  him, she would have suffered too deeply in the struggle to have continued
+  to resist, and the cloister would have seemed a paradise. Or if the
+  cloister had appeared too sad a shelter for her, she might have gone back
+  to the gardens of the <!-- Page 94 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page94"></a>[pg 94]</span> Alhambra, where she had played as a
+  child, carrying with her the affectionate remembrance of every English
+  heart, and welcomed by her own people as an injured saint. Nor again can
+  we suppose that the possible injury of her daughter's prospects from the
+  birth of a prince by another marriage could have seemed of so vast moment
+  to her. Those prospects were already more than endangered, and would have
+  been rather improved than brought into further peril.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not for us to dictate the conduct which a woman smarting under
+  injuries so cruel ought to have pursued. She had a right to choose the
+  course which seemed the best to herself, and England especially could not
+  claim of a stranger that readiness to sacrifice herself which it might
+  have demanded and exacted of one of its own children. We may regret,
+  however, what we are unable to censure; and the most refined ingenuity
+  could scarcely have invented a more unfortunate answer than that which
+  the Queen returned to the legate's request. She seems to have said that
+  she was ready to take vows of chastity if the king would do the same. It
+  does not appear whether the request was <i>formally</i> made, or whether
+  it was merely suggested to her in private conversation. That she told the
+  legates, however, what her answer would be, appears certain from the
+  following passage, sadly indicating the "devices of policy" to which in
+  this unhappy business honourable men allowed themselves to be
+  driven:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Forasmuch as it is like that the queen shall make marvellous
+  difficulty, and in nowise be conformable to enter religion<a
+  name="NtA_157"></a><a href="#Nt_157"><sup>157</sup></a> or take vows of
+  chastity, but that to induce her thereunto, there must be ways and means
+  of high policy used, and all things possible devised to encourage her to
+  the same; wherein percase she shall resolve that she in no wise will
+  condescend so to do, unless that the King's Highness also do the
+  semblable for his part; the king's said orators shall therefore in like
+  wise ripe and instruct themselves by their secret learned council in the
+  court of Rome, if, for so great a benefit to ensue unto the king's
+  succession, realm, and subjects, with the quiet of his conscience, his
+  Grace should promise so to enter religion on vows of chastity for his
+  part, only thereby to conduce the queen thereunto, whether in that case
+  the Pope's Holiness may dispense with the King's Highness for the same
+  promise, oath, or vow, discharging his Grace clearly of the same."<a
+  name="NtA_158"></a><a href="#Nt_158"><sup>158</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 95 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page95"></a>[pg 95]</span>
+
+  <p>The explanation of the queen's conduct lies probably in regions into
+  which it is neither easy nor well to penetrate; in regions of outraged
+  delicacy and wounded pride, in a vast drama of passion which had been
+  enacted behind the scenes. From the significant hints which are let fall
+  of the original cause of the estrangement, it was of a kind more
+  difficult to endure than the ordinary trial of married women, the
+  transfer of a husband's affection to some fairer face; and a wife whom so
+  painful a misfortune had failed to crush would be likely to have been
+  moved by it to a deeper and more bitter indignation even, because while
+  she could not blame herself, she knew not whom she might rightly allow
+  herself to blame. And if this were so, the king is not likely to have
+  allayed the storm when at length, putting faith in Wolsey's promises, he
+  allowed himself openly to regard another person as his future wife,
+  establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same roof with the
+  queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position openly
+  acknowledged,<a name="NtA_159"></a><a href="#Nt_159"><sup>159</sup></a>
+  the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy dignity of the actual
+  wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival. Tamer blood than
+  that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile would have boiled
+  under these indignities; and we have little reason to be surprised if
+  policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Catherine in the bitterness
+  of the draught which was forced upon her, and if her own personal wrongs
+  outweighed the interests of the world. Henry had proceeded to the last
+  unjustifiable extremity as soon as the character of Campeggio's mission
+  had been made clear to him, as if to demonstrate to all the world that he
+  was determined to persevere at all costs and hazards.<a
+  name="NtA_160"></a><a href="#Nt_160"><sup>160</sup></a> Taking the
+  management of the negotiation into his own keeping, he sent Sir Francis
+  Bryan, the cousin of Anne Boleyn, to the pope, to announce that what he
+  required must be done, and to declare peremptorily, no more with covert
+  hints, but with open menace, that in default of help from Rome, he would
+  lay the matter before parliament, to be settled at home by the laws of
+  his own country.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, the emperor, who had hitherto conducted himself with the
+  greatest address, had fallen into his first error. He had retreated
+  skilfully out of the embarrassment in which the pope's imprisonment
+  involved him, and mingling authority and dictation with kindness and
+  deference, he had won over the Holy See to his devotion, and neutralised
+  the danger to which the alliance <!-- Page 96 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page96"></a>[pg 96]</span> of France and England threatened to
+  expose him. His correspondence with the latter country assured him of the
+  unpopularity of the course which had been pursued by the cardinal; he was
+  aware of the obstruction of trade which it had caused, and of the general
+  displeasure felt by the people at the breach of an old friendship; while
+  the league with France in behalf of the Roman church had been barren of
+  results, and was made ridiculous by the obvious preference of the pope
+  for the enemy from whom it was formed to deliver him. If Charles had
+  understood the English temper, therefore, and had known how to avail
+  himself of the opportunity, events might have run in a very different
+  channel. But he was not aware of the earnestness with which the people
+  were bent upon securing the succession, nor of their loyal attachment to
+  Henry. He supposed that disapproval of the course followed by Wolsey to
+  obtain the divorce implied an aversion to it altogether; and trusting to
+  his interest in the privy council, and to his commercial connection with
+  the city, he had attempted to meet menace with menace; he had replied to
+  the language addressed by Henry to the pope with an attempt to feel the
+  pulse of English disaffection, and he opened a correspondence with the
+  Earl of Desmond for an Irish revolt.<a name="NtA_161"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_161"><sup>161</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The opportunity for a movement of this kind had not yet arrived. There
+  was, in England at least, as yet no wide disaffection; but there was a
+  chance of serious outbreaks; and Henry instantly threw himself upon the
+  nation. He summoned the peers by circular to London, and calling a
+  general meeting, composed of the nobility, the privy council, the lord
+  mayor, and the great merchants of the city, he laid before them a
+  specific detail of his objects in desiring the divorce;<a
+  name="NtA_162"></a><a href="#Nt_162"><sup>162</sup></a> and informed them
+  <!-- Page 97 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page97"></a>[pg 97]</span>
+  of the nature of the measures which had been taken.<a
+  name="NtA_163"></a><a href="#Nt_163"><sup>163</sup></a> This, the French
+  ambassador informs us, gave wide satisfaction and <!-- Page 98 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page98"></a>[pg 98]</span> served much to allay
+  the disquiet; but so great was the indignation against Wolsey, that
+  disturbances in London were every day anticipated; and at one time the
+  danger appeared so threatening, that an order of council was issued,
+  commanding all strangers to leave the city, and a general search was
+  instituted for arms.<a name="NtA_164"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_164"><sup>164</sup></a> The strangers aimed at were the
+  Flemings, whose numbers made them formidable, and who were, perhaps,
+  supposed to be ready to act under instruction from abroad. The cloud,
+  however, cleared away; the order was not enforced; and the propitious
+  moment for treason had not yet arrived. The emperor had felt so confident
+  that, in the autumn of 1528, he had boasted that, "before the winter was
+  over, he would fling Henry from his throne by the hands of his own
+  Subjects." The words had been repeated to Wolsey, who mentioned them
+  openly at his table before more than a hundred gentlemen. A person
+  present exclaimed, "That speech has lost the emperor more than a hundred
+  thousand hearts among us;"<a name="NtA_165"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_165"><sup>165</sup></a> an expression which reveals at once the
+  strength and the weakness of the imperial party. England might have its
+  own opinions of the policy of the government, but it was in no humour to
+  tolerate treason, and the first hint of revolt was followed by an instant
+  recoil. The discovery of more successful intrigues in Scotland and
+  Ireland completed the destruction of Charles's influence;<a
+  name="NtA_166"></a><a href="#Nt_166"><sup>166</sup></a> and the result of
+  these ill-judged and premature efforts was merely to unite the nation in
+  their determination to prosecute the divorce.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus were the various parties in the vast struggle which was about to
+  commence gravitating into their places; and mistake combined with policy
+  to place them in their true positions. Wolsey, in submitting "the king's
+  matter" to the pope, had brought to issue the question whether the papal
+  authority should be any longer recognised in England; and he had secured
+  the ruin of that authority by the steps through which he hoped to
+  establish it; while Charles, by his unwise endeavours to foment a
+  rebellion, severed with his own hand the links of a friendship which
+  would have been seriously embarrassing if it had continued. By him, also,
+  was dealt the concluding stroke in this first act of the drama; and
+  though we may grant him credit for the ingenuity of his contrivance, he
+  can claim it only at the expense of his probity. The pope, when the
+  commission was appointed for the trial of the cause in England, had given
+  a promise in writing that the commission <!-- Page 99 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page99"></a>[pg 99]</span> should not be
+  revoked. It seemed, therefore, that the legates would be compelled, in
+  spite of themselves, to pronounce sentence; and that the settlement of
+  the question, in one form or other, could not long be delayed. At the
+  pressure of the crisis in the winter of 1528-9, a document was produced
+  alleged to have been found in Spain, which furnished a pretext for a
+  recall of the engagement, and opening now questions, indefinite and
+  inexhaustible, rendered the passing of a sentence in England impossible.
+  Unhappily, the weight of the king's claim (however it had been rested on
+  its true merits in conversation and in letters) had, by the perverse
+  ingenuity of the lawyers, been laid on certain informalities and defects
+  in the original bull of dispensation, which had been granted by Julius
+  II. for the marriage of Henry and Catherine. At the moment when the
+  legates' court was about to be opened, a copy of a brief was brought
+  forward, bearing the same date as the bull, exactly meeting the
+  objection. The authenticity of this brief was open, on its own merits, to
+  grave doubt; and suspicion becomes certainty when we find it was dropped
+  out of the controversy so soon as the immediate object was gained for
+  which it was produced. But the legates' hands were instantly tied by it.
+  The "previous question" of authenticity had necessarily to be tried
+  before they could take another step; and the "original" of the brief
+  being in the hands of the emperor, who refused to send it into England,
+  but offered to send it to Rome, the cause was virtually transferred to
+  Rome, where Henry, as he knew, was unlikely to consent to plead, or where
+  he could himself rule the decision. He had made a stroke of political
+  finesse, which answered not only the purpose that he immediately
+  intended, but answered, also, the purpose that he did not intend&mdash;of
+  dealing the hardest blow which it had yet received to the supremacy of
+  the Holy See.</p>
+
+  <p>The spring of 1529 was wasted in fruitless efforts to obtain the
+  brief. At length, in May, the proceedings were commenced; but they were
+  commenced only in form, and were never more than an illusion. Catherine
+  had been instructed in the course which she was to pursue. She appealed
+  from the judgment of the legates to that of the pope; and the pope, with
+  the plea of the new feature which had arisen in the case, declared that
+  he could not refuse to revoke his promise. Having consented to the
+  production of the brief, he had in fact no alternative; nor does it
+  appear what he could have urged in excuse of himself. He may have
+  suspected the forgery; nay, it is certain that in <!-- Page 100 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page100"></a>[pg 100]</span> England he was
+  believed to be privy to it; but he could not ignore an important feature
+  of necessary evidence, especially when pressed upon him by the emperor;
+  and it was in fact no more than an absurdity to admit the authority of a
+  papal commission, and to refuse to permit an appeal from it to the pope
+  in person. We may thank Clement for dispelling a chimera by a simple act
+  of consistency. The power of the See of Rome in England was a
+  constitutional fiction, acknowledged only on condition that it would
+  consent to be inert. So long as a legate's court sat in London, men were
+  able to conceal from themselves the fact of a foreign jurisdiction, and
+  to feel that, substantially, their national independence was respected;
+  when the fiction aspired to become a reality, but one consequence was
+  possible. If Henry himself would have stooped to plead at a foreign
+  tribunal, the spirit of the nation would not have permitted him to
+  inflict so great a dishonour on the free majesty of England.</p>
+
+  <p>So fell Wolsey's great scheme, and with it fell the last real chance
+  of maintaining the pope's authority in England under any form. The people
+  were smarting under the long humiliation of the delay, and ill-endured to
+  see the interests of England submitted, as they virtually were, to the
+  arbitration of a foreign prince. The emperor, not the pope, was the true
+  judge who sat to decide the quarrel; and their angry jealousy refused to
+  tolerate longer a national dishonour.</p>
+
+  <p>"The great men of the realm," wrote the legates, "are storming in
+  bitter wrath at our procrastination. Lords and commons alike complain
+  that they are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital
+  moment to themselves and their fortunes. And many persons here who would
+  desire to see the pope's authority in this country diminished or
+  annulled, are speaking in language which we cannot repeat without
+  horror."<a name="NtA_167"></a><a href="#Nt_167"><sup>167</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>And when, being in such a mood, they were mocked, after two weary
+  years of negotiation, by the opening of a fresh vista of difficulties,
+  when they were informed that the further hearing of the cause was
+  transferred to Italy, even Wolsey, with certain ruin before him, rose in
+  protest before such a dream of shame. He was no more the Roman legate,
+  but the English minister.</p>
+
+  <p>"If the advocation be passed," he wrote to Cassalis,<a
+  name="NtA_168"></a><a href="#Nt_168"><sup>168</sup></a> "or shall now at
+  any time hereafter pass, with citation of the king in person, or by
+  proctor, to the court of Rome, or with any <!-- Page 101 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page101"></a>[pg 101]</span> clause of
+  interdiction or excommunication, <i>vel cum invocatione brachii
+  sęcularis</i>, whereby the king should be precluded from taking his
+  advantage otherwise, the dignity and prerogative royal of the king's
+  crown, whereunto all the nobles and subjects of this realm will adhere
+  and stick unto the death, may not tolerate nor suffer that the same be
+  obeyed. And to say the truth, in so doing the pope should not only show
+  himself the king's enemy, but also as much as in him is, provoke all
+  other princes and people to be the semblable. Nor shall it ever be seen
+  that the king's cause shall be ventilated or decided in any place out of
+  his own realm; <i>but that if his Grace should come at any time to the
+  Court of Rome, he would do the same with such a main and army royal as
+  should be formidable to the pope and all Italy</i>."<a
+  name="NtA_169"></a><a href="#Nt_169"><sup>169</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Wolsey, however, failed in his protest; the advocation was passed,
+  Campeggio left England, and he was lost. A crisis had arrived, and a
+  revolution of policy was inevitable. From the accession of Henry VII.,
+  the country had been governed by a succession of ecclesiastical
+  ministers, who being priests as well as statesmen, were essentially
+  conservative; and whose efforts in a position of constantly increasing
+  difficulty had been directed towards resisting the changing tendencies of
+  the age, and either evading a reformation of the church while they
+  admitted its necessity, or retaining the conduct of it in their own
+  hands, while <!-- Page 102 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page102"></a>[pg 102]</span> they were giving evidence of their
+  inability to accomplish the work. It was now over; the ablest
+  representative of this party, in a last desperate effort to retain power,
+  had decisively failed. Writs were issued for a parliament when the
+  legate's departure was determined, and the consequences were inevitable.
+  Wolsey had known too well the unpopularity of his foreign policy, to
+  venture on calling a parliament himself. He relied on success as an
+  ultimate justification; and inasmuch as success had not followed, he was
+  obliged to bear the necessary fate of a minister who, in a free country,
+  had thwarted the popular will and whom fortune deserted in the struggle.
+  The barriers which his single hand had upheld suddenly gave way, the
+  torrent had free course, and he himself was the first to be swept away.
+  In modern language, we should describe what took place as a change of
+  ministry, the government being transferred to an opposition, who had been
+  irritated by long depression under the hands of men whom they despised,
+  and who were borne into power by an irresistible force in a moment of
+  excitement and danger. The king, who had been persuaded against his
+  better judgment to accept Wolsey's schemes, admitted the rising spirit
+  without reluctance, contented to moderate its action, but no longer
+  obstructing or permitting it to be obstructed. Like all great English
+  statesmen, he was constitutionally conservative, but he had the tact to
+  perceive the conditions under which, in critical times, conservatism is
+  possible; and although he continued to endure for himself the trifling of
+  the papacy, he would not, for the sake of the pope's interest, delay
+  further the investigation of the complaints of the people against the
+  church; while in the future prosecution of his own cause, he resolved to
+  take no steps except with the consent of the legislature, and in a
+  question of national moment, to consult only the nation's wishes.</p>
+
+  <p>The new ministry held a middle place between the moving party in the
+  commons and the expelled ecclesiastics, the principal members of it being
+  the chief representatives of the old aristocracy, who had been Wolsey's
+  fiercest opponents, but who were disinclined by constitution and sympathy
+  from sweeping measures. An attempt was made, indeed, to conciliate the
+  more old-fashioned of the churchmen, by an offer of the seals to Warham,
+  Archbishop of Canterbury, probably because he originally opposed the
+  marriage between the king and his sister-in-law, and because it was hoped
+  that his objections remained unaltered. Warham, however, as we shall see,
+  had changed his mind: he declined, on the plea of age, and the <!-- Page
+  103 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page103"></a>[pg 103]</span> office
+  of chancellor was given to Sir Thomas More, perhaps the person least
+  disaffected to the clergy who could have been found among the leading
+  laymen. The substance of power was vested in the Dukes of Norfolk and
+  Suffolk, the great soldier-nobles of the age, and Sir William
+  Fitz-William, lord admiral; to all of whom the ecclesiastical domination
+  had been most intolerable, while they had each of them brilliantly
+  distinguished themselves in the wars with France and Scotland. According
+  to the French ambassador, we must add one more minister, supreme, if we
+  may trust him, above them all. "The Duke of Norfolk," he writes, "is made
+  president of the council, the Duke of Suffolk vice-president, and above
+  them both is Mistress Anne;"<a name="NtA_170"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_170"><sup>170</sup></a> this last addition to the council being
+  one which boded little good to the interests of the See that had so long
+  detained her in expectation. So confident were the destructive party of
+  the temper of the approaching parliament, and of the irresistible
+  pressure of the times, that the general burden of conversation of the
+  dinner-tables in the great houses in London was an exulting expectation
+  of a dissolution of the church establishment, and a confiscation of
+  ecclesiastical property; the king himself being the only obstacle which
+  was feared by them. "These noble lords imagine," continues the same
+  writer, "that the cardinal once dead of ruined, they will incontinently
+  plunder the church, and strip it of all its wealth," adding that there
+  was no occasion for him to write this in cipher, for it was everywhere
+  openly spoken of.<a name="NtA_171"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_171"><sup>171</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Movements, nevertheless, which are pregnant with vital change, are
+  slow in assuming their essential direction, even after the stir has
+  commenced. Circumstances do not immediately open themselves; the point of
+  vision alters gradually; and fragments of old opinions, and
+  prepossessions, and prejudices remain interfused with the new, even in
+  the clearest minds, and cannot at a moment be shaken off. Only the unwise
+  change suddenly; and we can never too often remind ourselves, when we see
+  men stepping forward with uncertainty and hesitation over a road, where
+  to us, we know the actual future, all seems so plain, that the road
+  looked different to the actors themselves, who were beset with
+  imaginations of the past, and to whom the gloom of the future appeared
+  thronged with phantoms of possible contingencies. The hasty expectations
+  of the noble lords were checked by Henry's prudence; and though parties
+  were rapidly arranging themselves, there was <!-- Page 104 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page104"></a>[pg 104]</span> still confusion.
+  The city, though disinclined to the pope and the church, continued to
+  retain an inclination for the emperor; and the pope had friends among
+  Wolsey's enemies, who, by his overthrow, were pressed forward into
+  prominence, and divided the victory with the reformers. The presence of
+  Sir Thomas More in the council was a guarantee that no exaggerated
+  measures against the church would be permitted so long as he held the
+  seals; and Henry, perhaps, was anxious to leave room for conciliation,
+  which he hoped that the pope would desire as much as himself, so soon as
+  the meeting of parliament had convinced him that the mutinous disposition
+  of the nation had not been overstated by his own and Wolsey's
+  letters.</p>
+
+  <p>The impression conceived two years before of the hostile relations
+  between the pope and Charles had not yet been wholly effaced; and even as
+  late as September, 1529, after the closing of the legates' court, in the
+  very heat of the public irritation, there were persons who believed that
+  when Clement met his imperial captor face to face, and the interview had
+  taken place which had been arranged for the ensuing January, his eyes
+  would be opened, and that he would fall back upon England.<a
+  name="NtA_172"></a><a href="#Nt_172"><sup>172</sup></a> At the same time,
+  the incongruities in the constitution of the council became so early
+  apparent, that their agreement was thought impossible, and Wolsey's
+  return to power was discussed openly as a probability<a
+  name="NtA_173"></a><a href="#Nt_173"><sup>173</sup></a>&mdash;a result
+  which Anne Boleyn, who, better than any other person, knew the king's
+  feelings, never ceased to fear, till, a year after his disgrace, the
+  welcome news were brought to her that he had sunk into his long rest,
+  where the sick load of office and of obloquy would gall his back no
+  more.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a third party in the country, unconsidered as yet, who had a
+  part to play in the historical drama: a party which, indeed, if any one
+  had known it, was the most important of all; the only one which, in a
+  true, high sense, was of importance at all; and for the sake of which,
+  little as it then appeared to be so, the whole work was to be
+  done&mdash;composed at that time merely of poor men, poor cobblers,
+  weavers, carpenters, trade apprentices, and humble artisans, men of low
+  birth and low estate, who might be seen at night stealing along the lanes
+  and alleys of London, carrying with them some precious load of books
+  which it was death to possess; and giving their lives gladly, if it must
+  be so, for the brief tenure of so dear a treasure. These men, for the
+  present, were likely to fare ill from the new <!-- Page 105 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page105"></a>[pg 105]</span> ministry. They were
+  the disturbers of order, the anarchists, the men disfigured <i>pravitate
+  hereticā</i>, by monstrous doctrines, and consequently by monstrous
+  lives&mdash;who railed at authorities, and dared to read New Testaments
+  with their own eyes&mdash;who, consequently, by their excesses and
+  extravagances, brought discredit upon liberal opinions, and whom moderate
+  liberals (as they always have done, and always will do while human nature
+  remains itself) held it necessary for their credit's sake to persecute,
+  that a censorious world might learn to make no confusion between true
+  wisdom and the folly which seemed to resemble it. The Protestants had not
+  loved Wolsey, and they had no reason to love him; but it was better to
+  bear a fagot of dry sticks in a procession when the punishment was
+  symbolic, than, lashed fast to a stake in Smithfield, amidst piles of the
+  same fagots kindled into actual flames, to sink into a heap of blackened
+  dust and ashes; and before a year had passed, they would gladly have
+  accepted again the hated cardinal, to escape from the philosophic mercies
+  of Sir Thomas More. The number of English Protestants at this time it is
+  difficult to conjecture. The importance of such men is not to be measured
+  by counting heads. In 1526, they were organised into a society, calling
+  themselves "the Christian brotherhood,"<a name="NtA_174"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_174"><sup>174</sup></a> with a central committee sitting in
+  London; with subscribed funds, regularly audited, for the purchase of
+  Testaments and tracts; and with paid agents, who travelled up and down
+  the country to distribute them. Some of the poorer clergy belonged to the
+  society;<a name="NtA_175"></a><a href="#Nt_175"><sup>175</sup></a> and
+  among the city merchants there were many well inclined to it, and who,
+  perhaps, attended its meetings "by night, secretly, for fear of the
+  Jews." But, as a rule, "property and influence" continued to hold aloof
+  in the usual haughty style, and the pioneers of the new opinions had yet
+  to win their way along a scorched and blackened path of suffering, before
+  the State would consent to acknowledge them. We think bitterly of these
+  things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is inevitable from the
+  constitution of the world. New doctrines ever gain readiest hearing among
+  the common people; not only because the interests of the higher classes
+  are usually in some degree connected with the maintenance of existing
+  institutions; but because ignorance is itself a protection against the
+  many considerations which embarrass the judgment of the educated. <!--
+  Page 106 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page106"></a>[pg 106]</span>
+  The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own apparent merits
+  by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms; while men of
+  experience know well that out of the thousands of theories which rise in
+  the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and one there which grows
+  to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality, where the
+  opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage and
+  repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which,
+  by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who
+  entertain them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not
+  any more believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is
+  necessarily fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were
+  supposed to be attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to
+  rise among us, making murder a religious service; if they gained
+  proselytes, and the proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should
+  speedily begin again to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism
+  would appear to ourselves, the teachers of heresy actually appeared to
+  Sir Thomas More, only being as much more hateful as the eternal death of
+  the soul is more terrible than the single and momentary separation of it
+  from the body. There is, I think, no just ground on which to condemn
+  conscientious Catholics on the score of persecution, except only this:
+  that as we are now convinced of the injustice of the persecuting laws, so
+  among those who believed them to be just, there were some who were led by
+  an instinctive protest of human feeling to be lenient in the execution of
+  those laws; while others of harder nature and more narrow sympathies
+  enforced them without reluctance, and even with exultation. The heart,
+  when it is rightly constituted, corrects the folly of the head; and wise
+  good men, even though they entertain no conscious misgiving as to the
+  soundness of their theories, may be delivered from the worst consequences
+  of those theories, by trusting their more genial instincts. And thus, and
+  thus only, are we justified in censuring those whose names figure largely
+  in the persecuting lists. Their defence is impregnable to logic. We blame
+  them for the absence of that humanity which is deeper than logic, and
+  which should have taught them to refuse the conclusions of their
+  speculative creed.</p>
+
+  <p>Such, then, was the state of parties in the autumn of 1529. The old
+  conservatives, the political ecclesiastics, had ceased to exist, and the
+  clergy as a body were paralysed by corruption. There remained&mdash;</p>
+
+<!-- Page 107 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page107"></a>[pg 107]</span>
+
+  <p>The English party who had succeeded to power, and who were bent upon a
+  secular revolt.</p>
+
+  <p>The papal party, composed of theoretic theologians, like Fisher,
+  Bishop of Rochester, and represented on the council by Sir Thomas
+  More.</p>
+
+  <p>And both of these were united in their aversion to the third party,
+  that of the doctrinal Protestants, who were still called heretics.</p>
+
+  <p>These three substantially divided what was sound in England; the first
+  composed of the mass of the people, representing the principles of
+  prudence, justice, good sense, and the working faculties of social life:
+  the two last sharing between them the higher qualities of nobleness,
+  enthusiasm, self-devotion; but in their faith being without discretion,
+  and in their piety without understanding. The problem of the Reformation
+  was to reunite virtues which could be separated only to their mutual
+  confusion; and to work out among them such inadequate reconciliation as
+  the wilfulness of human nature would allow.</p>
+
+  <p>Before I close this chapter, which is intended as a general
+  introduction, I have to say something of two prominent persons whose
+  character antecedent to the actions in which we are to find them engaged
+  it is desirable that we should understand; I mean Henry VIII. himself,
+  and the lady whom he had selected to fill the place from which Catherine
+  of Arragon was to be deposed.</p>
+
+  <p>If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of the
+  divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest
+  misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a
+  name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of
+  the Black Prince or of the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most
+  trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal
+  of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy
+  to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six
+  years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an
+  upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest
+  gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward
+  IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were
+  princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained
+  majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except
+  the Duke of Suffolk: he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by
+  any yeoman of his guard; and these <!-- Page 108 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page108"></a>[pg 108]</span> powers were
+  sustained in unfailing vigour by a temperate habit and by constant
+  exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not left to judge from the
+  suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His state papers and letters
+  may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they
+  lose nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the
+  perception is equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they
+  breathe throughout an irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this
+  he had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in
+  four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of other subjects, with
+  which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the
+  reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of his
+  age; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and
+  new constructions in ship-building; and this not with the condescending
+  incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike
+  understanding. His reading was vast, especially in theology, which has
+  been ridiculously ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father's intention of
+  educating him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury; as if the scientific
+  mastery of such a subject could have been acquired by a boy of twelve
+  years of age, for he was no more when he became Prince of Wales. He must
+  have studied theology with the full maturity of his intellect; and he had
+  a fixed and perhaps unfortunate interest in the subject itself.<a
+  name="NtA_176"></a><a href="#Nt_176"><sup>176</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 109 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page109"></a>[pg 109]</span>
+
+  <p>In all directions of human activity Henry displayed natural powers of
+  the highest order, at the highest stretch of industrious culture. He was
+  "attentive," as it is called, "to his religious duties," being present at
+  the services in chapel two or three times a day with unfailing
+  regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious
+  obligation in the energy and purity of his life. In private he was
+  good-humoured and good-natured. His letters to his secretaries, though
+  never undignified, are simple, easy, and unrestrained; and the letters
+  written by them to him are similarly plain and businesslike, as if the
+  writers knew that the person whom they were addressing disliked
+  compliments, and chose to be treated as a man. Again, from their
+  correspondence with one another, when they describe interviews with him,
+  we gather the same pleasant impression. He seems to have been always
+  kind, always considerate; inquiring into their private concerns with
+  genuine interest, and winning, as a consequence, their warm and
+  unaffected attachment.</p>
+
+  <p>As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been
+  successful. He had the splendid tastes in which the English people most
+  delighted, and he had substantially acted out his own theory of his duty
+  which was expressed in the following words:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and nurses to
+  their subjects, and by Scripture it appeareth that it appertaineth unto
+  the office of princes to see that right religion and true doctrine be
+  maintained and taught, and that their subjects may be well ruled and
+  governed by good and just laws; and to provide and care for them that all
+  things necessary for them may be plenteous; and that the people and
+  commonweal may increase; and to defend them from oppression and invasion,
+  as well within the realm as without; and to see that justice be
+  administered unto them indifferently; and to hear benignly all their
+  complaints; and to show towards them, although they offend, fatherly
+  pity. And, finally, so to <!-- Page 110 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page110"></a>[pg 110]</span> correct them that be evil, that they
+  had yet rather save them than lose them if it were not for respect of
+  justice, and maintenance of peace and good order in the commonweal."<a
+  name="NtA_177"></a><a href="#Nt_177"><sup>177</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct
+  in his earlier years. His social administration we have partially seen in
+  the previous chapter. He had more than once been tried with insurrection,
+  which he had soothed down without bloodshed, and extinguished in
+  forgiveness; and London long recollected the great scene which followed
+  "evil May-day," 1517, when the apprentices were brought down to
+  Westminster Hall to receive their pardons. There had been a dangerous
+  riot in the streets, which might have provoked a mild government to
+  severity; but the king contented himself with punishing the five
+  ringleaders, and four hundred other prisoners, after being paraded down
+  the streets in white shirts with halters round their necks, were
+  dismissed with an admonition, Wolsey weeping as he pronounced it.<a
+  name="NtA_178"></a><a href="#Nt_178"><sup>178</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It is certain that if, as I said, he had died before the divorce was
+  mooted, Henry VIII., like that Roman Emperor said by Tacitus to have been
+  <i>consensu omnium dignus imperii nisi imperasset</i>, would have been
+  considered by posterity as formed by Providence for the conduct of the
+  Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a perpetual
+  calamity. We must allow him, therefore, the benefit of his past career,
+  and be careful to remember it, when interpreting his later actions. Not
+  many men would have borne themselves through the same trials with the
+  same integrity; but the circumstances of those trials had not tested the
+  true defects in his moral constitution. Like all princes of the
+  Plantagenet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will.
+  His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction;
+  and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into
+  collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had
+  not fitted him to contend. Education had done much for him, but his
+  nature required more correction than his position had permitted, whilst
+  unbroken prosperity and early independence of control had been his most
+  serious misfortune. He had capacity, if his training had been equal to
+  it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him, he
+  was still <!-- Page 111 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page111"></a>[pg 111]</span> perhaps the greatest of his
+  contemporaries; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to govern
+  England, had been set to do it by the conditions of his birth.</p>
+
+  <p>The other person whose previous history we have to ascertain is one,
+  the tragedy of whose fate has blotted the remembrance of her
+  sins&mdash;if her sins were, indeed, and in reality, more than imaginary.
+  Forgetting all else in shame and sorrow, posterity has made piteous
+  reparation for her death in the tenderness with which it has touched her
+  reputation; and with the general instincts of justice, we have refused to
+  qualify our indignation at the wrong which she experienced, by admitting
+  either stain or shadow on her fame. It has been with Anne Boleyn as it
+  has been with Catherine of Arragon&mdash;both are regarded as the victims
+  of a tyranny which catholics and protestants unite to remember with
+  horror; and each has taken the place of a martyred saint in the hagiology
+  of the respective creeds. Catholic writers have, indeed, ill repaid, in
+  their treatment of Anne, the admiration with which the mother of Queen
+  Mary has been remembered in the Church of England; but the invectives
+  which they have heaped upon her have defeated their object by their
+  extravagance. It has been believed that matter failed them to sustain a
+  just accusation, when they condescended to outrageous slander. Inasmuch,
+  however, as some natural explanation can usually be given of the actions
+  of human beings in this world without supposing them to have been
+  possessed by extraordinary wickedness, and if we are to hold Anne Boleyn
+  entirely free from fault, we place not the king only, but the privy
+  council, the judges, the Lords and Commons, and the two Houses of
+  Convocation, in a position fatal to their honour and degrading to
+  ordinary humanity; we cannot without inquiry acquiesce in so painful a
+  conclusion. The English nation also, as well as she, deserves justice at
+  our hands; and it must not be thought uncharitable if we look with some
+  scrutiny at the career of a person who, except for the catastrophe with
+  which it was closed, would not so readily have obtained forgiveness for
+  having admitted the addresses of the king, or for having received the
+  homage of the court as its future sovereign, while the king's wife, her
+  mistress, as yet resided under the same roof, with the title and the
+  position of queen, and while the question was still undecided of the
+  validity of the first marriage. If in that alone she was to blame, her
+  fault was, indeed, revenged a thousandfold,&mdash;and yet no lady of true
+  delicacy would have accepted such a position; and feeling for Queen
+  Catherine should have restrained <!-- Page 112 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page112"></a>[pg 112]</span> her, if she was
+  careless of respect for herself. It must, therefore, be permitted me, out
+  of such few hints and scattered notices as remain, to collect such
+  information as may be trusted respecting her early life before her
+  appearance upon the great stage. These hints are but slight, since I
+  shall not even mention the scandals of Sanders, any more than I shall
+  mention the panegyrics of Foxe; stories which, as far as I can learn,
+  have no support in evidence, and rest on no stronger foundation than the
+  credulity of passion.</p>
+
+  <p>Anne Boleyn was the second daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a gentleman
+  of noble family, though moderate fortune;<a name="NtA_179"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_179"><sup>179</sup></a> who, by a marriage with the daughter of
+  the Duke of Norfolk, was brought into connection with the highest blood
+  in the realm. The year of her birth has not been certainly ascertained,
+  but she is supposed to have been seven years old<a name="NtA_180"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_180"><sup>180</sup></a> in 1514, when she accompanied the
+  Princess Mary into France, on the marriage of that lady with Louis XII.
+  Louis dying a few months subsequently, the princess married Sir Charles
+  Brandon, afterwards created Duke of Suffolk, and returned to England.
+  Anne Boleyn did not return with her; she remained in Paris to become
+  accomplished with the graces and elegancies, if she was not contaminated
+  by the vices, of that court, which, even in those days of loyal
+  licentiousness, enjoyed an undesirable pre-eminence in profligacy. In the
+  French capital she could not have failed to see, to hear, and to become
+  familiar with occurrences with which no young girl can be brought in
+  contact with impunity, and this poisonous atmosphere she continued to
+  breathe for nine years. She came back to England in 1525, to be maid of
+  honour to Queen Catherine, and to be distinguished at the court, by
+  general consent, for her talents, her accomplishments, and her beauty.
+  Her portraits, though all professedly by Holbein, or copied from pictures
+  by him, are singularly unlike each other. The profile in the picture
+  which is best known is pretty, innocent, and piquant, though rather
+  insignificant: there are other pictures, however, in which we see a face
+  more powerful, though less prepossessing. In these the features are full
+  and languid. The eyes are large; but the expression, though remarkable,
+  is not pleasing, and indicates cunning more than thought, passion more
+  than feeling; while the heavy lips and massive chin wear a <!-- Page 113
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page113"></a>[pg 113]</span> look of
+  sensuality which is not to be mistaken. Possibly all are like the
+  original, but represented her under different circumstances, or at
+  different periods of her life. Previous to her engagement with the king,
+  she was the object of fleeting attentions from the young noblemen about
+  the court. Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know,
+  was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal
+  Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic
+  story of the affair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately
+  interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself. The story is not without its
+  difficulties, since Lord Percy had been contracted, several years
+  previously, to a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury,<a
+  name="NtA_181"></a><a href="#Nt_181"><sup>181</sup></a> whom he
+  afterwards married, and by the law he could not have formed a second
+  engagement so long as the first was undissolved. And again, he himself,
+  when subsequently examined before the privy council, denied solemnly on
+  his oath that any contract of the kind had existed.<a
+  name="NtA_182"></a><a href="#Nt_182"><sup>182</sup></a> At the same time,
+  we cannot suppose Cavendish to have invented so circumstantial a
+  narrative, and Percy would not have been examined if there had been no
+  reason for suspicion. Something, therefore, probably had passed between
+  him and the young maid of honour, though we cannot now conjecture of what
+  nature; and we can infer only that it was not openly to her discredit, or
+  she would not have obtained the position which cost her so dear. She
+  herself confessed subsequently, before Archbishop Cranmer, to a
+  connection of some kind into which she had entered before her
+  acquaintance with Henry. No evidence survives which will explain to what
+  she referred, for the act of parliament which mentions the fact furnishes
+  no details.<a name="NtA_183"></a><a href="#Nt_183"><sup>183</sup></a> But
+  it was of a kind which made her marriage with the king illegal, and
+  illegitimatised the offspring of it; and it has been supposed, therefore,
+  that, in spite of Lord Percy's denial, he had really engaged himself to
+  her, and was afraid to acknowledge it.<a name="NtA_184"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_184"><sup>184</sup></a> This supposition, however, <!-- Page
+  114 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page114"></a>[pg 114]</span> is not
+  easy to reconcile with the language of the act, which speaks of the
+  circumstance, whatever it was, as only "recently known;" nor could a
+  contract with Percy have invalidated her marriage with the king, when
+  Percy having been pre-contracted to another person, it would have been
+  itself invalid. A light is thrown upon the subject by a letter found
+  among Cromwell's papers, addressed by some unknown person to a Mr.
+  Melton, also unknown, but written obviously when "Mistress Anne" was a
+  young lady about the court, and before she had been the object of any
+  open attention from Henry.</p>
+
+  <p>"MR. MELTON.&mdash;This shall be to advertise you that Mistress Anne
+  is changed from that she was at when we three were last together.
+  Wherefore I pray you that ye be no devil's sakke, but according to the
+  truth ever justify, as ye shall make answer before God; and do not suffer
+  her in my absence to be married to any other man. I must go to my master,
+  wheresoever he be, for the Lord Privy Seal desireth much to speak with
+  me, whom if I should speak with in my master's absence, it would cause me
+  to lose my head; and yet I know myself as true a man to my prince as
+  liveth, whom (as my friend informeth me) I have offended grievously in my
+  words. No more to you, but to have me commended unto Mistress Anne, and
+  bid her remember her promise, which none can loose, but God only, to whom
+  I shall daily during my life commend her."<a name="NtA_185"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_185"><sup>185</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The letter must furnish its own interpretation; for it receives little
+  from any other quarter. Being in the possession of Cromwell, however, it
+  had perhaps been forwarded to him at the time of Queen Anne's trial, and
+  may have thus occasioned the investigation which led to the annulling of
+  her marriage.</p>
+
+  <p>From the account which was written of her by the grandson of Sir
+  Thomas Wyatt the poet, we still gather the impression (in spite of the
+  admiring sympathy with which Wyatt writes) of a person with whom young
+  men took liberties,<a name="NtA_186"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_186"><sup>186</sup></a> however she might seem to forbid them.
+  In her diet she was an epicure, fond of dainty and delicate eating, and
+  not always contented if she did not obtain what she desired. When the
+  king's attentions <!-- Page 115 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page115"></a>[pg 115]</span> towards her became first marked,
+  Thomas Heneage, afterwards lord chamberlain, wrote to Wolsey, that he had
+  one night been "commanded down with a dish for Mistress Anne for supper";
+  adding that she caused him "to sup with her, and she wished she had some
+  of Wolsey's good meat, as carps, shrimps, and others."<a
+  name="NtA_187"></a><a href="#Nt_187"><sup>187</sup></a> And this was not
+  said in jest, since Heneage related it as a hint to Wolsey, that he might
+  know what to do, if he wished to please her. In the same letter he
+  suggested to the cardinal that she was a little displeased at not having
+  received a token or present from him; she was afraid she was forgotten,
+  he said, and "the lady, her mother, desired him to send unto his Grace,
+  and desire his Grace to bestow a morsel of tunny upon her." Wolsey made
+  her presents also at times of a more valuable character, as we find her
+  acknowledging in language of exaggerated gratitude;<a
+  name="NtA_188"></a><a href="#Nt_188"><sup>188</sup></a> and, perhaps the
+  most painful feature in all her earlier history lies in the contrast
+  between the servility with which she addressed the cardinal so long as he
+  was in power, and the bitterness with which the Bishop of Bayonne (and,
+  in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that she pressed upon his
+  decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title of "the
+  night-crow,"<a name="NtA_189"></a><a href="#Nt_189"><sup>189</sup></a> as
+  the person to whom he owed all which was most cruel in his treatment; as
+  "the enemy that never slept, but studied and continually imagined, both
+  sleeping and waking, his utter destruction."<a name="NtA_190"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_190"><sup>190</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Taking these things together, and there is nothing to be placed beside
+  them of a definitely pleasing kind, except beauty and accomplishments, we
+  form, with the assistance of her pictures, a tolerable conception of this
+  lady; a conception of her as a woman not indeed questionable, but as one
+  whose antecedents might lead consistently to a future either of evil or
+  of good; and whose character removes the surprise which we might be
+  inclined to feel at the position with respect to Queen Catherine in which
+  she consented to be placed. A harsh critic would describe her, on this
+  evidence, as a self-indulgent coquette, indifferent to the <!-- Page 116
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page116"></a>[pg 116]</span>
+  obligations of gratitude, and something careless of the truth. From the
+  letter referring to her, preserved by Cromwell, it appears that she had
+  broken a definite promise at a time when such promises were legally
+  binding, and that she had really done so was confirmed by her subsequent
+  confession. The breach of such promises by a woman who could not be
+  expected to understand the grounds on which the law held them to be
+  sacred, implies no more than levity, and levity of this kind has been
+  found compatible with many high qualities. Levity, however, it does
+  undoubtedly imply, and the symptom, if a light one, must be allowed the
+  weight which is due to it.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a miserable duty to be compelled to search for these indications
+  of human infirmities; above all when they are the infirmities of a lady
+  whose faults, let them have been what they would, were so fearfully and
+  terribly expiated; and, if there were nothing else at issue but poor
+  questions of petty scandal, it were better far that they perished in
+  forgetfulness, and passed away out of mind and memory for ever. The
+  fortunes of Anne Boleyn were unhappily linked with those of men to whom
+  the greatest work ever yet accomplished in this country was committed;
+  and the characters of a king of England, and of the three estates of the
+  realm, are compromised in the treatment which she received from them.</p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PARLIAMENT OF 1529</h3>
+
+  <p>No Englishman can look back uninterested on the meeting of the
+  parliament of 1529. The era at which it assembled is the most memorable
+  in the history of this country, and the work which it accomplished before
+  its dissolution was of larger moment politically and spiritually than the
+  achievements of the Long Parliament itself. For nearly seven years it
+  continued surrounded by intrigue, confusion, and at length conspiracy,
+  presiding over a people from whom the forms and habits by which they had
+  moved for centuries were falling like the shell of a chrysalis. While
+  beset with enemies within the realm and without, it effected a revolution
+  which severed England from the papacy, yet it preserved peace unbroken
+  and prevented anarchy from <!-- Page 117 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page117"></a>[pg 117]</span> breaking bounds; and although its
+  hands are not pure from spot, and red stains rest on them which posterity
+  have bitterly and long remembered; yet if we consider the changes which
+  it carried through, and if we think of the price which was paid by other
+  nations for victory in the same struggle, we shall acknowledge that the
+  records of the world contain no instance of such a triumph, bought at a
+  cost so slight and tarnished by blemishes so trifling.</p>
+
+  <p>The letters of the French Ambassador<a name="NtA_191"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_191"><sup>191</sup></a> describe to us the gathering of the
+  members into London, and the hum of expectation sounding louder and
+  louder as the day of the opening approached. In order that we may see
+  distinctly what London felt on this occasion, that we may understand in
+  detail the nature of those questions with which parliament was
+  immediately to deal, we will glance at some of the proceedings which had
+  taken place in the Bishops' Consistory Courts during the few preceding
+  years. The duties of the officials of these courts resembled in theory
+  the duties of the censors under the Roman Republic. In the middle ages, a
+  lofty effort had been made to overpass the common limitations of
+  government, to introduce punishment for sins as well as crimes, and to
+  visit with temporal penalties the breach of the moral law. The punishment
+  best adapted for such offences was some outward expression of the
+  disapproval with which good men regard acts of sin; some open disgrace;
+  some spiritual censure; some suspension of communion with the church,
+  accompanied by other consequences practically inconvenient, to be
+  continued until the offender had made reparation, or had openly repented,
+  or had given confirmed proof of amendment. The administration of such a
+  discipline fell, as a matter of course, to the clergy. The clergy were
+  the guardians of morality; their characters were a claim to confidence,
+  their duties gave them opportunities of observation which no other men
+  could possess; while their priestly office gave solemn weight to their
+  sentences. Thus arose throughout Europe a system of spiritual
+  surveillance over the habits and conduct of every man, extending from the
+  cottage to the castle, taking note of all wrong dealing, of all
+  oppression of man by man, of all licentiousness and profligacy, and
+  representing upon earth, in the principles by which it was guided, the
+  laws of the great tribunal of Almighty God.</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the origin of the church courts, perhaps the greatest
+  institutions ever yet devised by man. But to aim at these high ideals is
+  as perilous as it is noble; and weapons which may be <!-- Page 118
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page118"></a>[pg 118]</span> safely
+  trusted in the hands of saints become fatal implements of mischief when
+  saints have ceased to wield them. For a time, we need not doubt, the
+  practice corresponded to the intention. Had it not been so, the
+  conception would have taken no root, and would have been extinguished at
+  its birth. But a system which has once established itself in the respect
+  of mankind will be tolerated long after it has forfeited its claim to
+  endurance, as the name of a great man remains honoured though borne by
+  worthless descendants; and the Consistory courts had continued into the
+  sixteenth century with unrestricted jurisdiction, although they had been
+  for generations merely perennially flowing fountains, feeding the
+  ecclesiastical exchequer. The moral conduct of every English man and
+  woman remained subject to them. Each private person was liable to be
+  called in question for every action of his life; and an elaborate network
+  of canon law perpetually growing, enveloped the whole surface of society.
+  But between the original design and the degenerate counterfeit there was
+  this vital difference,&mdash;that the censures were no longer spiritual.
+  They were commuted in various gradations for pecuniary fines, and each
+  offence against morality was rated at its specific money value in the
+  episcopal tables. Suspension and excommunication remained as ultimate
+  penalties; but they were resorted to only to compel unwilling culprits to
+  accept the alternative.</p>
+
+  <p>The misdemeanours of which the courts took cognisance<a
+  name="NtA_192"></a><a href="#Nt_192"><sup>192</sup></a> were "offences
+  against chastity," "heresy," or "matter sounding thereunto,"
+  "witchcraft," "drunkenness," "scandal," "defamation," "impatient words,"
+  "broken promises," "untruth," "absence from church," "speaking evil of
+  saints," "non-payment of offerings," and other delinquencies incapable of
+  legal definition; matters, all of them, on which it was well, if
+  possible, to keep men from going wrong; but offering wide opportunities
+  for injustice; while all charges, whether well founded or ill, met with
+  ready acceptance in courts where innocence and guilt alike contributed to
+  the revenue.<a name="NtA_193"></a><a href="#Nt_193"><sup>193</sup></a>
+  "Mortuary claims" were another fertile matter for prosecution; and
+  probate duties and legacy duties; and a further lucrative occupation was
+  the punishment of persons who complained against the constitutions of the
+  courts themselves; to complain against the justice of the courts being to
+  complain against the church, and to complain <!-- Page 119 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page119"></a>[pg 119]</span> against the church
+  being heresy. To answer accusations on such subjects as these, men were
+  liable to be summoned, at the will of the officials, to the metropolitan
+  courts of the archbishops, hundreds of miles from their homes.<a
+  name="NtA_194"></a><a href="#Nt_194"><sup>194</sup></a> No expenses were
+  allowed; and if the charges were without foundation, it was rare that
+  costs could be recovered. Innocent or guilty, the accused parties were
+  equally bound to appear.<a name="NtA_195"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_195"><sup>195</sup></a> If they failed, they were suspended for
+  contempt. If after receiving notice of their suspension, they did not
+  appear, they were excommunicated; and no proof of the groundlessness of
+  the original charge availed to relieve them from their sentence, till
+  they had paid for their deliverance.</p>
+
+  <p>Well did the church lawyers understand how to make their work
+  productive. Excommunication seems but a light thing when there are many
+  communions. It was no light thing when it was equivalent to outlawry;
+  when the person excommunicated might be seized and imprisoned at the will
+  of the ordinary; when he was cut off from all holy offices; when no one
+  might speak to him, trade with him, or show him the most trivial
+  courtesy; and when his friends, if they dared to assist him, were subject
+  to the same penalties. In the <i>Register</i> of the Bishop of London<a
+  name="NtA_196"></a><a href="#Nt_196"><sup>196</sup></a> there is more
+  than one instance to be found of suspension and excommunication for the
+  simple crime of offering shelter to an excommunicated neighbour; and thus
+  offence begot offence, guilt spread like a contagion through the
+  influence of natural humanity, and a single refusal of obedience to a
+  frivolous citation might involve entire families in misery and ruin.</p>
+
+  <p>The people might have endured better to submit to so enormous a
+  tyranny, if the conduct of the clergy themselves had given them a title
+  to respect, or if equal justice had been distributed to lay and spiritual
+  offenders. "Benefit of clergy," unhappily, as at this time interpreted,
+  was little else than a privilege to commit sins with impunity. The
+  grossest moral profligacy in a priest was passed over with indifference;
+  and so far from exacting obedience in her ministers to a higher standard
+  than she required of ordinary persons, the church extended her limits
+  under fictitious pretexts as a sanctuary for lettered villany. Every
+  person who could read was claimed by prescriptive usage as a clerk, and
+  shielded under her protecting mantle; nor was <!-- Page 120 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page120"></a>[pg 120]</span> any clerk amenable
+  for the worst crimes to the secular jurisdiction, until he had been first
+  tried and degraded by the ecclesiastical judges. So far was this
+  preposterous exemption carried, that previous to the passing of the first
+  of the 23rd of Henry the Eighth,<a name="NtA_197"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_197"><sup>197</sup></a> those who were within the degrees might
+  commit murder with impunity, the forms which it was necessary to observe
+  in degrading a priest or deacon being so complicated as to amount to
+  absolute protection.<a name="NtA_198"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_198"><sup>198</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Among the clergy, properly so called, however, the prevailing offence
+  was not crime, but licentiousness. A doubt has recently crept in among
+  our historians as to the credibility of the extreme language in which the
+  contemporary writers spoke upon this painful topic. It will scarcely be
+  supposed that the picture has been overdrawn in the act books of the
+  Consistory courts; and as we see it there it is almost too deplorable for
+  belief, as well in its own intrinsic hideousness as in the unconscious
+  connivance of the authorities. Brothels were kept in London for the
+  especial use of priests;<a name="NtA_199"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_199"><sup>199</sup></a> the "confessional" was abused in the
+  most open and abominable manner.<a name="NtA_200"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_200"><sup>200</sup></a> Cases occurred of <!-- Page 121
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page121"></a>[pg 121]</span> the same
+  frightful profanity in the service of the mass, which at Rome startled
+  Luther into Protestantism;<a name="NtA_201"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_201"><sup>201</sup></a> and acts of incest between nuns and
+  monks were too frequently exposed to allow us to regard the detected
+  instances as exceptions.<a name="NtA_202"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_202"><sup>202</sup></a> It may be said that the proceedings
+  upon these charges prove at least that efforts were made to repress them.
+  The bishops must have the benefit of the plea, and the two following
+  instances will show how far it will avail their cause. In the Records of
+  the London Court I find a certain Thomas Wyseman, priest, summoned for
+  fornication and incontinency. He was enjoined for penance, that on the
+  succeeding Sunday, while high mass was singing, he should offer at each
+  of the altars in the Church of St. Bartholomew a candle of wax, value one
+  penny, saying therewith five <i>Paternosters</i>, five <i>Ave Marys</i>,
+  and five <i>Credos</i>. On the following Friday he was to offer a candle
+  of the same price before the crucifix, standing barefooted, and one
+  before the image of cur Lady of Grace. This penance accomplished he
+  appeared again at the court and compounded for absolution, paying six
+  shillings and eightpence.<a name="NtA_203"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_203"><sup>203</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>An exposure too common to attract notice, and a fine of six and
+  eightpence was held sufficient penalty for a mortal sin.</p>
+
+  <p>Even this, however, was a severe sentence compared with the sentence
+  passed upon another priest who confessed to <!-- Page 122 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page122"></a>[pg 122]</span> incest with the
+  prioress of Kilbourn. The offender was condemned to bear a cross in a
+  procession in his parish church, and was excused his remaining guilt for
+  three shillings and fourpence.<a name="NtA_204"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_204"><sup>204</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>I might multiply such instances indefinitely; but there is no occasion
+  for me to stain my pages with them.<a name="NtA_205"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_205"><sup>205</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>An inactive imagination may readily picture to itself the indignation
+  likely to have been felt by a high-minded people, when they were forced
+  to submit their lives, their habits, their most intimate conversations
+  and opinions to a censorship conducted by clergy of such a character;
+  when the offences of these clergy themselves were passed over with such
+  indifferent carelessness. Men began to ask themselves who and what these
+  persons were who retained the privileges of saints,<a
+  name="NtA_206"></a><a href="#Nt_206"><sup>206</sup></a> and were
+  incapable of <!-- Page 123 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page123"></a>[pg 123]</span> the most ordinary duties; and for many
+  years before the burst of the Reformation the coming storm was gathering.
+  Priests were hooted, or "knocked down into the kennel,"<a
+  name="NtA_207"></a><a href="#Nt_207"><sup>207</sup></a> as they walked
+  along the streets&mdash;women refused to receive the holy bread from
+  hands which they thought polluted,<a name="NtA_208"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_208"><sup>208</sup></a> and the appearance of an apparitor of
+  the courts to serve a process or a citation in a private house was a
+  signal for instant explosion. Violent words were the least which these
+  officials had to fear, and they were fortunate if they escaped so
+  lightly. A stranger had died in a house in St. Dunstan's belonging to a
+  certain John Fleming, and an apparitor had been sent "to seal his chamber
+  and his goods" that the church might not lose her dues. John Fleming
+  drove him out, saying loudly unto him, "Thou shalt seale no door here; go
+  thy way, thou stynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and brybours everych one
+  of you."<a name="NtA_209"></a><a href="#Nt_209"><sup>209</sup></a> Thomas
+  Banister, of St. Mary Wolechurch, when a process was served upon him,
+  "did threaten to slay the apparitor." "Thou horson knave," he said to
+  him, "without thou tell me who set <!-- Page 124 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page124"></a>[pg 124]</span> thee awork to
+  summon me to the court, by Goddis woundes, and by this gold, I shall
+  brake thy head."<a name="NtA_210"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_210"><sup>210</sup></a> A "waiter, at the sign of the Cock,"
+  fell in trouble for saying that "the sight of a priest did make him
+  sick," also, "that he would go sixty miles to indict a priest," saying
+  also in the presence of many&mdash;"horsyn priests, they shall be
+  indicted as many as come to my handling."<a name="NtA_211"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_211"><sup>211</sup></a> Often the officers found threats
+  convert themselves into acts. The apparitor of the Bishop of London went
+  with a citation into the shop of a mercer of St. Bride's, Henry Clitheroe
+  by name. "Who does cite me?" asked the mercer. "Marry, that do I,"
+  answered the apparitor, "if thou wilt anything with it;" whereupon, as
+  the apparitor deposeth, the said Henry Clitheroe did hurl at him from off
+  his finger that instrument of his art called the "thymmelle," and he, the
+  apparitor, drawing his sword, "the said Henry did snatch up his virga,
+  Anglice, his yard, and did pursue the apparitor into the public streets,
+  and after multiplying of many blows did break the head of the said
+  apparitor."<a name="NtA_212"></a><a href="#Nt_212"><sup>212</sup></a>
+  These are light matters, but they were straws upon the stream; and such a
+  scene as this which follows reveals the principles on which the courts
+  awarded their judgment. One Richard Hunt was summoned for certain
+  articles implying contempt, and for vilipending his lordship's
+  jurisdiction. Being examined, he confessed to the words following: "That
+  all false matters were bolstered and clokyd in this court of Paul's
+  Cheyne; moreover he called the apparitor, William Middleton, false knave
+  in the full court, and his father's dettes, said he, by means of his
+  mother-in-law and master commissary, were not payd; and this he would
+  abide by, that he had now in this place said no more but truth." Being
+  called on to answer further, he said he would not, and his lordship did
+  therefore excommunicate him.<a name="NtA_213"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_213"><sup>213</sup></a> From so brief an entry we cannot tell
+  on which side the justice lay; but at least we can measure the equity of
+  a tribunal which punished complaints against itself with excommunication,
+  and dismissed the confessed incest of a priest with a fine of a few
+  shillings.</p>
+
+  <p>Such then were the English consistory courts. I have selected but a
+  few instances from the proceedings of a single one of them. If we are to
+  understand the weight with which the system pressed upon the people, we
+  must multiply the proceedings at St. Paul's by the number of the English
+  dioceses; the number of dioceses by the number of archdeaconries; we <!--
+  Page 125 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page125"></a>[pg 125]</span>
+  must remember that in proportion to the distance from London the abuse
+  must have increased indefinitely from the absence of even partial
+  surveillance; we must remember that appeals were permitted only from one
+  ecclesiastical court to another; from the archdeacon's court to that of
+  the bishop of the diocese, from that of the bishop to the Court of
+  Arches; that any language of impatience or resistance furnished suspicion
+  of heresy, and that the only security therefore was submission. We can
+  then imagine what England must have been with an archdeacon's commissary
+  sitting constantly in every town; exercising an undefined jurisdiction
+  over general morality; and every court swarming with petty lawyers who
+  lived upon the fees which they could extract. Such a system for the
+  administration of justice was perhaps never tolerated before in any
+  country.</p>
+
+  <p>But the time of reckoning at length was arrived; slowly the hand had
+  crawled along the dial plate; slowly as if the event would never come:
+  and wrong was heaped on wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if
+  no ear had heard its voice; till the measure of the circle was at length
+  fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great
+  hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of
+  iniquity was shivered into ruins. Wolsey had dreamed that it might still
+  stand, self-reformed as he hoped to see it; but in his dread lest any
+  hands but those of friends should touch the work, he had "prolonged its
+  sickly days," waiting for the convenient season which was not to be; he
+  had put off the meeting of parliament, knowing that if parliament were
+  once assembled, he would be unable to resist the pressure which would be
+  brought to bear upon him; and in the impatient minds of the people he had
+  identified himself with the evils which he alone for the few last years
+  had hindered from falling. At length he had fallen himself, and his
+  disgrace was celebrated in London with enthusiastic rejoicing as the
+  inauguration of the new era. On the eighteenth of October, 1529, Wolsey
+  delivered up the seals. He was ordered to retire to Esher; and, "at the
+  taking of his barge," Cavendish saw no less than a thousand boats full of
+  men and women of the city of London, "waffeting up and down in Thames,"
+  to see him sent, as they expected, to the Tower.<a name="NtA_214"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_214"><sup>214</sup></a> A fortnight later the same crowd was
+  perhaps again assembled on a wiser occasion, and with truer reason for
+  exultation, to see the king coming up in his barge from Greenwich to open
+  parliament.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 126 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page126"></a>[pg 126]</span>
+
+  <p>"According to the summons," says Hall, "the King of England began his
+  high court of parliament the third day of November, on which day he came
+  by water to his palace of Bridewell, and there he and his nobles put on
+  their robes of Parliament, and so came to the Black Friars Church, where
+  a mass of the Holy Ghost was solemnly sung by the king's chaplain; and
+  after the mass, the king, with all his Lords and Commons which were
+  summoned to appear on that day, came into the Parliament. The king sate
+  on his throne or seat royal, and Sir Thomas More, his chancellor,
+  standing on the right hand of the king, made an eloquent oration, setting
+  forth the causes why at that time the king so had summoned them."<a
+  name="NtA_215"></a><a href="#Nt_215"><sup>215</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"Like as a good shepherd," More said, "which not only keepeth and
+  attendeth well his sheep, but also foreseeth and provideth for all things
+  which either may be hurtful or noysome to his flock; so the king, which
+  is the shepherd, ruler, and governor of his realm, vigilantly foreseeing
+  things to come, considers how that divers laws, before this time made,
+  are now, by long continuance of time and mutation of things, become very
+  insufficient and imperfect; and also, by the frail condition of man,
+  divers new enormities are sprung amongst the people, for the which no law
+  is yet made to reform the same. For this cause the king at this time has
+  summoned his high court of parliament; and I liken the king to a shepherd
+  or herdsman, because if a prince be compared to his riches, he is but a
+  rich man; if a prince be compared to his honour, he is but an honourable
+  man; but compare him to the multitude of his people, and the number of
+  his flock, then he is a ruler, a governor of might and puissance; so that
+  his people maketh him a prince, as of the multitude of sheep cometh the
+  name of a shepherd.</p>
+
+  <p>"And as you see that amongst a great flock of sheep some be rotten and
+  faulty, which the good shepherd sendeth from the good sheep; so the great
+  wether which is of late fallen, as you all know, so craftily, so
+  scabedly, yea, so untruly juggled with the king, that all men must needs
+  guess that he thought in himself, either the king had no wit to perceive
+  his crafty doings, or else that he would not see nor know them.</p>
+
+  <p>"But he was deceived, for his Grace's sight was so quick and
+  penetrable that he saw him; yea, and saw through him, both within and
+  without; and according to his desert he hath had a gentle correction,
+  which small punishment the king will not to be an example to other
+  offenders; but clearly declareth <!-- Page 127 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page127"></a>[pg 127]</span> that whosoever
+  hereafter shall make like attempt, or shall commit like offence, shall
+  not escape with like punishment.</p>
+
+  <p>"And because you of the Commons House be a gross multitude, and cannot
+  all speak at one time, the king's pleasure is, that you resort to the
+  Nether House, and then amongst yourselves, according to the old and
+  antient custom, choose an able person to be your common mouth and
+  speaker."<a name="NtA_216"></a><a href="#Nt_216"><sup>216</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The invective against "the great wether" was not perhaps the portion
+  of the speech to which the audience listened with least interest. In the
+  minds of contemporaries, principles are identified with persons, who
+  form, as it were, the focus on which the passions concentrate. At present
+  we may consent to forget Wolsey, and fix our attention on the more
+  permanently essential matter&mdash;the reform of the laws. The world was
+  changing; how swiftly, how completely, no living person knew;&mdash;but a
+  confusion no longer tolerable was a patent fact to all men; and with a
+  wise instinct it was resolved that the grievances of the nation, which
+  had accumulated through centuries, should be submitted to a complete
+  ventilation, without reserve, check, or secrecy.</p>
+
+  <p>For this purpose it was essential that the Houses should not be
+  interfered with, that they should be allowed full liberty to express
+  their wishes and to act upon them. Accordingly, the practice then usual
+  with ministers, of undertaking the direction of the proceedings, was
+  clearly on this occasion foregone. In the House of Commons then, as much
+  as now, there was in theory unrestricted liberty of discussion, and free
+  right for any member to originate whatever motion he pleased. "The
+  discussions in the English Parliament," wrote Henry himself to the pope,
+  "are free and unrestricted; the crown has no power to limit their debates
+  or to controul the votes of the members. They determine everything for
+  themselves, as the interests of the commonwealth require."<a
+  name="NtA_217"></a><a href="#Nt_217"><sup>217</sup></a> But so long as
+  confidence existed between the crown and the people, these rights were in
+  great measure surrendered. The ministers prepared the business which was
+  to be transacted; and the temper of the Houses was usually so well
+  understood, that, except when there was a demand for money, it was rare
+  that a measure was proposed the acceptance of which was doubtful, or the
+  nature of which would provoke debate. So little jealousy, indeed, was in
+  quiet times entertained of the power of the crown, and so little was a
+  residence in London to the taste of the burgesses and the <!-- Page 128
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page128"></a>[pg 128]</span> country
+  gentlemen, that not only were their expenses defrayed by a considerable
+  salary, but it was found necessary to forbid them absenting themselves
+  from their duties by a positive enactment.<a name="NtA_218"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_218"><sup>218</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>In the composition of the House of Commons, however, which had now
+  assembled, no symptoms appeared of such indifference. The election had
+  taken place in the midst of great and general excitement; and the members
+  chosen, if we may judge from their acts and their petitions, were men of
+  that broad resolved temper, who only in times of popular effervescence
+  are called forward into prominence. It would have probably been unsafe
+  for the crown to attempt dictation or repression at such a time, if it
+  had desired to do so. Under the actual circumstances, its interest was to
+  encourage the fullest expression of public feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>The proceedings were commenced with a formal "act of accusation"
+  against the clergy, which was submitted to the king in the name of the
+  Commons of England, and contained a summary of the wrongs of which the
+  people complained. This remarkable document must have been drawn up
+  before the opening of parliament, and must have been presented in the
+  first week of the session,&mdash;probably on the first day on which the
+  House met to transact business.<a name="NtA_219"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_219"><sup>219</sup></a> There is appearance of haste in the
+  composition, little order being observed in the catalogue of grievances;
+  but inasmuch as it contains the germ of all the acts which were framed in
+  the following years for the reform of the church, and is in fact the most
+  complete exhibition which we possess of the working of the church system
+  at the time when it ceased to be any more tolerable, I have thought it
+  well to insert it uncurtailed. Although the fact of the presentation of
+  this petition has been well known, it has not been accurately described
+  by any of our historians, none of them appearing to have seen more than
+  incorrect and imperfect epitomes of it.<a name="NtA_220"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_220"><sup>220</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class="center">"TO THE KING OUR SOVEREIGN LORD</p>
+
+  <p>"In most humble wise show unto your Highness and your most prudent
+  wisdom your faithful, loving, and most <!-- Page 129 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page129"></a>[pg 129]</span> obedient servants
+  the Commons in this your present parliament assembled; that of late, as
+  well through new fantastical and erroneous opinions grown by occasion of
+  frantic seditious books compiled, imprinted, published, and made in the
+  English tongue, contrary and against the very true Catholic and Christian
+  faith; as also by the extreme and uncharitable behaviour and dealing of
+  divers ordinaries, their commissaries and sumners, which have heretofore
+  had, and yet have the examination in and upon the said errours and
+  heretical opinions; much discord, variance, and debate hath risen, and
+  more and more daily is like to increase and ensue amongst the universal
+  sort of your said subjects, as well spiritual as temporal, each against
+  the other&mdash;in most uncharitable manner, to the great inquietation,
+  vexation, and breach of your peace within this your most Catholic
+  Realm:</p>
+
+  <p>"The special particular griefs whereof, which most principally concern
+  your Commons and lay subjects, and which are, as they undoubtedly
+  suppose, the very chief fountains, occasions, and causes that daily
+  breedeth and nourisheth the said seditious factions, deadly hatred, and
+  most uncharitable part taking, of either part of said subjects spiritual
+  and temporal against the other, followingly do ensue.&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I. First the prelates and spiritual ordinaries of this your most
+  excellent Realm of England, and the clergy of the same, have in their
+  convocations heretofore made or caused to be made, and also daily do make
+  many and divers fashions of laws, constitutions, and ordinances; without
+  your knowledge or most Royal assent, and without the assent and consent
+  of any of your lay subjects; unto the which laws your said lay subjects
+  have not only heretofore been and daily be constrained to obey, in their
+  bodies, goods, and possessions; but have also been compelled to incur
+  daily into the censures of the same, and been continually put to
+  importable charges and expenses, against all equity, right, and good
+  conscience. And yet your said humble subjects ne their predecessors could
+  ever be privy to the said laws; ne any of the said laws have been
+  declared unto them in the English tongue, or otherwise published, by
+  knowledge whereof they might have eschewed the penalties, dangers, or
+  censures of the same; which laws so made your said most humble and
+  obedient servants, under the supportation of your Majesty, suppose to be
+  not only to the diminution and derogation of your imperial jurisdiction
+  and prerogative royal, but also to the great prejudice, inquietation, and
+  damage of your said subjects.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 130 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page130"></a>[pg 130]</span>
+
+  <p>"II. Also now of late there hath been devised by the Most Reverend
+  Father in God, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, that in the courts
+  which he calleth his Courts of the Arches and Audience, shall only be ten
+  proctors at his deputation, which be sworn to preserve and promote the
+  only jurisdiction of his said courts; by reason whereof, if any of your
+  lay subjects should have any lawful cause against the judges of the said
+  courts, or any doctors or proctors of the same, or any of their friends
+  and adherents, they can ne may in nowise have indifferent counsel: and
+  also all the causes depending in any of the said courts may by the
+  confederacy of the said few proctors be in such wise tracted and delayed,
+  as your subjects suing in the same shall be put to importable charges,
+  costs, and expense. And further, in case that any matter there being
+  preferred should touch your crown, your regal jurisdiction, and
+  prerogative Royal, yet the same shall not be disclosed by any of the said
+  proctors for fear of the loss of their offices. Your most obedient
+  subjects do therefore, under protection of your Majesty, suppose that
+  your Highness should have the nomination of some convenient number of
+  proctors to be always attendant upon the said Courts of Arches and
+  Audience, there to be sworn to the preferment of your jurisdiction and
+  prerogative, and to the expedition of the causes of your lay subjects
+  repairing and suing to the same.</p>
+
+  <p>"III. And also many of your said most humble and obedient subjects, and
+  <i>specially those that be of the poorest sort</i>, within this your
+  Realm, be daily convented and called before the said spiritual
+  ordinaries, their commissaries and substitutes, <i>ex officio</i>;
+  sometimes, at the pleasure of the said ordinaries, for malice without any
+  cause; and sometimes at the only promotion and accusement of their
+  summoners and apparitors, being light and undiscreet persons; without any
+  lawful cause of accusation, or credible fame proved against them, and
+  without any presentment in the visitation: and your said poor subjects be
+  thus inquieted, disturbed, vexed, troubled, and put to excessive and
+  importable charges for them to bear&mdash;and many times be suspended and
+  excommunicate for small and light causes upon the only certificate of the
+  proctors of the adversaries, made under a feigned seal which every
+  proctor hath in his keeping; whereas the party suspended or excommunicate
+  many times never had any warning; and yet when he shall be absolved, if
+  it be out of court, he shall be compelled to pay <!-- Page 131 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page131"></a>[pg 131]</span> to his own proctor
+  twenty<a name="NtA_221"></a><a href="#Nt_221"><sup>221</sup></a>
+  <i>pence</i>; to the proctor which is against him other twenty pence, and
+  twenty pence to the scribe, besides a privy reward that the judge shall
+  have, to the great impoverishing of your said poor lay subjects.</p>
+
+  <p>"IV. Also your said most humble and obedient servants find themselves
+  grieved with the great and excessive fees taken in the said spiritual
+  courts, and especially in the said Courts of the Arches and Audience;
+  where they take for every citation two shillings and sixpence; for every
+  inhibition six shillings and eightpence; for every proxy sixteen pence;
+  for every certificate sixteen pence; for every libel three shillings and
+  fourpence; for every answer for every libel three shillings and
+  fourpence; for every act, if it be but two words according to the
+  register, fourpence; for every personal citation or decree three
+  shillings and fourpence; for every sentence or judgment, to the judge
+  twenty-six shillings and eightpence; for every testament upon such
+  sentence or judgment twenty-six shillings and eightpence; for every
+  significavit twelve shillings; for every commission to examine witnesses
+  twelve shillings, which charges be thought importable to be borne by your
+  said subjects, and very necessary to be reformed.</p>
+
+  <p>"V. And also the said prelates and ordinaries daily do permit and
+  suffer the parsons, vicars, curates, parish priests, and other spiritual
+  persons having cure of souls within this your Realm, to exact and take of
+  your humble servants divers sums of money for the sacraments and
+  sacramentals of Holy Church, sometimes denying the same without they be
+  first paid<a name="NtA_222"></a><a href="#Nt_222"><sup>222</sup></a> the
+  said sums of money, which sacraments and sacramentals your said most
+  humble and obedient subjects, under protection of your Highness, do
+  suppose and think ought to be in most reverend, charitable, and godly
+  wise freely ministered unto them at all times requisite, without denial,
+  or exaction of any manner sums of money to be demanded or asked for the
+  same.</p>
+
+  <p>"VI. And also in the spiritual courts of the said prelates and
+  ordinaries there be limited and appointed so many judges, scribes,
+  apparitors, summoners, appraysers, and other ministers for the
+  approbation of Testaments, which covet so much their <!-- Page 132
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page132"></a>[pg 132]</span> own
+  private lucres, and the satisfaction and appetites of the said prelates
+  and ordinaries, that when any of your said loving subjects do repair to
+  any of the said courts for the probate of any Testaments, they do in such
+  wise make so long delays, or excessively do take of them so large fees
+  and rewards for the same as is importable for them to bear, directly
+  against all justice, law, equity, and good conscience. Therefore your
+  most humble and obedient subjects do, under your gracious correction and
+  supportation, suppose it were very necessary that the said ordinaries in
+  their deputation of judges should be bound to appoint and assign such
+  discreet, gracious, and honest persons, having sufficient learning, wit,
+  discretion, and understanding; and also being endowed with such spiritual
+  promotion, stipend, and salary; as they being judges in their said courts
+  might and may minister to every person repairing to the same,
+  justice&mdash;without taking any manner of fee or reward for any manner
+  of sentence or judgment to be given before them.</p>
+
+  <p>"VII. And also divers spiritual persons being presented as well by your
+  Highness as others within this your Realm to divers benefices or other
+  spiritual promotions, the said ordinaries and their ministers do not only
+  take of them for their letters of institution and induction many large
+  sums of money and rewards; but also do pact and covenant with the same,
+  taking sure bonds for their indemnity to answer to the said ordinaries
+  for the firstfruits of their said benefices after their
+  institution&mdash;so as they, being once presented or promoted, as
+  aforesaid, are by the said ordinaries very uncharitably handled, to their
+  no little hindrance and impoverishment; which your said subjects suppose
+  not only to be against all laws, right, and good conscience, but also to
+  be simony, and contrary to the laws of God.</p>
+
+  <p>"VIII. And also <i>the said spiritual ordinaries do daily confer and
+  give sundry benefices unto certain young folks, calling them their
+  nephews or kinsfolk</i>, being in their minority and within age, not apt
+  ne able to serve the cure of any such benefice: whereby the said
+  ordinaries do keep and detain the fruits and profits of the same
+  benefices in their own hands, and thereby accumulate to themselves right
+  great and large sums of money and yearly profits, to the most pernicious
+  example of your said lay subjects&mdash;and so the cures and promotions
+  given unto such infants be only employed to the enriching of the said
+  ordinaries; and the poor silly souls of your people, which should be
+  taught in the parishes given as aforesaid, for lack of good curates [be
+  left] to perish without doctrine or any good teaching.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 133 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page133"></a>[pg 133]</span>
+
+  <p>"IX. Also, a great number of holydays now at this present time, with
+  very small devotion, be solemnised and kept throughout this your Realm,
+  upon the which many great, abominable, and execrable vices, idle and
+  wanton sports, be used and exercised, which holydays, if it may stand
+  with your Grace's pleasure, and specially such as fall in the harvest,
+  might, by your Majesty, with the advice of your most honourable council,
+  prelates, and ordinaries, be made fewer in number; and those that shall
+  be hereafter ordained to stand and continue, might and may be the more
+  devoutly, religiously, and reverendly observed, to the laud of Almighty
+  God, and to the increase of your high honour and favour.</p>
+
+  <p>"X. And furthermore the said spiritual ordinaries, their commissaries
+  and substitutes, sometimes for their own pleasure, sometimes by the
+  sinister procurement of other spiritual persons, use to make out process
+  against divers of your said subjects, and thereby compel them to appear
+  before themselves, to answer at a certain day and place to such articles
+  as by them shall be, <i>ex officio</i>, then proposed; and that secretly
+  and not in open places;<a name="NtA_223"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_223"><sup>223</sup></a> and forthwith upon their appearance,
+  without any declaration made or showed, commit and send them to ward,
+  sometimes for [half] a year, sometimes for a whole year or more, before
+  they may in anywise know either the cause of their imprisonment or the
+  name of their accuser;<a name="NtA_224"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_224"><sup>224</sup></a> and finally after their great costs and
+  charges therein, when all is examined and nothing can be proved against
+  them, but they clearly innocent for any fault or crime that can be laid
+  unto them, they be again set at large without any recompence or amends in
+  that behalf to be towards them adjudged.</p>
+
+  <p>"XI. And also if percase upon the said process and appearance any party
+  be upon the said matter, cause, or examination, brought forth and named,
+  either as party or witness, and then upon the proof and trial thereof be
+  not able to prove and verify the said accusation and testimony against
+  the party accused, then the person so accused is for the more part
+  without any remedy for his charges and wrongful vexation to be towards
+  him adjudged and recovered.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 134 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page134"></a>[pg 134]</span>
+
+  <p>"XII. Also upon the examination of the said accusation, if heresy be
+  ordinarily laid unto the charge of the parties so accused, then the said
+  ordinaries or their ministers use to put to them such subtle
+  interrogatories concerning the high mysteries of our faith, as are able
+  quickly to trap a simple unlearned, or yet a well-witted layman without
+  learning, and bring them by such sinister introductions soon to their own
+  confusion. And further, if there chance any heresy to be by such subtle
+  policy, by any person confessed in words, and yet never committed neither
+  in thought nor deed, then put they, without further favour, the said
+  person either to make his purgation, and so thereby to lose his honesty
+  and credence for ever; or else as some simple silly soul [may do], the
+  said person may stand precisely to the testimony of his own well-known
+  conscience, rather than confess his innocent truth in that behalf [to be
+  other than he knows it to be], and so be utterly destroyed. And if it
+  fortune the said party so accused to deny the said accusation, and to put
+  his adversaries to prove the same as being untrue, forged and imagined
+  against him, then for the most part such witnesses as are brought forth
+  for the same, be they but two in number, never so sore diffamed, of
+  little truth or credence, they shall be allowed and enabled, only by
+  discretion of the said ordinaries, their commissaries or substitutes; and
+  thereupon sufficient cause be found to proceed to judgment, to deliver
+  the party so accused either to secular hands, after abjuration,<a
+  name="NtA_225"></a><a href="#Nt_225"><sup>225</sup></a> without remedy;
+  or afore if he submit himself, as best happeneth, he shall have to make
+  his purgation and bear a faggot, to his extreme shame and undoing.</p>
+
+  <p>"In consideration of all these things, most gracious Sovereign Lord,
+  and forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a few years past
+  hath been outrageous violence on the one part and much default and lack
+  of patient sufferance, charity, and good will on the other part; and
+  consequently a marvellous disorder [hath ensued] of the godly quiet,
+  peace, and tranquillity in which this your Realm heretofore, ever
+  hitherto, has been through your politic wisdom, most honourable fame, and
+  catholic faith inviolably preserved; it may therefore, most benign
+  Sovereign Lord, like your excellent goodness for the tender and
+  universally indifferent zeal, benign love and favour which your Highness
+  beareth towards both the said parties, that the said articles (if they
+  shall be by your most clear and perfect judgment, <!-- Page 135 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page135"></a>[pg 135]</span> thought any
+  instrument of the said disorders and factions), being deeply and
+  weightily, after your accustomed ways and manner, searched and
+  considered; graciously to provide (all violence on both sides utterly and
+  clearly set apart) some such necessary and behoveful remedies as may
+  effectually reconcile and bring in perpetual unity, your said subjects,
+  spiritual and temporal; and for the establishment thereof, to make and
+  ordain on both sides such strait laws against transgressors and offenders
+  as shall be too heavy, dangerous, and weighty for them, or any of them,
+  to bear, suffer, and sustain.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whereunto your said Commons most humbly and entirely beseech your
+  Grace, as the only Head, Sovereign Lord and Protector of both the said
+  parties, in whom and by whom the only and sole redress, reformation, and
+  remedy herein absolutely resteth [of your goodness to consent]. By
+  occasion whereof all your Commons in their conscience surely account
+  that, beside the marvellous fervent love that your Highness shall thereby
+  engender in their hearts towards your Grace, ye shall do the most
+  princely feat, and show the most honourable and charitable precedent and
+  mirrour that ever did sovereign lord upon his subjects; and therewithal
+  merit and deserve of our merciful God eternal bliss&mdash;whose goodness
+  grant your Grace in goodly, princely, and honourable estate long to
+  reign, prosper, and continue as the Sovereign Lord over all your said
+  most humble and obedient servants."<a name="NtA_226"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_226"><sup>226</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>But little comment need be added in explanation of this petition,
+  which, though drawn with evident haste, is no less remarkable for temper
+  and good feeling, than for the masterly clearness with which the evils
+  complained of are laid bare. Historians will be careful for the future
+  how they swell the charges against Wolsey with quoting the lamentations
+  of Archbishop Warham, when his Court of Arches was for a while superseded
+  by the Legate's Court, and causes lingering before his commissaries were
+  summarily dispatched at a higher tribunal.<a name="NtA_227"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_227"><sup>227</sup></a> The archbishop professed, indeed, that
+  he derived no personal advantage from his courts,<a name="NtA_228"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_228"><sup>228</sup></a> and as we have only the popular
+  impression to the contrary to set against his word, we must believe him;
+  yet it was of small moment to the laity who were pillaged, whether the
+  spoils taken from them filled the coffers of the master, or those of his
+  followers and friends.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 136 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page136"></a>[pg 136]</span>
+
+  <p>When we consider, also, the significant allusion<a
+  name="NtA_229"></a><a href="#Nt_229"><sup>229</sup></a> to the young
+  folks whom the bishops called their nephews, we cease to wonder at their
+  lenient dealing with the poor priests who had sunk under the temptations
+  of frail humanity; and still less can we wonder at the rough handling
+  which was soon found necessary to bring back these high dignitaries to a
+  better mind.</p>
+
+  <p>The House of Commons, in casting their grievances into the form of a
+  petition, showed that they had no desire to thrust forward of themselves
+  violent measures of reform; they sought rather to explain firmly and
+  decisively what the country required. The king, selecting out of the many
+  points noticed those which seemed most immediately pressing, referred
+  them back to the parliament, with a direction to draw up such enactments
+  as in their own judgment would furnish effective relief. In the meantime
+  he submitted the petition itself to the consideration of the bishops,
+  requiring their immediate answer to the charges against them, and
+  accompanied this request with a further important requisition. The
+  legislative authority of convocation lay at the root of the evils which
+  were most complained of. The bishops and clergy held themselves
+  independent of either crown or parliament, passing canons by their own
+  irresponsible and unchecked will, irrespective of the laws of the land,
+  and sometimes in direct violation of them; and to these canons the laity
+  were amenable without being made acquainted with their provisions,
+  learning them only in the infliction of penalties for their unintended
+  breach. The king required that thenceforward the convocation should
+  consent to place itself in the position of parliament, and that his own
+  consent should be required and received before any law passed by
+  convocation should have the force of statute.<a name="NtA_230"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_230"><sup>230</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Little notion, indeed, could the bishops have possessed of the
+  position in which they were standing. It seemed as if they literally
+  believed that the promise of perpetuity which Christ had made to his
+  church was a charm which would hold them free in the quiet course of
+  their injustice; or else, under the blinding influence of custom, they
+  did not really know that any injustice adhered to them. They could see in
+  themselves only the ideal virtues of their saintly office, and not the
+  vices <!-- Page 137 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page137"></a>[pg
+  137]</span> of their fragile humanity; they believed that they were still
+  holy, still spotless, still immaculate, and therefore that no danger
+  might come near them. It cannot have been but that, before the minds of
+  such men as Warham and Fisher, some visions of a future must at times
+  have floated, which hung so plainly before the eyes of Wolsey and of Sir
+  Thomas More.<a name="NtA_231"></a><a href="#Nt_231"><sup>231</sup></a>
+  They could not have been wholly deaf to the storm in Germany; and they
+  must have heard something of the growls of smothered anger which for
+  years had been audible at home, to all who had ears to hear.<a
+  name="NtA_232"></a><a href="#Nt_232"><sup>232</sup></a> Yet if any such
+  thoughts at times did cross their imagination, they were thrust aside as
+  an uneasy dream, to be shaken off like a nightmare, or with the coward's
+  consolation, "It will last my time." If the bishops ever felt an uneasy
+  moment, there is no trace of uneasiness in the answer which they sent in
+  to the king, and which now, when we read it with the light which is
+  thrown back out of the succeeding years, seems like the composition of
+  mere lunacy. Perhaps they had confidence in the support of Henry. In
+  their courts they were in the habit of identifying an attack upon
+  themselves with an attack upon the doctrines of the Church; and reading
+  the king's feelings in their own, they may have considered themselves
+  safe under the protection of a sovereign who had broken a lance with
+  Luther, and had called himself the Pope's champion. Perhaps they thought
+  that they had bound him to themselves by a declaration which they had all
+  signed in the preceding summer in favour of the divorce.<a
+  name="NtA_233"></a><a href="#Nt_233"><sup>233</sup></a> Perhaps they were
+  but steeped in the dulness of official lethargy. The defence is long,
+  wearying the patience to read it; wearying the imagination to invent
+  excuses for the falsehoods which it contains. Yet it is well to see all
+  men in the light in which they see themselves; and justice requires that
+  we allow the bishops the benefit of their own reply. It was couched in
+  the following words:&mdash;<a name="NtA_234"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_234"><sup>234</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"After our most humble wise, with our most bounden duty of honour and
+  reverence to your excellent Majesty, endued from God with incomparable
+  wisdom and goodness. Please it the same to understand that we, your
+  orators and daily bounden bedemen, have read and perused a certain
+  supplication which <!-- Page 138 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page138"></a>[pg 138]</span> the Commons of your Grace's honourable
+  parliament now assembled have offered unto your Highness, and by your
+  Grace's commandment delivered unto us, that we should make answer
+  thereunto. We have, as the time hath served, made this answer following,
+  beseeching your Grace's indifferent benignity graciously to hear the
+  same.</p>
+
+  <p>"And first for that discord, variance, and debate which, in the
+  preface of the said supplication they do allege to have risen among your
+  Grace's subjects, spiritual and temporal, occasioned, as they say, by the
+  uncharitable behaviour and demeanour of divers ordinaries: to this we,
+  the ordinaries, answer, assuring your Majesty that in our hearts there is
+  no such discord or variance ort our part against our brethren in God and
+  ghostly children your subjects, as is induced in this preface; but our
+  daily prayer is and shall be that all peace and concord may increase
+  among your Grace's true subjects our said children, whom God be our
+  witness we love, have loved, and shall love ever with hearty affection;
+  never intending any hurt ne harm towards any of them in soul or body; ne
+  have we ever enterprised anything against them of trouble, vexation, or
+  displeasure; but only have, with all charity, exercised the spiritual
+  jurisdiction of the Church, as we are bound of duty, upon certain
+  evil-disposed persons infected with the pestilent poison of heresy. And
+  to have peace with such had been against the Gospel of our Saviour
+  Christ, wherein he saith, <i>Non veni mittere pacem sed gladium</i>.
+  Wherefore, forasmuch as we know well that there be as well-disposed and
+  well-conscienced men of your Grace's Commons in no small number
+  assembled, as ever we knew at any time in parliament; and with that
+  consider how on our part there is given no such occasion why the whole
+  number of the spirituality and clergy should be thus noted unto your
+  Highness; we humbling our hearts to God and remitting the judgment of
+  this our inquietation to Him, and trusting, as his Scripture teacheth,
+  that if we love him above all, omnia cooperabuntur in bonum, shall
+  endeavour to declare to your Highness the innocency of us, your poor
+  orators.</p>
+
+  <p>"And where, after the general preface of the same supplication, your
+  Grace's Commons descend to special particular griefs, and first to those
+  divers fashions of laws concerning temporal things, whereon, as they say,
+  the clergy in their convocation have made and daily do make divers laws,
+  to their great trouble and inquietation, which said laws be sometimes
+  repugnant to the statutes of your Realm, with many other complaints
+  thereupon:<a name="NtA_235"></a><a href="#Nt_235"><sup>235</sup></a> <!--
+  Page 139 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page139"></a>[pg 139]</span>
+  To this we say, that forasmuch as we repute and take our authority of
+  making of laws to be grounded upon the Scriptures of God and the
+  determination of Holy Church, which must be the rule and square to try
+  the justice and righteousness of all laws, as well spiritual as temporal,
+  we verily trust that in such laws as have been made by us, or by our
+  predecessors, the same being sincerely interpreted, and after the meaning
+  of the makers, there shall be found nothing contained in them but such as
+  may be well justified by the said rule and square. And if it shall
+  otherwise appear, as it is our duty whereunto we shall always most
+  diligently apply ourselves to reform our ordinances to God's commission,
+  and to conform our statutes to the determination of Scripture and Holy
+  Church; <i>so we hope in God, and shall daily pray for the same, that
+  your Highness will, if there appear cause why, with the assent of your
+  people, temper your Grace's laws accordingly; whereby shall ensue a most
+  sure and hearty conjunction and agreement; God being lapis
+  angularis</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>"And as concerning the requiring of your Highness's royal assent to
+  the authorising of such laws as have been made by our predecessors, or
+  shall be made by us, in such points and articles, as we have authority to
+  rule and order; we knowing your Highness's wisdom, virtue, and learning,
+  nothing doubt but that the same perceiveth how the granting thereunto
+  dependeth not upon our will and liberty, <i>and that we may not submit
+  the execution of our charges and duty certainly prescribed to us by God
+  to your Highness's assent</i>; although, indeed, the same is most worthy
+  for your most princely and excellent virtues, not only to give your royal
+  assent, but also to devise and command what we should for good order or
+  manners by statutes and laws provide in the church. Nevertheless, we
+  considering we may not so nor in such sort restrain the doing of our
+  office in the feeding and ruling of Christ's people, we most humbly
+  desire your Grace (as the same hath done heretofore) to show your Grace's
+  mind and opinion unto us, which we shall most gladly hear and follow if
+  it shall please God to inspire us so to do; and with all humility we
+  therefore beseech your Grace, following the steps of your most noble
+  progenitors, to maintain and defend such laws and ordinances as we,
+  according to our calling and by the authority of God, shall for his
+  honour make to the edification of virtue and the maintaining of Christ's
+  faith, whereof your Highness is defender in name, and hath been hitherto
+  indeed a special protector.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 140 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page140"></a>[pg 140]</span>
+
+  <p>"Furthermore, where there be found in the said supplication, with
+  mention of your Grace's person, other griefs that some of the said laws
+  extend to the goods and possessions of your said lay subjects, declaring
+  the transgressors not only to fall under the terrible censure of
+  excommunication, but also under the detestable crime of heresy:</p>
+
+  <p>"To this we answer that we remember no such, and yet if there be any
+  such, it is but according to the common law of the Church, and also to
+  your Grace's law, which determine and decree that every person spiritual
+  or temporal condemned of heresy shall forfeit his moveables or
+  immoveables to your Highness, or to the lord spiritual or temporal that
+  by law hath right to them.<a name="NtA_236"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_236"><sup>236</sup></a> Other statutes we remember none that
+  toucheth lands or goods. If there be, it were good that they were brought
+  forth to be weighed and pondered accordingly.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item as touching the second principal article of the said
+  supplication, where they say that divers and many of your Grace's
+  obedient subjects, and especially they that be of the poorest sort, be
+  daily called before us or before our substitutes ex officio; sometimes at
+  the pleasure of us, the ordinaries, without any probable cause, and
+  sometimes at the only promotion of our summoner, without any credible
+  fame first proved against them, and without presentment in the visitation
+  or lawful accusation:</p>
+
+  <p>"On this we desire your high wisdom and learning to consider that
+  albeit in the ordering of Christ's people, your Grace's subjects, God of
+  His spiritual goodness assisteth his church, and inspireth by the Holy
+  Ghost as we verily trust such rules and laws as tend to the wealth of his
+  elect folk; yet upon considerations to man unknown, his infinite wisdom
+  leaveth or permitteth men to walk in their infirmity and frailty; so that
+  we cannot ne will arrogantly presume of ourselves, as though being in
+  name spiritual men, we were also in all our acts and doings clean and
+  void from all temporal affections and carnality of this world, or that
+  the laws of the church made for spiritual and ghostly purpose be not
+  sometime applied to worldly intent. This we ought and do lament, as
+  becometh us, very sore. Nevertheless, as the evil deeds of men be the
+  mere defaults of those particular men, and not of the whole order of the
+  clergy, nor of the law wholesomely by them made; our request and petition
+  shall be with all humility and reverence; that laws well made be not
+  therefore called evil because by all men and at all times they be not
+  well <!-- Page 141 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page141"></a>[pg
+  141]</span> executed; and that in such defaults as shall appear such
+  distribution may be used <i>ut unusquisque onus suum portet</i>, and
+  remedy be found to reform the offenders; unto the which your Highness
+  shall perceive as great towardness in your said orators as can be
+  required upon declaration of particulars. And other answer than this
+  cannot be made in the name of your whole clergy, for though <i>in multis
+  offendimus omnes</i>, as St. James saith, yet not 'in omnibus offendimus
+  omnes;' and the whole number can neither justify ne condemn particular
+  acts to them unknown but thus. He that calleth a man ex officio for
+  correction of sin, doeth well. He that calleth men for pleasure or
+  vexation, doeth evil. Summoners should be honest men. If they offend in
+  their office, they should be punished. To prove first [their faults]
+  before men be called, is not necessary. He that is called according to
+  the laws ex officio or otherwise, cannot complain. He that is otherwise
+  ordered should have by reason convenient recompence and so forth; that is
+  well to be allowed, and misdemeanour when it appeareth to be
+  reproved.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say in the same article that upon their appearance ex
+  officio at the only pleasure of the ordinaries, they be committed to
+  prison without bail or mainprize; and there they lie some half a year or
+  more before they come to their deliverance; to this we answer,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"That we use no prison before conviction but for sure custody, and
+  only of such as be suspected of heresy, in which crime, thanked be God,
+  there hath fallen no such notable person in our time, or of such
+  qualities as hath given occasion of any sinister suspicion to be
+  conceived of malice or hatred to his person other than the heinousness of
+  their crime deserveth. <i>Truth it is that certain apostates, friars,
+  monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds, and lewd idle fellows
+  of corrupt intent, have embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions
+  lately sprung in Germany</i>; and by them some have been seduced in
+  simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if judgment has been exercised
+  according to the laws of the church, and conformably to the laws of this
+  realm, we be without blame. If we have been too remiss and slack, we
+  shall gladly do our duty from henceforth. If any man hath been, under
+  pretence of this [crime], particularly offended, it were pity to suffer
+  any man to be wronged; and thus it ought to be, and otherwise we cannot
+  answer, no man's special case being declared in the said petition.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say further that they so appearing ex officio, be
+  condemned to answer to many subtle questions by the <!-- Page 142
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page142"></a>[pg 142]</span> which a
+  simple, unlearned, or else a well-witted layman without learning
+  sometimes is, and commonly may be trapped and induced into peril of open
+  penance to their shame, or else [forced] to redeem their penance for
+  money, as is commonly used; to this we answer that we should not use
+  subtlety, for we should do all things plainly and openly; and if we do
+  otherwise, we do amiss. We ought not to ask questions, but after the
+  capacities of the man. Christ hath defended his true doctrine and faith
+  in his Catholic church from all subtlety, and so preserved good men in
+  the same, as they have not (blessed be God) been vexed, inquieted, or
+  troubled in Christ's church. Thereupon evil men fall in danger by their
+  own subtlety; we protest afore God we have neither known, read, nor heard
+  of any one man damaged or prejudiced by spiritual jurisdiction in this
+  behalf, neither in this realm nor any other, but only by his own deserts.
+  Such is the goodness of God in maintaining the cause of his Catholic
+  faith.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say they be compelled to do open penance, or else
+  redeem the same for money; as for penance, we answer it consisteth in the
+  arbitre of a judge who ought to enjoin such penance as might profit for
+  correction of the fault. Whereupon we disallow that judge's doing who
+  taketh money for penance for lucre or advantage, not regarding the
+  reformation of sin as he ought to do. But when open penance may sometimes
+  work in certain persons more hurt than good, it is commendable and
+  allowable in that case to punish by the purse, and preserve the fame of
+  the party; foreseeing always the money be converted <i>in usus pios et
+  eleemosynam</i>, and thus we think of the thing, and that the offenders
+  should be punished.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they complain that two witnesses be admitted, be they
+  never so defamed, of little truth or credence, adversaries or enemies to
+  the parties; yet in many cases they be allowed by the discretion of the
+  ordinaries to put the party defamed, ex officio, to open penance, and
+  then to redemption for money; so that every of your subjects, upon the
+  only will of the ordinaries or their substitutes, without any accuser,
+  proved fame, or presentment, is or may be infamed, vexed, and troubled,
+  to the peril of their lives, their shames, costs, and expenses:</p>
+
+  <p>"To this we reply, <i>the Gospel of Christ teacheth us to believe two
+  witnesses; and as the cause is, so the judge must esteem the quality of
+  the witness; and in heresy no exception is necessary to be considered if
+  their tale be likely; which hath been highly provided lest heretics
+  without jeopardy might else plant their</i> <!-- Page 143 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page143"></a>[pg 143]</span> <i>heresies in lewd
+  and light persons, and taking exception to the witnesses, take boldness
+  to continue their folly. This is the universal law of Christendom, and
+  hath universally done good. Of any injury done to any man thereby we know
+  not</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say it is not intended by them to take away from us
+  our authority to correct and punish sins, and especially the detestable
+  crime of heresy:</p>
+
+  <p>"To this we answer, in the prosecuting heretics we regard our duty and
+  office whereunto we be called, and if God will discharge us thereof, or
+  cease that plague universal, as, by directing the hearts of princes, and
+  specially the heart of your Highness (laud and thanks be unto Him), His
+  goodness doth commence and begin to do, we should and shall have great
+  cause to rejoice; as being our authority therein costly, dangerous, full
+  of trouble and business, without any fruit, pleasure, or commodity
+  worldly, but a continued conflict and vexation with pertinacity,
+  wilfulness, folly, and ignorance, whereupon followeth their bodily and
+  ghostly destruction, to our great sorrow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they desire that by assent of your Highness (if the laws
+  heretofore made be not sufficient for the repression of heresy) more
+  dreadful and terrible laws may be made; this We think is undoubtedly a
+  more charitable request than as we trust necessary, considering that by
+  the aid of your Highness, and the pains of your Grace's statutes freely
+  executed, your realm may be in short time clean purged from the few small
+  dregs that do remain, if any do remain.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they desire some reasonable declaration may be made to
+  your people, how they may, if they will, avoid the peril of heresy. No
+  better declaration, we say, can be made than is already by our Saviour
+  Christ, the Apostles, and the determination of the church, which if they
+  keep, they shall not fail to eschew heresy.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they desire that some charitable fashion may be devised by
+  your wisdom for the calling of any of your subjects before us, that it
+  shall not stand in the only will and pleasure of the ordinaries at their
+  own imagination, without lawful accusation by honest witness, according
+  to your law; to this we say that a better provision cannot be devised
+  than is already devised by the clergy in our opinion; and if any default
+  appear in the execution, it shall be amended on declaration of the
+  particulars, and the same proved.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say that your subjects be cited out of the diocese
+  which they dwell in, and many times be suspended <!-- Page 144 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page144"></a>[pg 144]</span> and excommunicate
+  for light causes upon the only certificate devised by the proctors, and
+  that all your subjects find themselves grieved with the excessive fees
+  taken in the spiritual courts:</p>
+
+  <p>"To this article, for because it concerneth specially the spiritual
+  courts of me the Archbishop of Canterbury, please it your Grace to
+  understand that about twelve months past I reformed certain things
+  objected here; and now within these ten weeks I reformed many other
+  things in my said courts, as I suppose is not unknown unto your Grace's
+  Commons; and some of the fees of the officers of my courts I have brought
+  down to halves, some to the third part, and some wholly taken away and
+  extincted; and yet it is objected to me as though I had taken no manner
+  of reformation therein. Nevertheless I shall not cease yet; but in such
+  things as I shall see your Commons most offended I will set redress
+  accordingly, so as, I trust, they will be contented in that behalf. And
+  I, the said archbishop, beseech your Grace to consider what service the
+  doctors in civil law, which have had their practice in my courts, have
+  done your Grace concerning treaties, truces, confederations, and leagues
+  devised and concluded with outward princes; and that without such learned
+  men in civil law your Grace could not have been so conveniently served as
+  at all times you have been, which thing, perhaps, when such learned men
+  shall fail, will appear more evident than it doth now. The decay whereof
+  grieveth me to foresee, not so greatly for any cause concerning the
+  pleasure or profit of myself, being a man spent, and at the point to
+  depart this world, and having no penny of any advantage by my said
+  courts, but principally for the good love which I bear to the honour of
+  your Grace and of your realm. And albeit there is, by the assent of the
+  Lords Temporal and the Commons of your Parliament, an act passed
+  thereupon already, the matter depending before your Majesty by way of
+  supplication offered to your Highness by your said Commons;<a
+  name="NtA_237"></a><a href="#Nt_237"><sup>237</sup></a> yet, forasmuch as
+  we your Grace's humble chaplains, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York,
+  be bounden by oath to be intercessors for the rights of our churches; and
+  forasmuch as the spiritual prelates of the clergy, being of your Grace's
+  parliament, consented to the said act for divers great causes moving
+  their conscience, we your Grace's said chaplains show unto your <!-- Page
+  145 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page145"></a>[pg 145]</span>
+  Highness that it hath appertained to the Archbishops of Canterbury and
+  York for the space of four hundred years or thereabouts to have spiritual
+  jurisdiction over all your Grace's subjects dwelling within the
+  provinces; and to have authority to call before them, not only in
+  spiritual causes devolved to them by way of appeal, but also by way of
+  querimony and complaint; which right and privilege pertaineth not only to
+  the persons of the said archbishops, but also to the pre-eminences of
+  their churches. Insomuch that when the archbishop of either of the sees
+  dieth, the said privileges do not only remain to his successor (by which
+  he is named Legatus natus), but also in the meantime of vacation the same
+  privilege resteth in the churches of Canterbury and York; and is executed
+  by the prior, dean and chapter of the said churches; and so the said act
+  is directly against the liberty and privileges of the churches of
+  Canterbury and York; and what dangers be to them which study and labour
+  to take away the liberties and privileges of the church, whoso will read
+  the general councils of Christendom and the canons of the fathers of the
+  Catholic church ordained in that behalf, shall soon perceive. And
+  further, we think verily that our churches, to which the said privileges
+  were granted, can give no cause why the pope himself (whose predecessors
+  granted that privilege) or any other (the honour of your Grace ever
+  except) may justly take away the same privileges so lawfully prescribed
+  from our churches, though we [ourselves] had greatly offended, abusing
+  the said privileges. But when in our persons we trust we have given no
+  cause why to lose that privilege, we beseech your Grace of your goodness
+  and absolute power to set such orders in this behalf as we may enjoy our
+  privileges lawfully admitted so long.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they complain that there is exacted and demanded in divers
+  parishes of this your realm, other manner of tythes than hath been
+  accustomed to be paid this hundred years past; and in some parts of this
+  your realm there is exacted double tythes, that is to say, threepence, or
+  twopence-halfpenny, for one acre, over and beside the tythe for the
+  increase of cattle that pastureth the same:</p>
+
+  <p>"To this we say, that tythes being due by God's law, be so duly paid
+  (thanked be God), by all good men, as there needeth not exaction in the
+  most parts of this your Grace's realm. As for double tythes, they cannot
+  be maintained due for one increase; whether in any place they be unduly
+  exacted in fact we know not. This we know in learning, that neither a
+  hundred <!-- Page 146 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page146"></a>[pg
+  146]</span> years, nor seven hundred of non-payment, may debar the right
+  of God's law. The manner of payment, and person unto whom to pay, may be
+  in time altered, but the duty cannot by any means be taken away.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say that when a mortuary is due, curates sometimes,
+  before they will demand it, will bring citation for it; and then will not
+  receive the mortuaries till they may have such costs as they say they
+  have laid out for the suit of the same; when, indeed, if they would first
+  have charitably demanded it, they needed not to have sued for the same,
+  for it should have been paid with good will:</p>
+
+  <p>"We answer that curates thus offending, if they were known, ought to
+  be punished, but who thus doeth we know not.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say that divers spiritual persons being presented to
+  benefices within this your realm, we and our ministers do take of them
+  great sums of money and reward; we reply that this is a particular abuse,
+  and he that taketh reward doeth not well; and if any penny be exacted
+  above the accustomed rate and after convenient proportion, it is not well
+  done. But in taking the usual fee for the sealing, writing, and
+  registering the letters, which is very moderate, we cannot think it to be
+  reputed as any offence; neither have we heard any priests in our days
+  complain of any excess therein.</p>
+
+  <p>"And where they say in the same article that such as be presented be
+  delayed without reasonable cause, to the intent that we the ordinaries
+  may have the profit of the benefice during the vacation, unless they will
+  pact and convent with us by temporal bonds, whereof some bonds contain
+  that we should have part of the profit of the said benefice, which your
+  said subjects suppose to be not only against right and conscience, but
+  also seemeth to be simony, and contrary to the laws of God:</p>
+
+  <p>"To this we do say that a delay without reasonable cause, and for a
+  lucrative intent, is detestable in spiritual men, and the doers cannot
+  eschew punishment: but otherwise a delay is sometimes expedient to
+  examine the clerk, and sometimes necessary when the title is in variance.
+  All other bargains and covenants being contrary to the law ought to be
+  punished, as the quality is of the offence more or less, as simony or
+  inordinate covetousness.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say that we give benefices to our nephews and
+  kinsfolk, being in young age or infants, whereby the cure is not
+  substantially looked into, nor the parishioners taught as they should be;
+  we reply to this that the thing which is not lawful in <!-- Page 147
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page147"></a>[pg 147]</span> others is
+  in spiritual men more detestable. Benefices should be disposed of not
+  <i>secundum carnem et sanguinem, sed secundum merita</i>. And when there
+  is a default it is not authorised by the clergy as good, but reproved;
+  whereupon in this the clergy is not to be blamed, but the default as it
+  may appear must be laid to particular men.</p>
+
+  <p>"And where they say that we take the profit of such benefices for the
+  time of the minority of our said kinsfolk, if it be done to our own use
+  and profit it is not well; <i>if it be bestowed to the bringing up and
+  use of the same parties</i>, or applied to the maintenance of the church
+  and God's service, or distributed among the poor, we do not see but that
+  it may be allowed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Item where they say that divers and many spiritual persons, not
+  contented with the convenient livings and promotions of the church, daily
+  intromit and exercise themselves in secular offices and rooms, as
+  stewards, receivers, auditors, bailiffs, and other temporal occupations,
+  withdrawing themselves from the good contemplative lives that they have
+  professed, not only to the damage but also to the perilous example of
+  your loving and obedient subjects; to this we your bedesmen answer that
+  beneficed men may lawfully be stewards and receivers to their own
+  bishops, as it evidently appeareth in the laws of the church; and we by
+  the same laws ought to have no other. And as for priests to be auditors
+  and bailiffs, we know none such.</p>
+
+  <p>"And where, finally, they, in the conclusion of their supplication, do
+  repeat and say that forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a
+  few years past hath been much misdemeanour and violence upon the one
+  part, and much default and lack of patience, charity, and good will on
+  the other part; and marvellous discord in consequence of the quiet,
+  peace, and tranquillity in which this your realm hath been ever hitherto
+  preserved through your politic wisdom:</p>
+
+  <p>"To the first part as touching such discord as is reported, and also
+  the misdemeanour which is imputed to us and our doings, we trust we have
+  sufficiently answered the same, humbly beseeching your Grace so to esteem
+  and weigh such answer with their supplication as shall be thought good
+  and expedient by your high wisdom. Furthermore we ascertain your Grace as
+  touching the violence which they seem to lay to our charge, albeit divers
+  of the clergy of this your realm have sundry times been <i>rigorously
+  handled, and with much violence entreated by certain ill-disposed and
+  seditious persons of the lay fee, have been injured in their bodies,
+  thrown down in the kennel in the open</i> <!-- Page 148 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page148"></a>[pg 148]</span> <i>streets at
+  mid-day</i>, even here within your city and elsewhere, to the great
+  rebuke and disquietness of the clergy of your realm, the great danger of
+  the souls of the said misdoers, and perilous example of your subjects.
+  Yet we think verily, and do affirm the same, that no violence hath been
+  so used on our behalf towards your said lay subjects in any case; unless
+  they esteem this to be violence that we do use as well for the health of
+  their souls as for the discharge of our duties in taking, examining, and
+  punishing heretics according to the law: wherein we doubt not but that
+  your Grace, and divers of your Grace's subjects, do understand well what
+  charitable entreaty we have used with such as have been before us for the
+  same cause of heresy; and what means we have devised and studied for
+  safeguard specially of their souls; and that charitably, as God be our
+  judge, and without violence as [far as] we could possibly devise. In
+  execution thereof, and also of the laws of the church for repression of
+  sin, and also for reformation of mislivers, it hath been to our great
+  comfort that your Grace hath herein of your goodness, assisted and aided
+  us in this behalf for the zeal and love which your Grace beareth to God's
+  church and to His ministers; especially in defence of His faith whereof
+  your Grace only and most worthily amongst all Christian princes beareth
+  the title and name. And for that marvellous discord and grudge among your
+  subjects as is reported in the supplication of your Commons, we beseech
+  your Majesty, all the premises considered, to repress those that be
+  misdoers; protesting in our behalf that we ourselves have no grudge nor
+  displeasure towards your lay subjects our ghostly children. We intreat
+  your Grace of your accustomed goodness to us your bedemen to continue our
+  chief protector, defender, and aider in and for the execution of our
+  office and duty; specially touching repression of heresy, reformation of
+  sin, and due behaviour and order of all your Grace's subjects, spiritual
+  and temporal; which (no doubt thereof) shall be much to the pleasure of
+  God, great comfort to men's souls, quietness and unity of all your realm;
+  and, as we think, most principally to the great comfort of your Grace's
+  Majesty. Which we beseech lowly upon our knees, so entirely as we can, to
+  be the author of unity, charity, and concord as above, for whose
+  preservation we do and shall continually pray to Almighty God long to
+  reign and prosper in most honourable estate to his pleasure."</p>
+
+  <p>This was the bishops' defence; the best which, under the
+  circumstances, they considered themselves capable of making. <!-- Page
+  149 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page149"></a>[pg 149]</span> The
+  House of Commons had stated their complaints in the form of special
+  notorious facts; the bishops replied with urging the theory of their
+  position, and supposed that they could relieve the ecclesiastical system
+  from the faults of its ministers, by laying the sole blame on the
+  unworthiness of individual persons. The degenerate representatives of a
+  once noble institution could not perhaps be expected to admit their
+  degeneracy, and confess themselves, as they really were, collectively
+  incompetent; yet the defence which they brought forward would have been
+  valid only so long as the blemishes were the rare exceptions in the
+  working of an institution which was still generally beneficent. It was no
+  defence at all when the faults had become the rule, and when there was no
+  security in the system itself for the selection of worth and capacity to
+  exercise its functions. The clergy, as I have already said, claimed the
+  privileges of saints, while their conduct fell below the standard of that
+  of ordinary men; and the position taken in this answer was tenable only
+  on the hypothesis which it, in fact, deliberately asserted, that the
+  judicial authority of the church had been committed to it by God Himself;
+  and that no misconduct of its ministers in detail could forfeit their
+  claims or justify resistance to them.</p>
+
+  <p>There is something touching in the bishops' evidently sincere
+  unconsciousness that there could be real room for blame. Warham, who had
+  been Archbishop of Canterbury thirty years, took credit to himself for
+  the reforms which, under the pressure of public opinion, he had
+  introduced, in the last few weeks or months; and did not know that in
+  doing so he had passed sentence on a life of neglect. In the opinion of
+  the entire bench no infamy, however notorious, could shake the testimony
+  of a witness in a case of heresy; no cruelty was unjust when there was
+  suspicion of so horrible a crime; while the appointment of minors to
+  church benefices (not to press more closely the edge of the accusation)
+  they admitted while they affected to deny it; since they were not ashamed
+  to defend the appropriation of the proceeds of benefices occupied by such
+  persons, if laid out on the education and maintenance of the minors
+  themselves.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet these things were as nothing in comparison with the powers claimed
+  for convocation; and the prelates of the later years of Henry's reign
+  must have looked back with strange sensations at the language which their
+  predecessors had so simply addressed to him. If the canons which
+  convocation might think good to enact were not consistent with the laws
+  of the Realm, "His Majesty" was desired to produce the wished-for <!--
+  Page 150 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page150"></a>[pg 150]</span>
+  uniformity by altering the laws of the Realm; and although the bishops
+  might not submit their laws to His Majesty's approval, they would be
+  happy, they told him, to consider such suggestions as he might think
+  proper to make. The spirit of the Plantagenets must have slumbered long
+  before such words as these could have been addressed to an English
+  sovereign, and little did the bishops dream that these light words were
+  the spell which would burst the charm, and bid that spirit wake again in
+  all its power and terror.</p>
+
+  <p>The House of Commons in the mean time had not been idle. To them the
+  questions at issue were unincumbered with theoretic difficulties.
+  Enormous abuses had been long ripe for dissolution, and there was no
+  occasion to waste time in unnecessary debates. At such a time, with a
+  House practically unanimous, business could be rapidly transacted, the
+  more rapidly indeed in proportion to its importance. In six weeks, for so
+  long only the session lasted, the astonished church authorities saw bill
+  after bill hurried up before the Lords, by which successively the
+  pleasant fountains of their incomes would be dried up to flow no longer;
+  or would flow only in shallow rivulets along the beds of the once
+  abundant torrents, The jurisdiction of the spiritual courts was not
+  immediately curtailed, and the authority which was in future to be
+  permitted to convocation lay over for further consideration, to be dealt
+  with in another manner. But probate duties and legacy duties, hitherto
+  assessed at discretion, were dwarfed into fixed proportions,<a
+  name="NtA_238"></a><a href="#Nt_238"><sup>238</sup></a> not to touch the
+  poorer laity any more, and bearing even upon wealth with a reserved and
+  gentle hand. Mortuaries were shorn of their luxuriance; when effects were
+  small, no mortuary should be required; when large, the clergy should
+  content themselves with a modest share. No velvet cloaks should be
+  stripped any more from strangers' bodies to save them from a rector's
+  grasp;<a name="NtA_239"></a><a href="#Nt_239"><sup>239</sup></a> no
+  shameful battles with apparitors should disturb any more the recent rest
+  of the dead.<a name="NtA_240"></a><a href="#Nt_240"><sup>240</sup></a>
+  Such sums as the law would permit should be paid thenceforward in the
+  form of decent funeral fees for householders dying in their own parishes,
+  and there the exactions should terminate.<a name="NtA_241"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_241"><sup>241</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 151 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page151"></a>[pg 151]</span>
+
+  <p>The carelessness of the bishops in the discharge of their most
+  immediate duties obliged the legislature to trespass also in the
+  provinces purely spiritual, and undertake the discipline of the clergy.
+  The Commons had complained in their petition that the clergy, instead of
+  attending to their duties, were acting as auditors, bailiffs, stewards,
+  or in other capacities, as laymen; they were engaged in trade also, in
+  farming, in tanning, in brewing, in doing anything but the duties which
+  they were paid for doing; while they purchased dispensations for
+  non-residence on their benefices; and of these benefices, in favoured
+  cases, single priests held as many as eight or nine. It was thought
+  unnecessary to wait for the bishops' pleasure to apply a remedy here. If
+  the clergy were unjustly accused of these offences, a law of general
+  prohibition would not touch them. If the belief of the House of Commons
+  was well founded, there was no occasion for longer delay. It was
+  therefore enacted<a name="NtA_242"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_242"><sup>242</sup></a>&mdash;"for the more quiet and virtuous
+  increase and maintenance of divine service, the preaching and teaching
+  the Word of God with godly and good example, for the better discharge of
+  cures, the maintenance of hospitality, the relief of poor people, the
+  increase of devotion and good opinion of the lay fee towards spiritual
+  persons"&mdash;that no such persons thenceforward should take any land to
+  farm beyond what was necessary, <i>bonā fide</i>, for the support of
+  their own households; that they should not buy merchandise to sell again;
+  that they should keep no tanneries or brewhouses, or otherwise directly
+  or indirectly trade for gain. Pluralities were not to be permitted with
+  benefices above the yearly value of eight pounds, and residence was made
+  obligatory under penalty in cases of absence without special reason, of
+  ten pounds for each month of such absence. The law against pluralities
+  was limited as against existing holders, each of whom, for their natural
+  lives, might continue to hold as many as four benefices. But
+  dispensations, either <!-- Page 152 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page152"></a>[pg 152]</span> for non-residence or for the violation
+  of any other provision of the act, were made penal in a high degree,
+  whether obtained from the bishops or from the court of Rome.</p>
+
+  <p>These bills struck hard and struck home. Yet even persons who most
+  disapprove of the Reformation will not at the present time either wonder
+  at their enactment or complain of their severity. They will be desirous
+  rather to disentangle their doctrine from suspicious connection, and will
+  not be anxious to compromise their theology by the defence of unworthy
+  professors of it.</p>
+
+  <p>The bishops, however, could ill tolerate an interference with the
+  privileges of the ecclesiastical order. The Commons, it was exclaimed,
+  were heretics and schismatics;<a name="NtA_243"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_243"><sup>243</sup></a> the cry was heard everywhere, of Lack
+  of faith, Lack of faith; and the lay peers being constitutionally
+  conservative, and perhaps instinctively apprehensive of the infectious
+  tendencies of innovation, it seemed likely for a time that an effective
+  opposition might be raised in the Upper House. The clergy commanded an
+  actual majority in that House from their own body, which they might
+  employ if they dared; and although they were not likely to venture alone
+  on so bold a measure, yet a partial support from the other members was a
+  sufficient encouragement. The aged Bishop of Rochester was made the
+  spokesman of the ecclesiastics on this occasion. "My Lords," he said,
+  "you see daily what bills come hither from the Commons House, and all is
+  to the destruction of the church. For God's sake see what a realm the
+  kingdom of Bohemia was; and when the church went down, then fell the
+  glory of that kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but Down with the
+  church, and all this meseemeth is for lack of faith only."<a
+  name="NtA_244"></a><a href="#Nt_244"><sup>244</sup></a> "In result," says
+  Hall, "the acts were sore debated; the Lords Spiritual would in no wise
+  consent, and committees of the two Houses sate continually for
+  discussion." The spiritualty defended themselves by prescription and
+  usage, to which a Gray's Inn lawyer something insolently answered, on one
+  occasion, "the usage hath ever been of thieves to rob on Shooter's Hill,
+  <i>ergo</i>, it is lawful." "With this answer," continues Hall, "the
+  spiritual men were sore offended because their doings were called
+  robberies, but the temporal men stood by their sayings, insomuch that the
+  said gentlemen declared to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that both the
+  exaction of probates of testaments and the taking of mortuaries were open
+  robbery and thefts."</p>
+
+<!-- Page 153 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page153"></a>[pg 153]</span>
+
+  <p>At length, people out of doors growing impatient, and dangerous
+  symptoms threatening to show themselves, the king summoned a meeting in
+  the Star-chamber between eight members of both Houses. The lay peers,
+  after some discussion, conclusively gave way; and the bishops, left
+  without support, were obliged to yield. They signified their unwilling
+  consent, and the bills, "somewhat qualified," were the next day agreed
+  to&mdash;"to the great rejoicing of the lay people, and the great
+  displeasure of the spiritual persons."<a name="NtA_245"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_245"><sup>245</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Nor were the House of Commons contented with the substance of victory.
+  The reply to their petition had perhaps by that time been made known to
+  them, and at any rate they had been accused of sympathy with heresy, and
+  they would not submit to the hateful charge without exacting revenge. The
+  more clamorous of the clergy out of doors were punished probably by the
+  stocks; from among their opponents in the Upper House, Fisher was
+  selected for special and signal humiliation. The words of which he had
+  made use were truer than the Commons knew; perhaps the latent truth of
+  them was the secret cause of the pain which they inflicted; but the
+  special anxiety of the English reformers was to disconnect themselves,
+  with marked emphasis, from the movement in Germany, and they determined
+  to compel the offending bishop to withdraw his words.</p>
+
+  <p>They sent the speaker, Sir Thomas Audeley, to the king, who "very
+  eloquently declared what dishonour it was to his Majesty and the realm,
+  that they which were elected for the wisest men in the shires, cities,
+  and boroughs within the realm of England, should be declared in so noble
+  a presence to lack faith." It was equivalent to saying "that they were
+  infidels, and no Christians&mdash;as ill as Turks and Saracens."
+  Wherefore he "most humbly besought the King's Highness to call the said
+  bishop before him, and to cause him to speak more discreetly of such a
+  number as was in the Commons House."<a name="NtA_246"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_246"><sup>246</sup></a> Henry consented to their request, it is
+  likely with no great difficulty, and availed himself of the opportunity
+  to read a lesson much needed to the remainder of the bench. He sent for
+  Fisher, and with him for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for six other
+  bishops. The speaker's message was laid before them, and they were asked
+  what they had to say. It would have been well for the weak trembling old
+  men if they could have repeated what they believed and had maintained
+  their right to believe it. Bold conduct is ever the most safe; it is
+  fatal only when there is <!-- Page 154 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page154"></a>[pg 154]</span> courage but for the first step, and
+  fails when a second is required to support it. But they were forsaken in
+  their hour of calamity, not by courage only, but by prudence, by
+  judgment, by conscience itself. The Bishop of Rochester stooped to an
+  equivocation too transparent to deceive any one; he said that "he meant
+  only the doings of the Bohemians were for lack of faith, and not the
+  doings of the Commons House"&mdash;"which saying was confirmed by the
+  bishops present." The king allowed the excuse, and the bishops were
+  dismissed; but they were dismissed into ignominy, and thenceforward, in
+  all Henry's dealings with them, they were treated with contemptuous
+  disrespect. For Fisher himself we must feel only sorrow. After
+  seventy-six years of a useful and honourable life, which he might have
+  hoped to close in a quiet haven, he was launched suddenly upon stormy
+  waters, to which he was too brave to yield, which he was too timid to
+  contend against; and the frail vessel drifting where the waves drove it,
+  was soon piteously to perish.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus triumphant on every side, the parliament, in the middle of
+  December, closed its session, and lay England celebrated its exploits as
+  a national victory. "The king removed to Greenwich, and there kept his
+  Christmas with the queen with great triumph, with great plenty of viands,
+  and disguisings, and interludes, to the great rejoicing of his people;"<a
+  name="NtA_247"></a><a href="#Nt_247"><sup>247</sup></a> the members of
+  the House of Commons, we may well believe, following the royal example in
+  town and country, and being the little heroes of the day. Only the
+  bishops carried home sad hearts within them, to mourn over the perils of
+  the church and the impending end of all things; Fisher, unhappily for
+  himself, to listen to the wailings of the Nun of Kent, and to totter
+  slowly into treason.</p>
+
+  <p>Here, for the present leaving the clergy to meditate on their future,
+  and reconsider the wisdom of their answer to the king respecting the
+  ecclesiastical jurisdiction (a point on which they were not the less
+  certain to be pressed, because the process upon it was temporarily
+  suspended), we must turn to the more painful matter which, for a time
+  longer, ran parallel with the domestic reformation, and as yet was unable
+  to unite with it. After the departure of Campeggio, the further hearing
+  of the divorce cause had been advoked to Rome, where it was impossible
+  for Henry to consent to plead; while the appearance of the supposed brief
+  had opened avenues of new difficulty which left no hope of a decision
+  within the limits of an ordinary lifetime. Henry <!-- Page 155 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page155"></a>[pg 155]</span> was still, however,
+  extremely reluctant<a name="NtA_248"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_248"><sup>248</sup></a> to proceed to extremities, and appeal
+  to the parliament. He had threatened that he would tolerate no delay, and
+  Wolsey had evidently expected that he would not. Queen Catherine's alarm
+  had gone so far, that in the autumn she had procured an injunction from
+  the pope, which had been posted in the churches of Flanders, menacing the
+  king with spiritual censures if he took any further steps.<a
+  name="NtA_249"></a><a href="#Nt_249"><sup>249</sup></a> Even this she
+  feared that he would disregard, and in March, 1529-30, a second
+  inhibition was issued at her request, couched in still stronger
+  language.<a name="NtA_250"></a><a href="#Nt_250"><sup>250</sup></a> But
+  these measures were needless, or at least premature. Henry expected that
+  the display of temper in the country in the late session would produce an
+  effect both on the pope and on the emperor; and proposing to send an
+  embassy to remonstrate jointly with them on the occasion of the emperor's
+  coronation, which was to take place in the spring at Bologna, he had
+  recourse in the mean time to an expedient which, though blemished in the
+  execution, was itself reasonable and prudent.</p>
+
+  <p>Among the many <i>technical</i> questions which had been raised upon
+  the divorce, the most serious was on the validity of the original
+  dispensation; a question not only on the sufficiency of the form the
+  defects of which the brief had been invented to remedy; but on the more
+  comprehensive uncertainty whether Pope Julius had not exceeded his powers
+  altogether in granting a dispensation where there was so close affinity.
+  No one supposed that the pope could permit a brother to marry a sister; a
+  dispensation granted in such a case would be <i>ipso facto</i>
+  void.&mdash;Was <!-- Page 156 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page156"></a>[pg 156]</span> not the dispensation similarly void
+  which permitted the marriage of a brother's widow? The advantage which
+  Henry expected from raising this difficulty was the transfer of judgment
+  from the partial tribunal of Clement to a broader court. The pope could
+  not, of course, adjudicate on the extent of his own powers; especially as
+  he always declared himself to be ignorant of the law; and the decision of
+  so general a question rested either with a general council, or must be
+  determined by the consent of Christendom, obtained in some other manner.
+  If such general consent declared against the pope, the cause was
+  virtually terminated. If there was some approach to a consent against
+  him, or even if there was general uncertainty, Henry had a legal pretext
+  for declining his jurisdiction, and appealing to a council.</p>
+
+  <p>Thomas Cranmer, then a doctor of divinity at Cambridge,<a
+  name="NtA_251"></a><a href="#Nt_251"><sup>251</sup></a> is said to have
+  been the person who suggested this ingenious expedient, and to have
+  advised the king, as the simplest means of carrying it out, to consult in
+  detail the universities and learned men throughout Europe. His notorious
+  activity in collecting the opinions may have easily connected him with
+  the origination of the plan, which probably occurred to many other
+  persons as well as to him; but whoever was the first adviser, it was
+  immediately acted upon, and English agents were despatched into Germany,
+  Italy, and France, carrying with them all means of persuasion,
+  intellectual, moral, and material, which promised to be of most cogent
+  potency with lawyers' convictions.</p>
+
+  <p>This matter was in full activity when the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne
+  Boleyn's father, with Cranmer, the Bishop of London, and Edward Lee,
+  afterwards Archbishop of York, was despatched to Bologna to lay Henry's
+  remonstrances before the emperor, who was come at last in person to enjoy
+  his miserable triumph, and receive from the pope the imperial crown. Sir
+  Nicholas Carew, who had been sent forward a few weeks previously,
+  described in piteous language the state to which Italy had been reduced
+  by him. Passing through Pavia, the English emissary saw the children
+  crying about the streets for bread, and dying of hunger; the grapes in
+  midwinter rotting on the vines, because there was no one to gather them;
+  and for fifty miles scarcely a single creature, man or woman, in the
+  fields. "They say," added Carew, "and the pope also showed us the same,
+  that the whole people of that country, with divers other places in
+  Italia, <!-- Page 157 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page157"></a>[pg
+  157]</span> with war, famine, and pestilence, are utterly dead and
+  gone."<a name="NtA_252"></a><a href="#Nt_252"><sup>252</sup></a> Such had
+  been the combined work of the vanity of Francis and the cold selfishness
+  of Charles; and now the latter had arrived amidst the ruins which he had
+  made, to receive his crown from the hands of a pope who was true to
+  Italy, if false to all the world besides, and whom, but two years before,
+  he had imprisoned and disgraced. We think of Clement as the creature of
+  the emperor, and such substantially he allowed himself to be; but his
+  obedience was the obedience of fear to a master whom he hated, and the
+  bishop of Tarbčs, who was present at the coronation, and stood at his
+  side through the ceremony, saw him trembling under his robes with
+  emotion, and heard him sigh bitterly.<a name="NtA_253"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_253"><sup>253</sup></a> Very unwillingly, we may be assured, he
+  was compelled to act his vacillating part to England, and England, at
+  this distance of time, may forgive him for faults to which she owes her
+  freedom, and need not refuse him some tribute of sympathy in his
+  sorrows.</p>
+
+  <p>Fallen on evil times, which greater wisdom and greater courage than
+  had for many a century been found in the successors of St. Peter would
+  have failed to encounter successfully, Clement VII. remained, with all
+  his cowardice, a true Italian; his errors were the errors of his age and
+  nation, and were softened by the presence, in more than usual measure, of
+  Italian genius and grace. Benvenuto Cellini, who describes his character
+  with much minuteness, has left us a picture of a hot-tempered, but
+  genuine and kind-hearted man, whose taste was elegant, and whose wit,
+  from the playful spirit with which it was pervaded, and from a certain
+  tendency to innocent levity, approached to humour. He was liable to
+  violent bursts of feeling; and his inability to control himself, his
+  gesticulations, his exclamations, and his tears, all represent to us a
+  person who was an indifferent master of the tricks of dissimulation to
+  which he was reduced, and whose weakness entitles him to pity, if not to
+  respect. The papacy had fallen to him at the crisis of its deepest
+  degradation. It existed as a politically organised institution, which it
+  was convenient to maintain, but from which the private hearts of all men
+  had fallen away; and it depended for its very life upon the support which
+  the courts of <!-- Page 158 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page158"></a>[pg 158]</span> Europe would condescend to extend to
+  it. Among these governments, therefore, distracted as they were by mutual
+  hostility, the pope was compelled to make his choice; and the fatality of
+  his position condemned him to quarrel with the only prince on whom, at
+  the outset of these complications, he had a right to depend.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1512, France had been on the point of declaring her religious
+  independence; and as late as 1525, Francis entertained thoughts of
+  offering the patriarchate to Wolsey.<a name="NtA_254"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_254"><sup>254</sup></a> Charles V., postponing his religious
+  devotion for the leisure of old age, had reserved the choice of his
+  party, to watch events and to wait upon opportunity; while, from his
+  singular position, he wielded in one hand the power of Catholic Spain, in
+  the other that of Protestant Germany, ready to strike with either, as
+  occasion or necessity recommended. If his Spaniards had annexed the New
+  World to the papacy, his German lanzknechts had stormed the Holy City,
+  murdered cardinals, and outraged the pope's person: while both Charles
+  and Francis, alike caring exclusively for their private interests, had
+  allowed the Turks to overrun Hungary, to conquer Rhodes, and to collect
+  an armament at Constantinople so formidable as to threaten Italy itself,
+  and the very Christian faith. Henry alone had shown hitherto a true
+  feeling for religion; Henry had made war with Louis XII. solely in the
+  pope's quarrel; Henry had broken an old alliance with the emperor to
+  revenge the capture of Rome, and had won Francis back to his allegiance.
+  To Henry, if to any one, the Roman bishop had a right to look with
+  confidence. But the power of England was far off, and could not reach to
+  Rome. Francis had been baffled and defeated, his armies destroyed, his
+  political influence in the Peninsula annihilated. The practical choice
+  which remained to Clement lay only, as it seemed, between the emperor and
+  martyrdom; and having, perhaps, a desire for the nobler alternative, yet
+  being without the power to choose it, his wishes and his conduct, his
+  words to private persons and his open actions before the world, were in
+  perpetual contradiction. He submitted while his heart revolted; and while
+  at Charles's dictation he was threatening Henry with excommunication if
+  he proceeded further with his divorce, he was able at that very time to
+  say, in confidence, to the Bishop of Tarbčs, that he would be <!-- Page
+  159 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page159"></a>[pg 159]</span> well
+  contented if the King of England would marry on his own responsibility,
+  availing himself of any means which he might possess among his own
+  people, so only that he himself was not committed to a consent or the
+  privileges of the papacy were not trenched upon.<a name="NtA_255"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_255"><sup>255</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Two years later, when the course which the pope would really pursue
+  under such circumstances was of smaller importance, Henry gave him an
+  opportunity of proving the sincerity of this language; and the result was
+  such as he expected it to be. As yet, however, he had not relinquished
+  the hope of succeeding by a more open course.</p>
+
+  <p>In March, 1529-30, the English ambassadors appeared at Bologna. Their
+  instructions were honest, manly, and straightforward. They were directed
+  to explain, <i>ab initio</i>, the grounds of the king's proceedings, and
+  to appeal to the emperor's understanding of the obligations of princes.
+  Full restitution was to be offered of Catherine's dowry, and the Earl of
+  Wiltshire was provided with letters of credit adequate to the amount.<a
+  name="NtA_256"></a><a href="#Nt_256"><sup>256</sup></a> If these
+  proposals were not accepted, they were to assume a more peremptory tone,
+  and threaten the alienation of England; and if menaces were equally
+  ineffectual, they were to declare that Henry, having done all which lay
+  within his power to effect his purpose with the goodwill of his friends,
+  since he could not do as he would, must now do as he could, and discharge
+  his conscience. If the emperor should pretend that he would "abide the
+  law, and would defer to the pope," they were to say, "that the sacking of
+  Rome by the Spaniards and Germans had so discouraged the pope and
+  cardinals, that they feared for body and goods," and had ceased to be
+  free agents; and concluding finally that the king would fear God rather
+  than man, and would rely on comfort from the Saviour against those who
+  abused their authority, they were then to withdraw.<a
+  name="NtA_257"></a><a href="#Nt_257"><sup>257</sup></a> The tone of the
+  directions was not sanguine, and the political complications of Europe,
+  on which the emperor's reply must more or less have depended, were too
+  involved to allow us to trace the influences which were likely to have
+  weighed with him. There seems no primā facie reason, however, why the
+  attempt might not have been successful. <!-- Page 160 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page160"></a>[pg 160]</span> The revolutionary
+  intrigues in England had decisively failed, and the natural sympathy of
+  princes, and a desire to detach Henry from Francis, must have combined to
+  recommend a return of the old cordiality which had so long existed
+  between the sovereigns of England and Flanders. But whatever was the
+  cause, the opening interview assured the Earl of Wiltshire that he had
+  nothing to look for. He was received with distant courtesy; but Charles
+  at once objected even to hearing his instructions, as an interested
+  party.<a name="NtA_258"></a><a href="#Nt_258"><sup>258</sup></a> The earl
+  replied that he stood there, not as the father of the queen's rival, but
+  as the representative of his sovereign; but the objection declared the
+  attitude which Charles was resolved to maintain, and which, in fact, he
+  maintained throughout. "The emperor," wrote Lord Wiltshire to Henry, "is
+  stiffly bent against your Grace's matter, and is most earnest in it;
+  while the pope is led by the emperor, and neither will nor dare displease
+  him."<a name="NtA_259"></a><a href="#Nt_259"><sup>259</sup></a> From that
+  quarter, so long as parties remained in their existing attitude, there
+  was no hope. It seems to have been hinted, indeed, that if war broke out
+  again between Charles and Francis, something might be done as the price
+  of Henry's surrendering the French alliance;<a name="NtA_260"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_260"><sup>260</sup></a> but the suggestion, if it was made, was
+  probably ironical; and as Charles was unquestionably acting against his
+  interest in rejecting the English overtures, it is fair to give him
+  credit for having acted on this one occasion of his life, upon generous
+  motives. A respectful compliment was paid to his conduct by Henry himself
+  in the reproaches which he addressed to the pope.<a name="NtA_261"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_261"><sup>261</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>So terminated the first and the last overture on this subject which
+  Henry attempted with Charles V. The ambassadors remained but a few days
+  at Bologna, and then discharged their commission and returned. The pope,
+  however, had played his part with remarkable skill, and by finessing
+  dexterously behind the scenes, had contrived to prevent the precipitation
+  of a rupture with himself. His simple and single wish was to gain time,
+  trusting to accident or Providence to deliver him from his dilemma. On
+  the one hand, he yielded to the emperor in refusing to consent to Henry's
+  demand; on the other, he availed <!-- Page 161 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page161"></a>[pg 161]</span> himself of all the
+  intricacies to parry Catherine's demand for a judgment in her favour. He
+  even seemed to part with the emperor on doubtful terms. "The latter,"
+  said the Bishop of Tarbčs,<a name="NtA_262"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_262"><sup>262</sup></a> "before leaving Bologna, desired his
+  Holiness to place two cardinals' hats at his disposal, to enable him to
+  reward certain services." His Holiness ventured to refuse. During his
+  imprisonment, he said he had been compelled to nominate several persons
+  for that office whose conduct had been a disgrace to their rank; and when
+  the emperor denied his orders, the pope declared that he had seen them.
+  The cardinals' hats, therefore, should be granted only when they were
+  deserved, "when the Lutherans in Germany had been reduced to obedience,
+  and Hungary had been recovered from the Turks." If this was acting, it
+  was skilfully managed, and it deceived the eyes of the French
+  ambassador.</p>
+
+  <p>Still further to gratify Henry, the pope made a public declaration
+  with respect to the dispute which had arisen on the extent of his
+  authority, desiring, or professing to desire, that all persons whatever
+  throughout Italy should be free to express their opinions without fear of
+  incurring his displeasure. This declaration, had it been honestly meant,
+  would have been creditable to Clement's courage: unfortunately for his
+  reputation, his outward and his secret actions seldom corresponded, and
+  the emperor's agents were observed to use very dissimilar language in his
+  name. The double policy, nevertheless, was still followed to secure
+  delay. Delay was his sole aim,&mdash;either that Catherine's death, or
+  his own, or Henry's, or some relenting in one or other of the two princes
+  who held their minatory arms extended over him, might spare himself and
+  the church the calamity of a decision. For to the church any decision was
+  fatal. If he declared for Charles, England would fall from it; if for
+  Henry, Germany and Flanders were lost irrecoverably, and Spain itself
+  might follow. His one hope was to procrastinate; and in this policy of
+  hesitation for two more years he succeeded, till at length the patience
+  of Henry and of England was worn out, and all was ended. When the emperor
+  required sentence to be passed, he pretended to be about to yield; and at
+  the last moment, some technical difficulty ever interfered to make a
+  decision impossible. When Henry was cited to appear at Rome, a point of
+  law was raised upon the privilege of kings, threatening to open into
+  other points of law, and so to multiply to infinity. The pope, indeed,
+  finding his own ends so well <!-- Page 162 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page162"></a>[pg 162]</span> answered by evasion, imagined that it
+  would answer equally those of the English nation, and he declared to
+  Henry's secretary that "if the King of England would send a mandate ad
+  totam causam, then if his Highness would, there might be given so many
+  delays by reason of matters which his Highness might lay in, and the
+  remissorials that his Grace might ask, ad partes, that peradventure in
+  ten years or longer a sentence should not be given."<a
+  name="NtA_263"></a><a href="#Nt_263"><sup>263</sup></a> In point of
+  worldly prudence, his conduct was unexceptionably wise; but something
+  beyond worldly prudence was demanded of a tribunal which claimed to be
+  inspired by the Holy Ghost.</p>
+
+  <p>The dreary details of the negotiations I have no intention of
+  pursuing. They are of no interest to any one,&mdash;a miserable tissue of
+  insincerity on one side, and hesitating uncertainty on the other. There
+  is no occasion for us to weary ourselves with the ineffectual efforts to
+  postpone an issue which was sooner or later inevitable.</p>
+
+  <p>I may not pass over in similar silence another unpleasant episode in
+  this business,&mdash;the execution of Cranmer's project for collecting
+  the sentiments of Europe on the pope's dispensing power. The details of
+  this transaction are not wearying only, but scandalous; and while the
+  substantial justice of Henry's cause is a reason for deploring the means
+  to which he allowed himself to be driven in pursuing it, we may not
+  permit ourselves either to palliate those means or to conceal them. The
+  project seemed a simple one, and likely to be effective and useful.
+  Unhappily, the appeal was still to ecclesiastics, to a body of men who
+  were characterised throughout Europe by a universal absence of integrity,
+  who were incapable of pronouncing an honest judgment, and who courted
+  intimidation and bribery by the readiness with which they submitted to be
+  influenced by them. Corruption was resorted to on all sides with the most
+  lavish unscrupulousness, and the result arrived at was general discredit
+  to all parties, and a conclusion which added but one more circle to the
+  labyrinth of perplexities. Croke,<a name="NtA_264"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_264"><sup>264</sup></a> a Doctors' Commons lawyer, who was
+  employed in Italy, described the state of feeling in the peninsula as
+  generally in Henry's favour; and he said that he could have secured an
+  all but universal consent, except for the secret intrigues of the Spanish
+  agents, and their open direct menaces, when intrigue was insufficient. He
+  complained bitterly of the treachery of the Italians who were in <!--
+  Page 163 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page163"></a>[pg 163]</span>
+  the English pay; the two Cassalis, Pallavicino, and Ghinucci, the Bishop
+  of Worcester. These men, he said, were betraying Henry when they were
+  pretending to serve him, and were playing secretly into the hands of the
+  emperor.<a name="NtA_265"></a><a href="#Nt_265"><sup>265</sup></a> His
+  private despatches were intercepted, or the contents of them by some
+  means were discovered; for the persons whom he named as inclining against
+  the papal claims, became marked at once for persecution. One of them, a
+  Carmelite friar, was summoned before the Cardinal Governor of Bologna,
+  and threatened with death;<a name="NtA_266"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_266"><sup>266</sup></a> and a certain Father Omnibow, a
+  Venetian who had been in active co-operation with Dr. Croke, wrote
+  himself to Henry, informing him in a very graphic manner of the treatment
+  to which, by some treachery, he had been exposed. Croke and Omnibow were
+  sitting one morning in the latter's cell, "when there entered upon them
+  the emperor's great ambassador, accompanied with many gentlemen of Spain,
+  and demanded of the Father how he durst be so bold to take upon him to
+  intermeddle in so great and weighty a matter, the which did not only
+  lessen and enervate the pope's authority, but was noyful and odious to
+  all Realms Christened."<a name="NtA_267"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_267"><sup>267</sup></a> Omnibow being a man of some influence
+  in Venice, the ambassador warned him on peril of his life to deal no
+  further with such things: there was not the slightest chance that the
+  King of England could obtain a decision in his favour, because the
+  question had been placed in the hands of six cardinals who were all
+  devoted to the emperor: the pope, it was sternly added, had been made
+  aware of his conduct, and was exceedingly displeased, and the general<a
+  name="NtA_268"></a><a href="#Nt_268"><sup>268</sup></a> of his order had
+  at the same time issued an injunction, warning all members to desist at
+  their peril from intercourse with the English agents. The Spanish party
+  held themselves justified in resorting to intimidation to defend
+  themselves against English money; the English may have excused their use
+  of money as a defence against Spanish intimidation; and each probably had
+  recourse to their several methods prior to experience of the proceedings
+  of their adversaries, from a certain expectation of what those
+  proceedings would be. Substantially, the opposite man&#339;uvres
+  neutralised each other, and in Catholic countries, opinions on the real
+  point <!-- Page 164 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page164"></a>[pg
+  164]</span> at issue seem to have been equally balanced. The Lutheran
+  divines, from their old suspicion of Henry, were more decided in their
+  opposition to him. "The Italian Protestants," wrote Croke to the king,
+  "be utterly against your Highness in this cause, and have letted as much
+  as with their power and malice they could or might."<a
+  name="NtA_269"></a><a href="#Nt_269"><sup>269</sup></a> In Germany Dr.
+  Bames and Cranmer found the same experience. Luther himself had not
+  forgotten his early passage at arms with the English Defender of the
+  Faith, and was coldly hostile; the German theologians, although they
+  expressed themselves with reserve and caution, saw no reason to court the
+  anger of Charles by meddling in a quarrel in which they had no interest;
+  they revenged the studied slight which had been passed by Henry on
+  themselves, with a pardonable indifference to the English ecclesiastical
+  revolt.</p>
+
+  <p>If, however, in Germany and Italy the balance of unjust interference
+  lay on the imperial side, it was more than adequately compensated by the
+  answering pressure which was brought to bear in England and in France on
+  the opposite side. Under the allied sovereigns, the royal authority was
+  openly exercised to compel such expressions of sentiment as the courts of
+  London and Paris desired; and the measures which were taken oblige us
+  more than ever to regret the inventive efforts of Cranmer's genius. For,
+  in fact, these man&#339;uvres, even if honestly executed, were all
+  unrealities. The question at issue was one of domestic English politics,
+  and the metamorphosis of it into a question of ecclesiastical law was a
+  mere delusion. The discussion was transferred to a false ground, and
+  however the king may have chosen to deceive himself, was not being tried
+  upon its real merits. A complicated difficulty vitally affecting the
+  interests of a great nation, was laid for solution before a body of
+  persons incompetent to understand or decide it, and the laity, with the
+  alternative before them of civil war, and the returning miseries of the
+  preceding century, could brook no judgment which did not answer to their
+  wishes.</p>
+
+  <p>The French king, contemptuously indifferent to justice, submitted to
+  be guided by his interest; feeling it necessary for his safety to fan the
+  quarrel between Henry and the emperor, he resolved to encourage whatever
+  measures would make the <!-- Page 165 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page165"></a>[pg 165]</span> breach between them irreparable. The
+  reconciliation of Herod and Pontius Pilate<a name="NtA_270"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_270"><sup>270</sup></a> was the subject of his worst alarm; and
+  a slight exercise of ecclesiastical tyranny was but a moderate price by
+  which to ensure himself against so dangerous a possibility.</p>
+
+  <p>Accordingly, at the beginning of June, the University of Paris was
+  instructed by royal letters to pronounce an opinion on the extent to
+  which the pope might grant dispensations for marriage within the
+  forbidden degrees. The letters were presented by the grand master, and
+  the latter in his address to the faculty, maintained at the outset an
+  appearance of impartiality. The doctors were required to decide according
+  to their conscience, having the fear of God before their eyes; and no
+  open effort was ventured to dictate the judgment which was to be
+  delivered.</p>
+
+  <p>The majority of the doctors understood their duty and their position,
+  and a speedy resolution was anticipated, when a certain Dr. Beda, an
+  energetic Ultramontane, commenced an opposition. He said that, on a
+  question which touched the power of the pope, they were not at liberty to
+  pronounce an opinion without the permission of his Holiness himself; and
+  that the deliberation ought not to go forward till they had applied for
+  that permission and had received it. This view was supported by the
+  Spanish and Italian party in the university. The debate grew warm, and at
+  length the meeting broke up in confusion without coming to a resolution.
+  Beda, when remonstrated with on the course which he was pursuing, did not
+  hesitate to say that he had the secret approbation of his prince; that,
+  however Francis might disguise from the world his real opinions, in his
+  heart he only desired to see the pope victorious. An assertion so
+  confident was readily believed, nor is it likely that Beda ventured to
+  make it without some foundation. But being spoken of openly it became a
+  matter of general conversation, and reaching the ears of the English
+  ambassador, it was met with instant and angry remonstrance. "The
+  ambassador," wrote the grand master to Francis, "has been to me in great
+  displeasure, and has told me roundly that his master is trifled with by
+  us. We give him words in plenty to keep his beak in the water; but it is
+  very plain that we are playing false, and that no honesty is intended.
+  Nor are his <!-- Page 166 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page166"></a>[pg 166]</span> words altogether without reason; for
+  many persons declare openly that nothing will be done. If the alliance of
+  England, therefore, appear of importance to your Highness, it would be
+  well for you to write to the Dean of the Faculty, directing him to close
+  an impertinent discussion, and require an answer to the question asked as
+  quickly as possible."<a name="NtA_271"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_271"><sup>271</sup></a> The tone of this letter proves, with
+  sufficient clearness, the true feelings of the French government; but at
+  the moment the alternative suggested by the grand master might not be
+  ventured. Francis could not afford to quarrel with England, or to be on
+  less than cordial terms with it, and for a time at least his brother
+  sovereigns must continue to be at enmity. The negotiations for the
+  recovery of the French princes out of their Spanish prison, were on the
+  point of conclusion; and, as Francis was insolvent, Henry had consented
+  to become security for the money demanded for their deliverance. Beda
+  had, moreover, injured his cause by attacking the Gallican liberties; and
+  as this was a point on which the government was naturally sensitive, some
+  tolerable excuse was furnished for the lesson which it was thought proper
+  to adminster to the offending doctor.</p>
+
+  <p>On the seventeenth of June, 1530, therefore, Francis wrote as follows
+  to the President of the Parliament of Paris:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"We have learnt, to our great displeasure, that one Beda, an
+  imperialist, has dared to raise an agitation among the theologians,
+  dissuading them from giving their voices on the cause of the King of
+  England.&mdash;On receipt of this letter, therefore, you shall cause the
+  said Beda to appear before you, and you shall show him the grievous anger
+  which he has given us cause to entertain towards him. And further you
+  shall declare to him, laying these our present writings before his eyes
+  that he may not doubt the truth of what you say, that if he does not
+  instantly repair the fault which he has committed, he shall be punished
+  in such sort as that he shall remember henceforth what it is for a person
+  of his quality to meddle in the affairs of princes. If he venture to
+  remonstrate; if he allege that it is matter of conscience, and that
+  before proceeding to pronounce an opinion it is necessary to communicate
+  with the pope; in our name you shall forbid him to hold any such
+  communication: and he and all who abet him, and all persons whatsoever,
+  not only who shall themselves dare to consult the pope on this matter,
+  but who shall so much as entertain the proposal of consulting him, shall
+  be dealt with in such a manner as shall be an <!-- Page 167 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page167"></a>[pg 167]</span> example to all the
+  world. The liberties of the Gallican Church are touched, and the
+  independence of our theological council, and there is no privilege
+  belonging to this realm on which we are more peremptorily determined to
+  insist."<a name="NtA_272"></a><a href="#Nt_272"><sup>272</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The haughty missive, a copy of which was sent to England,<a
+  name="NtA_273"></a><a href="#Nt_273"><sup>273</sup></a> produced the
+  desired effect. The doctors became obedient and convinced, and the
+  required declaration of opinion in Henry's favour, was drawn up in the
+  most ample manner. They made a last desperate effort to escape from the
+  position in which they were placed when the seal of the university was to
+  be affixed to the decision; but the resistance was hopeless, the
+  authorities were inexorable, and they submitted. It is not a little
+  singular that the English political agent employed on this occasion, and
+  to whose lot it fell to communicate the result to the king, was Reginald
+  Pole. He it was, who behind the scenes, and assisting to work the
+  machinery of the intrigue, first there, perhaps, contracted his disgust
+  with the cause on which he was embarked. There learning to hate the ill
+  with which he was forced immediately into contact, he lost sight of the
+  greater ill to which it was opposed; and in the recoil commenced the
+  first steps of a career, which brought his mother to the scaffold, which
+  overspread all England with an atmosphere of treason and suspicion, and
+  which terminated at last after years of exile, rebellion, and falsehood,
+  in a brief victory of blood and shame. So ever does wrong action beget
+  its own retribution, punishing itself by itself, and wrecking the
+  instruments by which it works. The letter which Pole wrote from Paris to
+  Henry will not be uninteresting. It revealed his distaste for his
+  occupation, though prudence held him silent as to his deeper
+  feelings.</p>
+
+  <p>"Please it your Highness to be advertised, that the determination and
+  conclusion of the divines in this university was achieved and finished
+  according to your desired purpose, upon Saturday last past. The sealing
+  of the same has been put off unto this day, nor never could be obtained
+  before for any soliciting on our parts which were your agents here, which
+  never ceased to labour, all that lay in us, for the expedition of it,
+  both with the privy president and with all such as we thought might in
+  any part aid us therein. But what difficulties and stops hath been, to
+  let the obtaining of the seal of the university, notwithstanding the
+  conclusion passed and agreed unto by the more part of the <!-- Page 168
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page168"></a>[pg 168]</span> faculty,
+  by reason of such oppositions as the adversary part hath made to embezzle
+  the determination that it should not take effect nor go forth in that
+  same form as it was concluded, it may please your Grace, to be advertised
+  by this bearer, Master Fox; who, with his prudence, diligence, and great
+  exercise in the cause, hath most holp to resist all these crafts, and to
+  bring the matter to that point as your most desired purpose hath been to
+  have it. He hath indeed acted according to that hope which I had of him
+  at the beginning and first breaking of the matter amongst the faculty
+  here, when I, somewhat fearing and foreseeing such contentions,
+  altercations, and empeschements as by most likelihood might ensue, did
+  give your Grace advertisement, how necessary I thought it was to have
+  Master Fox's presence. And whereas I was informed by Master Fox how it
+  standeth with your Grace's pleasure, considering my fervent desire
+  thereon, that, your motion once achieved and brought to a final
+  conclusion in this university, I should repair to your presence, your
+  Grace could not grant me at this time a petition more comfortable unto
+  me. And so, making what convenient speed I may, my trust is shortly to
+  wait upon your Highness. Thus Jesu preserve your most noble Grace to his
+  pleasure, and your most comfort and honour. Written at Paris, the seventh
+  day of July, by your Grace's most humble and faithful servant, REGINALD
+  POLE."<a name="NtA_274"></a><a href="#Nt_274"><sup>274</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>We must speak of this transaction as it deserves, and call it wholly
+  bad, unjust, and inexcusable. Yet we need not deceive ourselves into
+  supposing that the opposition which was crushed so roughly was based on
+  any principal of real honesty. In Italy, intrigue was used against
+  intimidation. In France intimidation was used against intrigue; and the
+  absence of rectitude in the parties whom it was necessary to influence,
+  provoked and justified the contempt with which they were treated.</p>
+
+  <p>The conduct of the English universities on the same occasion was
+  precisely what their later characters would have led us respectively to
+  expect from them. At Oxford the heads of houses and the senior doctors
+  and masters submitted their consciences to state dictation, without
+  opposition, and, as it seemed, without reluctance. Henry was wholly
+  satisfied that the right was on his own side; he was so convinced of it,
+  that an opposition to his wishes among his own subjects, he could
+  attribute only to disloyalty or to some other unworthy feeling; <!-- Page
+  169 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page169"></a>[pg 169]</span> and
+  therefore, while he directed the convocation, "giving no credence to
+  sinister persuasions, to show and declare their just and true learning in
+  his cause," he was able to dwell upon the answer which he expected from
+  them, as a plain matter of duty; and obviously as not admitting of any
+  uncertainty whatever.</p>
+
+  <p>"We will and command you," he said, "that ye, not leaning to wilful
+  and sinister opinions of your own several minds, considering that we be
+  your sovereign liege lord [and] totally giving your time, mind, and
+  affections to the true overtures of divine learning in this behalf, do
+  show and declare your true and just learning in the said cause, like as
+  ye will abide by: wherein ye shall not only please Almighty God, but also
+  us your liege lord. And we, for your so doing, shall be to you and to our
+  university there so good and gracious a lord for the same, as ye shall
+  perceive it well done in your well fortune to come. And in case you do
+  not uprightly, according to divine learning, handle yourselves herein, ye
+  may be assured that we, not without great cause, shall so quickly and
+  sharply look to your unnatural misdemeanour herein, that it shall not be
+  to your quietness and ease hereafter."<a name="NtA_275"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_275"><sup>275</sup></a> The admonitory clauses were
+  sufficiently clear; they were scarcely needed, however, by the older
+  members of the university. An enlarged experience of the world which
+  years, at Oxford as well as elsewhere, had not failed to bring with them,
+  a just apprehension of the condition of the kingdom, and a sense of the
+  obligations of subjects in times of political difficulty, sufficed to
+  reconcile the heads of the colleges to obedience; and threats were not
+  required where it is unlikely that a thought of hesitation was
+  entertained. But there was a class of residents which appears to be
+  perennial in that university, composed out of the younger masters; a
+  class of men who, defective alike in age, in wisdom, or in knowledge,
+  were distinguished by a species of theoretic High Church fanaticism; who,
+  until they received their natural correction from advancing years,
+  required from time to time to be protected against their own extravagance
+  by some form of external pressure. These were the persons whom the king
+  was addressing in his more severe language, and it was not without reason
+  that he had recourse to it.</p>
+
+  <p>In order to avoid difficulty, and to secure a swift and convenient
+  resolution, it was proposed that both at Oxford and Cambridge the
+  universities should be represented by a committee composed of the heads
+  of houses, the proctors, and the <!-- Page 170 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page170"></a>[pg 170]</span> graduates in
+  divinity and law: that this committee should agree upon a form of a
+  reply; and that the university seal should then be affixed without
+  further discussion. This proposition was plausible as well as prudent,
+  for it might be supposed reasonably that young half-educated students
+  were incapable of forming a judgment on an intricate point of law; and to
+  admit their votes was equivalent to allowing judgment to be given by
+  party feeling. The masters who were to be thus excluded refused however
+  to entertain this view of their incapacity. The question whether the
+  committee should be appointed was referred to convocation, where, having
+  the advantage of numbers, they coerced the entire proceedings; and some
+  of them "expressing themselves in a very forward manner" to the royal
+  commissioners,<a name="NtA_276"></a><a href="#Nt_276"><sup>276</sup></a>
+  and the heads of houses being embarrassed, and not well knowing what to
+  do, the king found it necessary again to interpose. He was unwilling, as
+  he said, to violate the constitution of the university by open
+  interference, "considering it to exist under grant and charter from the
+  crown as a body politic, in the ruling whereof in things to be done in
+  the name of the whole, the number of private suffrages doth prevail." "He
+  was loth, too," he added, "to show his displeasure, whereof he had so
+  great cause ministered unto him, unto the whole in general, whereas the
+  fault perchance consisted and remained in light and wilful heads," and he
+  trusted that it might suffice if the masters of the colleges used their
+  private influence and authority<a name="NtA_277"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_277"><sup>277</sup></a> in overcoming the opposition. For the
+  effecting of this purpose, however, and in order to lend weight to their
+  persuasion, he assisted the convocation towards a conclusion with the
+  following characteristic missive:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"To our trusty and well-beloved the heads of houses, doctors, and
+  proctors of our University of Oxford:</p>
+
+  <p>"Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well; and of late being
+  informed, to our no little marvel and discontentation, that a great part
+  of the youth of that our university, with contentious and factious manner
+  daily combining together, neither regarding their duty to us their
+  sovereign lord, nor yet conforming themselves to the opinions and orders
+  of the virtuous, wise, sage, and profound learned men of that university,
+  wilfully do stick upon the opinion to have a great number of regents and
+  non-regents to be associate unto the doctors, proctors, and bachelors of
+  divinity for the determination of our question; which we <!-- Page 171
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page171"></a>[pg 171]</span> believe
+  hath not been often seen, that such a number of right small learning in
+  regard to the other should be joined with so famous a sort, or in a
+  manner stay their seniors in so weighty a cause. And forasmuch as this,
+  we think, should be no small dishonour to our university there, but most
+  especially to you the seniors and rulers of the same; and as also, we
+  assure you, this their unnatural and unkind demeanour is not only right
+  much to our displeasure, but much to be marvelled of, upon what ground
+  and occasion, they being our mere subjects, should show themselves more
+  unkind and wilful in this matter than all other universities, both in
+  this and all other regions do: we, trusting in the dexterity and wisdom
+  of you and other the said discreet and substantial learned men of that
+  university, be in perfect hope that ye will conduce and frame the said
+  young persons unto order and conformity as it becometh you to do. Whereof
+  we be desirous to hear with incontinent diligence; and doubt you not we
+  shall regard the demeanour of every one of the university according to
+  their merits and deserts. And if the youth of the university will play
+  masteries as they begin to do, we doubt not but they shall well perceive
+  that non est bonum irritare crabrones.<a name="NtA_278"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_278"><sup>278</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"Given under our hand and seal, at our Castle of Windsor,</p>
+
+  <p>"HENRY R."<a name="NtA_279"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_279"><sup>279</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It is scarcely necessary to say, that, armed with this letter, the
+  heads of houses subdued the recalcitrance of the overhasty "youth;" and
+  Oxford duly answered as she was required to answer.</p>
+
+  <p>The proceedings at Cambridge were not very dissimilar; but Cambridge
+  being distinguished by greater openness and largeness of mind on this as
+  on the other momentous subjects of the day than the sister university,
+  was able to preserve a more manly bearing, and escape direct humiliation.
+  Cranmer had written a book upon the divorce in the preceding year, which,
+  as coming from a well-known Cambridge man, had occasioned a careful
+  ventilation of the question there; the resident masters had been divided
+  by it into factions nearly equal in number, though unharmoniously
+  composed. The heads of houses, as at Oxford, were inclined to the king,
+  but they were embarrassed and divided by the presence on the same side of
+  the suspected liberals, the party of Shaxton, Latimer, and Cranmer
+  himself. <!-- Page 172 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page172"></a>[pg
+  172]</span> The agitation of many months had rendered all members of the
+  university, young and old, so well acquainted (as they supposed) with the
+  bearings of the difficulty, that they naturally resisted, as at the other
+  university, the demand that their power should be delegated to a
+  committee; and the Cambridge convocation, as well as that of Oxford,
+  threw out this resolution when it was first proposed to them. A king's
+  letter having made them more amenable, a list of the intended committee
+  was drawn out, which, containing Latimer's name, occasioned a fresh
+  storm. But the number in the senate house being nearly divided, "the
+  labour of certain friends" turned the scale; the vote passed, and the
+  committee was allowed, on condition that the question should be argued
+  publicly in the presence of the whole university. Finally, judgment was
+  obtained on the king's side, though in a less absolute form than he had
+  required, and the commissioners did not think it prudent to press for a
+  more extreme conclusion. They had been desired to pronounce that the pope
+  had no power to permit a man to marry his brother's widow. They consented
+  only to say that a marriage within those degrees was contrary to the
+  divine law; but the question of the pope's power was left unapproached.<a
+  name="NtA_280"></a><a href="#Nt_280"><sup>280</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It will not be uninteresting to follow this judgment a further step,
+  to the delivery of it into the hands of the king, where it will introduce
+  us to a Sunday at Windsor Castle three centuries ago. We shall find
+  present there, as a significant symptom of the time, Hugh Latimer,
+  appointed freshly select preacher in the royal chapel, but already
+  obnoxious to English orthodoxy, on account of his Cambridge sermons.
+  These sermons, it had been said, contained many things good and
+  profitable, "on sin, and godliness, and virtue," but much also which was
+  disrespectful to established beliefs, the preacher being clearly opposed
+  to "candles and pilgrimages," and "calling men unto the works that God
+  commanded in his Holy Scripture, all dreams and unprofitable glosses set
+  aside and utterly despised." The preacher had, therefore, been cited
+  before consistory courts and interdicted by bishops, "swarms of friars
+  and doctors flocking against Master Latimer on every side."<a
+  name="NtA_281"></a><a href="#Nt_281"><sup>281</sup></a> This also was to
+  be noted about him, that he was one of the most fearless men who ever
+  lived. Like John Knox, whom he much resembled, in whatever presence he
+  might be, whether of poor or rich, of laymen or priests, of bishops or
+  kings, he ever spoke out boldly <!-- Page 173 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page173"></a>[pg 173]</span> from his pulpit what he thought,
+  directly if necessary to particular persons whom he saw before him
+  respecting their own actions. Even Henry himself he did not spare where
+  he saw occasion for blame; and Henry, of whom it was said that he never
+  was mistaken in a <i>man</i>&mdash;loving a <i>man</i><a
+  name="NtA_282"></a><a href="#Nt_282"><sup>282</sup></a> where he could
+  find him with all his heart&mdash;had, notwithstanding, chosen this
+  Latimer as one of his own chaplains.</p>
+
+  <p>The unwilling bearer of the Cambridge judgment was Dr. Buckmaster, the
+  vice-chancellor, who, in a letter to a friend, describes his reception at
+  the royal castle.</p>
+
+  <p>"To the right worshipful Dr. Edmonds, vicar of Alborne, in Wiltshire,
+  my duty remembered,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I heartily commend me unto you, and I let you understand that
+  yesterday week, being Sunday at afternoon, I came to Windsor, and also to
+  part of Mr. Latimer's sermon; and after the end of the same I spake with
+  Mr. Secretary [Cromwell], and also with Mr. Provost; and so after
+  evensong I delivered our letters in the Chamber of Presence, all the
+  court beholding. The king, with Mr. Secretary, did there read them; and
+  did then give me thanks and talked with me a good while. He much lauded
+  our wisdom and good conveyance in the matter, with the great quietness in
+  the same. He showed me also what he had in his hands for our university,
+  according to that which Mr. Secretary did express unto us, and so he
+  departed from me. But by and bye he greatly praised Mr. Latimer's sermon;
+  and in so praising said on this wise: 'This displeaseth greatly Mr.
+  Vice-Chancellor yonder; yon same,' said he to the Duke of Norfolk, 'is
+  Mr. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge,' and so pointed unto me. Then he spake
+  secretly unto the said duke, which, after the king's departure, came unto
+  me and welcomed me, saying, among other things, the king would speak with
+  me on the next day. And here is the first act. On the next day I waited
+  until it was dinner time; and so at the last Dr. Butts, [king's
+  physician,] came unto me, and brought a reward, twenty nobles for me, and
+  five marks for the junior proctor which was with me, saying that I should
+  take that for a resolute answer, and that I might depart from the court
+  when I would. Then came Mr. Provost, and when I had shewed him of the
+  answer, he said I should speak with the king after dinner for all that,
+  and so he brought me into a privy place where after dinner he <!-- Page
+  174 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page174"></a>[pg 174]</span> would
+  have me wait. I came thither and he both; and by one of the clock the
+  king entered in. It was in a gallery. There were Mr. Secretary, Mr.
+  Provost, Mr. Latimer, Mr. Proctor, and I, and no more. The king then
+  talked with us until six of the clock. I assure you he was scarce
+  contented with Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, that this was not also
+  determined, <i>an Papa possit dispensare</i>. I made the best, and
+  confirmed the same that they had shewed his Grace before; and how it
+  would never have been so obtained. He opened his mind, saying he would
+  have it determined after Easter, and of the same was counselled
+  awhile.</p>
+
+  <p>"Much other communication we had, which were too long here to recite.
+  Then his Highness departed, casting a little holy water of the court; and
+  I shortly after took my leave of Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, with whom
+  I did not drink, nor yet was bidden, and on the morrow departed from
+  thence, thinking more than I did say, and being glad that I was out of
+  the court, where many men, as I did both hear and perceive, did wonder at
+  me. And here shall be an end for this time of this fable.</p>
+
+  <p>"All the world almost crieth out of Cambridge for this act, and
+  specially on me; but I must bear it as well as I may. I have lost a
+  benefice by it, which I should have had within these ten days; for there
+  hath one fallen in Mr. Throgmorton's<a name="NtA_283"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_283"><sup>283</sup></a> gift which he hath faithfully promised
+  unto me many a time, but now his mind is turned and alienate from me. If
+  ye go to court after Easter I pray you have me in remembrance. Mr.
+  Latimer preacheth still,&mdash;quod ęmuli ejus graviter ferunt.</p>
+
+  <p>"Thus fare you well. Your own to his power,<br />
+  WILLIAM BUCKMASTER.<a name="NtA_284"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_284"><sup>284</sup></a><br />
+  Cambridge, Monday after Easter, 1530."</p>
+
+  <p>It does not appear that Cambridge was pressed further, and we may,
+  therefore, allow it to have acquitted itself creditably, If we sum up the
+  results of Cranmer's measure as a whole, it may be said that opinions had
+  been given by about half Europe directly or indirectly unfavourable to
+  the papal claims; and that, therefore, the king had furnished himself
+  with a legal pretext for declining the jurisdiction of the court of Rome,
+  and appealing to a general council. Objections to the manner in <!-- Page
+  175 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page175"></a>[pg 175]</span> which
+  the opinions had been gained could be answered by recriminations equally
+  just; and in the technical aspect of the question a step had certainly
+  been gained. It will be thought, nevertheless, on wider grounds, that the
+  measure was a mistake; that it would have been far better if the legal
+  labyrinth had never been entered, and if the divorce had been claimed
+  only upon those considerations of policy for which it had been first
+  demanded, and which formed the true justification of it. Not only might a
+  shameful chapter of scandal have been spared out of the world's history,
+  but the point on which the battle was being fought lay beside the real
+  issue. Europe was shaken with intrigue, hundreds of books were written,
+  and tens of thousands of tongues were busy for twelve months weaving
+  logical subtleties, and all for nothing. The truth was left unspoken
+  because it was not convenient to speak it, and all parties agreed to
+  persuade themselves and accept one another's persuasions, that they meant
+  something which they did not mean. Beyond doubt the theological
+  difficulty really affected the king. We cannot read his own book<a
+  name="NtA_285"></a><a href="#Nt_285"><sup>285</sup></a> upon it without a
+  conviction that his arguments were honestly urged, that his misgivings
+  were real, and that he meant every word which he said. Yet it is clear at
+  the same time that these misgivings would not have been satisfied, if all
+  the wisdom of the world&mdash;pope, cardinals, councils, and all the
+  learned faculties together&mdash;had declared against him, the true
+  secret of the matter lying deeper, understood and appreciated by all the
+  chief parties concerned, and by the English laity, whose interests were
+  at stake; but in all these barren disputings ignored as if it had no
+  existence.</p>
+
+  <p>It was perhaps less easy than it seems to have followed the main road.
+  The bye ways often promise best at first entrance into them, and Henry's
+  peculiar temper never allowed him to believe beforehand that a track
+  which he had chosen could lead to any conclusion except that to which he
+  had arranged that it should lead. With an intellect endlessly fertile in
+  finding reasons to justify what he desired, he could see no justice on
+  any side but his own, or understand that it was possible to disagree with
+  him except from folly of ill-feeling. Starting always with a foregone
+  conclusion, he arrived of course where he wished to arrive. His "Glasse
+  of Truth" is a very picture of his mind. "If the marshall of the host
+  bids us do anything," he said, "shall we do it if it be against the great
+  captain? Again, if the great captain bid us do anything, and the king or
+  the emperor commandeth <!-- Page 176 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page176"></a>[pg 176]</span> us to do another, dost thou doubt that
+  we must obey the commandment of the king or emperor, and contemn the
+  commandment of the great captain? Therefore if the king or the emperor
+  bid one thing, and God another, we must obey God, and contemn and not
+  regard neither king nor emperor." And, therefore, he argued, "we are not
+  to obey the pope, when the pope commands what is unlawful."<a
+  name="NtA_286"></a><a href="#Nt_286"><sup>286</sup></a> These were but
+  many words to prove what the pope would not have questioned; and either
+  they concluded nothing or the conclusion was assumed.</p>
+
+  <p>We cannot but think that among the many misfortunes of Henry's life
+  his theological training was the greatest; and that directly or
+  indirectly it was the parent of all the rest. If in this unhappy business
+  he had trusted only to his instincts as an English statesman; if he had
+  been contented himself with the truth, and had pressed no arguments
+  except those which in the secrets of his heart had weight with him, he
+  would have spared his own memory a mountain of undeserved reproach, and
+  have spared historians their weary labour through these barren deserts of
+  unreality.</p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>CHURCH AND STATE</h3>
+
+  <p>The authorities of the church, after the lesson which they had
+  received from the parliament in its first session, were now allowed a
+  respite of two years, during which they might reconsider the complaints
+  of the people, and consult among themselves upon the conduct which they
+  would pursue with respect to those complaints. They availed themselves of
+  their interval of repose in a manner little calculated to recover the
+  esteem which they had forfeited, or to induce the legislature further to
+  stay their hand. Instead of reforming their own faults, they spent the
+  time in making use of their yet uncurtailed powers of persecution; and
+  they wreaked the bitterness of their resentment upon the unfortunate
+  heretics, who paid with their blood at the stake for the diminished
+  revenues and blighted dignities of their spiritual lords and superiors.
+  During the later years of Wolsey's administration, the Protestants,
+  though threatened <!-- Page 177 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page177"></a>[pg 177]</span> and imprisoned, had escaped the most
+  cruel consequences of their faith. Wolsey had been a warm-hearted and
+  genuine man, and although he had believed as earnestly as his brother
+  bishops, that Protestantism was a pernicious thing, destructive alike to
+  the institutions of the country and to the souls of mankind, his memory
+  can be reproached with nothing worse than assiduous but humane efforts
+  for the repression of it. In the three years which followed his
+  dismissal, a far more bloody page was written in the history of the
+  reformers; and under the combined auspices of Sir Thomas More's
+  fanaticism, and the spleen of the angry clergy, the stake re-commenced
+  its hateful activity. This portion of my subject requires a full and
+  detailed treatment; I reserve the account of it, therefore, for a
+  separate chapter, and proceed for the present with the progress of the
+  secular changes.</p>
+
+  <p>Although, as I said, no further legislative measures were immediately
+  contemplated against the clergy, yet they were not permitted to forget
+  the alteration in their position which had followed upon Wolsey's fall;
+  and as they had shown in the unfortunate document which they had
+  submitted to the king, so great a difficulty in comprehending the nature
+  of that alteration, it was necessary clearly and distinctly to enforce it
+  upon them. Until that moment they had virtually held the supreme power in
+  the state. The nobility, crippled by the wars of the Roses, had sunk into
+  the second place; the Commons were disorganised, or incapable of a
+  definite policy; and the chief offices of the government had fallen as a
+  matter of course to the only persons who for the moment were competent to
+  hold them. The jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments, which had shown
+  itself so bitterly under the Plantagenets, had been superseded from the
+  accession of Henry VII. by a policy of studied conciliation, and the
+  position of Wolsey had but symbolised the position of his order. But
+  Wolsey was now gone, and the ecclesiastics who had shared his greatness
+  while they envied it, were compelled to participate also in his change of
+  fortune.</p>
+
+  <p>This great minister, after the failure of a discreditable effort to
+  fasten upon him a charge of high treason,&mdash;a charge which,
+  vindictively pressed through the House of Lords, was wisely rejected by
+  the Commons,&mdash;had been prosecuted with greater justice for a breach
+  of the law, in having exercised the authority of papal legate within the
+  realm of England. His policy had broken down: he had united against him
+  in a common exasperation all orders in the state, secular and spiritual;
+  and the possible consequences of his adventurous transgression had fallen
+  <!-- Page 178 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page178"></a>[pg
+  178]</span> upon him. The parliaments of Edward I., Edward III., Richard
+  II., and Henry IV. had by a series of statutes pronounced illegal all
+  presentations by the pope to any office or dignity in the Anglican
+  church, under penalty of a premunire; the provisions of these acts
+  extending not only to the persons themselves who accepted office under
+  such conditions, but comprehending equally whoever acknowledged their
+  authority, "their executors, procurators, fautors, maintainers, and
+  receivers."<a name="NtA_287"></a><a href="#Nt_287"><sup>287</sup></a> The
+  importance attached to these laws was to be seen readily in the frequent
+  re-enactment of them, with language of increasing vehemence; and although
+  the primary object was to neutralise the supposed right of the pope to
+  present to English benefices, and although the office of papal legate is
+  not especially named in any one of the prohibitory clauses, yet so acute
+  a canonist as Wolsey could not have been ignorant that it was
+  comprehended under the general denunciation. The 5th of the 16th of
+  Richard II. was in fact explicitly universal in its language, and dwelt
+  especially on the importance of prohibiting the exercise of any species
+  of jurisdiction which could encroach on the royal authority. He had
+  therefore consciously violated a law on his own responsibility, which he
+  knew to exist, but which he perhaps trusted had fallen into desuetude,
+  and would not again be revived. It cannot be denied that in doing so,
+  being at the time the highest law officer of the crown, he had committed
+  a grave offence, and was justly liable to the full penalties of the
+  broken statute. He had received the royal permission, but it was a plea
+  which could not have availed him, and he did not attempt to urge it.<a
+  name="NtA_288"></a><a href="#Nt_288"><sup>288</sup></a> The contingency
+  of a possible violation of <!-- Page 179 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page179"></a>[pg 179]</span> the law by the king himself had been
+  expressly foreseen and provided against in the act under which he was
+  prosecuted,<a name="NtA_289"></a><a href="#Nt_289"><sup>289</sup></a> and
+  being himself the king's legal adviser, it was his duty to have kept his
+  sovereign<a name="NtA_290"></a><a href="#Nt_290"><sup>290</sup></a>
+  informed of the true nature of the statute. He had neglected this, his
+  immediate obligation, in pursuit of the interests of the church, and when
+  Henry's eyes were opened, he did not consider himself called upon to
+  interfere to shield his minister from the penalties which he had
+  incurred, nor is it likely that in the face of the irritation of the
+  country he could have done so if he had desired. It was felt, indeed,
+  that the long services of Wolsey, and his generally admirable
+  administration, might fairly save him (especially under the circumstances
+  of the case) from extremity of punishment; and if he had been allowed to
+  remain unmolested in the affluent retirement which was at first conceded
+  to him, his treatment would not have <!-- Page 180 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page180"></a>[pg 180]</span> caused the stain
+  which we have now to lament on the conduct of the administration which
+  succeeded his fall. He indeed himself believed that the final attack upon
+  him was due to no influence of rival statesmen, but to the hatred of Anne
+  Boleyn; and perhaps he was not mistaken. This, however, is a matter which
+  does not concern us here, and I need not pursue it. It is enough that he
+  had violated the law of England, openly and knowingly, and on the revival
+  of the national policy by which that law had been enacted, he reaped the
+  consequences in his own person.</p>
+
+  <p>It will be a question whether we can equally approve of the enlarged
+  application of the statute which immediately followed. The guilt of
+  Wolsey did not rest with himself; it extended to all who had recognised
+  him in his capacity of legate; to the archbishops and bishops, to the two
+  Houses of Convocation, to the Privy Council, to the Lords and Commons,
+  and indirectly to the nation itself. It was obvious that such a state of
+  things was not contemplated by the act under which he was tried, and
+  where in point of law all persons were equally guilty, in equity they
+  were equally innocent; the circumstances of the case, therefore, rendered
+  necessary a general pardon, which was immediately drawn out. The
+  government, however, while granting absolution to the nation, determined
+  to make some exceptions in their lenity; and harsh as their resolution
+  appeared, it is not difficult to conjecture the reasons which induced
+  them to form it. The higher clergy had been encouraged by Wolsey's
+  position to commit those excessive acts of despotism which had created so
+  deep animosity among the people. The overthrow of the last ecclesiastical
+  minister was an opportunity to teach them that the privileges which they
+  had abused were at an end; and as the lesson was so difficult for them to
+  learn, the letter of the law which they had broken was put in force to
+  quicken their perceptions. They were to be punished indirectly for their
+  other evil doings, and forced to surrender some portion of the unnumbered
+  exactions which they had extorted from the helplessness of their
+  flocks.</p>
+
+  <p>In pursuance of this resolution, therefore, official notice was issued
+  in December, 1530, that the clergy lay all under a premunire, and that
+  the crown intended to prosecute. Convocation was to meet in the middle of
+  January, and this comforting fact was communicated to the bishops in
+  order to divert their attention to subjects which might profitably occupy
+  their deliberations. The church legislature had sate in the preceding
+  years contemporaneously with the sitting of parliament, at the <!-- Page
+  181 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page181"></a>[pg 181]</span> time
+  when their privileges were being discussed, and when their conduct had
+  been so angrily challenged: but these matters had not disturbed their
+  placid equanimity: and while the bishops were composing their answer to
+  the House of Commons, Convocation had been engaged in debating the most
+  promising means of persecuting heretics and preventing the circulation of
+  the Bible.<a name="NtA_291"></a><a href="#Nt_291"><sup>291</sup></a> The
+  session had continued into the spring of 1529-30, when the king had been
+  prevailed upon to grant an order in council prohibiting Tyndale's
+  Testament, in the preface of which the clergy were spoken of
+  disrespectfully.<a name="NtA_292"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_292"><sup>292</sup></a> His consent had been obtained with
+  great difficulty, on the representation of the bishops that the
+  translation was faulty, and on their undertaking themselves to supply the
+  place of it with a corrected version. But in obtaining the order, they
+  supposed themselves to have gained a victory; and their triumph was
+  celebrated in St. Paul's churchyard with an auto da fé, over which the
+  Bishop of London consented to preside; when such New Testaments as the
+  diligence of the apparitors could discover, were solemnly burned.</p>
+
+  <p>From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was
+  furnished by the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce
+  its due effect, it was accompanied with the further information that the
+  clergy of the province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon
+  payment of a hundred thousand pounds&mdash;a very considerable fine,
+  amounting to more than a million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds
+  was required simultaneously from the province of York; and the whole sum
+  was to be paid in instalments spread over a period of five years.<a
+  name="NtA_293"></a><a href="#Nt_293"><sup>293</sup></a> The demand was
+  serious, but the clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the
+  chances of the law; and <!-- Page 182 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page182"></a>[pg 182]</span> feeling that, with the people so
+  unfavourably disposed towards them, they had no chance of a more
+  equitable construction of their position, they consented with a tolerable
+  grace, the Upper House of Convocation first, the Lower following. Their
+  debates upon the subject have not been preserved. It was probably
+  difficult to persuade them that they were treated with anything but the
+  most exquisite injustice; since Wolsey's legatine faculties had been the
+  object of their general dread; and if he had remained in power, the
+  religious orders would have been exposed to a searching visitation in
+  virtue of these faculties, from which they could have promised themselves
+  but little advantage. But their punishment, if tyrannical in form, was
+  equitable in substance, and we can reconcile ourselves without difficulty
+  to an act of judicial confiscation.</p>
+
+  <p>The money, however, was not the only concession which the threat of
+  the premunire gave opportunity to extort; and it is creditable to the
+  clergy that the demand which they showed most desire to resist was not
+  that which most touched their personal interests. In the preamble of the
+  subsidy bill, under which they were to levy their ransom, they were
+  required by the council to designate the king by the famous title which
+  gave occasion for such momentous consequences, of "Protector and only
+  Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England."<a
+  name="NtA_294"></a><a href="#Nt_294"><sup>294</sup></a> It is not very
+  easy to see what Henry proposed to himself by requiring this designation,
+  at so early a stage in the movement. The breach with the pope was still
+  distant, and he was prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even
+  seriously contemplate a step which he so little desired. It may have been
+  designed as a reply to the papal censures: it may have been to give
+  effect to his own menaces, which Clement to the last believed to be no
+  more than words;<a name="NtA_295"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_295"><sup>295</sup></a> or perhaps (and this is the most
+  likely) he desired by some emphatic act, to make his clergy understand
+  the relation in which thenceforward they were to be placed towards the
+  temporal authority. It is certain only that this title was not intended
+  to imply what it implied when, four years later, it was conferred by act
+  Of parliament, and when virtually England was severed by it from the
+  Roman communion.</p>
+
+  <p>But whatever may have been the king's motive, he was serious in
+  requiring that the title should be granted to him. Only by acknowledging
+  Henry as Head of the Church should the clergy receive their pardon, and
+  the longer they hesitated, the more peremptorily he insisted on their
+  obedience. The clergy had <!-- Page 183 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page183"></a>[pg 183]</span> defied the lion, and the lion held
+  them in his grasp; and they could but struggle helplessly, supplicate and
+  submit. Archbishop Warham, just drawing his life to a close, presided for
+  the last time in the miserable scene, imagining that the clouds were
+  gathering for the storms of the latter day, and that Antichrist was
+  coming in his power.</p>
+
+  <p>There had been a debate of three days, whether they should or should
+  not consent, when, on the 9th of February, a deputation of the judges
+  appeared in Convocation, to ask whether the Houses were agreed, and to
+  inform them finally that the king had determined to allow no
+  qualifications. The clergy begged for one more day, and the following
+  morning the bishops held a private meeting among themselves, to discuss
+  some plan to turn aside the blow. They desired to see Cromwell, to learn,
+  perhaps, if there was a chance of melting the hard heart of Henry; and
+  after an interview with the minister which could not have been
+  encouraging, they sent two of their number, the Bishops of Exeter and
+  Lincoln, to attempt the unpromising task. It was in vain; the miserable
+  old men were obliged to return with the answer that the king would not
+  see them&mdash;they had seen only the judges, who had assured them, in
+  simple language, that the pardon was not to be settled until the
+  supremacy was admitted. The answer was communicated to the House, and
+  again "debated." Submission was against the consciences of the unhappy
+  clergy; to obey their consciences involved forfeiture of property; and
+  naturally in such a dilemma they found resolution difficult. They
+  attempted another appeal, suggesting that eight of their number should
+  hold a conference with the privy council, and "discover, if they might,
+  some possible expedient." But Henry replied, as before, that he would
+  have a clear answer, "<i>yes</i>, or <i>no</i>." They might say "yes,"
+  and their pardon was ready. They might say "no"&mdash;and accept the
+  premunire and its penalties. And now, what should the clergy have done?
+  No very great courage was required to answer, "This thing is wrong; it is
+  against God's will, and therefore it must not be, whether premunire come
+  or do not come." They might have said it, and if they could have dared
+  this little act of courage, victory was in their hands. With the cause
+  against them so doubtful, their very attitude would have commanded back
+  the sympathies of half the nation, and the king's threats would have
+  exploded as an empty sound. But Henry knew the persons with whom he had
+  to deal&mdash;forlorn shadows, decked in the trappings of <!-- Page 184
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page184"></a>[pg 184]</span>
+  dignity&mdash;who only by some such rough method could be brought to a
+  knowledge of themselves. "Shrink to the clergy"&mdash;I find in a state
+  paper of the time&mdash;"Shrink to the clergy, and they be lions; lay
+  their faults roundly and charitably to them, and they be as sheep, and
+  will lightly be reformed, for their consciences will not suffer them to
+  resist."<a name="NtA_296"></a><a href="#Nt_296"><sup>296</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>They hesitated for another night. The day following, the archbishop
+  submitted the clause containing the title to the Upper House, with a
+  saving paragraph, which, as Burnet sententiously observes, the nature of
+  things did require to be supposed.<a name="NtA_297"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_297"><sup>297</sup></a> "Ecclesię et cleri Anglicani," so it
+  ran, "singularem protectorem, et unicum et supremum Dominum, et quantum
+  per legem Christi licet, etiam supremum caput ipsius Majestatem
+  agnoscimus&mdash;We recognise the King's Majesty to be our only sovereign
+  lord, the singular protector of the church and clergy of England, and as
+  far as is allowed by the law of Christ, also as our Supreme Head." The
+  words were read aloud by the archbishop, and were received in silence.
+  "Do you assent?" he asked. The House remained speechless. "Whoever is
+  silent seems to consent," the archbishop said. A voice answered out of
+  the crowd, "Then are we all silent." They separated for a few hours to
+  collect themselves. In the afternoon sitting they discussed the
+  sufficiency of the subterfuge; and at length agreeing that it saved their
+  consciences, the clause was finally passed, the Bishop of Rochester,
+  among the rest, giving his unwilling acquiescence.</p>
+
+  <p>So for the present terminated this grave matter. The pardon was
+  immediately submitted to parliament, where it was embodied in a
+  statute;<a name="NtA_298"></a><a href="#Nt_298"><sup>298</sup></a> and
+  this act of dubious justice accomplished, the Convocation was allowed to
+  return to its usual occupations, and continue the prosecutions of the
+  heretics.</p>
+
+  <p>The House of Commons, during their second session, had <!-- Page 185
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page185"></a>[pg 185]</span> confined
+  themselves meanwhile to secular business. They had been concerned chiefly
+  with regulations affecting trade and labour; and the proceedings on the
+  premunire being thought for the time to press sufficiently on the clergy,
+  they deferred the further prosecution of their own complaints till the
+  following year. Two measures, however, highly characteristic of the age,
+  must not be passed over, one of which concerned a matter that must have
+  added heavily to the troubles of the Bishop of Rochester at a time when
+  he was in no need of any addition to his burdens.</p>
+
+  <p>Fisher was the only one among the prelates for whom it is possible to
+  feel respect. He was weak, superstitious, pedantical; towards the
+  Protestants he was even cruel; but he was a singlehearted man, who lived
+  in honest fear of evil, so far as he understood what evil was; and he
+  alone could rise above the menaces of worldly suffering, under which his
+  brethren on the bench sank so rapidly into meekness and submission. We
+  can therefore afford to compassionate him in the unexpected calamity by
+  which he was overtaken, and which must have tried his failing spirit in
+  no common manner.</p>
+
+  <p>He lived, while his duties required his presence in London, at a house
+  in Lambeth, and being a hospitable person, he opened his doors at the
+  dinner hour for the poor of the neighbourhood. Shortly after the matter
+  which I have just related, many of these people who were dependent on his
+  bounty were reported to have become alarmingly ill, and several gentlemen
+  of the household sickened also in the same sudden and startling manner.
+  One of these gentlemen died, and a poor woman also died; and it was
+  discovered on inquiry that the yeast which had been used in various
+  dishes had been poisoned. The guilty person was the cook, a certain
+  Richard Rouse; and inasmuch as all crimes might be presumed to have had
+  motives, and the motive in the present instance was undiscoverable, it
+  was conjectured by Queen Catherine's friends that he had been bribed by
+  Anne Boleyn, or by some one of her party, to remove out of the way the
+  most influential of the English opponents of the divorce.<a
+  name="NtA_299"></a><a href="#Nt_299"><sup>299</sup></a> The story was
+  possibly without foundation, although it is not unlikely that Fisher
+  himself believed it. The shock of such an occurrence may well have
+  unsettled his powers of reasoning, and at all times he was a person whose
+  better judgment was easily harassed into incapacity. The origin of the
+  crime, however, is of less importance than the effect of the discovery
+  <!-- Page 186 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page186"></a>[pg
+  186]</span> upon the nation, in whom horror of the action itself absorbed
+  every other feeling. Murder of this kind was new in England. Ready as the
+  people ever were with sword or lance&mdash;incurably given as they were
+  to fighting in the best ordered times&mdash;an Englishman was accustomed
+  to face his enemy, man to man, in the open day; and the Italian crime (as
+  it was called) of poisoning had not till recent years been heard of.<a
+  name="NtA_300"></a><a href="#Nt_300"><sup>300</sup></a> Even revenge and
+  passion recognised their own laws of honour and fair play; and the
+  cowardly ferocity which would work its vengeance in the dark, and
+  practise destruction by wholesale to implicate one hated person in the
+  catastrophe, was a new feature of criminality. Occurring in a time so
+  excited, when all minds were on the stretch, and imaginations were
+  feverish with fancies, it appeared like a frightful portent, some prodigy
+  of nature, or enormous new birth of wickedness, not to be received or
+  passed by as a common incident, and not to be dealt with by the process
+  of ordinary law. Parliament undertook the investigation, making it the
+  occasion, when the evidence was completed, of a special statute, so
+  remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording. The English were a
+  stern people&mdash;a people knowing little of compassion where no lawful
+  ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful and solemn
+  horror of evil things,&mdash;a feeling which, in proportion as it exists,
+  inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man is
+  ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and is still
+  contending with it; but we purchase compassion for utter wickedness only
+  by doubting in our hearts whether wickedness is more than misfortune.</p>
+
+  <p>"The King's royal Majesty," says the 9th of the 22nd of Henry VIII.,
+  "calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of good and
+  wholesome laws, and due execution of the same against the offenders
+  thereof, is the only cause that good obedience and order hath been
+  preserved in this realm; and his Highness having most tender zeal for the
+  same, considering that man's life above all things is chiefly to be
+  favoured, and voluntary murders most highly to be detested and abhorred;
+  and specially all kinds of murders by poisoning, which in this realm
+  hitherto, our Lord be thanked, hath been most rare and seldom committed
+  or practised: and now, in the time of this present parliament, that is to
+  say, on the eighteenth day of February, in <!-- Page 187 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page187"></a>[pg 187]</span> the twenty-second
+  year of his most victorious reign, one Richard Rouse, late of Rochester,
+  in the county of Kent, cook, otherwise called Richard Cook, of his most
+  wicked and damnable disposition, did cast a certain venom or poison into
+  a vessel replenished with yeast or barm, standing in the kitchen of the
+  reverend father in God, John Bishop of Rochester, at his place in Lambeth
+  Marsh; with which yeast or barm, and other things convenient, porridge or
+  gruel was forthwith made for his family there being; whereby not only the
+  number of seventeen persons of his said family, which did eat of that
+  porridge, were mortally infected or poisoned, and one of them, that is to
+  say, Bennet Curwan, gentleman, is thereof deceased; but also certain poor
+  people which resorted to the said bishop's place, and were there
+  charitably fed with the remains of the said porridge and other victuals;
+  were in like wise infected; and one poor woman of them, that is to say,
+  Alice Tryppitt, widow, is also thereof now deceased: Our said sovereign
+  lord the king, of his blessed disposition inwardly abhorring all such
+  abominable offences, because that in manner no person can live in surety
+  out of danger of death by that means, if practices thereof should not be
+  eschewed, hath ordained and enacted by authority of this present
+  parliament, that the said poisoning be adjudged and deemed as high
+  treason; and that the said Richard, for the said murder and poisoning of
+  the said two persons, shall stand and be attainted of high treason.</p>
+
+  <p>"And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and
+  committed, requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and
+  enacted by authority of this present parliament that the said Richard
+  Rouse shall be therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of
+  his clergy; and that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or
+  persons hereafter to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning,
+  shall be reputed, deemed, and judged in the law to be high treason; and
+  that all and every person or persons which shall hereafter be indicted
+  and condemned by order of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted
+  to the benefit of his or their clergy, but shall be immediately after
+  such attainder or condemnation, committed to execution of death by
+  boiling for the same."</p>
+
+  <p>The sentence was carried into effect<a name="NtA_301"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_301"><sup>301</sup></a> in Smithfield, "on the tenebra
+  Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others." The
+  spectacle of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed
+  three hundred years ago by the London <!-- Page 188 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page188"></a>[pg 188]</span> citizens, within
+  the walls of that old cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the
+  significance of which is not easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of
+  the soul there was the stake,<a name="NtA_302"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_302"><sup>302</sup></a> for the poisoners of the body, the
+  boiling cauldron,&mdash;the two most fearful punishments for the most
+  fearful of crimes. The stake at which the heretic suffered was an
+  inherited institution descending through the usage of centuries; the
+  poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the judgment of the
+  English nation on a novel enormity; and I have called attention to it
+  because the temper which this act exhibits is the key to all which has
+  seemed most dark and cruel in the rough years which followed; a temper
+  which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which, rightly or
+  wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably hurried
+  out the penalties of it.</p>
+
+  <p>Following the statute against poisoning, there stands "an act for the
+  banishment out of the country of divers outlandish and vagabond people
+  called Egyptians;"<a name="NtA_303"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_303"><sup>303</sup></a> and attached to it another of analogous
+  import, "for the repression of beggars and vagabonds," the number of
+  whom, it was alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and
+  much crime and other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by
+  them. We may regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the
+  energetic and reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into
+  prominence all forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for
+  those disorders. But they indicate something more than this: they point
+  to the growth of a disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption
+  of industry, and other symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at
+  the same time they show us the government conscious of the momentous
+  nature of the struggle into which it was launched; and with timely energy
+  bracing up the sinews of the nation for its approaching trial. The act
+  against the gipsies especially, illustrates one of the most remarkable
+  features of the times. The air was impregnated with superstition; in a
+  half consciousness of the impending changes, all men were listening with
+  wide ears to rumours and prophecies and fantastic fore-shadowings of the
+  future; and fanaticism, half deceiving and half itself deceived, <!--
+  Page 189 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page189"></a>[pg 189]</span>
+  was grasping the lever of the popular excitement to work out its own
+  ends.<a name="NtA_304"></a><a href="#Nt_304"><sup>304</sup></a> The power
+  which had ruled the hearts of mankind for ten centuries was shaking
+  suddenly to its foundation. The Infallible guidance of the Church was
+  failing; its light gone out, or pronounced to be but a mere deceitful
+  ignis fatuus; and men found themselves wandering in darkness, unknowing
+  where to turn or what to think or believe. It was easy to clamour against
+  the spiritual courts. From men smarting under the barefaced oppression of
+  that iniquitous jurisdiction, the immediate outcry rose without ulterior
+  thought; but unexpectedly the frail edifice of the church itself
+  threatened under the attack to crumble into ruins; and many gentle hearts
+  began to tremble and recoil when they saw what was likely to follow on
+  their light beginnings. It was true that the measures as yet taken by the
+  parliament and the crown professed to be directed, not to the overthrow
+  of the church, but to the re-establishment of its strength. But the
+  exulting triumph of the Protestants, the promotion of Latimer to a royal
+  chaplaincy, the quarrel with the papacy, and a dim but sure perception of
+  the direction in which the stream was flowing, foretold to earnest
+  Catholics a widely different issue; and the simplest of them knew better
+  than the court knew, that they were drifting from the sure moorings of
+  the faith into the broad ocean of uncertainty. There seems, indeed, to be
+  in religious men, whatever be their creed, and however limited their
+  intellectual power, a prophetic faculty of insight into the true bearings
+  of outward things,&mdash;an insight which puts to shame the sagacity of
+  statesmen, and claims for the sons of God, and only for them, the wisdom
+  even of the world. Those only read the world's future truly who have
+  faith in principle, as opposed to faith in human dexterity; who feel that
+  in human things there lies really and truly a spiritual nature, a
+  spiritual connection, a spiritual tendency, which the wisdom of the
+  serpent cannot alter, and scarcely can affect.</p>
+
+  <p>Excitement, nevertheless, is no guarantee for the understanding; and
+  these instincts, powerful as they are, may be found often in minds wild
+  and chaotic, which, although they vaguely foresee the future, yet have no
+  power of sound judgment, and know not what they foresee, or how wisely to
+  estimate it. Their wisdom, if we may so use the word, combines crudely
+  with <!-- Page 190 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page190"></a>[pg
+  190]</span> any form of superstition or fanaticism. Thus in England, at
+  the time of which we are speaking, Catholics and Protestants had alike
+  their horoscope of the impending changes, each nearer to the truth than
+  the methodical calculations of the statesmen; yet their foresight did not
+  affect their convictions, or alter the temper of their hearts. They
+  foresaw the same catastrophe, yet their faith still coloured the
+  character of it. To the one it was the advent of Antichrist, to the other
+  the inauguration of the millennium. The truest hearted men on all sides
+  were deserted by their understandings at the moment when their
+  understandings were the most deeply needed: and they saw the realities
+  which were round them transfigured into phantoms through the mists of
+  their hopes and fears. The present was significant only as it seemed in
+  labour with some gigantic issue, and the events of the outer world flew
+  from lip to lip, taking as they passed every shape most wild and
+  fantastical. Until "the king's matter" was decided, there was no
+  censorship upon speech, and all tongues ran freely on the great subjects
+  of the day. Every parish pulpit rang with the divorce, or with the perils
+  of the Catholic faith; at every village ale-house, the talk was of St.
+  Peter's keys, the sacrament, or of the pope's supremacy, or of the points
+  in which a priest differed from a layman. Ostlers quarrelled over such
+  questions as they groomed their masters' horses; old women mourned across
+  the village shopboards of the evil days which were come or coming; while
+  every kind of strangest superstition, fairy stories and witch stories,
+  stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and to and
+  fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue of the general
+  imagination.<a name="NtA_305"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_305"><sup>305</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English
+  mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement,
+  the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant,
+  who to a man were devoted to the pope and to Queen Catherine, passed up
+  and down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster,
+  and the wrath of God; and mingling with their prophecies more than
+  dubious language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who
+  was opposing God and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the
+  sowers made haste to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there
+  danger in those wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose
+  habits rendered <!-- Page 191 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page191"></a>[pg 191]</span> them the ready-made missionaries of
+  sedition; whose swarthy features might hide a Spanish heart, and who in
+  telling fortunes might readily dictate policy.<a name="NtA_306"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_306"><sup>306</sup></a> Under the disguise of gipsies, the
+  emissaries of the emperor or the pope might pass unsuspected from the
+  Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families,
+  tying the links of the Catholic organisation: and in the later years of
+  the struggle, as the intrigues became more determined and a closer
+  connection was established between the Continental powers and the
+  disaffected English, it became necessary to increase the penalty against
+  these irregular wanderers from banishment to death. As yet, however, the
+  milder punishment was held sufficient, and even this was imperfectly
+  enforced.<a name="NtA_307"></a><a href="#Nt_307"><sup>307</sup></a> The
+  tendencies to treason were still incipient&mdash;they were tendencies
+  only, which had as yet shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future
+  was uncertain, the action of the government doubtful. The aim was rather
+  to calm down the excitement of the people, and to extinguish with as
+  little violence as possible the means by which it was fed.</p>
+
+  <p>Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape
+  in the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin
+  Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of
+  abstinence from food. This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after
+  having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his
+  mission, he was furnished with a priest's habit and a certificate under
+  leaden seal.<a name="NtA_308"></a><a href="#Nt_308"><sup>308</sup></a>
+  Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and loaded himself with
+  palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which Christ was scourged;
+  and from thence making his way to England, he appeared at Paul's Cross an
+  evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his divorce, denouncing
+  his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven. He was arrested and
+  thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed, fifty days
+  without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of the time
+  the government thought it <!-- Page 192 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page192"></a>[pg 192]</span> prudent to send him back to Scotland,
+  without further punishment.<a name="NtA_309"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_309"><sup>309</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her
+  reputation&mdash;the celebrated Nun of Kent&mdash;whose cell at
+  Canterbury, for some three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic
+  oracle, from which the orders of Heaven were communicated even to the
+  pope himself. This singular woman seems for a time to have held in her
+  hand the balance of the fortunes of England. By the papal party she was
+  universally believed to be inspired. Wolsey believed it, Warham believed
+  it, the bishops believed it, Queen Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas
+  More's philosophy was no protection to him against the same delusion; and
+  finally, she herself believed the world, when she found the world
+  believed in her. Her story is a psychological curiosity; and, interwoven
+  as it was with the underplots of the time, we cannot observe it too
+  accurately.</p>
+
+  <p>In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a
+  certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
+  who possessed an estate there. Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was
+  a country girl called Elizabeth Barton&mdash;a decent person, so far as
+  we can learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having
+  shown nothing unusual in her temperament. She was then attacked, however,
+  by some internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was
+  reduced into that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited
+  the phenomena known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or
+  clairvoyance. The scientific value of such phenomena is still
+  undetermined, but that they are not purely imaginary is generally agreed.
+  In the histories of all countries and of all times, we are familiar with
+  accounts of young women of bad health and irritable nerves, who have
+  exhibited at recurring periods certain unusual powers; and these
+  exhibitions have had especial attraction for superstitious persons,
+  whether they have believed in God, or in the devil, or in neither. A
+  further feature also uniform in such cases, has been that a small element
+  of truth may furnish a substructure for a considerable edifice of
+  falsehood; human credulity being always an insatiable faculty, and its
+  powers being unlimited when once the path of ordinary experience has been
+  transcended. We have seen in our own time to what excesses occurrences of
+  this kind may tempt the belief, even when defended with the armour of
+  science. In the sixteenth century, when demoniacal <!-- Page 193 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page193"></a>[pg 193]</span> possession was the
+  explanation usually received even of ordinary insanity, we can well
+  believe that the temptation must have been great to recognise
+  supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and that the
+  difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise must have
+  been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the subject
+  of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under the
+  influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their
+  natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make
+  too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a
+  weak girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable
+  to understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should
+  do so, we continue the story.</p>
+
+  <p>This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers
+  and many,<a name="NtA_310"></a><a href="#Nt_310"><sup>310</sup></a>
+  consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and said in
+  other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had heard
+  no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and
+  the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was,
+  that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil. The
+  archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so
+  much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard
+  Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The
+  girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been
+  brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar
+  to it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and
+  vice;"<a name="NtA_311"></a><a href="#Nt_311"><sup>311</sup></a> or, as
+  another account says, "she spake very godly certain things concerning the
+  seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."<a name="NtA_312"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_312"><sup>312</sup></a> This seemed satisfactory as to the
+  source of the inspiration. It was clearly not a devil that spoke words
+  against sin, and therefore, as there was no other alternative, it was
+  plain that God had visited her. Her powers were assuredly from heaven;
+  and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence of reasoning, that she held
+  some divine commission, of which her clairvoyance was the miracle in
+  attestation.</p>
+
+  <p>An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the
+  parish of Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and <!-- Page 194
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page194"></a>[pg 194]</span> rode to
+  Lambeth with the news to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story
+  having lost nothing of its marvel by the way,<a name="NtA_313"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_313"><sup>313</sup></a> the archbishop, who was fast sinking
+  into dotage, instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some
+  competent person to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he assured
+  Father Richard that "the speeches which she had spoken came of God; and
+  bidding him keep him diligent account of all her utterances, directed him
+  to inform her in his name that she was not to refuse or hide the goodness
+  and works of God." Cobb, the bailiff, being encouraged by such high
+  authority, would not keep any longer in his kitchen a prophetess with the
+  archbishop's imprimatur upon her; and as soon as the girl was
+  sufficiently recovered from her illness to leave her bed, he caused her
+  to sit at his own mess with his mistress and the parson.<a
+  name="NtA_314"></a><a href="#Nt_314"><sup>314</sup></a> The story spread
+  rapidly through the country; inquisitive foolish people came about her to
+  try her skill with questions; and her illness, as she subsequently
+  confessed, having then left her, and as only her reputation was
+  remaining, she bethought herself whether it might not be possible to
+  preserve it a little longer. "Perceiving herself to be much made of, to
+  be magnified and much set by, by reason of trifling words spoken
+  unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, she conceived in her mind that
+  having so good success, and furthermore from so small an occasion and
+  nothing to be esteemed, she might adventure further to enterprise and
+  essay what she could do, being in good advisement and remembrance."<a
+  name="NtA_315"></a><a href="#Nt_315"><sup>315</sup></a> Her fits no
+  longer recurred naturally, but she was able to reproduce either the
+  reality or the appearance of them; and she continued to improvise her
+  oracles with such ability as she could command, and with tolerable
+  success.</p>
+
+  <p>In this undertaking she was speedily provided with an efficient
+  coadjutor. The Catholic church had for some time been unproductive of
+  miracles, and as heresy was raising its head and attracting converts, so
+  opportune an occurrence was not to be allowed to sleep. The archbishop
+  sent his comptroller to the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury, with
+  directions that two monks whom he especially named, Doctor Bocking, the
+  cellarer, and Dan William Hadley, should go to Aldington to observe.<a
+  name="NtA_316"></a><a href="#Nt_316"><sup>316</sup></a> At first, not
+  knowing what was before them, both prior and monks were unwilling to
+  meddle with the matter.<a name="NtA_317"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_317"><sup>317</sup></a> They submitted, however, "from the
+  obedience which they <!-- Page 195 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page195"></a>[pg 195]</span> owed unto their lord;" and they had
+  soon reason to approve the correctness of the archbishop's judgment.
+  Bocking, selected no doubt from previous knowledge of his qualities, was
+  a man devoted to his order, and not over-scrupulous as to the means by
+  which he furthered the interests of it. With instinctive perception he
+  discovered material in Elizabeth Barton too rich to be allowed to waste
+  itself in a country village. Perhaps he partially himself believed in
+  her, but he was more anxious to ensure the belief of others, and he
+  therefore set himself to assist her inspiration towards more effective
+  utterance. Conversing with her in her intervals of quiet, he discovered
+  that she was wholly ignorant, and unprovided with any stock of mental or
+  imaginative furniture; and that consequently her prophecies were without
+  body, and too indefinite to be theologically available. This defect he
+  remedied by instructing her in the Catholic legends, and by acquainting
+  her with the revelations of St. Brigitt and St. Catherine of Sienna.<a
+  name="NtA_318"></a><a href="#Nt_318"><sup>318</sup></a> In these women
+  she found an enlarged reflection of herself; the details of their visions
+  enriched her imagery; and being provided with these fair examples, she
+  was able to shape herself into fuller resemblance with the traditionary
+  model of the saints.</p>
+
+  <p>As she became more proficient, Father Bocking extended his lessons to
+  the Protestant controversy, initiating his pupil into the mysteries of
+  justification, sacramental grace, and the power of the keys. The ready
+  damsel redelivered his instructions to the world in her moments of
+  possession; and the world discovered a fresh miracle in the inspired
+  wisdom of the untaught peasant. Lists of these pregnant sayings were
+  forwarded<a name="NtA_319"></a><a href="#Nt_319"><sup>319</sup></a>
+  regularly to the archbishop, which still possibly lie mouldering in the
+  Lambeth library, to be discovered by curious antiquaries. It is idle to
+  inquire how far she was yet conscious of her falsehood. Conscious wilful
+  deception lies far down the road in a course of this kind; and supported
+  by the assurance of an archbishop, she was in all likelihood deep in
+  lying before she actually knew it. Fanaticism and deceit are strangely
+  near relations to each other, and the deceiver is often the person first
+  deceived, and the last who is aware of the imposture.</p>
+
+  <p>The instructions of the Father had made her acquainted with many
+  stories of miraculous cures. The Catholic saints followed the type of the
+  apostles, and to heal diseases by supernatural means was a more orthodox
+  form of credential than <!-- Page 196 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page196"></a>[pg 196]</span> clairvoyance or second sight. Being
+  now cured of her real disorder, yet able to counterfeit the appearance of
+  it, she could find no difficulty in arranging in her own case a miracle
+  of the established kind, and so striking an incident would answer a
+  further end. In the parish was a chapel of the Virgin, which was a place
+  of pilgrimage; the pilgrims added something to the income of the priest;
+  and if, by a fresh demonstration of the Virgin's presence at the favoured
+  spot, the number of these pilgrims could be increased, they would add
+  more. For both reasons, therefore, the miracle was desired; and the
+  priest and the monk were agreed that any means were justifiable which
+  would encourage the devotion of the people.<a name="NtA_320"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_320"><sup>320</sup></a> Accordingly, the girl announced, in one
+  of her trances, that "she would never take health of her body till such
+  time as she had visited the image of our Lady" in that chapel. The Virgin
+  had herself appeared to her, she said, and had fixed a day for her
+  appearance there, and had promised that on her obedience she would
+  present herself in person and take away her disorder.<a
+  name="NtA_321"></a><a href="#Nt_321"><sup>321</sup></a> The day came; and
+  as (under the circumstances) there was no danger of failure, the holy
+  fathers had collected a vast concourse of people to witness the marvel.
+  The girl was conducted to the chapel by a procession of more than two
+  thousand persons, headed by the monk, the clergyman, and many other
+  religious persons, the whole multitude "singing the Litany and saying
+  divers psalms and orations by the way."</p>
+
+  <p>"And when she was brought thither<a name="NtA_322"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_322"><sup>322</sup></a> and laid before the image of our Lady,
+  her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes
+  being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly
+  deformed. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it
+  had been in a tonne, her lips not greatly moving: she all that while
+  continuing by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which
+  voice, when it told of anything of the joys of heaven, spake so sweetly
+  and so heavenly, that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof;
+  and contrarywise, when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and
+  terribly, that it put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many
+  things for the confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of
+  masses and confession, and many other such things. And after she had lyen
+  there a long time, she came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. So
+  this miracle was finished and solemnly <!-- Page 197 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page197"></a>[pg 197]</span> sung; and a book
+  was written of all the whole story thereof, and put into print; which
+  ever since that time was commonly sold, and went abroad among the
+  people."</p>
+
+  <p>The miracle successfully accomplished, the residence at Aldington was
+  no longer adapted for an acknowledged and favoured saint. The Virgin
+  informed her that she was to leave the bailiff and devote herself to her
+  exclusive service. She was to be Sister Elizabeth, and her especial
+  favourite; and Father Bocking was to be her spiritual father. The priory
+  of St. Sepulchre's, Canterbury, was chosen for the place of her
+  profession; and as soon as she was established in her cell, she became a
+  recognised priestess or prophetess, alternately communicating
+  revelations, or indulging the curiosity of foolish persons, and for both
+  services consenting to be paid. The church had by this time spread her
+  reputation through England. The book of her oracles, which extended soon
+  to a considerable volume, was shown by Archbishop Warham to the king, who
+  sent it to Sir Thomas More, desiring him to look at it. More's good sense
+  had not yet forsaken him; he pronounced it "a right poor production, such
+  as any simple woman might speak of her own wit;"<a name="NtA_323"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_323"><sup>323</sup></a> and Henry himself "esteemed the matter
+  as light as it afterwards proved lewd." But the world were less critical
+  censors: the saintly halo was round her head, and her most trivial words
+  caught the reflection of the glory, and seemed divine. "Divers and many,
+  as well great men of the realm as mean men, and many learned men, but
+  specially many religious men, had great confidence in her, and often
+  resorted to her."<a name="NtA_324"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_324"><sup>324</sup></a> They "consulted her much as to the will
+  of God touching the heresies and schisms in the realm;" and when the
+  dispute arose between the bishops and the House of Commons, they asked
+  her what judgment there was in heaven "on the taking away the liberties
+  of the church;" to which questions her answers, being dictated by her
+  confessor, were all which the most eager churchman could desire. Her
+  position becoming more and more determined, the eccentric periods of her
+  earlier visions subsided into regularity. Once a fortnight she was taken
+  up into heaven into the presence of God and the saints, with heavenly
+  lights, heavenly voices, heavenly melodies and joys. The place of ascent
+  was usually the priory chapel, to which it was essential, therefore, that
+  she should have continual access: and she was allowed, in consequence, to
+  pass <!-- Page 198 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page198"></a>[pg
+  198]</span> the dormitory door when she pleased&mdash;a privilege of
+  which the Statute uncharitably hints that she availed herself for a less
+  respectable purpose. But whatever was her secret conduct, her outward
+  behaviour was in full keeping with her language and profession. She
+  related many startling stories, not always of the most decent kind, of
+  the attempts which the devil made to lead her astray. The devil and the
+  angels were in fact alternate visitors to her cell, and the former, on
+  one occasion, burnt a mark upon her hand, which she exhibited publicly,
+  and to which the monks were in the habit of appealing, when there were
+  any signs of scepticism in the visitors to the priory. On the occasion of
+  these infernal visits, "great stinking smokes" were seen to issue from
+  her chamber, "savouring grievously through all the dorture;" with which,
+  however, it was suspected subsequently that a paper of brimstone and
+  assaf&#339;tida, found among her property after her arrest, had been in
+  some way connected. We smile at these stories, looking back at them with
+  eyes enlightened by scientific scepticism; but they furnished matter for
+  something else than smiles when the accounts of them could be exhibited
+  by the clergy as a living proof of the credibility of the Aurea
+  Legenda,&mdash;when the subject of them could be held up as a witness,
+  accredited by miracles, to the truth of the old faith, a living evidence
+  to shame the incredulity of the Protestant sectaries. She became a figure
+  of great and singular significance; a "wise woman," to whom persons of
+  the highest rank were not ashamed to have recourse to inquire of her the
+  will of God, and to ask the benefit of her intercessory prayers, for
+  which also they did not fail to pay at a rate commensurate with their
+  credulity.<a name="NtA_325"></a><a href="#Nt_325"><sup>325</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for
+  herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the
+  Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the queen, and
+  the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the
+  stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence
+  that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she
+  now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and <!-- Page
+  199 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page199"></a>[pg 199]</span>
+  audacity. Far from imitating the hesitation of the pope and the bishops,
+  she issued boldly, "in the name and by the authority of God," a solemn
+  prohibition against the king; threatening that, if he divorced his wife,
+  he should not "reign a month, but should die a villain's death."<a
+  name="NtA_326"></a><a href="#Nt_326"><sup>326</sup></a> Burdened with
+  this message, she forced herself into the presence of Henry himself;<a
+  name="NtA_327"></a><a href="#Nt_327"><sup>327</sup></a> and when she
+  failed to produce an effect upon Henry's obdurate scepticism, she turned
+  to the hesitating ecclesiastics, and roused their flagging spirits. The
+  archbishop bent under her denunciations, and at her earnest request
+  introduced her to Wolsey, then tottering on the edge of ruin.<a
+  name="NtA_328"></a><a href="#Nt_328"><sup>328</sup></a> He, too, in his
+  confusion and perplexity, was frightened, and doubted. She made herself
+  known to the papal ambassadors, and through them she took upon herself to
+  threaten Clement,<a name="NtA_329"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_329"><sup>329</sup></a> assuming, in virtue of her <!-- Page
+  200 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page200"></a>[pg 200]</span> divine
+  commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were
+  likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it
+  might be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a
+  similar career on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the
+  destined saviour of the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the
+  saviour of France.</p>
+
+  <p>It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she
+  were to be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have
+  been the reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history
+  of the true heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the
+  outline of her part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a
+  somnambulist peasant girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also,
+  might have seen in the achievement which had been already accomplished,
+  an earnest of what might be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too,
+  an impostor, we are bound to believe that she first imposed upon herself,
+  and that her wildest adventures into falsehood were compatible with a
+  belief that she was really and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a
+  conviction would have enabled her to play a part among kings and queens,
+  and so many of the ablest statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else
+  could have tempted her, on the failure of her prophecies, into the
+  desperate career of treason into which we are soon to see her
+  launched.</p>
+
+  <p>Her proceedings were known partially, but partially only, to the king;
+  and the king seems to have been the only person whose understanding was
+  proof against her influence. To him she appeared nothing worse than an
+  excited fanatic, and he allowed her to go her own way, as the best
+  escapement of a frenzy. Until parliament had declared it illegal to
+  discuss the marriage question further, he interfered with no one, and
+  therefore not with her. If her own word was to be taken, he even showed
+  her much personal kindness, having offered to make her an abbess, which
+  is difficult to believe, especially as she said that she had refused his
+  offer. She stated also that at the time of Lord Wiltshire's mission to
+  the emperor, the Countess of Wiltshire endeavoured to persuade her to
+  accept a place at the court, as a companion to Anne; which again is
+  unsupported by other evidence, and sounds improbable.<a
+  name="NtA_330"></a><a href="#Nt_330"><sup>330</sup></a> But it is plain,
+  that until she was found to be meditating treason, she experienced no
+  treatment from the government of which she had cause to complain; and
+  thus for the present we may leave <!-- Page 201 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page201"></a>[pg 201]</span> her pursuing her
+  machinations with the Canterbury friars, and return to the
+  parliament.</p>
+
+  <p>The second session had been longer than the first; it had commenced on
+  the 16th of January, and continued for ten weeks. On the 30th of March,
+  which was to be its last day, Sir Thomas More came down to the House of
+  Commons, and there read aloud to the members the decision of the various
+  universities on the papal power, and the judgment of European learning on
+  the general question of the king's divorce. The country, he said, was
+  much disturbed, and the king desired them each to report what they had
+  heard in their several counties and towns, "in order that all men might
+  perceive that he had not attempted this matter of his own will or
+  pleasure, as some strangers reported, but only for the discharge of his
+  conscience and surety of the succession of his realm."<a
+  name="NtA_331"></a><a href="#Nt_331"><sup>331</sup></a> This appears to
+  have been the first time that the subject was mentioned before
+  parliament, and the occasion was reasonably and sensibly chosen. The
+  clergy having possession of the pulpits, had used their opportunity to
+  spread a false impression where the ignorance of the people would allow
+  them to venture the experiment; the king having resolved to fall back
+  upon the support of his subjects, naturally desired the assistance of the
+  country gentlemen and the nobles to counteract the efforts of
+  disaffection, and provided them with accurate information in the simplest
+  manner which he could have chosen.</p>
+
+  <p>But the desire expressed by Henry was no more than an unnecessary
+  form, for as a body, the educated laity were as earnestly bent upon the
+  divorce as the king himself could be, and might have been trusted to use
+  all means by which to further it. The parliament was prorogued, but the
+  Lords, shortly after the separation, united with such of the Commons as
+  remained in London, to give a proof of their feeling by a voluntary
+  address to the pope. The meaning of this movement was not to be mistaken.
+  On one side, the Nun of Kent was threatening Clement, speaking, perhaps,
+  the feelings of the clergy and of all the women in England; on the other
+  side, the parliament thought well to threaten him, speaking for the great
+  body of English <i>men</i>, for all persons of substance and property,
+  who desired above all things peace and order and a secured
+  succession.</p>
+
+  <p>The language of this remarkable document<a name="NtA_332"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_332"><sup>332</sup></a> was as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<!-- Page 202 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page202"></a>[pg 202]</span>
+
+  <p>"To the Most Holy Lord our Lord and Father in Christ, Clement, by
+  Divine Providence the seventh of that name, we desire perpetual happiness
+  in our Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+  <p>"Most blessed Father, albeit the cause concerning the marriage of the
+  most invincible prince, our sovereign lord, the King of England and of
+  France, Defender of the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, does for sundry great
+  and weighty reasons require and demand the aid of your Holiness, that it
+  may be brought to that brief end and determination which we with so great
+  and earnest desire have expected, and which we have been contented
+  hitherto to expect, though so far vainly, at your Holiness's hands; we
+  have been unable, nevertheless, to keep longer silence herein, seeing
+  that this kingdom and the affairs of it are brought into so high peril
+  through the unseasonable delay of sentence. His Majesty, who is our head,
+  and by consequence the life of us all, and we through him as subject
+  members by a just union annexed to the head, have with great earnestness
+  entreated your Holiness for judgment; we have however entreated in vain:
+  we are by the greatness of our grief therefore forced separately and
+  distinctly by these our letters most humbly to demand a speedy
+  determination. There ought, indeed, to have been no need of this request
+  on our part. The justice of the cause itself, approved to be just by the
+  sentence of so many learned men, by the suffrage of the most famous
+  universities in England, France, and Italy, should have sufficed alone to
+  have induced your Holiness to confirm the sentence given by others;
+  especially when the interests of a king and kingdom are at stake, which
+  in so many ways have deserved well of the apostolic see. This we say
+  ought to have been motive sufficient with you, without need of petition
+  on our part; and if we had added our entreaties, it should have been but
+  as men yielding to a causeless anxiety, and wasting <!-- Page 203
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page203"></a>[pg 203]</span> words for
+  which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither the merit of the
+  cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have received, nor
+  the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have availed
+  anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from you what it is
+  your duty as a father to grant; the load of our grief, increased as it is
+  beyond measure by the remembrance of the past miseries and calamities
+  which have befallen this nation, makes vocal every member of our
+  commonwealth, and compels us by word and letter to utter our
+  complaints.</p>
+
+  <p>"For what a misfortune is this,&mdash;that a sentence which our own
+  two universities, which the University of Paris, and many other
+  universities in France, which men of the highest learning and probity
+  everywhere, at home and abroad, are ready to defend with word and pen,
+  that such sentence, we say, cannot be obtained from the apostolic see by
+  a prince to whom that see owes its present existence. Amidst the attacks
+  of so many and so powerful enemies, the King of England ever has stood by
+  that see with sword and pen, with voice and with authority. Yet he alone
+  is to reap no benefit from his labours. He has saved the papacy from
+  ruin, that others might enjoy the fruits of the life which he has
+  preserved for it. We see not what answer can be made to this; and
+  meanwhile we perceive a flood of miseries impending over the
+  commonwealth, threatening to bring back upon us the ancient controversy
+  on the succession, which had been extinguished only with so much blood
+  and slaughter. We have now a king most eminent for his virtues, and
+  reigning by unchallenged title, who will secure assured tranquillity to
+  the realm if he leave a son born of his body to succeed him. The sole
+  hope that such a son may be born to him lies in the being found for him
+  some lawful marriage into which he may enter; and to such marriage the
+  only obstacle lies with your Holiness. It cannot be until you shall
+  confirm the sentence of so many learned men on the character of his
+  former connection. This if you will not do, if you who ought to be our
+  father have determined to leave us as orphans, and to treat us as
+  castaways, we shall interpret such conduct to mean only that we are left
+  to care for ourselves, and to seek our remedy elsewhere. We do not desire
+  to be driven to this extremity, and therefore we beseech your Holiness
+  without further delay to assist his Majesty's just and reasonable
+  desires. We entreat you to confirm the judgment of these learned men; and
+  for the sake of that love and fatherly affection which your office <!--
+  Page 204 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page204"></a>[pg 204]</span>
+  requires you to show towards us, not to close your bowels of compassion
+  against us, your most dutiful, most loving, most obedient children. The
+  cause of his Majesty is the cause of each of ourselves; the head cannot
+  suffer, but the members must bear a part. We have all our common share in
+  the pain and in the injury; and as the remedy is wholly in the power of
+  your Holiness, so does the duty of your fatherly office require you to
+  administer it. If, however, your Holiness will not do this, or if you
+  choose longer to delay to do it, our condition hitherto will have been so
+  much the more wretched, that we have so long laboured fruitlessly and in
+  vain. But it will not be wholly irremediable; extreme remedies are ever
+  harsh of application; but he that is sick will by any means be rid of his
+  distemper; and there is hope in the exchange of miseries, when, if we
+  cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain a lesser evil, and trust that
+  time may enable us to endure it.</p>
+
+  <p>"These things we beseech your Holiness, in the name of our Lord Jesus
+  Christ, to consider with yourself. You profess that on earth you are His
+  vicar. Endeavour, then, to show yourself so to be, by pronouncing your
+  sentence to the glory and praise of God, and giving your sanction to that
+  truth which has been examined, approved, and after much deliberation
+  confirmed by the most learned men of all nations. We meanwhile will pray
+  the all-good God, whom we know by most sure testimony to be truth itself,
+  that He will deign so to inform and direct the counsels of your Holiness,
+  that we obtaining by your authority what is holy, just, and true, may be
+  spared from seeking it by other more painful methods."</p>
+
+  <p>Thus was the great crisis steadily maturing itself, and the cause by
+  this petition was made to rest upon its proper merits. The justification
+  of the demand for the divorce was the danger of civil war; and into civil
+  war the nation had no intention of permitting themselves to be drifted by
+  papal imbecility. Whatever was the origin of Henry's resolution, it was
+  acted out with calmness, and justified by sober reason; and backed by the
+  good sense of his lay subjects, he proceeded bravely, in spite of
+  excommunication, interdict, and the Nun of Kent, towards the object which
+  his country's interests, as well as his own, required.</p>
+
+  <p>It would have been well if his private behaviour as a man had been as
+  unobjectionable as his conduct as a sovereign. Hitherto he had remained
+  under the same roof with Queen Catherine, but with that indelicacy which
+  was the singular blemish on his character, he had maintained her rival in
+  the same household <!-- Page 205 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page205"></a>[pg 205]</span> with the state of a princess,<a
+  name="NtA_333"></a><a href="#Nt_333"><sup>333</sup></a> and needlessly
+  wounded feelings which he was bound to have spared to the utmost which
+  his duty permitted. The circumstances of the case, if they were known to
+  us, though they could never excuse such a proceeding, might perhaps
+  partially palliate it. Catherine was harsh and offensive, and it was by
+  her own determination, and not by Henry's desire, that she was unprovided
+  with an establishment elsewhere. There lay, moreover, as I have said,
+  behind the scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now
+  is happily concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us
+  without the clue to these painful doings. Indelicate, however, the
+  position given to Anne Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate
+  in Henry to grant such a position, what shall we say of the lady who
+  consented, in the presence of her sovereign and mistress, to wear such
+  ignominious splendour?</p>
+
+  <p>But in these most offensive relations there was henceforth to be a
+  change. In June, 1531, two months after the prorogation of parliament, a
+  deputation of the privy council went to the apartments of Catherine at
+  Greenwich, and laying before her the papers which had been read by Sir
+  Thomas More to the two Houses, demanded formally, whether, for the sake
+  of the country, and for the quiet of the king's conscience, she would
+  withdraw her appeal to Rome, and submit to an arbitration in the kingdom.
+  It was, probably, but an official request, proposed without expectation
+  that she would yield. After rejecting a similar entreaty from the pope
+  himself, she was not likely, inflexible as she had ever been, to yield
+  when the pope had admitted her appeal, and the emperor, victorious
+  through Europe, had promised her support. She refused, of course, like
+  herself, proudly, resolutely, gallantly, and not without the scorn which
+  she was entitled to feel. The nation had no claims upon her, and "for the
+  king's conscience," she answered, "I pray God send his Grace good quiet
+  therein, and tell him I say I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully
+  married; and in that point I will abide till the court of Rome, which was
+  privy to the beginning, <!-- Page 206 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page206"></a>[pg 206]</span> hath made thereof a determination and
+  a final ending."<a name="NtA_334"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_334"><sup>334</sup></a> The learned councillors retired with
+  their answer. A more passive resistance would have been more dignified;
+  but Catherine was a queen, and a queen she chose to be; and in defence of
+  her own high honour, and of her daughter's, by no act of hers would she
+  abate one tittle of her dignity, or cease to assert her claim to it. Her
+  reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request was
+  only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency,
+  and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the
+  court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the
+  king to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw
+  her again. She was removed to the More, a house in Hertfordshire, which
+  had been originally built by George Neville, Archbishop of York, and had
+  belonged to Wolsey, who had maintained it with his usual splendour.<a
+  name="NtA_335"></a><a href="#Nt_335"><sup>335</sup></a> Once more an
+  attempt was made to persuade her to submit; but with no better result,
+  and a formal establishment was then provided for her at Ampthill, a large
+  place belonging to Henry not far from Dunstable. There at least she was
+  her own mistress, surrounded by her own friends, who were true to her as
+  queen, and she attracted to her side from all parts of England those whom
+  sympathy or policy attached to her cause. The court, though keeping a
+  partial surveillance over her, did not dare to restrict her liberty; and
+  as the measures against the church became more stringent, and a
+  separation from the papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus
+  of a powerful political party. Her injuries had deprived the king and the
+  nation of a right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to
+  England. Her allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was
+  the subject of the pope; and this dubious position gave her an advantage
+  which she was not slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who
+  adhered to the old faith, and to whom the measures of the government
+  appeared a sacrilege. Through herself, or through her secretaries and
+  confessors, a correspondence was conducted which brought the courts of
+  the continent into connection with the various disaffected parties in
+  England, with the Nun of Kent and her friars, with the Poles, the
+  Nevilles, the Courtenays, and all the <!-- Page 207 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page207"></a>[pg 207]</span> remaining faction
+  of the White Rose. And so first the great party of sedition began to
+  shape itself, which for sixty years, except in the shortlived interlude
+  of its triumph under Catherine's daughter, held the nation on the edge of
+  civil war. We shall see this faction slowly and steadily organising
+  itself, starting from scattered and small beginnings, till at length it
+  overspread all England and Ireland and Scotland, exploding from time to
+  time in abortive insurrections, yet ever held in check by the tact and
+  firmness of the government, and by the inherent loyalty of the English to
+  the land of their birth. There was a proverb then current that "the
+  treasons of England should never cease."<a name="NtA_336"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_336"><sup>336</sup></a> It was perhaps fortunate that the papal
+  cause was the cause of a foreign power, and could only be defended by a
+  betrayal of the independence of the country. In Scotland and Ireland the
+  insurrectionists were more successful, being supported in either instance
+  by the national feeling. But the strength of Scotland had been broken at
+  Flodden; and Ireland, though hating "the Saxons" with her whole heart,
+  was far off and divided. The true danger was at home; and when the extent
+  and nature of it is fairly known and weighed, we shall understand better
+  what is called the "tyranny" of Henry VIII. and of Elizabeth; and rather
+  admire the judgment than condemn the resolution which steered the country
+  safe among those dangerous shoals. Elizabeth's position is more familiar
+  to us, and is more reasonably appreciated because the danger was more
+  palpable. Henry has been hardly judged because he trampled down the
+  smouldering fire, and never allowed it to assume the form which would
+  have justified him with the foolish and the unthinking. Once and once
+  only the flame blazed out; but it was checked on the instant, and
+  therefore it has been slighted and forgotten. But with despatches before
+  his eyes, in which Charles V. was offering James of Scotland the hand of
+  the Princess Mary, with the title for himself of Prince of England and
+  Duke of York<a name="NtA_337"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_337"><sup>337</sup></a>&mdash;with Ireland, as we shall
+  speedily see it, in flame from end to end, and Dublin castle the one spot
+  left <!-- Page 208 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page208"></a>[pg
+  208]</span> within the island on which the banner of St. George still
+  floated&mdash;with a corps of friars in hair shirts and chains, who are
+  also soon to be introduced to us, and an inspired prophetess at their
+  head preaching rebellion in the name of God&mdash;with his daughter, and
+  his daughter's mother in league against him, some forty thousand clergy
+  to be coerced into honest dealing, and the succession to the crown
+  floating in uncertainty&mdash;finally, with excommunication hanging over
+  himself, and at length falling, and his deposition pronounced, Henry, we
+  may be sure, had no easy time of it, and no common work to accomplish;
+  and all these things ought to be present before our minds, as they were
+  present before his mind, if we would see him as he was, and judge him as
+  we would be judged ourselves.</p>
+
+  <p>Leaving disaffection to mature itself, we return to the struggle
+  between the House of Commons and the bishops, which recommenced in the
+  following winter; first pausing to notice a clerical interlude of some
+  illustrative importance which took place in the close of the summer. The
+  clergy, as we saw, were relieved of their premunire on engaging to pay
+  118,000 pounds within five years. They were punished for their general
+  offences; the formal offence for which they were condemned being one
+  which could not fairly be considered an offence at all. When they came to
+  discuss therefore the manner in which the money was to be levied, they
+  naturally quarrelled among themselves as to where the burden of the fine
+  should fairly rest, and a little scene has been preserved to us by Hall,
+  through which, with momentary distinctness, we can look in upon those
+  poor men in their perplexity. The bishops had settled among themselves
+  that each diocese should make its own arrangements; and some of these
+  great persons intended to spare their own shoulders to the utmost decent
+  extremity. With this object, Stokesley, Bishop of London, who was just
+  then very busy burning heretics, and therefore in bad odour with the
+  people, resolved to call a meeting of five or six of his clergy, on whom
+  he could depend; and passing quietly with their assistance such
+  resolutions as seemed convenient, to avoid in this way the more doubtful
+  expedient of a large assembly.</p>
+
+  <p>The necessary intimations were given, and the meeting was to be held
+  on the 1st of September, in the Chapter-house of St. Paul's. The bishop
+  arrived at the time appointed, but unhappily <!-- Page 209 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page209"></a>[pg 209]</span> for his hopes, not
+  only the chosen six, but with them six hundred of the clergy of
+  Middlesex, accompanied by a mob of the London citizens, all gathered in a
+  crowd at the Chapter-house door, and clamouring to be admitted.</p>
+
+  <p>The bishop, trusting in the strength of the chains and bolts, and
+  still hoping to manage the affair officially, sent out a list of persons
+  who might be allowed to take part in the proceedings, and these with
+  difficulty made their way to the entrance. A rush was made by the others
+  as they were going in, and there was a scuffle, which ended for the
+  moment in the victory of the officials: but the triumph was of brief
+  duration; the excluded clergy were now encouraged by the people; they
+  returned vigorously to the attack, broke down the doors, "struck the
+  bishop's officers over the face," and the whole crowd, priests and laity,
+  rushed together, storming and shouting, into the Chapter-house. The scene
+  may be easily imagined; dust flying, gowns torn, heads broken, well-fed
+  faces in the hot September weather steaming with anger and exertion, and
+  every voice in loudest outcry. At length the clamour was partially
+  subdued, and the bishop, beautifully equal to the emergency, arose bland
+  and persuasive.</p>
+
+  <p>"My brethren," he said, "I marvel not a little why ye be so heady. Ye
+  know not what shall be said to you, therefore I pray you keep silence,
+  and hear me patiently. My friends, ye all know that we be men, frail of
+  condition and no angels; and by frailty and lack of wisdom we have
+  misdemeaned ourselves towards the king our sovereign lord and his laws;
+  so that all we of the clergy were in premunire, by reason whereof all our
+  promotions, lands, goods, and chattels were to him forfeit, and our
+  bodies ready to be imprisoned. Yet his Grace, moved with pity and
+  compassion, demanded of us what we could say why he should not extend his
+  laws upon us.</p>
+
+  <p>"Then the fathers of the clergy humbly besought his Grace for mercy,
+  to whom he answered he was ever inclined to mercy. Then for all our great
+  offences we had but little penance; for when he might, by the rigour of
+  his laws, have taken all our livelihoods, he was contented with one
+  hundred thousand pounds, to be paid in five years. And though this sum
+  may be more than we may easily bear, yet, by the rigour of his law, we
+  should have borne the whole burden; whereupon, my brethren, I charitably
+  exhort you to bear your parts of your livelihood and salary towards
+  payment of this sum granted."<a name="NtA_338"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_338"><sup>338</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 210 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page210"></a>[pg 210]</span>
+
+  <p>The ingenuity of this address deserved all praise; but the beauty of
+  the form was insufficient to disguise the inconclusiveness of the
+  reasoning. It confessed an offence which the hearers knew to be none; the
+  true provocation which had led to the penalty&mdash;the unjust extortion
+  of the high church officials&mdash;was ignored. The crowd laughed and
+  hooted. The clergy fiercely tightened their purse-strings, and the bishop
+  was heard out with hardly restrained indignation. "My lord," it was
+  shortly answered by one of them, "twenty nobles a year is but a bare
+  living for a priest. Victual and all else is now so dear that poverty
+  enforceth us to say nay. Besides that, my lord, we never meddled with the
+  cardinal's faculties. Let the bishops and abbots which have offended
+  pay." Loud clamour followed and shouts of applause. The bishop's officers
+  gave the priests high words. The priests threw back the taunts as they
+  came; and the London citizens, delighting in the scandalous quarrel,
+  hounded on the opposition. From words they passed to blows; the bedell
+  and vergers tried to keep order, but "were buffeted and stricken,"<a
+  name="NtA_339"></a><a href="#Nt_339"><sup>339</sup></a> and the meeting
+  broke up in wild uproar and confusion. For this matter five of the lay
+  crowd and fifteen London curates were sent to the Tower by Sir Thomas
+  More; but the undignified man&#339;uvre had failed, and the fruit of it
+  was but fresh disgrace. United, the clergy might have defied the king and
+  the parliament; but in the race of selfishness the bishops and high
+  dignitaries had cared only for their own advantage. They had left the
+  poorer members of their order with no interest in common with that of
+  their superiors, beyond the shield which the courts consented to extend
+  over moral delinquency; and in the hour of danger they found themselves
+  left naked and alone to bear the storm as they were able.</p>
+
+  <p>This incident, and it was perhaps but one of many, is not likely to
+  have softened the disposition of the Commons, or induced them to
+  entertain more respectfully the bishops' own estimate of their
+  privileges. The convocation and the parliament met simultaneously, on the
+  15th of January, and the conflict, which had been for two years in
+  abeyance, recommenced. The initial measure was taken by convocation, and
+  this body showed a spirit still unsubdued, and a resolution to fight in
+  their own feebly tyrannical manner to the last. A gentleman in
+  Gloucestershire had lately died, by name Tracy. In his last testament he
+  had bequeathed his soul to God through the <!-- Page 211 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page211"></a>[pg 211]</span> mercies of Christ,
+  declining the mediatorial offices of the saints; and leaving no money to
+  be expended in masses.<a name="NtA_340"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_340"><sup>340</sup></a> Such notorious heresy could not be
+  passed over with impunity, and the first step of the assembled clergy<a
+  name="NtA_341"></a><a href="#Nt_341"><sup>341</sup></a> was to issue a
+  commission to raise the body and burn it. Their audacity displayed at
+  once the power which they possessed, and the temper in which they were
+  disposed to use it. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have been
+  responsible for this monstrous order, which unfortunately was carried
+  into execution before Henry had time to interfere.<a
+  name="NtA_342"></a><a href="#Nt_342"><sup>342</sup></a> It was the last
+  act of the kind, however, in which he was permitted to indulge, and the
+  legislature made haste to take away such authority from hands so
+  incompetent to use it. From their debates upon burning the dead Tracy,
+  convocation were proceeding to discuss the possibility of burning the
+  living Latimer,<a name="NtA_343"></a><a href="#Nt_343"><sup>343</sup></a>
+  when they were recalled to their senses by a summons to prepare some more
+  reasonable answer than that which the bishops had made for them on their
+  privilege of making laws. Twenty more years of work were to be lived by
+  Latimer before they were to burn him, and their own delinquencies were
+  for the present of a more pressing nature. The House of Commons at the
+  same time proceeded to frame necessary bills on the other points of their
+  complaint.</p>
+
+  <p>The first act upon the roll recalls the Constitutions of Clarendon and
+  the famous quarrel between Becket and the Crown. When Catholicism was a
+  living belief, when ordained priests were held really and truly to
+  possess those awful powers which the mystery of transubstantiation
+  assigns to them, they were acknowledged by common consent to be an order
+  apart from the rest of mankind, and being spiritual men, to be amenable
+  only to spiritual jurisdiction. It was not intended that, if they
+  committed crimes, they should escape the retributive consequences of
+  those crimes: offenders against the law might (originally at least) be
+  degraded, if the bishops thought good, and stripped of their commission
+  be delivered thus to the secular arm. But the more appropriate punishment
+  for such persons was of a more awful kind, proportioned to the magnitude
+  of the fault; and was conveyed or held to be conveyed in the infliction
+  of the spiritual death of excommunication. Excommunication <!-- Page 212
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page212"></a>[pg 212]</span> was, in
+  real earnest, the death of the soul, at a time when communion with the
+  church was the only means by which the soul could be made partaker of the
+  divine life; and it was a noble thing to believe that there was something
+  worse for a man than legal penalties on his person or on his mortal body;
+  it was beautiful to recognise in an active living form, that the heaviest
+  ill which could befall a man was to be cut off from God. But it is only
+  for periods that humanity can endure the atmosphere of these high
+  altitudes of morality. The early Christians attempted a community of
+  goods, but they were unequal to it for more than a generation. The
+  discipline of Catholicism was assisted by superstition,&mdash;it remained
+  vigorous for many hundreds of years, but it languished at last; and
+  although there was so great virtue in a living idea, that its forms
+  preserved the reverence of mankind unabated, even when in their effect
+  and working they had become as evil as they once were noble; yet
+  reverence and endurance were at length exhausted, and these forms were to
+  submit to alteration in conformity with the altered nature of the persons
+  whom they affected.</p>
+
+  <p>I have already alluded to the abuse of "benefit of clergy;"<a
+  name="NtA_344"></a><a href="#Nt_344"><sup>344</sup></a> we have arrived
+  at the first of those many steps by which at length it was finally put
+  away,&mdash;a step which did not, however, as yet approach the heart of
+  the evil, but touched only its extreme outworks. The clergy had
+  monopolised the learning of the middle ages, and few persons external to
+  their body being able to read or write, their privileges became
+  co-extensive, as I above stated, with these acquirements. The exemption
+  from secular jurisdiction, which they obtained in virtue of their sacred
+  character, had been used as a protection in villainy for every scoundrel
+  who could write his name. Under this plea, felons of the worst kind might
+  claim, till this time, to be taken out of the hands of the law judges,
+  and to be tried at the bishops' tribunals; and at these tribunals, such a
+  monstrous solecism had Catholicism become, the payment of money was ever
+  welcomed as the ready expiation of crime. To prevent the escape of the
+  Bishop of Rochester's cook, who was a "clerk," parliament had specially
+  interfered, and sentenced him without trial, by attainder. They now
+  passed a general act, remarkable alike in what it provided as in what,
+  for the present, it omitted to provide.<a name="NtA_345"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_345"><sup>345</sup></a> The preamble related the nature of the
+  evil which was to be remedied, and the historical position of it. It
+  dwelt <!-- Page 213 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page213"></a>[pg
+  213]</span> upon the assurances which had been given again and again by
+  the ordinaries that their privileges should not be abused; but these
+  promises had been broken as often as they had been made; so that
+  "continually manifest thieves and murderers, indicted and found guilty of
+  their misdeeds by good and substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the
+  usages of the common lawes of the land, delivered to the ordinaries as
+  clerks convict, were speedily and hastily delivered and set at large by
+  the ministers of the said ordinaries for corruption and lucre; or else
+  because the ordinaries enclaiming such offenders by the liberties of the
+  church would in no wise take the charges in safe keeping of them, but did
+  suffer them to make their purgation by such as nothing knew of their
+  misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and make void the good and
+  provable trial which was used against such offenders by the king's law;
+  to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such offenders, if
+  the King's Highness by his authority royal put not speedy remedy
+  thereto."</p>
+
+  <p>To provide such necessary remedy, it was enacted that thenceforward no
+  person under the degree of subdeacon, if guilty of felony, should be
+  allowed to plead "his clergy" any more, but should be proceeded against
+  by the ordinary law. So far it was possible to go&mdash;an enormous step
+  if we think of what the evil had been; and in such matters to make a
+  beginning was the true difficulty&mdash;it was the logical premise from
+  which the conclusion could not choose but follow. Yet such was the
+  mystical sacredness which clung about the ordained clergy, that their
+  patent profligacy had not yet destroyed it&mdash;a priest might still
+  commit a murder, and the profane hand of the law might not reach to
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>The measure, however, if imperfect, was excellent in its degree; and
+  when this had been accomplished, the House proceeded next to deal with
+  the Arches Court&mdash;the one enormous grievance of the time. The
+  petition of the Commons has already exhibited the condition of this
+  institution; but the act by which the power of it was limited added more
+  than one particular to what had been previously stated, and the first
+  twenty lines of the statute which was now passed<a name="NtA_346"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_346"><sup>346</sup></a> may be recommended to the consideration
+  of the modern censors of the Reformation. The framer of the resolution
+  was no bad friend to the bishops, if they had possessed the faculty of
+  knowing who their true friends were, for the statement of complaint was
+  limited, mild, and moderate. Again, as with the "benefit of <!-- Page 214
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page214"></a>[pg 214]</span> clergy,"
+  the real ground for surprise is that any fraction of a system so
+  indefensible should have been permitted to continue. The courts were
+  nothing else but the vicious sources of unjust revenue; and with the
+  opportunity so fairly offered, it is strange indeed that they were not
+  swept utterly away. But sweeping measures have never found favour in
+  England. There has ever been in English legislation, even when most
+  reforming, that temperate spirit of equity which has refused to visit the
+  sins of centuries upon a single generation. The statute limited its
+  accusations to the points which it was designed to correct, and touched
+  these with a hand firmly gentle.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whereas great numbers of the king's subjects," says the preamble, "as
+  well men, wives, servants, or others dwelling in divers dioceses of the
+  realm of England and Wales, heretofore have been at many times called by
+  citations and other processes compulsory to appear in the Arches,
+  Audience, and other high Courts of the archbishops of this realm, far
+  from and out of the dioceses where such persons are inhabitant and
+  dwelling; and many times to answer to surmised and feigned causes and
+  matters, which have been sued more for vexation and malice than from any
+  just cause of suit; and when certificate hath been made by the sumners,
+  apparitors, or any such light litterate persons, that the party against
+  whom such citations have been awarded hath been cited or summoned; and
+  thereupon the same party so certified to be cited or summoned hath not
+  appeared according to the certificate, the same party therefore hath been
+  excommunicated, or, at the least, suspended from all divine service; and
+  thereupon, before that he or she could be absolved, hath been compelled,
+  not only to pay the fees of the court whereunto he or she was so called,
+  amounting to the sum of two shillings, or twenty pence at the least; but
+  also to pay to the sumner, for every mile distant from the place where he
+  or she then dwelled unto the same court whereunto he or she was summoned
+  to appear, twopence; to the great charge and impoverishment of the king's
+  subjects, and to the great occasion of misbehaviour of wives, women, and
+  servants, and to the great impairment and diminution of their good names
+  and honesties&mdash;be it enacted&mdash;&mdash;" We ask
+  what?&mdash;looking with impatience for some large measure to follow
+  these solemn accusations; and we find parliament contenting itself with
+  forbidding the bishops, under heavy penalties, to cite any man out of his
+  own diocese, except for specified causes (heresy being one of them), and
+  with limiting the fees which were to be taken by <!-- Page 215 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page215"></a>[pg 215]</span> the officers of the
+  courts.<a name="NtA_347"></a><a href="#Nt_347"><sup>347</sup></a> It
+  could hardly be said that in this parliament there was any bitter spirit
+  against the church. This act showed only mild forbearance and complacent
+  endurance of all tolerable evil.</p>
+
+  <p>Another serious matter was dealt with in the same moderate temper. The
+  Mortmain Act had prohibited the church corporations from further
+  absorbing the lands; but the Mortmain Act was evaded in detail, the
+  clergy using their influence to induce persons on their deathbeds to
+  leave estates to provide a priest for ever "to sing for their souls." The
+  arrangement was convenient possibly for both parties, or if not for both,
+  certainly for one; but to tie up lands for ever for a special service was
+  not to the advantage of the country; and it was held unjust to allow a
+  man a perpetual power over the disposition of property to atone for the
+  iniquities of his life. But the privilege was not abolished altogether;
+  it was submitted only to reasonable limitation. Men might still burden
+  their lands to find a priest for twenty years. After twenty years the
+  lands were to relapse for the service of the living, and sinners were
+  expected in equity to bear the consequence in their own persons of such
+  offences as remained after that time unexpiated.<a name="NtA_348"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_348"><sup>348</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus, in two sessions, the most flagrant of the abuses first
+  complained of were in a fair way of being remedied. The exorbitant
+  charges for mortuaries, probate duties, legacy duties, the illegal
+  exactions for the sacraments, the worst injustices of the ecclesiastical
+  courts, the non-residence, pluralities, neglect of cures, the secular
+  occupations and extravagant privileges of the clergy, were either
+  terminated or brought within bounds. There remained yet to be disposed of
+  the legislative power of the convocation and the tyrannical prosecutions
+  for heresy. The last of these was not yet ripe for settlement; the former
+  was under reconsideration by the convocation itself, which at length was
+  arriving at a truer conception of its position; and this question was not
+  therefore to be dealt with by the legislature.</p>
+
+  <p>One more important measure, however, was passed by parliament <!--
+  Page 216 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page216"></a>[pg 216]</span>
+  before it separated, and it is noticeable as the first step which was
+  taken in the momentous direction of a breach with the See of Rome. A
+  practice had existed for some hundreds of years in all the churches of
+  Europe, that bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees,
+  should transmit to the pope, on receiving their bulls of investment, one
+  year's income from their new preferments. It was called the payment of
+  annates, or firstfruits, and had originated in the time of the crusades,
+  as a means of providing a fund for the holy wars. Once established, it
+  had settled into custom,<a name="NtA_349"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_349"><sup>349</sup></a> and was one of the chief resources of
+  the papal revenue. From England alone, as much as 160,000 pounds had been
+  paid out of the country in fifty years;<a name="NtA_350"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_350"><sup>350</sup></a> and the impost was alike oppressive to
+  individuals and injurious to the state. Men were appointed to bishopricks
+  frequently at an advanced age, and dying, as they often did, within two
+  or three years of their nomination, their elevation had sometimes
+  involved their families and friends in debt and embarrassment;<a
+  name="NtA_351"></a><a href="#Nt_351"><sup>351</sup></a> while the annual
+  export of so much bullion was a serious evil at a time when the precious
+  metals formed the only currency, and were so difficult to obtain. Before
+  a quarrel with the court of Rome had been thought of as a possible
+  contingency, the king had laboured with the pope to terminate the system
+  by some equitable composition; and subsequently cessation of payment had
+  been mentioned more than once in connection with the threats of a
+  separation. The pope had made light of these threats, believing them to
+  be no more than words; there was an opportunity, therefore, of proving
+  that the English government was really in earnest, in a manner which
+  would touch him in a point where he was naturally sensitive, and would
+  show him at the same time that he could not wholly count on the
+  attachment even of the clergy themselves. For, in fact, the church itself
+  was fast disintegrating, and the allegiance even of the bishops and the
+  secular clergy to Rome had begun to waver: they had a stronger faith in
+  their own privileges than in the union of Christendom; and if they could
+  purchase the continuance of the former at the price of a quarrel with the
+  <!-- Page 217 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page217"></a>[pg
+  217]</span> pope, some among them were not disinclined to venture the
+  alternative. The Bishop of Rochester held aloof from such tendencies, and
+  Warham, though he signed the address of the House of Lords to the pope,
+  regretted the weakness to which he had yielded: but in the other prelates
+  there was little seriousness of conviction; and the constitution of the
+  bench had been affected also by the preferment of Gardiner and Edward Lee
+  to two of the sees made vacant by the death of Wolsey. Both these men had
+  been active agents in the prosecution of the divorce; and Gardiner,
+  followed at a distance by the other, had shaped out, as the pope grew
+  more intractable, the famous notion that the English church could and
+  should subsist as a separate communion, independent of foreign control,
+  self governed, self organised, and at the same time adhering without
+  variation to Catholic doctrine. This principle (if we may so abuse the
+  word) shot rapidly into popularity: a party formed about it strong in
+  parliament, strong in convocation, strong out of doors among the country
+  gentlemen and the higher clergy&mdash;a respectable, wealthy, powerful
+  body, trading upon a solecism, but not the less, therefore, devoted to
+  its maintenance, and in their artificial horror of being identified with
+  heresy, the most relentless persecutors of the Protestants. This party,
+  unreal as they were, and influential perhaps in virtue of their
+  unreality, became for the moment the arbiters of the Church of England;
+  and the bishops belonging to it, and each rising ecclesiastic who hoped
+  to be a bishop, welcomed the resistance of the annates as an opportunity
+  for a demonstration of their strength. On this question, with a fair show
+  of justice, they could at once relieve themselves of a burden which
+  pressed upon their purses, and as they supposed, gratify the king. The
+  conservatives were still numerically the strongest, and for a time
+  remained in their allegiance to the Papacy,<a name="NtA_352"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_352"><sup>352</sup></a> but their convictions were too feeble
+  <!-- Page 218 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page218"></a>[pg
+  218]</span> to resist the influence brought to bear upon them, and when
+  Parliament re-assembled after the Easter recess, the two Houses of
+  Convocation presented an address to the crown for the abolition of the
+  impost, and with it of all other exactions, direct and
+  indirect,&mdash;the indulgences, dispensations, delegacies, and the
+  thousand similar forms and processes by which the privileges of the
+  Church of England were abridged for the benefit of the Church of Rome,
+  and weighty injury of purse inflicted both on the clergy and the laity.<a
+  name="NtA_353"></a><a href="#Nt_353"><sup>353</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>That they contemplated a conclusive revolt from Rome as a consequence
+  of the refusal to pay annates, appears positively in the close of their
+  address: "May it please your Grace," they concluded, after detailing
+  their occasions for complaint,&mdash;"may it please your Grace to cause
+  the said unjust exactions to cease, and to be foredone for ever by act of
+  your high Court of Parliament; and in case the pope will make process
+  against this realm for the attaining those annates, or else will retain
+  bishops' bulls till the annates be paid; forasmuch as the exaction of the
+  said annates is against the law of God and the pope's own laws,
+  forbidding the buying or selling of spiritual gifts or promotions; and
+  forasmuch as all good Christian men be more bound to obey God than any
+  man; and forasmuch as St. Paul willeth us to withdraw from all such as
+  walk inordinately; may it please your Highness to ordain in this present
+  parliament that the obedience of your Highness and of the people be
+  withdrawn from the See of Rome."<a name="NtA_354"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_354"><sup>354</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It was perhaps cruel to compel the clergy to be the first to mention
+  separation&mdash;or the language may have been furnished by the Erastian
+  party in the Church, who hoped to gratify the King by it, and save the
+  annates for themselves; but there was no intention, if the battle was
+  really to be fought, of decorating the clergy with the spoils. The bill
+  was passed, but passed conditionally, leaving power to the Crown if the
+  pope would consent to a compromise of settling the question by a
+  composition. There was a Papal party in the House of Commons whose
+  opposition had perhaps to be considered,<a name="NtA_355"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_355"><sup>355</sup></a> and the annates were left suspended
+  before Clement at once as a menace and a bribe.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 219 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page219"></a>[pg 219]</span>
+
+  <p>"Forasmuch," concluded the statute, "as the King's Highness and this
+  his high Court of Parliament neither have nor do intend in this or any
+  other like cause any manner of extremity or violence, before gentle
+  courtesy and friendly ways and means be first approved and attempted, and
+  without a very great urgent cause and occasion given to the contrary; but
+  principally coveting to disburden this Realm of the said great exactions
+  and intolerable charges of annates and firstfruits: [the said Court of
+  Parliament] have therefore thought convenient to commit the final order
+  and determination of the premises unto the King's Highness, so that if it
+  may seem to his high wisdom and most prudent discretion meet to move the
+  Pope's Holiness and the Court of Rome, amicably, charitably, and
+  reasonably, to compound either to extinct the said annates, or by some
+  friendly, loving, and tolerable composition to moderate the same in such
+  way as may be by this his Realm easily borne and sustained, then those
+  ways of composition once taken shall stand in the strength, force, and
+  effect of a law."<a name="NtA_356"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_356"><sup>356</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The business of the session was closing. It remained to receive the
+  reply of convocation on the limitation of its powers. The convocation,
+  presuming, perhaps, upon its concessions on the annates question, and
+  untamed by the premunire, had framed their answer in the same spirit
+  which had been previously exhibited by the bishops. They had re-asserted
+  their claims as resting on divine authority, and had declined to
+  acknowledge the right of any secular power to restrain or meddle with
+  them.<a name="NtA_357"></a><a href="#Nt_357"><sup>357</sup></a> The
+  second answer, as may be supposed, fared no better than the first. It was
+  returned with a peremptory demand for submission; and taught by
+  experience the uselessness of further opposition, the clergy with a bad
+  grace complied. The form was again drawn by the bishops, and it is
+  amusing to trace the workings of their humbled spirit in their reluctant
+  descent from their high estate. They still laboured to protect their
+  dignity in the terms of their concession:&mdash;</p>
+
+<!-- Page 220 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page220"></a>[pg 220]</span>
+
+  <p>"As concerning such constitutions and ordinances provincial," they
+  wrote, "as shall be made hereafter by your most humble subjects, we
+  having our special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom,
+  your princely goodness, and fervent zeal for the promotion of God's
+  honour and Christian religion, and specially in your incomparable
+  learning far exceeding in our judgment the learning of all other kings
+  and princes that we have read of; and not doubting but that the same
+  should still continue and daily increase in your Majesty; do offer and
+  promise here unto the same, that from henceforth we shall forbear to
+  enact, promulge, or put in execution any such constitutions and
+  ordinances so by us to be made in time coming, unless your Highness by
+  your Royal assent shall license us to make, promulge, and execute such
+  constitutions, and the same so made be approved by your Highness's
+  authority.</p>
+
+  <p>"And whereas your Highness's most honourable Commons do pretend that
+  divers of the constitutions provincial, which have been heretofore
+  enacted, be not only much prejudicial to your Highness's prerogative
+  royal, but be also overmuch onerous to your said Commons, we, your most
+  humble servants for the consideration before said, be contented to refer
+  all the said constitutions to the judgment of your Grace only. And
+  whatsoever of the same shall finally be found prejudicial and overmuch
+  onerous as is pretended, we offer and promise your Highness to moderate
+  or utterly to abrogate and annul the same, according to the judgment of
+  your Grace. Saving to us always such liberties and immunities of this
+  Church of England as hath been granted unto the same by the goodness and
+  benignity of your Highness and of others your most noble progenitors;
+  with such constitutions provincial as do stand with the laws of Almighty
+  God and of your Realm heretofore made, which we most humbly beseech your
+  Grace to ratify and approve by your most Royal assent for the better
+  execution of the same in times to come."<a name="NtA_358"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_358"><sup>358</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The acknowledgment appeared to be complete, and might perhaps have
+  been accepted without minute examination, except for the imprudent
+  acuteness of the Lower House of Convocation. As it passed through their
+  hands, they discovered&mdash;what had no doubt been intended as a
+  loophole for future evasion&mdash;that the grounds which were alleged to
+  excuse the submission were the virtues of the reigning king: and
+  therefore, as they sagaciously argued, the submission must only remain in
+  force for his life. They introduced a limitation to that effect. Some
+  further <!-- Page 221 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page221"></a>[pg
+  221]</span> paltry dabbling was also attempted with the phraseology: and
+  at length, impatient with such dishonest trifling, and weary of a
+  discussion in which they had resolved to allow but one conclusion, the
+  king and the legislature thought it well to interfere with a high hand,
+  and cut short such unprofitable folly. The language of the bishops was
+  converted into an act of parliament; a mixed commission was appointed to
+  revise the canon law, and the clergy with a few brief strokes were
+  reduced for ever into their fit position of subjects.<a
+  name="NtA_359"></a><a href="#Nt_359"><sup>359</sup></a> Thus with a
+  moderate hand this great revolution was effected, and, to outward
+  appearance, with offence to none except the sufferers, whose misuse of
+  power when they possessed it deprived them of all sympathy in their
+  fall.</p>
+
+  <p>But no change of so vast a kind can be other than a stone of stumbling
+  to those many persons for whom the beaten ways of life alone are
+  tolerable, and who, when these ways are broken, are bewildered and lost.
+  Religion, when men are under its influence at all, so absorbs their
+  senses, and so pervades all their associations, that no faults in the
+  ministers of it can divest their persons of reverence; and just and
+  necessary as all these alterations were, many a pious and noble heart was
+  wounded, many a man was asking himself in his perplexity where things
+  would end, and still more sadly, where, if these quarrels deepened, would
+  lie his own duty. Now the Nun of Kent grew louder in her Cassandra
+  wailings. Now the mendicant friars mounted the pulpits exclaiming
+  sacrilege; bold men, who feared nothing that men could do to them, and
+  who dared in the king's own presence, and in his own chapel, to denounce
+  him by name.<a name="NtA_360"></a><a href="#Nt_360"><sup>360</sup></a>
+  The sacred associations of twelve centuries were tumbling into ruin; and
+  hot and angry as men had been before the work began, the hearts of
+  numbers sank in them when they "saw what was done;" and they fell away
+  slowly to doubt, disaffection, distrust, and at last treason.</p>
+
+  <p>The first outward symptom of importance pointing in this direction,
+  was the resignation of the seals by Sir Thomas More.<a
+  name="NtA_361"></a><a href="#Nt_361"><sup>361</sup></a> <!-- Page 222
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page222"></a>[pg 222]</span> More had
+  not been an illiberal man; when he wrote the <i>Utopia</i>, he seemed
+  even to be in advance of his time. None could see the rogue's face under
+  the cowl clearer than he, or the proud bad heart under the scarlet hat;
+  and few men had ventured to speak their thoughts more boldly. But there
+  was in More a want of confidence in human nature, a scorn of the follies
+  of his fellow creatures which, as he became more earnestly religious,
+  narrowed and hardened his convictions, and transformed the genial
+  philosopher into the merciless bigot. "Heresy" was naturally hateful to
+  him; his mind was too clear and genuine to allow him to deceive himself
+  with the delusions of Anglicanism; and as he saw the inevitable tendency
+  of the Reformation to lead ultimately to a change of doctrine, he
+  attached himself with increasing determination to the cause of the pope
+  and of the old faith. As if with an instinctive prescience of what would
+  follow from it, he had from the first been opposed to the divorce; and he
+  had not concealed his feeling from the king at the time when the latter
+  had pressed the seals on his unwilling acceptance. In consenting to
+  become chancellor, he had yielded only to Henry's entreaties; he had held
+  his office for two years and a half&mdash;and it would have been well for
+  his memory if he had been constant in his refusal&mdash;for in his
+  ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to
+  counterpoise the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy
+  Protestants. At the close of the session, however, the acts of which we
+  have just described, he felt that he must no longer countenance, by
+  remaining in an office so near to the crown, measures which he so
+  intensely disapproved and deplored; it was time for him to retire from a
+  world not moving to his mind; and in the fair tranquillity of his family
+  prepare himself for the evil days which he foresaw. In May, 1532, he
+  petitioned for permission to resign, resting his request unobtrusively on
+  failing health; and Henry sadly consented to lose his services.</p>
+
+  <p>Parallel to More's retirement, and though less important, yet still
+  noticeable, is a proceeding of old Archbishop Warham under the same
+  trying circumstances. In the days of his prosperity, Warham had never
+  reached to greatness as a man. He had <!-- Page 223 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page223"></a>[pg 223]</span> been a great
+  ecclesiastic, successful, dignified, important, but without those highest
+  qualities which command respect or interest. The iniquities of Warham's
+  spiritual courts were greater than those of any other in England. He had
+  not made them what they were. They grew by their own proper corruption;
+  and he was no more responsible for them than every man is responsible for
+  the continuance of an evil by which he profits, and which he has power to
+  remedy. We must look upon him as the leader of the bishops in their
+  opposition to the reform; and he was the probable author of the famous
+  answer to the Commons' petition, which led to such momentous
+  consequences.<a name="NtA_362"></a><a href="#Nt_362"><sup>362</sup></a>
+  These consequences he had lived partially to see. Powerless to struggle
+  against the stream, he had seen swept away one by one those gigantic
+  privileges to which he had asserted for his order a claim divinely
+  sanctioned; and he withdrew himself heartbroken, into his palace at
+  Lambeth, and there entered his solemn protest against all which had been
+  done. Too ill to write, and trembling on the edge of the grave, he
+  dictated to his notaries from his bed these not unaffecting
+  words:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"In the name of God, Amen. We, William, by Divine Providence
+  Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic
+  See, hereby publicly and expressly do protest for ourselves and for our
+  Holy Metropolitan Church of Canterbury, that to any statute passed or
+  hereafter to be passed in this present Parliament, began the third of
+  November, 1529, and continued until this present time; in so far as such
+  statute or statutes be in derogation of the Pope of Rome or the Apostolic
+  See, or be to the hurt, prejudice, or limitation of the powers of the
+  Church, or shall tend to the subverting, enervating, derogating from, or
+  diminishing the laws, customs, privileges, prerogatives, pre-eminence of
+  liberties of our Metropolitan Church of Canterbury; we neither will, nor
+  intend, nor with clear conscience are able to consent to the same, but by
+  these writings we do dissent from, refuse, and contradict them."<a
+  name="NtA_363"></a><a href="#Nt_363"><sup>363</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus formally having delivered his soul, he laid himself down and
+  died.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 224 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page224"></a>[pg 224]</span>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN</h3>
+
+  <p>Although in the question of the divorce the king had interfered
+  despotically to control the judgment of the universities, he had made no
+  attempt, as we have seen, to check the tongues of the clergy. Nor if he
+  had desired to check them, is it likely that at the present stage of
+  proceedings he could have succeeded. No law had as yet been passed which
+  made a crime of a difference of opinion on the pope's dispensing powers;
+  and so long as no definitive sentence had been pronounced, every one had
+  free liberty to think and speak as he pleased. So great, indeed, was the
+  anxiety to disprove Catherine's assertion that England was a <i>locus
+  suspectus</i>, and therefore that the cause could not be equitably tried
+  there, that even in the distribution of patronage there was an
+  ostentatious display of impartiality. Not only had Sir Thomas More been
+  made chancellor, although emphatically on Catherine's side; but Cuthbert
+  Tunstal, who had been her counsel, was promoted to the see of Durham. The
+  Nun of Kent, if her word was to be believed, had been offered an abbey,<a
+  name="NtA_364"></a><a href="#Nt_364"><sup>364</sup></a> and that Henry
+  permitted language to pass unnoticed of the most uncontrolled violence,
+  appears from a multitude of informations which were forwarded to the
+  government from all parts of the country. But while imposing no restraint
+  on the expression of opinion, the council were careful to keep themselves
+  well informed of the opinions which were expressed, and an instrument was
+  ready made to their hands, which placed them in easy possession of what
+  they desired. Among the many abominable practices which had been
+  introduced by the ecclesiastical courts, not the least hateful was the
+  system of espionage with which they had saturated English society;
+  encouraging servants to be spies on their masters, children on their
+  parents, neighbours on their neighbours, inviting every one who heard
+  language spoken anywhere of doubtful allegiance to the church, to report
+  the words to the nearest official, as an occasion of instant process. It
+  is not without a feeling of satisfaction, that we find this detestable
+  invention recoiling upon the heads of its authors. Those who had so long
+  suffered under it, found an opportunity in the turning tide, of revenging
+  themselves <!-- Page 225 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page225"></a>[pg 225]</span> on their oppressors; and the country
+  was covered with a ready-made army of spies, who, with ears ever open,
+  were on the watch for impatient or disaffected language in their clerical
+  superiors, and furnished steady reports of such language to Cromwell.<a
+  name="NtA_365"></a><a href="#Nt_365"><sup>365</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Specimens of these informations will throw curious light on the
+  feelings of a portion at least of the people. The English licence of
+  speech, if not recognised to the same extent as it is at <!-- Page 226
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page226"></a>[pg 226]</span> present,
+  was certainly as fully practised. On the return of the Abbot of Whitby
+  from the convocation at York in the summer of 1532, when the premunire
+  money was voted, the following conversation was reported as having been
+  overheard in the abbey.</p>
+
+  <p>The prior of the convent asked the abbot what the news were. "What
+  news," said the abbot, "evil news. The king is ruled by a common
+  &mdash;&mdash; Anne Boleyn, who has made all the spiritualty to be
+  beggared, and the temporalty also. Further he told the prior of a sermon
+  that he had heard in York, in which it was said, when a great wind rose
+  in the west we should hear news. And he asked what that was; and he said
+  a great man told him at York, and if he knew as much as three in England
+  he would tell what the news were. And he said who were they? and he said
+  the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, and the common &mdash;&mdash;
+  Anne Boleyn."<a name="NtA_366"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_366"><sup>366</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The dates of these papers cannot always be determined; this which
+  follows, probably, is something later, but it shows the general temper in
+  which the clergy were disposed to meet the measures of the
+  government.</p>
+
+  <p>"Robert Legate, friar of Furness, deposeth that the monks had a
+  prophecy among them, that 'in England shall be slain the decorate rose in
+  his mother's belly,' and this they interpret of his Majesty, saying that
+  his Majesty shall die by the hands of priests; for the church is the
+  mother, and the church shall slay his Grace. The said Robert maintaineth
+  that he hath heard the monks often say this. Also, it is said among them
+  that the King's Grace was not the right heir to the crown; for that his
+  Grace's father came in by no line, but by the sword. Also, that no
+  secular knave should be head of the church; also that the abbot did know
+  of these treasons, and had made no report thereof."<a
+  name="NtA_367"></a><a href="#Nt_367"><sup>367</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Nor was it only in the remote abbeys of the North that such dangerous
+  language was ventured. The pulpit of St. Paul's rang Sunday after Sunday
+  with the polemics of the divorce; and if "the holy water of the court"
+  made the higher clergy cringing and cowardly, the rank and file, even in
+  London itself, showed a bold English front, and spoke out their thoughts
+  with entire recklessness. Among the preachers on Catherine's side, <!--
+  Page 227 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page227"></a>[pg 227]</span>
+  Father Forest, famous afterward in Catholic martyrologies, began to
+  distinguish himself. Forest was warden of a convent of Observants at
+  Greenwich attached to the royal chapel, and having been Catherine's
+  confessor, remained, with the majority of the friars, faithful to her
+  interests, and fearless in the assertion of them. From their connection
+  with the palace, the intercourse of these monks with the royal household
+  was considerable; their position gave them influence, and Anne Boleyn
+  tried the power of her charms, if possible, to gain them over. She had
+  succeeded with a few of the weaker brothers, but she was unable (and her
+  inability speaks remarkably for Henry's endurance of opposition through
+  the early stages of the controversy) to protect those whose services she
+  had won from the anger of their superiors. One monk in whom she was
+  interested the warden imprisoned,<a name="NtA_368"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_368"><sup>368</sup></a> another there was an effort to expel,<a
+  name="NtA_369"></a><a href="#Nt_369"><sup>369</sup></a> because he was
+  ready to preach on her side; and Forest himself preached a violent sermon
+  at Paul's Cross, attacking Cromwell and indirectly the king.<a
+  name="NtA_370"></a><a href="#Nt_370"><sup>370</sup></a> He was sent for
+  to the court, and the persecuted brothers expected their triumph; but he
+  returned, as one of them wrote bitterly to Cromwell, having been received
+  with respect and favour, as if, after all, the enmity of a brave man
+  found more honour at the court than the complacency of cowardice. Father
+  Forest, says this letter, has been with the king. "He says he spake with
+  the king for half an hour and more, and was well retained by his Grace;
+  and the King's Grace did send him a great piece of beef from his own
+  table; and also he met with my Lord of Norfolk, and he says he took him
+  in his arms and bade him welcome."<a name="NtA_371"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_371"><sup>371</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Forest, unfortunately for himself, misconstrued forbearance into fear,
+  and went his way at last, through treason and perjury, to the stake. In
+  the meantime the Observants were left in possession of the royal chapel,
+  the weak brother died in prison, and the king, when at Greenwich,
+  continued to attend service, submitting to listen, as long as submission
+  was possible, to the admonitions which the friars used the opportunity to
+  deliver to him.</p>
+
+  <p>In these more courteous days we can form little conception <!-- Page
+  228 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page228"></a>[pg 228]</span> of the
+  licence which preachers in the sixteenth century allowed themselves, or
+  the language which persons in high authority were often obliged to bear.
+  Latimer spoke as freely to Henry VIII. of neglected duties, as to the
+  peasants in his Wiltshire parish. St. Ambrose did not rebuke the Emperor
+  Theodosius more haughtily than John Knox lectured Queen Mary and her
+  ministers on the vanities of Holyrood; and Catholic priests, it seems,
+  were not afraid to display even louder disrespect.</p>
+
+  <p>On Sunday, the first of May, 1532, the pulpit at Greenwich was
+  occupied by Father Peto, afterwards Cardinal Peto, famous through Europe
+  as a Catholic incendiary; but at this time an undistinguished brother of
+  the Observants convent. His sermon had been upon the story of Ahab and
+  Naboth, and his text had been, "Where the dogs licked the blood of
+  Naboth, even there shall they lick thy blood, O king." Henry, the court,
+  and most likely Anne Boleyn herself, were present; the first of May being
+  the great holy-day of the English year, and always observed at Greenwich
+  with peculiar splendour.  The preacher had dilated at length upon the
+  crimes and the fall of Ahab, and had drawn the portrait in all its
+  magnificent wickedness.  He had described the scene in the court of
+  heaven, and spoken of the lying prophets who had mocked the monarch's
+  hopes before the fatal battle. At the end, he turned directly to Henry,
+  and assuming to himself the mission of Micaiah, he closed his address in
+  the following audacious words:&mdash;"And now, O king," he said, "hear
+  what I say to thee.  I am that Micaiah whom thou wilt hate, because I
+  must tell thee truly that this marriage is unlawful, and I know that I
+  shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the waters of sorrow, yet
+  because the Lord hath put it in my mouth I must speak it.  There are
+  other preachers, yea too many, which preach and persuade thee otherwise,
+  feeding they folly and frail affections upon hopes of their own worldly
+  promotion; and by that means they betray thy soul, thy honour, and thy
+  posterity; to obtain fat benefices, to become rich abbots and bishops,
+  and I know not what.  These I say are the four hundred prophets who, in
+  the spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee.  Take heed lest thou, being
+  seduced, find Ahab's punishment, who had his blood licked up by the
+  dogs."</p>
+
+  <p>Henry must have been compelled to listen to many such invectives. He
+  left the chapel without noticing what had passed; and in the course of
+  the week Peto went down from Greenwich to attend a provincial council at
+  Canterbury, and perhaps to <!-- Page 229 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page229"></a>[pg 229]</span> communicate with the Nun of Kent.
+  Meantime a certain Dr. Kirwan was commissioned to preach on the other
+  side of the question the following Sunday.</p>
+
+  <p>Kirwan was one of those men of whom the preacher spoke prophetically,
+  since by the present and similar services he made his way to the
+  archbishopric of Dublin and the bishopric of Oxford, and accepting the
+  Erastian theory of a Christian's duty, followed Edward VI. into heresy,
+  and Mary into popery and persecution. He regarded himself as an official
+  of the state religion; and his highest conception of evil in a Christian
+  was disobedience to the reigning authority. We may therefore conceive
+  easily the burden of his sermon in the royal chapel. "He most sharply
+  reprehended Peto," calling him foul names, "dog, slanderer, base beggarly
+  friar, rebel, and traitor," saying "that no subject should speak so
+  audaciously to his prince:" he "commended" Henry's intended marriage,
+  "thereby to establish his seed in his seat for ever;" and having won, as
+  he supposed, his facile victory, he proceeded with his peroration,
+  addressing his absent antagonist. "I speak to thee, Peto," he exclaimed,
+  "to thee, Peto, which makest thyself Micaiah, that thou mayest speak evil
+  of kings; but now art not to be found, being fled for fear and shame, as
+  unable to answer my argument." In the royal chapel at Greenwich there was
+  more reality than decorum. A voice out of the rood-loft cut short the
+  eloquent declamation. "Good sir," it said, "you know Father Peto is gone
+  to Canterbury to a provincial council, and not fled for fear of you; for
+  to-morrow he will return again. In the meantime I am here as another
+  Micaiah, and will lay down my life to prove those things true which he
+  hath taught. And to this combat I challenge thee; thee Kirwan, I say, who
+  art one of the four hundred into whom the spirit of lying is entered, and
+  thou seekest by adultery to establish the succession, betraying thy king
+  for thy own vain glory into endless perdition."</p>
+
+  <p>A scene of confusion followed, which was allayed at last by the king
+  himself, who rose from his seat and commanded silence. It was thought
+  that the limit of permissible licence had been transcended, and the
+  following day Peto and Elstowe, the other speaker, were summoned before
+  the council to receive a reprimand. Lord Essex told them they deserved to
+  be sewn into a sack and thrown into the Thames. "Threaten such things to
+  rich and dainty folk, which have their hope in this world," answered
+  Elstowe, gallantly, "we fear them not; with thanks to God we know the way
+  to heaven to be as ready by water as <!-- Page 230 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page230"></a>[pg 230]</span> by land."<a
+  name="NtA_372"></a><a href="#Nt_372"><sup>372</sup></a> Men of such metal
+  might be broken, but they could not be bent. The two offenders were
+  hopelessly unrepentant and impracticable, and it was found necessary to
+  banish them. They retired to Antwerp, where we find them the following
+  year busy procuring copies of the Bishop of Rochester's book against the
+  king, which was broadly disseminated on the continent, and secretly
+  transmitting them into England; in close correspondence also with Fisher
+  himself, with Sir Thomas More, and for the ill fortune of their friends,
+  with the court at Brussels, between which and the English Catholics the
+  intercourse was dangerously growing.<a name="NtA_373"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_373"><sup>373</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The Greenwich friars, with their warden, went also a bad way. The
+  death of the persecuted brother was attended with circumstances in a high
+  degree suspicious.<a name="NtA_374"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_374"><sup>374</sup></a> Henry ordered an enquiry, which did not
+  terminate in any actual exposure; but a cloud hung over the convent,
+  which refused to be dispelled; the warden was deposed, and soon after it
+  was found necessary to dissolve the order.</p>
+
+  <p>If the English monks had shared as a body the character of the
+  Greenwich Observants, of the Carthusians of London and Richmond, and of
+  some other establishments,&mdash;which may easily be numbered,&mdash;the
+  resistance which they might have offered to the government, with the
+  sympathy which it would have commanded, would have formed an obstacle to
+  the Reformation <!-- Page 231 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page231"></a>[pg 231]</span> that no power could have overcome. It
+  was time, however, for the dissolution of the monasteries, when the few
+  among them, which on other grounds might have claimed a right to survive,
+  were driven by their very virtues into treason. The majority perished of
+  their proper worthlessness; the few remaining contrived to make their
+  existence incompatible with the safety of the state.</p>
+
+  <p>Leaving for the present these disorders to mature themselves, I must
+  now return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the
+  tortuous course of popes and princes, duping one another with false
+  hopes; saying what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say.
+  It is a very Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately
+  as we may; and we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the
+  knowledge that, although we are now approaching the spot where the mire
+  is deepest, the hard ground is immediately beyond.</p>
+
+  <p>We shall, perhaps, be able most readily to comprehend the position of
+  the various parties in Europe, by placing them before us as they stood
+  severally in the summer of 1532, and defining briefly the object which
+  each was pursuing.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry only, among the great powers, laid his conduct open to the
+  world, declaring truly what he desired, and seeking it by open means. He
+  was determined to proceed with the divorce, and he was determined also to
+  continue the Reformation of the English Church. If consistently with
+  these two objects he could avoid a rupture with the pope, he was
+  sincerely anxious to avoid it. He was ready to make great efforts, to
+  risk great sacrifices, to do anything short of surrendering what he
+  considered of vital moment, to remain upon good terms with the See of
+  Rome. If his efforts failed, and a quarrel was inevitable, he desired to
+  secure himself by a close maintenance of the French alliance; and having
+  induced Francis to urge compliance upon the pope by a threat of
+  separation if he refused, to prevail on him, in the event of the pope's
+  continued obstinacy, to put his threat in execution, and unite with
+  England in a common schism. All this is plain and
+  straightforward&mdash;Henry concealed nothing, and, in fact, had nothing
+  to conceal. In his threats, his promises, and his entreaties, we feel
+  entire certainty that he was speaking his real thoughts.</p>
+
+  <p>The emperor's position, also, though not equally simple, is
+  intelligible, and commands our respect. Although if he had consented to
+  sacrifice his aunt, he might have spared himself serious embarrassment;
+  although both by the pope and by the <!-- Page 232 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page232"></a>[pg 232]</span> consistory such a
+  resolution would probably have been welcomed with passionate
+  thankfulness; yet at all hazards Charles was determined to make her his
+  first object, even with the risk of convulsing Europe. At the same time
+  his position was encumbered with difficulty. The Turks were pressing upon
+  him in Hungary and in the Mediterranean; his relations with
+  Francis&mdash;fortunately for the prospects of the Reformation&mdash;were
+  those of inveterate hostility; while in Germany he had been driven to
+  make terms with the Protestant princes; he had offended the pope by
+  promising them a general council, in which the Lutheran divines should be
+  represented; and the pope, taught by recent experience, was made to fear
+  that these symptoms of favour towards heresy, might convert themselves
+  into open support.</p>
+
+  <p>With Francis the prevailing feeling was rivalry with the emperor,
+  combined with an eager desire to recover his influence in Italy, and to
+  restore France to the position in Europe which had been lost by the
+  defeat of Pavia, and the failure of Lautrec at Naples. This was his first
+  object, to which every other was subsidiary. He was disinclined to a
+  rupture with the pope; but the possibility of such a rupture had been
+  long contemplated by French statesmen. It was a contingency which the
+  pope feared:&mdash;which the hopes of Henry pictured as more likely than
+  it was&mdash;and Francis, like his rivals in the European system, held
+  the menace of it extended over the chair of St. Peter, to coerce its
+  unhappy occupant into compliance with his wishes. With respect to Henry's
+  divorce, his conduct to the University of Paris, and his assurances
+  repeated voluntarily on many occasions, show that he was sincerely
+  desirous to forward it. He did not care for Henry, or for England, or for
+  the cause itself; he desired only to make the breach between Henry and
+  Charles irreparable; to make it impossible for ever that "his two great
+  rivals" should become friends together; and by inducing the pope to
+  consent to the English demand, to detach the court of Rome conclusively
+  from the imperial interests.</p>
+
+  <p>The two princes who disputed the supremacy of Europe, were intriguing
+  one against the other, each desiring to constitute himself the champion
+  of the church; and to compel the church to accept his services, by the
+  threat of passing over to her enemies. By a dexterous use of the cards
+  which were in his hands, the King of France proposed to secure one of two
+  alternatives. Either he would form a league between himself, Henry, and
+  the pope, against the emperor, of which the divorce, and the consent to
+  it, which he would extort from Clement, should be the cement; <!-- Page
+  233 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page233"></a>[pg 233]</span> or, if
+  this failed him, he would avail himself of the vantage ground which was
+  given to him by the English alliance to obtain such concessions for
+  himself at the emperor's expense as the pope could be induced to make,
+  and the emperor to tolerate.</p>
+
+  <p>Such, in so far as I can unravel the web of the diplomatic
+  correspondence, appear to have been the open positions and the secret
+  purposes of the great European powers.</p>
+
+  <p>There remains the fourth figure upon the board, the pope himself,
+  labouring with such means as were at his disposal to watch over the
+  interests of the church, and to neutralise the destructive ambition of
+  the princes, by playing upon their respective selfishnesses. On the
+  central question, that of the divorce, his position was briefly this.
+  Both the emperor and Henry pressed for a decision. If he decided for
+  Henry, he lost Germany; if he decided for Catherine, while Henry was
+  supported by Francis, France and England threatened both to fall from
+  him. It was therefore necessary for him to induce the emperor to consent
+  to delay, while he worked upon the King of France; and, if France and
+  England could once be separated, he trusted that Henry would yield in
+  despair. This most subtle and difficult policy reveals itself in the
+  transactions open and secret of the ensuing years. It was followed with a
+  dexterity as extraordinary as its unscrupulousness, and with all but
+  perfect success. That it failed at all, in the ordinary sense of failure,
+  was due to the accidental delay of a courier; and Clement, while he
+  succeeded in preserving the allegiance of France to the Roman see,
+  succeeded also&mdash;and this is no small thing to have
+  accomplished&mdash;in weaving the most curious tissue of falsehood which
+  will be met with even in the fertile pages of Italian subtlety.</p>
+
+  <p>With this general understanding of the relation between the great
+  parties in the drama, let us look to their exact position in the summer
+  of 1532.</p>
+
+  <p>Charles was engaged in repelling an invasion of the Turks, with an
+  anarchical Germany in his rear, seething with fanatical anabaptists, and
+  clamouring for a general council.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry and Francis had been called upon to furnish a contingent against
+  Solyman, and had declined to act with the emperor. They had undertaken to
+  concert their own measures between themselves, if it proved necessary for
+  them to move; and in the meantime Cardinal Grammont and Cardinal Tournon
+  were sent by Francis to Rome, to inform Clement that unless he gave a
+  verdict in Henry's favour, the Kings of France and England, <!-- Page 234
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page234"></a>[pg 234]</span> being
+  <i>une mesme chose</i>, would pursue some policy with respect to him,<a
+  name="NtA_375"></a><a href="#Nt_375"><sup>375</sup></a> to which he would
+  regret that he had compelled them to <!-- Page 235 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page235"></a>[pg 235]</span> have recourse. So
+  far their instructions were avowed and open. A private message revealed
+  the secret means by which the pope might escape from his dilemma; the
+  cardinals were to negotiate a marriage between the Duke of Orleans and
+  the pope's niece (afterwards so infamously famous), Catherine de Medicis.
+  The marriage, as Francis represented it to Henry, was beneath the dignity
+  of a prince of France, he had consented to it, as he professed, only for
+  Henry's sake;<a name="NtA_376"></a><a href="#Nt_376"><sup>376</sup></a>
+  but the pope had made it palatable by a secret article in the engagement,
+  for the grant of the duchy of Milan as the lady's dowry.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry, threatened as we have seen with domestic disturbance, and with
+  further danger on the side of Scotland, which Charles had succeeded in
+  agitating, concluded, on the 23rd of June, a league, offensive and
+  defensive, with Francis, the latter engaging to send a fleet into the
+  Channel, and to land 15,000 troops in England if the emperor should
+  attempt an invasion from the sea.<a name="NtA_378"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_378"><sup>378</sup></a> For the better consolidation of this
+  league, and to consult upon the measures which they would pursue on the
+  great questions at issue in Christendom, and lastly to come to a final
+  understanding on the divorce, it was agreed further that in the autumn
+  the two kings should meet at Calais. The conditions of the interview were
+  still unarranged on the 22nd of July, when the Bishop of Paris, who
+  remained ambassador at the English court, wrote to Montmorency to suggest
+  that Anne Boleyn should be invited to accompany the King of England on
+  this occasion, and that she should be received in state. The letter was
+  dated from Ampthill, to which Henry had escaped for a while from his
+  Greenwich friars and other troubles, and where the king was staying a few
+  weeks before the house was given up to Queen Catherine. Anne Boleyn was
+  with him; she now, as a matter of course, attended him everywhere.
+  Intending her, as he did, to be the mother of the future heir to his
+  crown, he <!-- Page 236 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page236"></a>[pg 236]</span> preserved what is technically called
+  her honour unimpeached and unimpaired. In all other respects she occupied
+  the position and received the homage due to the actual wife of the
+  English sovereign; and in this capacity it was the desire of Henry that
+  she should be acknowledged by a foreign prince.</p>
+
+  <p>The bishop's letter on this occasion is singularly interesting and
+  descriptive. The court were out hunting, he said, every day; and while
+  the king was pursuing the heat of the chase, he and Mademoiselle Anne
+  were posted together, each with a crossbow, at the point to which the
+  deer was to be driven. The young lady, in order that the appearance of
+  her reverend cavalier might correspond with his occupation, had made him
+  a present of a hunting cap and frock, a horn and a greyhound. Her
+  invitation to Calais he pressed with great earnestness, and suggested
+  that Marguerite de Valois, the Queen of Navarre, should be brought down
+  to entertain her. The Queen of France being a Spaniard, would not, he
+  thought, be welcome: "the sight of a Spanish dress being as hateful in
+  the King of England's eyes as the devil himself." In other respects the
+  reception should be as magnificent as possible, "and I beseech you," he
+  concluded, "keep out of the court, <i>deux sortes de gens</i>, the
+  imperialists, and the wits and mockers; the English can endure neither of
+  them."<a name="NtA_379"></a><a href="#Nt_379"><sup>379</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Through the tone of this language the contempt is easily <!-- Page 237
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page237"></a>[pg 237]</span> visible
+  with which the affair was regarded in the French court. But for Francis
+  to receive in public the rival of Queen Catherine, to admit her into his
+  family, and to bring his sister from Paris to entertain her, was to
+  declare in the face of Europe, in a manner which would leave no doubt of
+  his sincerity, that he intended to countenance Henry. With this view only
+  was the reception of Anne desired by the King of England; with this view
+  it was recommended by the bishop, and assented to by the French court.
+  Nor was this the only proof which Francis was prepared to give, that he
+  was in earnest. He had promised to distribute forty thousand crowns at
+  Rome, in bribing cardinals to give their voices for Henry in the
+  consistory, with other possible benefactions.<a name="NtA_380"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_380"><sup>380</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>He had further volunteered his good offices with the court of
+  Scotland, where matters were growing serious, and where his influence
+  could be used to great advantage. The ability of James the Fifth to
+  injure Henry happily fell short of his inclination, but encouraged by
+  secret promises from Clement and from the emperor, he was waiting his
+  opportunity to cross the Border with an army; and in the meantime he was
+  feeding with efficient support a rebellion in Ireland. Of what was
+  occurring at this time in that perennially miserable country I shall
+  speak in a separate chapter. It is here sufficient to mention, that on
+  the 23rd of August, Henry received information that McConnell of the
+  Isles, after receiving knighthood from James, had been despatched into
+  Ulster with four thousand men,<a name="NtA_381"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_381"><sup>381</sup></a> and was followed by Mackane with seven
+  thousand more on the 3rd of September.<a name="NtA_382"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_382"><sup>382</sup></a> Peace with England nominally continued;
+  but <!-- Page 238 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page238"></a>[pg
+  238]</span> the Kers, the Humes, the Scotts of Buccleugh, the advanced
+  guard of the Marches, were nightly making forays across the Border, and
+  open hostilities appeared to be on the point of explosion.<a
+  name="NtA_383"></a><a href="#Nt_383"><sup>383</sup></a> If war was to
+  follow, Henry was prepared for it. He had a powerful force at Berwick,
+  and in Scotland itself a large party were secretly attached to the
+  English interests. The clan of Douglas, with their adherents, were even
+  prepared for open revolt, and open transfer of allegiance.<a
+  name="NtA_384"></a><a href="#Nt_384"><sup>384</sup></a> But, although
+  Scottish nobles might be gained over, and Scottish armies might be
+  defeated in the field, Scotland itself, as the experience of centuries
+  had proved, could never be conquered. The policy of the Tudors had been
+  to abstain from aggression, till time should have soothed down the
+  inherited animosity between the two countries; and Henry was unwilling to
+  be forced into extremities which might revive the bitter memories of
+  Flodden. The Northern counties also, in spite of their Border prejudices,
+  were the stronghold of the papal party, and it was doubtful how far their
+  allegiance could be counted upon in the event of an invasion sanctioned
+  by the pope. The hands of the English government were already full
+  without superadded embarrassment, and the offered mediation of Francis
+  was gratefully welcomed.</p>
+
+  <p>These were the circumstances under which the second great interview
+  was to take place between Francis the First and Henry of England.<a
+  name="NtA_385"></a><a href="#Nt_385"><sup>385</sup></a> Twelve years had
+  passed since their last meeting, <!-- Page 239 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page239"></a>[pg 239]</span> and the experience
+  which those years had brought to both of them, had probably subdued their
+  inclination for splendid pageantry. Nevertheless, in honour of the
+  occasion, some faint revival was attempted of the magnificence of the
+  Field of the Cloth of Gold. Anne Boleyn was invited duly; and the Queen
+  of Navarre, as the Bishop of Paris recommended, came down to Boulogne to
+  receive her. The French princes came also to thank Henry in person for
+  their deliverance out of their Spanish prison; and he too, on his side,
+  brought with him his young Marcellus, the Duke of Richmond, his only
+  son&mdash;illegitimate unfortunately&mdash;but whose beauty and noble
+  promise were at once his father's misery and pride; giving point to his
+  bitterness at the loss of his sons by Catherine; quickening his hopes of
+  what might be, and deepening his discontent with <!-- Page 240 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page240"></a>[pg 240]</span> that which was. If
+  this boy had lived, he would have been named to follow Edward the Sixth
+  in the succession, and would have been King of England;<a
+  name="NtA_386"></a><a href="#Nt_386"><sup>386</sup></a> but he too passed
+  away in the flower of his loveliness, one more evidence of the blight
+  which rested upon the stem of the Tudors.</p>
+
+  <p>The English court was entertained by Francis at Boulogne. The French
+  court was received in return at Calais by the English. The outward
+  description of the scene, the magnificent train of <!-- Page 241 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page241"></a>[pg 241]</span> the princes, the
+  tournaments, the feasts, the dances, will be found minutely given in the
+  pages of Hall, and need not be repeated here. To Hall indeed, the outward
+  life of men, their exploits in war, and their pageantries in peace, alone
+  had meaning or interest; and the backstairs secrets of Vatican diplomacy,
+  the questionings of opinion, and all the brood of mental sicknesses then
+  beginning to distract the world, were but impertinent interferences with
+  the true business of existence. But the healthy objectiveness of an old
+  English chronicler is no longer possible for us; we may envy where we
+  cannot imitate; and our business is with such features of the story as
+  are of moment to ourselves.</p>
+
+  <p>The political questions which were to be debated at the conference,
+  were three; the Turkish Invasion, the General Council, and King Henry's
+  divorce.</p>
+
+  <p>On the first, it was decided that there was no immediate occasion for
+  France and England to move. Solyman's retreat from Vienna had relieved
+  Europe from present peril; and the enormous losses which he had suffered,
+  might prevent him from repeating the experiment. If the danger became
+  again imminent, however, the two kings agreed to take the field in person
+  the following year at the head of eighty thousand men.</p>
+
+  <p>On the second point they came to no conclusion, but resolved only to
+  act in common.</p>
+
+  <p>On the third and most important, they parted with a belief that they
+  understood each other; but their memories, or the memory of one of them,
+  proved subsequently treacherous; and we can only extract what passed
+  between them out of their mutual recriminations.</p>
+
+  <p>It was determined certainly that at the earliest convenient moment, a
+  meeting should take place between the pope and Francis; and that at this
+  meeting Francis should urge in person concession to Henry's demands. If
+  the pope professed himself unable to risk the displeasure of the emperor,
+  it should be suggested that he might return to Avignon, where he would be
+  secure under the protection of France and England. If he was still
+  reluctant, and persisted in asserting his right to compel Henry to plead
+  before him at Rome, or if he followed up his citations by inhibitions,
+  suspensions, excommunications, or other form of censure, Francis declared
+  that he would support Henry to the last, whether against the pope himself
+  or against any prince or potentate who might attempt to enforce the
+  sentence. On this point the promises of the King of France <!-- Page 242
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page242"></a>[pg 242]</span> were most
+  profuse and decided; and although it was not expressly stated in words,
+  Henry seems to have persuaded himself that, if the pope pressed matters
+  to extremities, Francis had engaged further that the two countries should
+  pursue a common course, and unite in a common schism. The two princes did
+  in fact agree, that if the general council which they desired was
+  refused, they would summon provincial councils on their own authority.
+  Each of them perhaps interpreted their engagements by their own wishes or
+  interests.<a name="NtA_387"></a><a href="#Nt_387"><sup>387</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>We may further believe, since it was affirmed by Henry, and not denied
+  by Francis, that the latter advised Henry to bring the dispute to a
+  close, by a measure from which he could not recede; that he recommended
+  him to act on the general opinion of Europe that his marriage with Queen
+  Catherine was null, and at once upon his return to England to make Anne
+  Boleyn his wife.<a name="NtA_388"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_388"><sup>388</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>So far the account is clear. This advice was certainly given, and as
+  certainly Francis undertook to support Henry through all the consequences
+  in which the marriage might involve him. But a league for mutual defence
+  fell short of what Henry desired, and fell short also of what Francis, by
+  the warmth of his manner, had induced Henry for the moment to believe
+  that he meant. It is probable that the latter pressed upon him
+  engagements which he avoided by taking refuge in general professions; and
+  no sooner had Henry returned to England, <!-- Page 243 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page243"></a>[pg 243]</span> than either
+  misgivings occurred to him as to the substantial results of the
+  interview, or he was anxious to make the French king commit himself more
+  definitely. He sent to him to beg that he would either write out, or
+  dictate and sign, the expressions which he had used; professing to wish
+  it only for the comfort which he would derive from the continual presence
+  of such refreshing words&mdash;but surely for some deeper reason.<a
+  name="NtA_389"></a><a href="#Nt_389"><sup>389</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Francis had perhaps said more than he meant; Henry supposed him to
+  have meant more than he said. Yet some promise was made, which was not
+  afterwards observed; and Francis acknowledged some engagement in an
+  apology which he offered for the breach of it. He asserted, in defence of
+  himself, that he had added a stipulation which Henry passed over in
+  silence,&mdash;that no steps should be taken towards annulling the
+  marriage with Catherine in the English law courts until the effect had
+  been seen of his interview with the pope, provided the pope on his side
+  remained similarly inactive.<a name="NtA_390"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_390"><sup>390</sup></a> Whatever it was which he had bound
+  himself to do, this condition, if made at all, could be reconciled only
+  with his advice that Henry should marry Anne Boleyn without further
+  delay, on the supposition that the interview in question was to take
+  place immediately; for the natural consequences of the second marriage
+  would involve, as a matter of course, some speedy legal declaration with
+  respect to the first. And when on various pretexts the pope postponed the
+  meeting, and on the other part of his suggestion Henry had acted within a
+  few months of his return from Calais, it became impossible that such a
+  condition could be observed. It availed for a formal excuse; but Francis
+  vainly endeavoured to disguise his own infirmity of purpose behind the
+  language of a negotiation which conveyed, when it was used, a meaning
+  widely different.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 244 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page244"></a>[pg 244]</span>
+
+  <p>The conference was concluded on the 1st of November, but the court was
+  detained at Calais for a further fortnight by violent gales in the
+  Channel. In the excited state of public feeling, events in themselves
+  ordinary assumed a preternatural significance. The friends of Queen
+  Catherine, to whom the meeting between the kings was of so disastrous
+  augury, and the nation generally, which an accident to Henry at such a
+  time would have plunged into a chaos of confusion, alike watched the
+  storm with anxious agitation; on the king's return to London, Te Deums
+  were offered in the churches, as if for his deliverance from some extreme
+  and imminent peril. The Nun of Kent on this great occasion was admitted
+  to conferences with angels. She denounced the meeting, under celestial
+  instruction, as a conspiracy against Heaven. The king, she said, but for
+  her interposition, would have proceeded, while at Calais, to his impious
+  marriage;<a name="NtA_391"></a><a href="#Nt_391"><sup>391</sup></a> and
+  God was so angry with him, that he was not permitted to profane with his
+  unholy eyes the blessed Sacrament. "It was written in her revelations,"
+  says the statute of her attainder, "that when the King's Grace was at
+  Calais, and his Majesty and the French king were hearing mass in the
+  Church of Our Lady, that God was so displeased with the King's Highness,
+  that his Grace saw not at that time the blessed sacrament in the form of
+  bread, for it was taken away from the priest, being at mass, by an angel,
+  and was ministered to the said Elizabeth, there being present and
+  invisible, <!-- Page 245 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page245"></a>[pg 245]</span> and suddenly conveyed and rapt thence
+  again into the nunnery where she was professed."<a name="NtA_392"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_392"><sup>392</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>She had an interview with Henry on his return through Canterbury, to
+  try the effect of her Cassandra presence on his fears;<a
+  name="NtA_393"></a><a href="#Nt_393"><sup>393</sup></a> but if he still
+  delayed his marriage, it was probably neither because he was frightened
+  by her denunciations, nor from alarm at the usual occurrence of an
+  equinoctial storm. Many motives combined to dissuade him from further
+  hesitation. Six years of trifling must have convinced him that by
+  decisive action alone he could force the pope to a conclusion. He was
+  growing old, and the exigencies of the succession, rendered doubly
+  pressing by the long agitation, required immediate resolution. He was
+  himself satisfied that he was at liberty to marry whom he pleased and
+  when he pleased, his relationship to Catherine, according to his recent
+  convictions, being such as had rendered his connection with her from the
+  beginning invalid and void. His own inclinations and the interests of the
+  nation pointed to the same course. The King of France had advised it.
+  Even the pope himself, at the outset of the discussion, had advised it
+  also. "Marry freely," the pope had said; "fear nothing, and all shall be
+  arranged as you desire." He had forborne to take the pope at his word; he
+  had hoped that the justice of his demands might open a less violent way
+  to him; and he had shrunk from a step which might throw even a causeless
+  shadow over the legitimacy of the offspring for which he longed. The case
+  was now changed; no other alternative seemed to be open to his choice,
+  and it was necessary to bring the matter to a close once and for all.</p>
+
+  <p>But Henry, as he said himself, was past the age when passion or
+  appetite would be likely to move him, and having waited so many years, he
+  could afford to wait a little longer, till the effects of the Calais
+  conferences upon the pope should have had time to show themselves. In
+  December, Clement was to meet the emperor at Bologna. In the month
+  following, it might be hoped that he would meet Francis at Marseilles or
+  Avignon, and from their interview would be seen conclusively the future
+  attitude of the papal and imperial courts. Experience of the past forbade
+  anything like sanguine expectation; yet it was not impossible that the
+  pope might be compelled at last to yield the required concessions. The
+  terms of Henry's understanding with Francis were not perhaps made public,
+  but he <!-- Page 246 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page246"></a>[pg
+  246]</span> was allowed to dictate the language which the French
+  cardinals were to make use of in the consistory;<a name="NtA_394"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_394"><sup>394</sup></a> and the reception of Anne Boleyn by the
+  French king was equivalent to the most emphatic declaration that if the
+  censures of the church were attempted in defence of Catherine, the
+  enforcement of them would be resisted by the combined arms of France and
+  England.</p>
+
+  <p>And the pope did in fact feel himself in a dilemma from which all his
+  address was required to extricate him. He had no support from his
+  conscience, for he knew that he was acting unjustly in refusing the
+  divorce; while to risk the emperor's anger, which was the only honest
+  course before him, was perhaps for that very reason impossible. He fell
+  back upon his Italian cunning, and it did not fail him in his need. But
+  his conduct, though creditable to his ingenuity, reflects less pleasantly
+  on his character; and when it is traced through all its windings, few
+  reasonable persons will think that they have need to blush at the causes
+  which led to the last breach between England and the papacy.</p>
+
+  <p>From the time of Catherine's appeal and the retirement of Campeggio,
+  Clement, with rare exceptions, had maintained an attitude of impassive
+  reserve. He had allowed judgment to be delayed on various pretexts,
+  because until that time delay had answered his purposes sufficiently. But
+  to the English agents he had been studiously cold, not condescending even
+  to hold out hopes to them that concession might be possible. Some little
+  time before the meeting at Calais, however, a change was observed in the
+  language both of the pope himself and of the consistory. The cardinals
+  were visibly afraid of the position which had been taken by the French
+  king; questions supposed to be closed were once more admitted to debate
+  in a manner which seemed to show that their resolution was wavering; and
+  one day, at the close of a long argument, the following curious
+  conversation took place between some person (Sir Gregory Cassalis,
+  apparently), who reported it to Henry, and Clement himself. "I had
+  desired a private interview with his Holiness," says the writer,
+  "intending to use all my endeavours to persuade him to satisfy your
+  Majesty. But although I did my best, I could obtain nothing from him; he
+  had an answer for everything which I advanced, and it was in vain that I
+  laboured to remove his difficulties. At length, however, in reply to
+  something which I had proposed, he said shortly,&mdash;Multo minus <!--
+  Page 247 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page247"></a>[pg 247]</span>
+  scandalosum fuisset dispensare cum majestate vestrā super duabus
+  uxoribus, quam ea cedere quę ego petebam, <i>it would have created less
+  scandal to have granted your Majesty a dispensation to have two wives
+  than to concede what I was then demanding</i>. As I did not know how far
+  this alternative would be pleasing to your Majesty, I endeavoured to
+  divert him from it, and to lead him back to what I had been previously
+  saying. He was silent for a while, and then, paying no regard to my
+  interruption, he continued to speak of the 'two wives,' admitting however
+  that there were difficulties in the way of such an arrangement,
+  principally it seemed because the emperor would refuse his consent from
+  the possible injury which it might create to his cousin's prospects of
+  the succession. I replied, that as to the succession, I could not see
+  what right the emperor had to a voice upon the matter. If some lawful
+  means could be discovered by which your Majesty could furnish yourself
+  with male offspring, the emperor could no more justly complain than if
+  the queen were to die and the prospects of the princess were interfered
+  with by a second marriage of an ordinary kind. To this the pope made no
+  answer. I cannot tell what your Majesty will think, nor how far this
+  suggestion of the pope would be pleasing to your Majesty. Nor indeed can
+  I feel sure, in consequence of what he said about the emperor, that he
+  actually would grant the dispensation of which he spoke. I have thought
+  it right, however, to inform you of what passed."<a name="NtA_395"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_395"><sup>395</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This letter is undated, but it was written, as appears from internal
+  evidence, some time in the year 1532.<a name="NtA_396"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_396"><sup>396</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 248 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page248"></a>[pg 248]</span>
+
+  <p>The pope's language was ambiguous, and the writer did not allow
+  himself to derive from it any favourable augury; but the tone in which
+  the suggestions had been made was by many degrees more favourable than
+  had been heard for a very long time in the quarter from which they came,
+  and the symptoms which it promised of a change of feeling were more than
+  confirmed in the following winter.</p>
+
+  <p>Charles was to be at Bologna in the middle of December, where he was
+  to discuss with Clement the situation of Europe, and in particular of
+  Germany, with the desirableness of fulfilling the engagements into which
+  he had entered for a general council.</p>
+
+  <p>This was the avowed object of the meeting. But, however important the
+  question of holding a council was becoming, it was not immediately
+  pressing; and we cannot doubt that the disquiet occasioned by the
+  alliance of England and France was the cause that the conference was held
+  at so inconvenient a season. The pope left Rome on the 18th of November,
+  having in his train a person who afterwards earned for himself a dark
+  name in English history, Dr. Bonner, then a famous canon lawyer attached
+  to the embassy. The journey in the wild weather was extremely miserable;
+  and Bonner, whose style was as graphic as it was coarse, sent home a
+  humorous account of it to Cromwell.<a name="NtA_397"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_397"><sup>397</sup></a> Three wretched weeks the party were
+  upon the road, plunging through mire and water. They reached Bologna on
+  the 8th of December, where, four days after them, arrived Charles V. It
+  is important, as we shall presently see, to observe the dates of these
+  movements. I shall have to compare with them the successive issues of
+  several curious documents. On the 12th of December the pope and the
+  emperor met at Bologna; on the 24th Dr. Bennet, Henry's able secretary,
+  who had been despatched from England to be present at the conference,
+  wrote to report the result of his observations. He had been admitted to
+  repeated interviews with the pope, as well before as after the emperor's
+  arrival; and the language which the former made use of could only be
+  understood, and was of course intended to be <!-- Page 249 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page249"></a>[pg 249]</span> understood, as
+  expressing the attitude in which he was placing himself towards the
+  imperial faction. Bennet's letter was as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I have been sundry and many times with the pope, as well afore the
+  coming of the emperour as sythen, yet I have not at any time found his
+  Holiness more tractable or propense to show gratuity unto your Highness
+  than now of late,&mdash;insomuch that he hath more freely opened his mind
+  than he was accustomed, and said also that he would speak with me frankly
+  without any observance or respect at all. At which time, I greatly
+  lamented (your Highness's cause being so just) no means could be found
+  and taken to satisfy your Highness therein; and I said also that I
+  doubted not but that (if his Holiness would) ways might be found by his
+  wisdom, now at the emperour's being with him, to satisfy your Highness;
+  and that done, his Holiness should not only have your Highness in as much
+  or more friendship than he hath had heretofore, but also procure thereby
+  that thing which his Holiness hath chiefly desired, which is, as he hath
+  said, a universal concord among the princes of Christendom. His Holiness
+  answered, that he would it had cost him a joint of his hand that such a
+  way might be excogitate; and he said also, that the best thing which he
+  could see to be done therein at this present, for a preparation to that
+  purpose, was the thing which is contained in the first part of the
+  cipher.<a name="NtA_398"></a><a href="#Nt_398"><sup>398</sup></a>
+  Speaking of the justness of your cause, he called to his remembrance the
+  thing <!-- Page 250 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page250"></a>[pg
+  250]</span> which he told me two years past; which was, that the opinion
+  of the lawyers was more certain, favourable, and helping to your cause
+  than the opinion of the divines; for he said that as far as he could
+  perceive, the lawyers, though they held quod Papa possit dispensare in
+  this case, yet they commonly do agree quod hoc fieri debeat ex maximā
+  causā, adhibitā causę cognitione, which in this case doth not appear; and
+  he said, that to come to the truth herein he had used all diligence
+  possible, and enquired the opinion of learned men, being of fame and
+  indifferency both in the court here and in other places. And his Holiness
+  promised me that he would herein use all good policy and dexterity to
+  imprint the same in the emperour's head; which done, he reckoneth many
+  things to be invented that may be pleasant and profitable to your
+  Highness; adding yet that this is not to be done with a fury, but with
+  leisure and as occasion shall serve, lest if he should otherwise do, he
+  should let and hinder that good effect which peradventure might ensue
+  thereby."<a name="NtA_399"></a><a href="#Nt_399"><sup>399</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This letter has all the character of truth about it. The secretary had
+  no interest in deceiving Henry, and it is quite certain that, whether
+  honestly or not, the pope had led him to believe that his sympathies were
+  again on the English side, and that he was using his best endeavours to
+  subdue the emperor's opposition.</p>
+
+  <p>On the 26th of December, two days later, Sir Gregory Cassalis, who had
+  also followed the papal court to Bologna, wrote to the same effect. He,
+  too, had been with the pope, who had been very open and confidential with
+  him. The emperor, the pope said, had complained of the delay in the
+  process, but he had assured him that it was impossible for the consistory
+  to do more than it had done. The opinion of the theologians was on the
+  whole against the papal power of dispensation in cases of so close
+  relationship; of the canon lawyers part agreed with the theologians, and
+  those who differed from them were satisfied that such a power might not
+  be exercised unless there were most urgent cause, unless, that is, the
+  safety of a kingdom were dependent upon it. Such occasion he had declared
+  that he could not find to have existed for the dispensation granted by
+  his predecessor. The emperor had replied that there had been such
+  occasion: the dispensation had been granted to prevent war between Spain
+  and England; and that otherwise great calamities would have befallen both
+  countries. But this was manifestly untrue; and his Holiness said that he
+  had answered, It was a <!-- Page 251 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page251"></a>[pg 251]</span> pity, then, that these causes had not
+  been submitted at the time, as the reason for the demand, which it was
+  clear that they had not been: as the case stood, it was impossible for
+  him to proceed further. Upon which he added, "Se vidisse Cęsarem
+  obstupefactum." "I write the words," continued Sir Gregory, "exactly as
+  the pope related them to me. Whether he really spoke in this way, I
+  cannot tell; of this, however, I am sure, that on the day of our
+  conversation he had taken the blessed sacrament. He assured me further,
+  that he had laboured to induce the emperor to permit him to satisfy your
+  Majesty. I recommended him that when next the emperor spoke with him upon
+  the subject, he should enter at greater length on the question of
+  <i>justice</i>, and that some other person should be present at the
+  conference, that there might be no room left for suspicion."<a
+  name="NtA_400"></a><a href="#Nt_400"><sup>400</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The manner of Clement was so unlike what Cassalis had been in the
+  habit of witnessing in him, that he was unable, as we see, wholly to
+  persuade himself that the change was sincere: the letter, however, was
+  despatched to England, and was followed in a few days by Bonner, who
+  brought with him the result of the pope's good will in the form of
+  definite propositions&mdash;instructions of similar purport having been
+  forwarded at the same time to the papal nuncio in England. The pope, so
+  Henry was informed, was now really well disposed to do what was required;
+  he had urged upon the emperor the necessity of concessions, and the cause
+  might be settled in one of two ways, to either of which he was himself
+  ready to consent. Catherine had appealed against judgment being passed in
+  England, as a place which was not indifferent. Henry had refused to allow
+  his cause to be heard anywhere but in his own realm; pleading first his
+  privilege as a sovereign prince; and secondly, his exemption as an
+  Englishman.<a name="NtA_401"></a><a href="#Nt_401"><sup>401</sup></a> The
+  pope, with appearance of openness, now suggested that Henry should either
+  "send a mandate requiring the remission of his cause to an indifferent
+  place, in which case he would himself surrender his claim to have it
+  tried in the courts at Rome, and would appoint a legate and two auditors
+  to hear the trial elsewhere;" or else, a truce of three or four years
+  being concluded between England, France, and Spain, the pope would "with
+  all celerity indict a general council, to which he <!-- Page 252 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page252"></a>[pg 252]</span> would absolutely
+  and wholly remit the consideration of the question."<a
+  name="NtA_402"></a><a href="#Nt_402"><sup>402</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Both proposals carried on their front a show of fair dealing, and if
+  honestly proffered, were an evidence that something more might at length
+  be hoped than words. But the true obstacle to a settlement lay, as had
+  been long evident, rather in the want of an honest will, than in legal
+  difficulties or uncertainty as to the justice of the cause; and while
+  neither of the alternatives as they stood were admissible or immediately
+  desirable, there were many other roads, if the point of honesty were once
+  made good, which would lead more readily to the desired end. Once for all
+  Henry could not consent to plead out of England; while an appeal to a
+  council would occupy more time than the condition of the country could
+  conveniently allow. But the offer had been courteously made; it had been
+  accompanied with language which might be sincere; and the king replied
+  with grace, and almost with cordiality; not wholly giving Clement his
+  confidence, but expressing a hope that he might soon be no longer
+  justified in withholding it. He was unable, he said, to accept the first
+  condition, because it was contrary to his coronation oath; "it so highly
+  touched the prerogative royal of the realm, that though he were minded to
+  do it, yet must he abstain without the assent of the court of parliament,
+  which he thought verily would never condescend to it."<a
+  name="NtA_403"></a><a href="#Nt_403"><sup>403</sup></a> The other
+  suggestion he did not absolutely reject, but the gathering of a council
+  was too serious a matter to be precipitated, and the situation of
+  Christendom presented many obstacles to a measure which would be useless
+  unless it were carried through by all the great powers in a spirit of
+  cordial unanimity. He trusted therefore that if the pope's intentions
+  were really such as he pretended to entertain, he would find some method
+  more convenient of proving his sincerity.</p>
+
+  <p>It was happy for Henry that experience had taught him to be
+  distrustful. Events proved too clearly that Clement's assumed alteration
+  of tone was no more than a man&#339;uvre designed to entice him to
+  withdraw from the position in which he had entrenched himself, and to
+  induce him to acknowledge that he was amenable to an earthly authority
+  exterior to his own realm.<a name="NtA_404"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_404"><sup>404</sup></a> In his offer to refer the cause to a
+  general council, <!-- Page 253 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page253"></a>[pg 253]</span> he proved that he was insincere, when
+  in the following year he refused to allow a council to be a valid
+  tribunal for the trial of it. The course which he would have followed if
+  the second alternative had been accepted, may be conjectured from the
+  measures which, as I shall presently show, he was at this very moment
+  secretly pursuing. Henry, however, had happily resolved that he would be
+  trifled with no further; he felt instinctively that only action would cut
+  the net in which he was entangled; and he would not hesitate any longer
+  to take a step which, in one way or another, must bring the weary
+  question to a close. If the pope meant well, he would welcome a
+  resolution which made further procrastination impossible; if he did not
+  mean well, he could not be permitted to dally further with the interests
+  of the English nation. Within a few days, therefore, of Bonner's return
+  from Bologna, he took the final step from which there was no retreat, and
+  "somewhere about St. Paul's day,"<a name="NtA_405"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_405"><sup>405</sup></a> Anne Boleyn received the prize for
+  which she had thirsted seven long years, in the hand of the King of
+  England. The ceremony was private. No authentic details are known either
+  of the scene of it or the circumstances under which it took place; but it
+  is said to have been performed by the able Rowland Lee, Bishop of
+  Lichfield, summoned up for the purpose from the Welsh Marches, of which
+  he was warden. It was done, however&mdash;in one way or other finally
+  done&mdash;the cast was thrown, and a match was laid to the train which
+  now at length could explode the spell of intrigue, and set Henry and
+  England free.</p>
+
+  <p>We have arrived at a point from which the issue of the labyrinth is
+  clearly visible. The course of it has been very dreary; and brought in
+  contact as we have been with so much which is painful, so much which is
+  discreditable to all parties concerned, we may perhaps have lost our
+  sense of the broad bearings of the question in indiscriminate disgust. It
+  will be well, therefore, to pause for a moment to recapitulate those
+  features of the story which are the main indications of its character,
+  and may serve to guide our judgment in the censure which we shall
+  pass.</p>
+
+  <p>It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII.
+  had been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the
+  interests of the kingdom, if he had forborne, while his <!-- Page 254
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page254"></a>[pg 254]</span> request
+  was pending, to affront the princess who had for many years been his
+  companion and his queen; if he had shown her that respect which her high
+  character gave her a right to demand, and which her situation as a
+  stranger ought to have made it impossible to him to refuse; his conduct
+  would have been liable to no imputation, and our sympathies would without
+  reserve have been on his side. He could not have been expected to love a
+  person to whom he had been married as a boy for political convenience,
+  merely because she was his wife; especially when she was many years his
+  senior in age, disagreeable in her person, and by the consciousness of it
+  embittered in her temper. His kingdom demanded the security of a stable
+  succession; his conscience, it may not be doubted, was seriously agitated
+  by the loss of his children; and looking upon it as the sentence of
+  Heaven upon a connection, the legality of which had from the first been
+  violently disputed, he believed that he had been living in incest, and
+  that his misfortunes were the consequence of it. Under these
+  circumstances he had a full right to apply for a divorce.<a
+  name="NtA_406"></a><a href="#Nt_406"><sup>406</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The causa urgentissima of the canon law for which, by the pope's own
+  showing, the dispensing powers had been granted to him, had arisen in an
+  extreme form; and when the vital interests of England were sacrificed to
+  the will of a foreign prince, sufficient reason had arisen for the nation
+  to decline submission to so emphatic injustice, and to seek within itself
+  its own remedies for its own necessities. These considerations must be
+  allowed all their weight; and except for them, it is not to be supposed
+  that Henry would have permitted private distaste or inclination to induce
+  him to create a scandal in Europe. In his conduct, however, as in that of
+  most men, good was chequered with evil, and sincerity with
+  self-deception. Personal feeling can be traced from the first, holding a
+  subsidiary, indeed, but still an influential place, among his motives;
+  and exactly so far as he was influenced by it, his course was wrong, as
+  the consequence miserably proved. The position which, in his wife's
+  presence, he assigned to another woman, however he may have persuaded
+  <!-- Page 255 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page255"></a>[pg
+  255]</span> himself that Catherine had no claim to be considered his
+  wife, admits neither of excuse nor of palliation; and he ought never to
+  have shared his throne with a person who consented to occupy that
+  position. He was blind to the coarseness of Anne Boleyn, because, in
+  spite of his chivalry, his genius, his accomplishments, in his relations
+  with women he was without delicacy himself. He directed, or attempted to
+  direct, his conduct by the broad rules of what he thought to be just; and
+  in the wide margin of uncertain ground where rules of action cannot be
+  prescribed, and where men must guide themselves by consideration for the
+  feelings of others, he&mdash;so far as women were concerned&mdash;was
+  altogether or almost a stranger. Such consideration is a virtue which can
+  be learned only in the society of equals, where necessity obliges men to
+  practise it. Henry had been a king from his boyhood; he had been
+  surrounded by courtiers who had anticipated all his desires; and exposed
+  as he was to an ordeal from which no human being could have escaped
+  uninjured, we have more cause, after all, to admire him for those
+  excellences which he conquered for himself, than to blame the defects
+  which he retained.</p>
+
+  <p>But if in his private relations the king was hasty and careless,
+  towards the pope to whom we must now return, he exhausted all resources
+  of forbearance: and although, when separation from Rome was at length
+  forced upon him, he then permitted no half measures, and swept into his
+  new career with the strength of irresistible will, it was not till he had
+  shown resolution no less great in the endurance of indignity; and of the
+  three great powers in Europe, the prince who was compelled to break the
+  unity of the Catholic church, was evidently the only one who was capable
+  of real sacrifices to preserve it unbroken. Clement comprehended his
+  reluctance, but presumed too far upon it; and if there was sin in the
+  "great schism" of the Reformation, the guilt must rest where it is due.
+  We have now to show the reverse side of the transactions at Bologna, and
+  explain what a person wearing the title of his Holiness, in virtue of his
+  supposed sanctity, had been secretly doing.</p>
+
+  <p>In January, 1532, some little time before his conversation with Sir
+  Gregory Cassalis on the subject of the two wives, the pope had composed a
+  pastoral letter to Henry, which had never been issued. From its contents
+  it would seem to have been written on the receipt of an indignant
+  remonstrance of Queen Catherine, in which she had complained of her
+  desertion by her husband, and of the public position which had been given
+  to her <!-- Page 256 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page256"></a>[pg
+  256]</span> rival. She had supposed (and it was the natural mistake of an
+  embittered and injured woman) that Anne Boleyn had been placed in
+  possession of the rights of an actual, and not only of an intended wife;
+  and the pope, accepting her account of the situation, had written to
+  implore the king to abstain, so long as the cause remained undetermined,
+  from creating so great a scandal in Christendom, and to restore his late
+  queen to her place at his side. This letter, as it was originally
+  written, was one of Clement's happiest compositions.<a
+  name="NtA_407"></a><a href="#Nt_407"><sup>407</sup></a> He abstained in
+  it from using any expression which could be construed into a threat: he
+  appealed to Henry's honourable character, which no blot had hitherto
+  stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion of the Christian world,
+  he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects which would be
+  produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the Holy See in a
+  person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry had deserved
+  that such a letter should be written to him; and the pope was more than
+  justified in writing it. The letter, however, if it was sent, produced no
+  effect, and on the 15th of November, three days before Clement's
+  departure to Bologna, where he pretended (we must not forget) that he
+  considered Henry substantially right; he added a postscript, in a tone
+  not contrasting only with his words to the ambassadors, but with the
+  language of the brief itself.</p>
+
+  <p>Again urging Henry's delinquencies, his separation from his wife, and
+  the scandal of his connection with another person, he commanded him,
+  under penalty of excommunication, within one month of the receipt of
+  those injunctions, to restore the queen to her place, and to abstain
+  thenceforward from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn pending the issue of
+  the trial. "Otherwise," the pope continued, "when the said term shall
+  have elapsed, we pronounce thee, Henry King of England, and the said
+  Anne, to be <i>ipso facto</i> excommunicate, and command all men to shun
+  and avoid your presence; and although our mind shrinks from allowing such
+  a thought of your Serenity, although by ourselves and by our auditory of
+  the Rota an inhibition has been already issued against you; although the
+  act of which you are suspected be in itself forbidden by all laws human
+  and divine, yet the reports which are brought to us do so move us, that
+  once more we do inhibit you from dissolving your marriage with the
+  aforesaid Catherine, or from continuing process, in your own courts, of
+  divorce from her. And we do also hereby warn you, <!-- Page 257 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page257"></a>[pg 257]</span> that you presume
+  not to contract any new marriage with the said or with any other woman;
+  we declare such marriage, if you still attempt it, to be vain and of none
+  effect, and so to be regarded by all persons in obedience to the
+  Apostolic see."<a name="NtA_408"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_408"><sup>408</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>An inhibitory mandate, was a natural consequence of the conference of
+  Calais, provided that the pope intended to proceed openly and uprightly;
+  and if it had been sent upon the spot, Henry could have complained of
+  nothing worse than of an honourable opposition to his wishes. But the
+  mystery was not yet exhausted. The postscript was not issued, it was not
+  spoken of; it was carried secretly to Bologna, and it bears at its foot a
+  further date of the 23rd of December, the very time, that is to say, at
+  which the pope was representing himself to Bennet as occupied only in
+  devising the best means of satisfying Henry, and to Sir Gregory Cassalis,
+  as so convinced of the justice of the English demands, that he had
+  ventured in defence of them to the edge of rupture with the emperor.</p>
+
+  <p>It might be urged that he was sincere both in his brief and in his
+  conversation; that he believed that a verdict ought to be given, and
+  would at last be given, against the original marriage, and that therefore
+  he was the more anxious to prevent unnecessary scandal. Yet a menace of
+  excommunication couched in so haughty a tone, could have been honestly
+  reconciled with his other conduct, only by his following a course with
+  respect to it which he did not follow&mdash;by informing the ambassadors
+  openly of what he had done, and transmitting his letter through their
+  hands to Henry himself. This he might have done; and though the issue of
+  such a document at such a time would have been open to question, it might
+  nevertheless have been defended. His Holiness, however, did nothing of
+  the kind. No hint was let fall of the existence of any minatory brief; he
+  sustained his pretence of good will, till there was no longer any
+  occasion for him to counterfeit; and two months later it suddenly
+  appeared on the doors of the churches in Flanders.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry at first believed it to be forgery, One forged brief had already
+  been produced by the imperialists in the course of their transactions,
+  and he imagined that this was another; even his past experience of
+  Clement had not prepared him for this last venture of effrontery; he
+  wrote to Bennet, enclosing a copy, and requiring him to ascertain if it
+  were really genuine.<a name="NtA_409"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_409"><sup>409</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 258 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page258"></a>[pg 258]</span>
+
+  <p>The pope could not deny his hand, though the exposure, and the strange
+  irregular character of the brief itself troubled him, and Bonner, who was
+  again at the papal court, said that "he was in manner ashamed, and in
+  great perplexity what he might do therein."<a name="NtA_410"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_410"><sup>410</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>His conduct will be variously interpreted, and to attempt to analyse
+  the motives of a double-minded man is always a hazardous experiment; but
+  a comparison of date, the character of Clement himself, the circumstances
+  in which he was placed, and the retrospective evidence from after events,
+  points almost necessarily to but one interpretation. It is scarcely
+  disputable that, frightened at the reception of Anne Boleyn in France,
+  the pope found it necessary to pretend for a time an altered disposition
+  towards Henry; and that the emperor, unable to feel wholly confident that
+  a person who was false to others was true to himself, had exacted the
+  brief from him as a guarantee for his good faith; Charles, on his side,
+  reserving the publication until Francis had been gained over, and until
+  Clement was screened against the danger which he so justly feared, from
+  the consequences of the interview at Calais.</p>
+
+  <p>There was duplicity of a kind; this cannot be denied; and if not
+  designed to effect this object, this object in fact it answered. While
+  Clement was talking smoothly to Bennet and Cassalis, secret overtures
+  were advanced at Paris for a meeting at Nice between the pope, the
+  emperor, and the King of France, from which Henry was to be excluded.<a
+  name="NtA_411"></a><a href="#Nt_411"><sup>411</sup></a> The emperor made
+  haste with concessions to Francis, which but a few months before would
+  have seemed impossible. He withdrew his army out of Lombardy, and left
+  Italy free; he consented to the marriage which he had so earnestly
+  opposed between Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Orleans, agreeing
+  also, it is probable, to the contingency of the Duchy of Milan becoming
+  ultimately her dowry. And Francis having coquetted with the proposal for
+  <!-- Page 259 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page259"></a>[pg
+  259]</span> the Nice meeting,<a name="NtA_412"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_412"><sup>412</sup></a> not indeed accepting, but not
+  absolutely rejecting it, Charles consented also to waive his objections
+  to the interview between Francis and the pope, on which he had looked
+  hitherto with so much suspicion; provided that the pope would bear in
+  mind some mysterious and unknown communication which had passed at
+  Bologna.<a name="NtA_413"></a><a href="#Nt_413"><sup>413</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus was Francis won. He cared only, as the pope had seen, for his own
+  interests; and from this time he drew away, by imperceptible degrees,
+  from his engagements to England. He did not stoop to dishonour or
+  treacherous betrayal of confidence, for with all his faults he was, in
+  the technical acceptation of that misused term, a gentleman. He declined
+  only to maintain the attitude which, if he had continued in it, would
+  have compelled the pope to yield; and although he continued honestly to
+  urge him to make concessions, he no longer affected to make them the
+  price of preserving France in allegiance to the Holy See. Nor need we
+  regret that Francis shrank from a resolution which Henry had no right to
+  require of him. To have united with France in a common schism at the
+  crisis of the Reformation would have only embarrassed the free motions of
+  England; and two nations whose interests and whose tendencies were
+  essentially opposite, might not submit to be linked together by the
+  artificial interests of their princes. The populace of England were
+  unconsciously on the rapid road to Protestantism. The populace of <!--
+  Page 260 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page260"></a>[pg 260]</span>
+  France were fanatically Catholic. England was to go her way through a
+  golden era of Elizabeth to Cromwell, the Puritans, and a Protestant
+  republic; a republic to be perpetuated, if not in England herself, yet
+  among her great children beyond the sea. France was to go her way through
+  Bartholomew massacres and the dragonnades to a polished Louis the
+  Magnificent, and thence to the bloody Medea's cauldron of Revolution, out
+  of which she was to rise as now we know her. No common road could have
+  been found for such destinies as these; and the French prince followed
+  the direction of his wiser instincts when he preferred a quiet
+  arrangement with the pope, in virtue of which his church should be
+  secured by treaty the liberties which she desired, to a doubtful struggle
+  for a freedom which his people neither wished nor approved. The interests
+  of the nation were in fact his own. He could ill afford to forsake a
+  religion which allowed him so pleasantly to compound for his amatory
+  indulgences by the estrapade<a name="NtA_414"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_414"><sup>414</sup></a> and a zeal for orthodoxy.</p>
+
+  <p>It became evident to Henry early in the spring that he was left
+  substantially alone. His marriage had been kept secret with the intention
+  that it should be divulged by the King of France to the pope when he met
+  him at Marseilles; and as the pope had pretended an anxiety that either
+  the King of England should be present in person at that interview, or
+  should be represented by an ambassador of adequate rank, a train had been
+  equipped for the occasion, the most magnificent which England could
+  furnish. Time, meanwhile, passed on; the meeting, which was to have taken
+  place first in January, and then in April, was delayed till October, and
+  in the interval the papal brief had appeared in Flanders; the queen's
+  pregnancy could not admit of concealment; and the evident proof which
+  appeared that France was no longer to be depended upon, convinced the
+  English government that they had nothing to hope for from abroad, and
+  that Henry's best resources were to be found, where in fact they had
+  always been, in the strength and affection of his own people.</p>
+
+  <p>From this choking atmosphere, therefore, we now turn back to England
+  and the English parliament; and the change is from darkness to light,
+  from death to life. Here was no wavering, <!-- Page 261 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page261"></a>[pg 261]</span> no uncertainty, no
+  smiling faces with false hearts behind them; but the steady purpose of
+  resolute men, who slowly, and with ever opening vision, bore the nation
+  forward to the fair future which was already dawning.</p>
+
+  <p>Parliament met at the beginning of February, a few days after the
+  king's marriage, which, however, still remained a secret. It is, I think,
+  no slight evidence of the calmness with which the statesmen of the day
+  proceeded with their work, that in a session so momentous, in a session
+  in which the decisive blow was to be struck of the most serious
+  revolution through which the country as yet had passed, they should have
+  first settled themselves calmly down to transact what was then the
+  ordinary business of legislation, the struggle with the vital evils of
+  society. The first nine statutes which were passed in this session were
+  economic acts to protect the public against the frauds of money-making
+  tradesmen; to provide that shoes and boots should be made of honest
+  leather; that food should be sold at fair prices, that merchants should
+  part with their goods at fair profits; to compel, or as far as the
+  legislature was able to do it, to compel all classes of persons to be
+  true men; to deal honestly with each other, in that high Quixotic sense
+  of honesty which requires good subjects at all times and under all
+  circumstances to consider the interests of the commonwealth as more
+  important than their own. I have already spoken of this economic
+  legislation, and I need not dwell now upon details of it; although under
+  some aspects it may be thought that more which is truly valuable in
+  English history lies in these unobtrusive statutes than in all our noisy
+  wars, reformations, and revolutions. The history of this as of all other
+  nations (or so much of it as there is occasion for any of us to know), is
+  the history of the battles which it has fought and won with evil; not
+  with political evil merely, or spiritual evil; but with all
+  manifestations whatsoever of the devil's power. And to have beaten back,
+  or even to have struggled against and stemmed in ever so small a degree
+  those besetting basenesses of human nature, now held so invincible that
+  the influences of them are assumed as the fundamental axioms of economic
+  science; this appears to me a greater victory than Agincourt, a grander
+  triumph of wisdom and faith and courage than even the English
+  constitution or the English liturgy. Such a history, however, lies beside
+  the purpose which I may here permit myself; and the two acts with which
+  the session closed, alone in this place require our attention.</p>
+
+  <p>The first of these is one of the many "Acts of Apparel," <!-- Page 262
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page262"></a>[pg 262]</span> which are
+  to be found in the early volumes of the statute book. The meaning of
+  these laws becomes intelligible when we reflect upon the condition of the
+  people. The English were an organised nation of soldiers; they formed an
+  army perpetually ready for the field, where the degrees were determined
+  by social position; and the dresses prescribed to the various orders of
+  society were the graduated uniforms which indicated the rank of the
+  wearers. When every man was a soldier, and every gentleman was an
+  officer, the same causes existed for marking, by costume, the
+  distinctions of authority, which lead to the answering differences in the
+  modern regiments.</p>
+
+  <p>The changing conditions of the country at the time of the Reformation,
+  the growth of a middle class, with no landed possessions, yet made
+  wealthy by trade or other industry, had tended necessarily to introduce
+  confusion; and the policy of this reign, which was never more markedly
+  operative than during the most critical periods of it, was to
+  reinvigorate the discipline of the feudal system; and pending the growth
+  of what might better suit the age, pending the great struggle in which
+  the nation was engaged, to hold every man at his post. The statute
+  specifies its object, and the motives with which it was passed.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whereas," says the preamble, "divers laws, ordinances, and statutes
+  have been with great deliberation and advice provided and established for
+  the necessary repressing and avoiding the inordinate excess daily more
+  and more used in the sumptuous and costly array and apparel accustomably
+  worn in this realm, whereof hath ensued, and daily do chance such sundry
+  high and notable inconveniences as be to the great and notorious
+  detriment of the commonweal, the subversion of politic order in knowledge
+  and distinction of people according to their preeminence and degrees, to
+  the utter impoverishment and undoing of many light and inexpert persons
+  inclined to pride, the mother of all vices: Be it enacted,"<a
+  name="NtA_415"></a><a href="#Nt_415"><sup>415</sup></a>&mdash;but I need
+  not enter into the particulars of the uniforms worn by the nobles and
+  gentlemen of the court of Henry VIII.; the temper, not the detail, is of
+  importance; and of the wisdom or unwisdom of such enactments, we who live
+  in a changed age should be cautious of forming a hasty opinion. The ends
+  which the old legislation proposed to itself, have in latter ages been
+  resigned as impracticable. We are therefore no longer adequate judges how
+  far those ends may in other times have been attainable, and we can still
+  less judge of the means through which the attainment of them was
+  sought.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 263 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page263"></a>[pg 263]</span>
+
+  <p>The second act of which I have to speak is open to no such ambiguity;
+  it remains among the few which are and will be of perpetual moment in our
+  national history. The conduct of the pope had forced upon the parliament
+  the reconsideration of the character of his supremacy; and when the
+  question had once been asked, in the existing state of feeling but one
+  answer to it was possible.</p>
+
+  <p>The authority of the church over the state, the supreme kingship of
+  Christ, and consequently of him who was held to be Christ's vicar, above
+  all worldly sovereignties, was an established reality of medięval Europe.
+  The princes had with difficulty preserved their jurisdiction in matters
+  purely secular; while in matters spiritual, and in that vast section of
+  human affairs in which the spiritual and the secular glide one into the
+  other, they had been compelled&mdash;all such of them as lay within the
+  pale of the Latin communion&mdash;to acknowledge a power superior to
+  their own. To the popes was the ultimate appeal in all causes of which
+  the spiritual courts had cognisance. Their jurisdiction had been extended
+  by an unwavering pursuit of a single policy, and their constancy in the
+  twelfth century was rewarded by absolute victory. In England, however,
+  the field was no sooner won than it was again disputed, and the civil
+  government gave way at last only when the danger seemed to have ceased.
+  So long as the papacy was feared, so long as the successors of St. Peter
+  held a sword which could inflict sensible wounds, and enforce obedience
+  by penalties, the English kings had resisted both the theory and the
+  application. While the pope was dangerous he was dreaded and opposed.
+  When age had withered his arm, and the feeble lightnings flickered in
+  harmless insignificance, they consented to withdraw their watchfulness,
+  and his supremacy was silently allowed as an innocent superstition. It
+  existed as some other institutions exist at the present day, with a
+  merely nominal authority; with a tacit understanding, that the power
+  which it was permitted to retain should be exerted only in conformity
+  with the national will.</p>
+
+  <p>Under these conditions the Tudor princes became loyal subjects to the
+  Holy See, and so they would have willingly remained, had not Clement, in
+  an evil hour for himself, forgotten the terms of the compact. He laid
+  upon a legal fiction a strain which his predecessors, in their palmiest
+  days, would have feared to attempt; and the nation, after grave
+  remonstrance, which was only received with insults, exorcised the chimęra
+  <!-- Page 264 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page264"></a>[pg
+  264]</span> with a few resolute words for ever. The parliament, in
+  asserting the freedom of England, carefully chose their language. They
+  did not pass a new law, but they passed an act declaratory merely of the
+  law which already existed, and which they were vindicating against
+  illegal encroachment. "Whereas," says the Statute of Appeals, "by divers
+  sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared
+  and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been
+  accepted in the world; governed by one supreme head and king, having the
+  dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same; unto whom a
+  body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people, divided in terms
+  by names of spiritualty and temporalty, be bound and ought to bear, next
+  to God, a natural and humble obedience: he being also institute and
+  furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with plenary,
+  whole, and entire power, pre-eminence and authority, prerogative and
+  jurisdiction, to render and yield justice and final determination to all
+  manner of folk resident or subject within this his realm, without
+  restraint or provocation to any foreign prince or potentate of the world:
+  the body spiritual whereof having power when any cause of the law divine
+  happened to come in question, or of spiritual learning, [such cause
+  being] declared, interpret, and shewed by that part of the body politic
+  called the spiritualty, now usually called the English church; (which
+  also hath been reported and also found of that sort, that both for
+  knowledge, integrity, and sufficiency of numbers, it hath been always
+  thought to be, and is also at this hour sufficient and meet of itself,
+  without the interfering of any exterior person or persons, to declare and
+  determine all such doubts, and to administer all such offices and duties
+  as to the administration of their rooms spiritual doth appertain): and
+  the laws temporal, for trial of property of lands and goods, and for the
+  conservation of the people of this realm in unity and peace, having been
+  and yet being administered, adjudged, and executed by sundry judges and
+  administers of the said body politic called the temporalty: and seeing
+  that both these authorities and jurisdictions do conjoin together for the
+  due administration of justice, the one to help the other: and whereas the
+  king's most noble progenitors, and the nobility and commons of this said
+  realm at divers and sundry parliaments, as well in the time of King
+  Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., Henry IV., and other noble kings of
+  this realm, made sundry ordinances, laws, and provisions for the
+  conservation of the prerogatives, liberties, <!-- Page 265 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page265"></a>[pg 265]</span> and pre-eminences
+  of the imperial crown of this realm, and of the jurisdiction spiritual
+  and temporal of the same, to keep it from the annoyance as well of the
+  see of Rome as from the authority of other foreign potentates attempting
+  the diminution or violation thereof, as often as from time to time any
+  such annoyance or attempt might be known or espied: and notwithstanding
+  the said good statutes and ordinances, and since the making thereof,
+  divers inconveniences and dangers not provided for plainly by the said
+  statutes, have risen and sprung by reason of appeals sued out of this
+  realm to the see of Rome, in causes testamentary, causes of matrimony and
+  divorce, right of tithes, oblations, and obventions, not only to the
+  great inquietation, vexation, trouble, costs, and charges of the King's
+  Highness, and many of his subjects and residents in this his realm; but
+  also to the delay and let of the speedy determination of the said causes,
+  for so much as parties appealing to the said court of Rome most commonly
+  do the same for the delay of justice; and forasmuch as the great distance
+  of way is so far out of this realm, so that the necessary proofs, nor the
+  true knowledge of the causes, can neither there be so well known, nor the
+  witnesses so well examined there as within this realm, so that the
+  parties grieved by means of the said appeals be most times without
+  remedy; in consideration hereof, all testamentary and matrimonial causes,
+  and all suits for tithes, oblations, and obventions shall henceforth be
+  adjudged in the spiritual and temporal courts within the realm, without
+  regard to any process of foreign jurisdiction, or any inhibition,
+  excommunication, or interdict. Persons procuring processes, inhibitions,
+  appeals, or citations from the court of Rome, as well as their fautors,
+  comforters, counsellors, aiders and abettors, all and every of them shall
+  incur the penalties of premunire; and in all such cases as have hitherto
+  admitted of appeal to Rome, the appeals shall be from the Archdeacon's
+  court to the Bishop's court, from the Bishop's court to that of the
+  Archbishop, and no further."<a name="NtA_416"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_416"><sup>416</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The act was carried through Parliament in February, but again, as with
+  the Annates Bill, the king delayed his sanction till the post could reach
+  and return from the Vatican. The Bishop of Bayonne wrote that there was
+  hope that Clement might yet give way, and entreated that the king would
+  send an "excusator," a person formally empowered to protest for him that
+  he could not by the laws of England plead at a foreign <!-- Page 266
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page266"></a>[pg 266]</span> tribunal;
+  and that with this imperfect recognition of his authority the pope would
+  be satisfied.</p>
+
+  <p>Chastillon, the French ambassador, had an interview with the king, to
+  communicate the bishop's message.</p>
+
+  <p>"The morning after," Chastillon wrote, "his Majesty sent for me and
+  desired me to repeat my words before the council. I obeyed; but the
+  majority declared, that there was nothing in them to act upon, and that
+  the king must not put himself in subjection. His Majesty himself, too, I
+  found less warm than in his preceding conversation. I begged the council
+  to be patient. I said everything that I could think of likely to weigh
+  with the king, I promised him a sentence from our Holy Father declaring
+  his first marriage null, his present marriage good. I urged him on all
+  grounds, public and private, to avoid a rupture with the Holy See. Such a
+  sentence, I said, would be the best security for the queen, and the
+  safest guarantee for the unopposed succession of her offspring. If the
+  marriage was confirmed by the Holy Father's authority, the queen's
+  enemies would lose the only ground where they could make a stand. The
+  peace of the realm was now menaced. The emperor talked loudly and made
+  large preparations. Let the king be allied with France, and through
+  France with the Holy See, and the emperor could do him no harm. Thus I
+  said my proposals were for the benefit of the realm of his Majesty, and
+  of the children who might be born to him. The king would act more
+  prudently both for his own interest, and for the interest of his
+  children, in securing himself, than in running a risk of creating
+  universal confusion; and, besides, he owed something to the king his
+  brother, who had worked so long and so hard for him.</p>
+
+  <p>"After some further conversation, his Majesty took me aside into a
+  garden, where he told me that for himself he agreed in what I had said;
+  but he begged me to keep his confidence secret. He fears, I think, to
+  appear to condescend too easily.</p>
+
+  <p>"He will not, however, publish the acts of parliament till he sees
+  what is done at Rome. The vast sums of money which used to be sent out of
+  the country will go no longer; but in other respects he will be glad to
+  return to good terms. He will send the excusator when he hears again from
+  M. de Paris; and for myself, I think, that although the whole country is
+  in a blaze against the pope, yet with the good will and assistance of the
+  king, the Holy Father will be reinstated in the greater part of his
+  prerogatives."</p>
+
+  <p>But the hope that the pope would yield proved again delusive. <!--
+  Page 267 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page267"></a>[pg 267]</span>
+  Henry wrote to him himself in the spirit of his conversation with
+  Chastillon. His letter was presented by Cardinal Tournon, and Clement
+  said all that could be said in acknowledgment without making the one
+  vital concession. But whenever it was put before him that the cause must
+  be heard and decided in England and in no other place, he talked in the
+  old language of uncertainty and impossibilities;<a name="NtA_417"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_417"><sup>417</sup></a> and Henry learning at the same time
+  that a correspondence was going forward between Clement and Francis, with
+  the secrets of which he was not made acquainted, went forward upon his
+  own way. April brought with it the certainty that the expected
+  concessions were delusive. Anne Boleyn's pregnancy made further delay
+  impossible. D'Inteville, who had succeeded Chastillon as French
+  ambassador, once more attempted to interfere, but in vain. Henry told him
+  he could not help himself, the pope forced him to the course which he was
+  pursuing, by the answer which he had been pleased to issue; and he could
+  only encounter enmity with its own weapons. "The archbishop," d'Inteville
+  wrote to Francis, "will try the question, and will give judgment. I
+  entreated the king to wait till the conference at Nice, but he would not
+  consent. I prayed him to keep the sentence secret till the pope had seen
+  your Majesty; he replied it was impossible."<a name="NtA_418"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_418"><sup>418</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus the statute became law which transferred to the English courts of
+  law the power so long claimed and exercised by the Roman see. There are
+  two aspects under which it may be regarded, as there were two objects for
+  which it was passed. Considered as a national act, few persons will now
+  deny that it was as just in itself as it was politically desirable. If
+  the pope had no jurisdiction over English subjects, it was well that he
+  should be known to have none; if he had, it was equally well that such
+  jurisdiction should cease. The question was not of communion between the
+  English and Roman churches, which might or might not continue, but which
+  this act would not affect. The pope might still retain his rights of
+  episcopal precedency, whatever those might be, with all the privileges
+  attached to it. The parliament merely declared that he possessed no right
+  of interference in domestic disputes affecting persons and property.</p>
+
+  <p>But the act had a special as well as a national bearing, and here it
+  is less easy to arrive at a just conclusion. It destroyed <!-- Page 268
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page268"></a>[pg 268]</span> the
+  validity of Queen Catherine's appeal; it placed a legal power in the
+  hands of the English judges to proceed to pass sentence upon the divorce;
+  and it is open to the censure which we ever feel entitled to pass upon a
+  measure enacted to meet the particular position of a particular person.
+  When embarrassments have arisen from unforeseen causes, we have a right
+  to legislate to prevent a repetition of those embarrassments. Our
+  instincts tell us that no legislation should be retrospective, and should
+  affect only positions which have been entered into with a full knowledge
+  at the time of the condition of the laws.</p>
+
+  <p>The statute endeavours to avoid the difficulty by its declaratory
+  form; but again this is unsatisfactory; for that the pope possessed some
+  authority was substantially acknowledged in every application which was
+  made to him; and when Catherine had married under a papal dispensation,
+  it was a strange thing to turn upon her, and to say, not only that the
+  dispensation in the particular instance had been unlawfully granted, but
+  that the pope had no jurisdiction in the matter by the laws of the land
+  which she had entered.</p>
+
+  <p>On the other hand, throughout the entire negotiations King Henry and
+  his ministers had insisted jealously on the English privileges. They had
+  declared from the first that they might, if they so pleased, fall back
+  upon their own laws. In desiring that the cause might be heard by a papal
+  legate in England, they had represented themselves rather as
+  condescending to a form than acknowledging a right; and they had, in
+  fact, in allowing the opening of Campeggio's court, fallen, all of them,
+  even Henry himself, under the penalties of the statutes of provisors. The
+  validity of Catherine's appeal they had always consistently denied. If
+  the papal jurisdiction was to be admitted at all, it could only be
+  through a minister sitting as judge within the realm of England; and the
+  maxim, "Ne Angli extra Angliam litigare cogantur," was insisted upon as
+  the absolute privilege of every English subject.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet, if we allow full weight to these considerations, a feeling of
+  painful uncertainty continues to cling to us; and in ordinary cases to be
+  uncertain on such a point is to be in reality certain. The state of the
+  law could not have been clear, or the statute of appeals would not have
+  been required; and explain it as we may, it was in fact passed for a
+  special cause against a special person; and that person a woman.</p>
+
+  <p>How far the parliament was justified by the extremity of the case is a
+  further question, which it is equally difficult to answer. <!-- Page 269
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page269"></a>[pg 269]</span> The
+  alternative, as I have repeatedly said, was an all but inevitable civil
+  war, on the death of the king; and practically, when statesmen are
+  entrusted with the fortunes of an empire, the responsibility is too heavy
+  to allow them to consider other interests. Salus populi suprema lex, ever
+  has been and ever will be the substantial canon of policy with public
+  men, and morality is bound to hesitate before it censures them. There are
+  some acts of injustice which no national interest can excuse, however
+  great in itself that interest may be, or however certain to be attained
+  by the means proposed. Yet government, in its easiest tax, trenches to a
+  certain extent on natural right and natural freedom; and trenches further
+  and further in proportion to the emergency with which it has to deal. How
+  far it may go in this direction, or whether Henry VIII. and his
+  parliament went too far, is a difficult problem; their best justification
+  is an exceptive clause introduced into the act, which was intended
+  obviously to give Queen Catherine the utmost advantage which was
+  consistent with the liberties of the realm. "In case," says the
+  concluding paragraph, "of any cause, or matter, or contention now
+  depending for the causes before rehearsed, or that hereafter shall come
+  into contention for any of the same causes in any of the foresaid courts,
+  which hath, doth, shall, or may touch the king, his heirs or successors,
+  kings of this realm; in all or every such case or cases the party grieved
+  as aforesaid shall or may appeal from any of the said courts of this
+  realm, to the spiritual prelates and other abbots and priors of the Upper
+  House, assembled and convocate by the king's writ in convocation."<a
+  name="NtA_419"></a><a href="#Nt_419"><sup>419</sup></a> If Catherine's
+  cause was as just as Catholics and English high churchmen are agreed to
+  consider it, the English church might have saved her. If Catherine
+  herself had thought first or chiefly of justice, she would not perhaps
+  have accepted the arbitration of the English convocation; but long years
+  before she would have been in a cloister.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus it is that while we regret, we are unable to blame; and we cannot
+  wish undone an act, to have shrunk from which might have spared a single
+  heart, but <i>might</i> have wrecked the English nation. We increase our
+  pity for Catherine because she was a princess. We measure the magnitude
+  of the evils which human beings endure by their position in the scale of
+  society; and misfortunes which private persons would be expected to bear
+  without excessive complaining, furnish matter for the lamentation of ages
+  when they touch the sacred head which has been circled <!-- Page 270
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page270"></a>[pg 270]</span> with a
+  diadem. Let it be so. Let us compensate the queen's sorrows with
+  unstinted sympathy; but let us not trifle with history, by confusing a
+  political necessity with a moral crime.</p>
+
+  <p>The English parliament, then, had taken up the gauntlet which the pope
+  had flung to it with trembling fingers: and there remained nothing but
+  for the Archbishop of Canterbury to make use of the power of which by law
+  he was now possessed. And the time was pressing, for the new queen was
+  enciente, and further concealment was not to be thought of. The delay of
+  the interview between the pope and Francis, and the change in the
+  demeanour of the latter, which had become palpably evident, discharged
+  Henry of all promises by which he might have bound himself; and to
+  hesitate before the menaces of the pope's brief would have been
+  fatal.</p>
+
+  <p>The act of appeals being passed, convocation was the authority to
+  which the power of determining unsettled points of spiritual law seemed
+  to have lapsed. In the month of April, therefore, Cranmer, now Archbishop
+  of Canterbury,<a name="NtA_420"></a><a href="#Nt_420"><sup>420</sup></a>
+  submitted to it the two questions, on the resolution of which the
+  sentence which he was to pass was dependent.</p>
+
+  <p>The first had been already answered separately by the bench of bishops
+  and by the universities, and had been agitated from end to end of
+  Europe&mdash;was it lawful to marry the widow of a brother dying without
+  issue, but having consummated his marriage; and was the Levitical
+  prohibition of such a marriage grounded on a divine law, with which the
+  pope could not dispense, or on a canon law of which a dispensation was
+  permissible?<a name="NtA_421"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_421"><sup>421</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The pope had declared himself unable to answer; but he had allowed
+  that the general opinion was against the power of dispensing,<a
+  name="NtA_422"></a><a href="#Nt_422"><sup>422</sup></a> and there could
+  be little doubt, therefore, of the reply of the English convocation, or
+  at least of the upper house. <!-- Page 271 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page271"></a>[pg 271]</span> Fisher attempted an opposition; but
+  wholly without effect. The, question was one in which the interests of
+  the higher clergy were not concerned, and they were therefore left to the
+  dominion of their ordinary understandings. Out of two hundred and
+  sixty-three votes, nineteen only were in the pope's favour.<a
+  name="NtA_423"></a><a href="#Nt_423"><sup>423</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The lower house was less unanimous, as might have been expected, and
+  as had been experienced before; the opposition spirit of the English
+  clergy being usually then, as much as now, in the ratio of their poverty.
+  But there too the nature of the case compelled an overwhelming
+  majority.<a name="NtA_424"></a><a href="#Nt_424"><sup>424</sup></a> It
+  was decided by both houses that Pope Julius, in granting a licence for
+  the marriage of Henry and Catherine, had exceeded his authority, and that
+  this marriage was therefore, <i>ab initio</i>, void.</p>
+
+  <p>The other question to be decided was one of fact; whether the marriage
+  of Catherine with Prince Arthur had or had not been consummated, a matter
+  which the Catholic divines conceived to be of paramount importance, but
+  which to few persons at the present day will seem of any importance
+  whosoever. We cannot even read the evidence which was produced without a
+  sensation of disgust, although in those broader and less conscious ages
+  the indelicacy was less obviously perceptible. And we may console
+  ourselves with the hope that the discussion was not so wounding as might
+  have been expected to the feelings of Queen Catherine, since at all
+  official interviews, with all classes of persons, at all times and in all
+  places, she appeared herself to court the subject.<a
+  name="NtA_425"></a><a href="#Nt_425"><sup>425</sup></a> There is no
+  occasion in this place to follow her example. It is enough that
+  Ferdinand, at the time of her first marriage, satisfied himself, after
+  curious inquiry, that he might hope for a grandchild; and that the fact
+  of the consummation was asserted in the treaty between England and Spain,
+  which preceded the marriage with Henry, and in this supposed brief of
+  Pope Julius which permitted it.<a name="NtA_426"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_426"><sup>426</sup></a> We cannot in consequence be surprised
+  that the convocation accepted the conclusion which was sanctioned by so
+  high authority, and we rather wonder at the persistency of Catherine's
+  denials. With respect to this vote, therefore, we <!-- Page 272 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page272"></a>[pg 272]</span> need notice nothing
+  except that Dr. Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells<a name="NtA_427"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_427"><sup>427</sup></a> was one of an exceedingly small
+  minority, who were inclined to believe that the denial might be true, and
+  this bishop was one of the four who were associated with Cranmer when he
+  sate at Dunstable for the trial of the cause.</p>
+
+  <p>The ground being thus opened, and all preparations being completed,
+  the archbishop composed a formal letter to the king, in which he dwelt
+  upon the uncertain prospects of the succession, and the danger of leaving
+  a question which closely affected it so long unsettled. He expatiated at
+  length on the general anxiety which was felt throughout the realm, and
+  requested permission to employ the powers attached to his office to bring
+  it to some conclusion. The recent alterations had rendered the archbishop
+  something doubtful of the nature of his position; he was diffident and
+  unwilling to offend; and not clearly knowing in the exercise of the new
+  authority which had been granted to him, whether the extension of his
+  power was accompanied with a parallel extension of liberty in making use
+  of it, he wrote two copies of this letter, with slight alterations of
+  language, that the king might select between them the one which he would
+  officially recognise. Both these copies are extant; both were written the
+  same day from the same place; both were folded, sealed, and sent. It
+  seems, therefore, that neither was Cranmer furnished beforehand with a
+  draught of what he was to write; nor was his first letter sent back to
+  him corrected. He must have acted by his own judgment; and a comparison
+  of the two letters is singular and instructive. In the first he spoke of
+  his office and duty in language, chastened indeed and modest, but still
+  language of independence; and while he declared his unwillingness to
+  "enterprise any part of that office" without his Grace's favour obtained,
+  and pleasure therein first known, he implied nevertheless that his
+  request was rather of courtesy than of obligation, and had arisen rather
+  from a sense of moral propriety than because he might not legally enter
+  on the exercise of his duty without the permission of the crown.<a
+  name="NtA_428"></a><a href="#Nt_428"><sup>428</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The moderate gleam of freedom vanishes in the other copy under a few
+  pithy changes, as if Cranmer instinctively felt the revolution which had
+  taken place in the relations of church and state. Where in the first
+  letter he asked for his Grace's favour, in the second he asked for his
+  Grace's favour <i>and licence</i>&mdash;where <!-- Page 273 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page273"></a>[pg 273]</span> in the first he
+  requested to know his Grace's pleasure as to his proceeding, in the
+  second he desired his Most Excellent Majesty to <i>license</i> him to
+  proceed. The burden of both letters was the same, but the introduction of
+  the little word license changed all. It implied a hesitating belief that
+  the spiritual judges might perhaps thenceforward be on a footing with the
+  temporal judges and the magistrates; that under the new constitution they
+  were to understand that they held their offices not directly under God as
+  they had hitherto pretended, but under God through the crown.</p>
+
+  <p>The answer of Henry indicated that he had perceived the archbishop's
+  uncertainty; and that he was desirous by the emphatic distinctness of his
+  own language to spare him a future recurrence of it. He accepted the
+  deferential version of the petition; but even Cranmer's anticipation of
+  what might be required of him had not reached the reality. In running
+  through the preamble, the king flung into the tone of it a character of
+  still deeper humility;<a name="NtA_429"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_429"><sup>429</sup></a> and he conceded the desired licence in
+  the following imperial style. "In consideration of these
+  things,"&mdash;<i>i.e.</i> of the grounds urged by the archbishop for the
+  petition&mdash;"albeit we being your King and Sovereign, do recognise no
+  superior on earth but only God, and not being subject to the laws of any
+  earthly creature; yet because ye be under us, by God's calling and ours,
+  the most principal minister of our spiritual jurisdiction within this our
+  Realm, who we think assuredly is so in the fear of God, and love towards
+  the observance of his laws, to the which laws, we as a Christian king
+  have always heretofore, and shall ever most obediently submit ourself, we
+  will not therefore refuse (our pre-eminence, power, and authority to us
+  and to our successors in this behalf nevertheless saved) your humble
+  request, offer, and towardness&mdash;that is, to mean to make an end
+  according to the will and pleasure of Almighty God in our said great
+  cause of matrimony, which hath so long depended undetermined, to our
+  great and grievous unquietness and burden of our conscience. Wherefore
+  we, inclining to your humble petition, by these our letters sealed with
+  our seal, and signed with our sign manual, do license you <!-- Page 274
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page274"></a>[pg 274]</span> to proceed
+  in the said cause, and the examination and final determination of the
+  same; not doubting but that ye will have God and the justice of the said
+  cause only before your eyes, and not to regard any earthly or worldly
+  affection therein; for assuredly the thing which we most covet in the
+  world, is so to proceed in all our acts and doings as may be the most
+  acceptable to the pleasure of Almighty God our Creator, to the wealth and
+  honour of us, our successors and posterity, and the surety of our Realm,
+  and subjects within the same."<a name="NtA_430"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_430"><sup>430</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The vision of ecclesiastical independence, if Cranmer had indulged in
+  it, must have faded utterly before his eyes on receiving this letter. As
+  clergy who committed felony were no longer exempted from the penalties of
+  their crimes; so henceforward the courts of the clergy were to fell into
+  conformity with the secular tribunals. The temporal prerogatives of
+  ecclesiastics as a body whose authority over the laity was countervailed
+  with no reciprocal obligation, existed no longer. This is what the
+  language of the king implied. The difficulty which the persons whom he
+  was addressing experienced in realising the change in their position,
+  obliged him to be somewhat emphatic in his assertion of it; and it might
+  be imagined at first sight, that in insisting on his superiority to the
+  officers of the spiritual courts, he claimed a right to dictate their
+  sentences. But to venture such a supposition would be to mistake the
+  nature of English sovereignty and the spirit of the change. The supreme
+  authority in England was the law; and the king no more possessed, or
+  claimed a power of controlling the judgment of the bishops or their
+  ministers, than he could interfere with the jurisdiction of the judges of
+  the bench. All persons in authority, whether in church or state, held
+  their offices thenceforth by similar tenure; but the rule of the
+  proceedings in each remained alike the law of the land, which Henry had
+  no more thought of superseding by his own will than the most
+  constitutional of modern princes.</p>
+
+  <p>The closing sentences of his reply to Cranmer are striking, and it is
+  difficult to believe that he did not mean what he was saying. From the
+  first step in the process to the last, he maintained consistently that
+  his only object was to do what was right. He was thoroughly persuaded
+  that the course which he was pursuing was sanctioned by justice&mdash;and
+  persons who are satisfied that he was entitled to feel such persuasion,
+  need not refuse him the merit of sincerity, because (to use the language
+  <!-- Page 275 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page275"></a>[pg
+  275]</span> which Cromwell used at the fatal crisis of his life<a
+  name="NtA_431"></a><a href="#Nt_431"><sup>431</sup></a>) "It may be well
+  that they who medelle in many matters are not able to answer for them
+  all."</p>
+
+  <p>Cranmer, then, being fortified with this permission, and taking with
+  him the Bishops of London, Winchester, Lincoln, and Bath and Wells (the
+  latter perhaps having been chosen in consequence of his late conduct in
+  the convocation, to give show of fairness to the proceeding), went down
+  to Dunstable and opened his court there. The queen was at Ampthill, six
+  miles distant, having entered on her sad tenancy, it would seem, as soon
+  as the place had been evacuated by the gaudy hunting party of the
+  preceding summer. The cause being undecided, and her title being
+  therefore uncertain, she was called by the safe name of "the Lady
+  Catherine," and under this designation she was served with a citation
+  from the archbishop to appear before him on Saturday, the 10th of May.
+  The bearers of the summons were Sir Francis Bryan (an unfortunate choice,
+  for he was cousin of the new queen, and insolent in his manner and
+  bearing), Sir Thomas Gage, and Lord Vaux. She received them like herself
+  with imperial sorrow. They delivered their message; she announced that
+  she refused utterly to acknowledge the competency of the tribunal before
+  which she was called; the court was a mockery; the archbishop was a
+  shadow.<a name="NtA_432"></a><a href="#Nt_432"><sup>432</sup></a> She
+  would neither appear before him in person, nor commission any one to
+  appear on her behalf.</p>
+
+  <p>The court had but one course before it&mdash;she was pronounced
+  contumacious, and the trial went forward. None of her household were
+  tempted even by curiosity to be present. "There came not so much as a
+  servant of hers to Dunstable, save such as were brought in as witnesses;"
+  some of them having been required to give evidence in the re-examination
+  which was thought necessary, as to the nature of the relation of their
+  mistress with her first boy husband. As soon as this disgusting question
+  had been sufficiently investigated, nothing remained but to pronounce
+  judgment. The marriage with the king was declared to have been null and
+  void from the beginning, and on the 23rd of May, the archbishop sent to
+  London the welcome news that the long matter was at an end.<a
+  name="NtA_433"></a><a href="#Nt_433"><sup>433</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 276 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page276"></a>[pg 276]</span>
+
+  <p>It was over;&mdash;over at last; yet so over, that the conclusion
+  could but appear to the losing party a fresh injustice. To those who were
+  concerned in bringing it to pass, to the king himself, to the nation, to
+  Europe, to every one who heard of it at the time, it must have appeared,
+  as it appears now to us who read the story of it, if a necessity, yet a
+  most unwelcome and unsatisfying one. That the king remained uneasy is
+  evident from the efforts which he continued to make, or which he allowed
+  to be made, notwithstanding the brief of the 23rd of December, to gain
+  the sanction of the pope. That the nation was uneasy, we should not
+  require the evidence of history to tell us. "There was much murmuring in
+  England," says Hall, "and it was thought by the unwise that the Bishop of
+  Rome would curse all Englishmen; that the emperor and he would destroy
+  all the people." And those who had no such fears, and whose judgment in
+  the main approved of what had been done, were scandalised <!-- Page 277
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page277"></a>[pg 277]</span> at the
+  presentation to them at the instant of the publication of the divorce, of
+  a new queen, four months advanced in pregnancy. This also was a
+  misfortune which had arisen out of the chain of duplicities, a fresh
+  accident swelling a complication which was already sufficiently
+  entangled. It had been occasioned by steps which at the moment at which
+  they were ventured, prudence seemed to justify; but we the more regret
+  it, because, in comparison with the interests which were at issue, the
+  few months of additional delay were infinitely unimportant.</p>
+
+  <p>Nevertheless, we have reason to be thankful that the thing, well or
+  ill, was over; seven years of endurance were enough for the English
+  nation, and may be supposed to have gained even for Henry a character for
+  patience. In some way, too, it is needless to say, the thing must have
+  ended. The life of none of us is long enough to allow us to squander so
+  large a section of it struggling in the meshes of a law-suit; and
+  although there <!-- Page 278 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page278"></a>[pg 278]</span> may be a difference of opinion on the
+  wisdom of having first entered upon ground of such a kind, few thinking
+  persons can suggest any other method in which either the nation or the
+  king could have extricated themselves. Meanwhile, it was resolved that
+  such spots and blemishes as hung about the transaction should be
+  forgotten in the splendour of the coronation. If there was scandal in the
+  condition of the queen, yet under another aspect that condition was
+  matter of congratulation to a people so eager for an heir; and Henry may
+  have thought that the sight for the first time in public of so beautiful
+  a creature, surrounded by the most magnificent pageant which London had
+  witnessed since the unknown day on which the first stone of it was laid,
+  and bearing in her bosom the long-hoped-for inheritor of the English
+  crown, might induce a chivalrous nation to forget what it was the
+  interest of no loyal subject to remember longer, and to offer her an
+  English welcome to the throne.</p>
+
+  <p>In anticipation of the timely close of the proceedings at Dunstable,
+  notice had been given in the city early in May, that preparations should
+  be made for the coronation on the first of the following month. Queen
+  Anne was at Greenwich, but, according to custom, the few preceding days
+  were to be spent at the Tower; and on the 19th of May, she was conducted
+  thither in state by the lord mayor and the city companies, with one of
+  those splendid exhibitions upon the water which in the days when the
+  silver Thames deserved its name, and the sun could shine down upon it out
+  of the blue summer sky, were spectacles scarcely rivalled in gorgeousness
+  by the world-famous wedding of the Adriatic. The river was crowded with
+  boats, the banks and the ships in the pool swarmed with people; and fifty
+  great barges formed the procession, all blazing with gold and banners.
+  The queen herself was in her own barge, close to that of the lord mayor;
+  and in keeping with the fantastic genius of the time, she was preceded up
+  the water by "a foyst or wafter full or ordnance, in which was a great
+  dragon continually moving and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst
+  stood terrible monsters and wild men, casting fire and making hideous
+  noise."<a name="NtA_434"></a><a href="#Nt_434"><sup>434</sup></a> So,
+  with trumpets blowing, cannon pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns
+  of the ships, in a blaze of fireworks and splendour, Anne Boleyn was
+  borne along to the great archway of the Tower, where the king was waiting
+  on the stairs to receive her.</p>
+
+  <p>And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the <!-- Page 279
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page279"></a>[pg 279]</span> welcome
+  news to have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer
+  morning of life dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of
+  expectation. No bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had
+  been huddled over like a stolen love-match, and the marriage feast had
+  been eaten in vexation and disappointment. These past mortifications were
+  to be atoned for by a coronation pageant which the art and the wealth of
+  the richest city in Europe should be poured out in the most lavish
+  profusion to adorn.</p>
+
+  <p>On the morning of the 31st of May, the families of the London citizens
+  were stirring early in all houses. From Temple Bar to the Tower, the
+  streets were fresh strewed with gravel, the footpaths were railed off
+  along the whole distance, and occupied on one side by the guilds, their
+  workmen, and apprentices, on the other by the city constables and
+  officials in their gaudy uniforms, "with their staves in hand for to
+  cause the people to keep good room and order."<a name="NtA_435"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_435"><sup>435</sup></a> Cornhill and Gracechurch Street had
+  dressed their fronts in scarlet and crimson, in arras and tapestry, and
+  the rich carpet-work from Persia and the East. Cheapside, to outshine her
+  rivals, was draped even more splendidly in cloth of gold, and tissue, and
+  velvet. The sheriffs were pacing up and down on their great Flemish
+  horses, hung with liveries, and all the windows were thronged with ladies
+  crowding to see the procession pass. At length the Tower guns opened, the
+  grim gates rolled back, and under the archway in the bright May sunshine,
+  the long column began slowly to defile. Two states only permitted their
+  representatives to grace the scene with their presence&mdash;Venice and
+  France. It was, perhaps, to make the most of this isolated countenance,
+  that the French ambassador's train formed the van of the cavalcade.
+  Twelve French knights came riding foremost in surcoats of blue velvet
+  with sleeves of yellow silk, their horses trapped in blue, with white
+  crosses powdered on their hangings. After them followed a troop of
+  English gentlemen, two and two, and then the Knights of the Bath, "in
+  gowns of violet, with hoods purfled with miniver like doctors." Next,
+  perhaps at a little interval, the abbots passed on, mitred in their
+  robes; the barons followed in crimson velvet, the bishops then, and then
+  the earls and marquises, the dresses of each order increasing in
+  elaborate gorgeousness. All these rode on in pairs. Then came alone
+  Audeley, lord-chancellor, and behind him the Venetian ambassador and the
+  Archbishop of York; the Archbishop <!-- Page 280 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page280"></a>[pg 280]</span> of Canterbury, and
+  Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne and of Paris, not now with bugle and
+  hunting-frock, but solemn with stole and crozier. Next, the lord mayor,
+  with the city mace in hand, the Garter in his coat of arms; and then Lord
+  William Howard&mdash;Belted Will Howard, of the Scottish Border, Marshal
+  of England. The officers of the queen's household succeeded the marshal
+  in scarlet and gold, and the van of the procession was closed by the Duke
+  of Suffolk, as high constable, with his silver wand. It is no easy matter
+  to picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splendour which in such a
+  pageant must have drawn along the London streets,&mdash;those streets
+  which now we know so black and smoke-grimed, themselves then radiant with
+  masses of colour, gold, and crimson, and violet. Yet there it was, and
+  there the sun could shine upon it, and tens of thousands of eyes were
+  gazing on the scene out of the crowded lattices.</p>
+
+  <p>Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps however, it passed unheeded.
+  Those eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near. In
+  an open space behind the constable there was seen approaching "a white
+  chariot," drawn by two palfreys in white damask which swept the ground, a
+  golden canopy borne above it making music with silver bells: and in the
+  chariot sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful occasion of all
+  this glittering homage; fortune's plaything of the hour, the Queen of
+  England&mdash;queen at last&mdash;borne along upon the waves of this sea
+  of glory, breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had
+  risked her fair name, her delicacy, her honour, her self-respect, to win;
+  and she had won it.</p>
+
+  <p>There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing
+  loose over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of
+  gold and diamonds&mdash;most beautiful&mdash;loveliest&mdash;most
+  favoured perhaps, as she seemed at that hour, of all England's daughters.
+  Alas! "within the hollow round" of that coronet&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>Kept death his court, and there the antick sate,</p>
+      <p>Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp.</p>
+      <p>Allowing her a little breath, a little scene</p>
+      <p>To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks,</p>
+      <p>Infusing her with self and vain conceit,</p>
+      <p>As if the flesh which walled about her life</p>
+      <p>Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus,</p>
+      <p>Bored through her castle walls; and farewell, Queen.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Fatal gift of greatness! so dangerous ever! so more than <!-- Page 281
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page281"></a>[pg 281]</span> dangerous
+  in those tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the
+  great deeps of thought; and nations are in the throes of
+  revolution;&mdash;when ancient order and law and tradition are splitting
+  in the social earthquake; and as the opposing forces wrestle to and fro,
+  those unhappy ones who stand out above the crowd become the symbols of
+  the struggle, and fall the victims of its alternating fortunes. And what
+  if into an unsteady heart and brain, intoxicated with splendour, the
+  outward chaos should find its way, converting the poor silly soul into an
+  image of the same confusion,&mdash;if conscience should be deposed from
+  her high place, and the Pandora box be broken loose of passions and
+  sensualities and follies; and at length there be nothing left of all
+  which man or woman ought to value, save hope of God's forgiveness.</p>
+
+  <p>Three short years have yet to pass, and again, on a summer morning,
+  Queen Anne Boleyn will leave the Tower of London&mdash;not radiant then
+  with beauty on a gay errand of coronation, but a poor wandering ghost, on
+  a sad tragic errand, from which she will never more return, passing away
+  out of an earth where she may stay no longer, into a presence where,
+  nevertheless, we know that all is well&mdash;for all of us&mdash;and
+  therefore for her.</p>
+
+  <p>But let us not cloud her shortlived sunshine with the shadow of the
+  future. She went on in her loveliness, the peeresses following in their
+  carriages, with the royal guard in their rear. In Fenchurch Street she
+  was met by the children of the city schools; and at the corner of
+  Gracechurch Street a masterpiece had been prepared of the pseudo-classic
+  art, then so fashionable, by the merchants of the Styll Yard. A Mount
+  Parnassus had been constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing
+  into a basin with four jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain
+  sat Apollo with Calliope at his feet, and on either side the remaining
+  Muses, holding lutes or harps, and singing each of them some "posy" or
+  epigram in praise of the queen, which was presented, after it had been
+  sung, written in letters of gold.</p>
+
+  <p>From Gracechurch Street, the procession passed to Leadenhall, where
+  there was a spectacle in better taste, of the old English Catholic kind,
+  quaint perhaps and forced, but truly and even beautifully emblematic.
+  There was again a "little mountain," which was hung with red and white
+  roses; a gold ring was placed on the summit, on which, as the queen
+  appeared, a white falcon was made to "descend as out of the
+  sky"&mdash;"and then incontinent came down an angel with great melody,
+  and set a <!-- Page 282 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page282"></a>[pg 282]</span> close crown of gold upon the falcon's
+  head; and in the same pageant sat Saint Anne with all her issue beneath
+  her; and Mary Cleophas with her four children, of the which children one
+  made a goodly oration to the queen, of the fruitfulness of St. Anne,
+  trusting that like fruit should come of her."<a name="NtA_436"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_436"><sup>436</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>With such "pretty conceits," at that time the honest tokens of an
+  English welcome, the new queen was received by the citizens of London.
+  These scenes must be multiplied by the number of the streets, where some
+  fresh fancy met her at every turn. To preserve the festivities from
+  flagging, every fountain and conduit within the walls ran all day with
+  wine; the bells of every steeple were ringing; children lay in wait with
+  song, and ladies with posies, in which all the resources of fantastic
+  extravagance were exhausted; and thus in an unbroken triumph&mdash;and to
+  outward appearance received with the warmest affection&mdash;she passed
+  under Temple Bar, down the Strand by Charing Cross to Westminster Hall.
+  The king was not with her throughout the day; nor did he intend to be
+  with her in any part of the ceremony. She was to reign without a rival,
+  the undisputed sovereign of the hour.</p>
+
+  <p>Saturday being passed in showing herself to the people, she retired
+  for the night to "the king's manour house at Westminster," where she
+  slept. On the following morning, between eight and nine o'clock, she
+  returned to the hall, where the lord mayor, the city council, and the
+  peers were again assembled, and took her place on the high dais at the
+  top of the stairs under the cloth of state; while the bishops, the
+  abbots, and the monks of the abbey formed in the area. A railed way had
+  been laid with carpets across Palace Yard and the Sanctuary to the abbey
+  gates, and when all was ready, preceded by the peers in their robes of
+  parliament, the Knights of the Garter in the dress of the order, she
+  swept out under her canopy, the bishops and the monks "solemnly singing."
+  The train was borne by the old Duchess of Norfolk her aunt, the Bishops
+  of London and Winchester on either side "bearing up the lappets of her
+  robe." The Earl of Oxford carried the crown on its cushion immediately
+  before her. She was dressed in purple velvet furred with ermine, her hair
+  escaping loose, as she usually wore it, under a wreath of diamonds.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 283 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page283"></a>[pg 283]</span>
+
+  <p>On entering the abbey, she was led to the coronation chair Where she
+  sat while the train fell into their places, and the preliminaries, of the
+  ceremonial were despatched. Then she was conducted up to the high altar,
+  and anointed Queen of England, and she received from the hands of
+  Cranmer, fresh come in haste from Dunstable, with the last words of his
+  sentence upon Catherine scarcely silent upon his lips, the golden
+  sceptre, and St. Edward's crown.</p>
+
+  <p>Did any twinge of remorse, any pang of painful recollection, pierce at
+  that moment the incense of glory which she was inhaling? Did any vision
+  flit across her of a sad mourning figure which once had stood where she
+  was standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into the darkening
+  twilight of a life cut short by sorrow? Who can tell? At such a time,
+  that figure would have weighed heavily upon a noble mind, and a wise
+  mind would have been taught by the thought of it, that although life be
+  fleeting as a dream, it is long enough to experience strange vicissitudes
+  of fortune. But Anne Boleyn was not noble and was not wise,&mdash;too
+  probably she felt nothing but the delicious, all-absorbing,
+  all-intoxicating present, and if that plain, suffering face presented
+  itself to her memory at all, we may fear that it was rather as a foil to
+  her own surpassing loveliness. Two years later, she was able to exult
+  over Catherine's death; she is not likely to have thought of her with
+  gentler feelings in the first glow and flush of triumph.</p>
+
+  <p>We may now leave these scenes. They concluded in the usual English
+  style, with a banquet in the great hall, and with all outward signs of
+  enjoyment and pleasure. There must have been but few persons present
+  however who did not feel that the sunshine of such a day might not last
+  for ever, and that over so dubious a marriage no Englishman could exult
+  with more than half a heart. It is foolish to blame lightly actions which
+  arise in the midst of circumstances which are and can be but imperfectly
+  known; and there may have been political reasons which made so much pomp
+  desirable. Anne Boleyn had been the subject of public conversation for
+  seven years, and Henry, no doubt, desired to present his jewel to them in
+  the rarest and choicest setting. Yet to our eyes, seeing, perhaps, by the
+  light of what followed, a more modest introduction would have appeared
+  more suited to the doubtful nature of her position.</p>
+
+  <p>At any rate we escape from this scene of splendour very gladly as from
+  something unseasonable. It would have been well for Henry VIII. if he had
+  lived in a world in which women could <!-- Page 284 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page284"></a>[pg 284]</span> have been dispensed
+  with; so ill, in all his relations with them, he succeeded. With men he
+  could speak the right word, he could do the right thing; with women he
+  seemed to be under a fatal necessity of mistake.</p>
+
+  <p>It was now necessary, however, after this public step, to communicate
+  in form to the emperor the divorce and the new marriage. The king was
+  assured of the rectitude of the motives on which he had himself acted,
+  and he knew at the same time that he had challenged the hostility of the
+  papal world. Yet he did not desire a quarrel if there were means of
+  avoiding it; and more than once he had shown respect for the opposition
+  which he had met with from Charles, as dictated by honourable care for
+  the interests of his kinswoman. He therefore, in the truest language
+  which will be met with in the whole long series of the correspondence,
+  composed a despatch for his ambassador at Brussels, and expressed himself
+  in a tone of honest sorrow for the injury which he had been compelled to
+  commit. Neither the coercion which the emperor had exerted over the pope,
+  nor his intrigues with his subjects in Ireland and England, could deprive
+  the nephew of Catherine of his right to a courteous explanation; and
+  Henry directed Doctor Nicholas Hawkins in making his communication "to
+  use only gentle words;" to express a hope that Charles would not think
+  only of his own honour, but would remember public justice; and that a
+  friendship of long standing, which the interests of the subjects of both
+  countries were concerned so strongly in maintaining, might not be broken.
+  The instructions are too interesting to pass over with a general
+  description. After stating the grounds on which Henry had proceeded, and
+  which Charles thoroughly understood, Hawkins was directed to continue
+  thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"The King of England is not ignorant what respect is due unto the
+  world. How much he hath laboured and travailed therein he hath
+  sufficiently declared and showed in his acts and proceedings. If he had
+  contemned the order and process of the world, or the friendship and amity
+  of your Majesty, he needed not to have sent so often to the pope and to
+  you both, nor continued and spent his time in delays. He might have done
+  what he has done now, had it so liked him, with as little difficulty as
+  now, if without such respect he would have followed his pleasure."</p>
+
+  <p>The minister was then to touch the pope's behaviour and Henry's
+  forbearance, and after that to say:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Going forward in that way his Highness saw that he could come to no
+  conclusion; and he was therefore compelled to step <!-- Page 285 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page285"></a>[pg 285]</span> right forth out of
+  the maze, and so to quiet himself at last. And is it not time to have an
+  end in seven years? It is not to be asked nor questioned whether the
+  matter hath been determined after the common fashion, but whether it hath
+  in it common justice, truth, and equity. For observation of the common
+  order, his Grace hath done what lay in him. Enforced by necessity he hath
+  found the true order which he hath in substance followed with effect, and
+  hath done as becometh him. He doubteth not but your Majesty, remembering
+  his cause from the beginning hitherto, will of yourself consider and
+  think, that among mortal men nothing should be immortal; and suits must
+  once have an end, si possis recte, si non quocunque modo. If his Highness
+  cannot as he would, then must he do as he may; and he that hath a journey
+  to be perfected must, if he cannot go one way, essay another. For his
+  matter with the pope, he shall deal with him apart. Your Majesty he
+  taketh for his friend, and as to a friend he openeth these matters to
+  you, trusting to find your Majesty no less friendly than he hath done
+  heretofore."<a name="NtA_437"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_437"><sup>437</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>If courtesy obliged Henry to express a confidence in the stability of
+  the relations between himself and Charles, which it was impossible that
+  he could have felt, yet in other respects this letter has the most
+  pleasant merit of honesty. Hawkins was so much overcome by "the sweetness
+  of it," that "he nothing doubted if that the emperor read the same, by
+  God's grace he should be utterly persuaded;" and although in this
+  expectation he was a little over sanguine, as in calmer moments he would
+  have acknowledged, yet plain speech is never without its value; and
+  Charles himself after he had tried other expedients, and they had not
+  succeeded with him, found it more prudent to acquiesce in what could no
+  longer be altered, and to return to cordiality.</p>
+
+  <p>For the present he remained under the impression that by the great
+  body of the English the divorce was looked upon with coldness and even
+  with displeasure, that the king was supported only by the complacency of
+  a few courtiers, and that the nation were prepared to compel him to undo
+  the wrong which had been inflicted upon Catherine and the princess. So he
+  was assured by the Spanish party in England; so all the disaffected
+  assured him, who were perhaps themselves deceived. He had secured
+  Ireland, and Scotland also in so far as James's promises could secure
+  it;<a name="NtA_438"></a><a href="#Nt_438"><sup>438</sup></a> and he was
+  not disposed to surrender for the present so promising a game till he had
+  tried his strength and proved his <!-- Page 286 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page286"></a>[pg 286]</span> weakness. He
+  replied coldly to Hawkins, "That for the King of England's amity he would
+  be glad thereof, so the said king would do works according. The matter
+  was none of his; but the lady, whose rights had been violated, was his
+  aunt and an orphan, and that he must see for her, and for her daughter
+  his cousin."<a name="NtA_439"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_439"><sup>439</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The scarcely ambiguous answer was something softened the following
+  day; perhaps only, however, because it was too plain a betrayal of his
+  intentions. He communicated at once with Catherine, and Henry speedily
+  learnt the nature of the advice which he had given to her. After the
+  coronation had passed off so splendidly, when no disturbance had risen,
+  no voice had been raised for her or for her daughter, the poor queen's
+  spirit for the moment had sunk; she had thought of leaving the country,
+  and flying with the Princess Mary to Spain. The emperor sent to urge her
+  to remain a little longer, guaranteeing her, if she could command her
+  patience, an ample reparation for her injuries. Whatever might appear
+  upon the surface, the new queen, he was assured, was little loved by the
+  people, and "they were ready to join with any prince who would espouse
+  her quarrel."<a name="NtA_440"></a><a href="#Nt_440"><sup>440</sup></a>
+  All classes, he said, were agreed in one common feeling of displeasure.
+  They were afraid of a change of religion; they were afraid of the wreck
+  of their commerce; and the whole country was fast ripening towards
+  insurrection. The points on which he relied as the occasion of the
+  disaffection betrayed the sources of his information. He was in
+  correspondence with the regular clergy through Peto at Antwerp, and
+  through his Flemish subjects with merchants of London. Among both these
+  classes, as well as among the White Rose nobles, he had powerful
+  adherents; and it could not have been forgotten in the courts, either of
+  London or Brussels, that within the memory of living men, a small band of
+  exiles, equipped by a Duke of Burgundy, had landed at a Yorkshire
+  village, and in a month had revolutionised the kingdom.</p>
+
+  <p>In the eyes of Charles there was no reason why an attempt which had
+  succeeded once might not succeed again under circumstances seemingly of
+  far fairer promise. The strength of a party of insurrection is a power
+  which official statesmen never justly comprehend. It depends upon moral
+  influences, which they are professionally incapable of appreciating. They
+  are able complacently to ignore the existence of substantial disaffection
+  <!-- Page 287 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page287"></a>[pg
+  287]</span> though all society may be undermined; they can build their
+  hopes, When it suits their convenience, on the idle trifling of
+  superficial discontent. In the present instance there was some excuse for
+  the mistake. That in England there really existed an active and organised
+  opposition, prepared, when opportunity offered, to try the chances of
+  rebellion, was no delusion of persons who measured facts by their
+  desires; it was an ascertained peril of serious magnitude, which might be
+  seriously calculated upon; and if the experiment was tried, reasonable
+  men might fairly be divided in opinion on the result to be expected.</p>
+
+  <p>In the meantime the government had been obliged to follow up the
+  coronation of the new queen by an act which the situation of the kingdom
+  explained and excused; but which, if Catherine had been no more than a
+  private person, would have been wanton cruelty. Among the people she
+  still bore her royal title; but the name of queen, so long as she was
+  permitted to retain it, was an allowed witness against the legality of
+  the sentence at Dunstable. There could not be "two queens" in England,<a
+  name="NtA_441"></a><a href="#Nt_441"><sup>441</sup></a> and one or other
+  must retire from the designation. A proclamation was therefore issued by
+  the council, declaring, that in consequence of the final proofs that the
+  Lady Catherine had never been lawfully married to the king, she was to
+  bear thenceforward the title which she had received after the death of
+  her first husband, and be called the Princess Dowager.</p>
+
+  <p>Harsh as this measure was, she had left no alternative to the
+  government by which to escape the enforcement of it, by her refusal to
+  consent to any form of compromise. If she was queen, Anne Boleyn was not
+  queen. If she was queen, the Princess Mary remained the heir to the
+  crown, and the expected offspring of Anne would be illegitimate. If the
+  question had been merely of names, to have moved it would have been
+  unworthy and wicked; but where respect for private feeling was
+  incompatible with the steps which a nation felt necessary in order to
+  secure itself against civil convulsions, private feeling was compelled
+  not unjustly to submit to injury. Mary, though still a girl, had
+  inherited both her father's will and her mother's obstinacy. She was in
+  correspondence, as we have seen, with the Nun of Kent, and aware at
+  least, if she was not further implicated in it, of a conspiracy to place
+  her on the throne. Charles was engaged in the same designs; and it will
+  not be pretended that Catherine was left without information of what <!--
+  Page 288 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page288"></a>[pg 288]</span>
+  was going forward, or that her own conduct was uninfluenced by policy.
+  These intrigues it was positively necessary to stifle, and it was
+  impossible to leave a pretext of which so powerful a use might be made in
+  the hands of a party whose object was not only to secure to the princess
+  her right to succeed her father, but to compel him by arms either to
+  acknowledge it, or submit to be deposed.<a name="NtA_442"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_442"><sup>442</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Our sympathies are naturally on the side of the weak and the
+  unsuccessful. State considerations lose their force after the lapse of
+  centuries, when no interests of our own are any longer in jeopardy; and
+  we feel for the great sufferers of history only in their individual
+  capacity, without recalling or caring for the political exigencies to
+  which they were sacrificed. It is an error of disguised selfishness, the
+  counterpart of the carelessness with which in our own age, when we are
+  ourselves constituents of an interested public, we ignore what it is
+  inconvenient to remember.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, therefore, on one hot Midsummer Sunday in this year 1533, the
+  people gathering to church in every parish through the English counties,
+  read, nailed upon the doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that
+  the Lady Catherine of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not
+  to be called by that title any more, but was to be called Princess
+  Dowager, and so to be held and esteemed. The proclamation, we may
+  suppose, was read with varying comments; of the reception of it in the
+  northern counties, the following information was forwarded to the crown.
+  The Earl of Derby, lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the
+  council that he had arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James
+  Harrison by name, on the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous
+  words of his Highness and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the
+  examinations of several witnesses, which he had sent with his letter, and
+  which were to the following effect:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>Richard Clark deposeth that the said James Harrison reading the
+  proclamation, said that Queen Catherine was queen, Nan Bullen should not
+  be queen, nor the king should be no king but on his bearing.</p>
+
+  <p>William Dalton deposeth, that in his hearing the above-named James
+  said, I will take none for queen but Queen Catherine&mdash;who the devil
+  made Nan Bullen, that hoore, queen? I will never take her for
+  queen&mdash;and he the said William answered, "Hold thy peace, thou
+  wot'st not what thou sayest&mdash;but that <!-- Page 289 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page289"></a>[pg 289]</span> thou art a priest I
+  should punish thee, that others should take example."</p>
+
+  <p>Richard Sumner and John Clayton depose, that they came in company with
+  the said James from Perbalt to Eccleston, when the said James did say,
+  "This is a marvellous world&mdash;the king will put down the order of
+  priests and destroy the Sacrament, but he cannot reign long, for York
+  will be in London hastily."<a name="NtA_443"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_443"><sup>443</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Here was the later growth of the spirit which we saw a few months
+  previously in the monks of Furness. The mutterings of discontent had
+  developed into plain open treason, confident of success, and scarcely
+  caring to conceal itself&mdash;and Yorkshire was preparing for rebellion
+  and "the Pilgrimage of Grace."</p>
+
+  <p>There is another quarter also into which we must follow the
+  proclamation, and watch the effect of the royal order in a scene where it
+  is well that we should for a few moments rest. Catherine was still at
+  Ampthill, surrounded by her own attendants, who formed an inner circle,
+  shielding her retirement against impertinent curiosity. She rarely or
+  never allowed herself to be seen; Lord Mountjoy, with an official
+  retinue, was in attendance in the house; but the occupation was not a
+  pleasant one, and he was as willing to respect the queen's seclusion as
+  she to remain secluded. Injunctions arrived however from the court at the
+  end of June, which compelled him to request an interview; a deputation of
+  the privy council had come down to inform the ex-queen of the orders of
+  the government, and to desire that they might be put in force in her own
+  family. Aware probably of the nature of the communication which was to be
+  made to her, she refused repeatedly to admit them to her presence. At
+  length, however, she nerved herself for the effort, and on the 3rd of
+  July Mountjoy and the state commissioners were informed that she was
+  ready to receive them.</p>
+
+  <p>As they entered her room she was lying on a sofa. She had a bad cough,
+  and she had hurt her foot with a pin, and was unable to stand or walk.
+  Her attendants were all present by her own desire; she was glad to see
+  around her some sympathising human faces, to enable her to endure the
+  cold hard eyes of the officials of the council.</p>
+
+  <p>She inquired whether the message was to be delivered in writing or by
+  word of mouth.</p>
+
+  <p>They replied that they had brought with them instructions <!-- Page
+  290 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page290"></a>[pg 290]</span> which
+  they were to read, and that they were further charged with a message
+  which was to be delivered verbally. She desired that they would read
+  their written despatch. It was addressed to the Princess Dowager, and she
+  at once excepted to the name. She was not Princess Dowager, she said, but
+  queen, and the king's true wife. She came to the king a clear maid for
+  any bodily knowledge of Prince Arthur; she had borne him lawful issue and
+  no bastard, and therefore queen she was, and queen she would be while she
+  lived.</p>
+
+  <p>The commissioners were prepared for the objection, and continued,
+  without replying, to read. The paper contained a statement of worn-out
+  unrealities; the old story of the judgment of the universities and the
+  learned men, the sentence of convocation, and of the houses of
+  parliament; and, finally, the fact of substantial importance, that the
+  king, acting as he believed according to the laws of God, had married the
+  Lady Anne Boleyn, who was now his lawful wife, and anointed Queen of
+  England.</p>
+
+  <p>Oh yes, she answered when they had done, we know that, and "we know
+  the authority by which it has been done&mdash;more by power than
+  justice." The king's learned men were learned heretics; the honest
+  learning was for her. As for the seals of the universities there were
+  strange stories about the way in which they had been obtained. The
+  universities and the parliament had done what the king bade them; and
+  they had gone against their consciences in doing it; but it was of no
+  importance to her&mdash;she was in the hands of the pope, who was God's
+  vicar, and she acknowledged no other judge.</p>
+
+  <p>The commissioners informed her of the decision of the council that she
+  was no longer to bear the title of queen. It stood, they said, neither
+  with the laws of God nor man, nor with the king's honour, to have two
+  queens named within the realm; and in fact, there was but one queen, the
+  king's lawful wife, to whom he was now married.</p>
+
+  <p>She replied shortly that she was the king's lawful queen, and none
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>There was little hope in her manner that anything which could be said
+  would move her; but her visitors were ordered to try her to the
+  uttermost.</p>
+
+  <p>The king, they continued, was surprised that she could be so
+  disobedient; and not only that she was disobedient herself, but that she
+  allowed and encouraged her servants in the same conduct.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 291 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page291"></a>[pg 291]</span>
+
+  <p>She was ready to obey the king; she answered, when she could do so
+  without disobeying God; but she could not damn her soul even for him. Her
+  servants, she said, must do the best they could; they were standing round
+  her as she was speaking; and she turned to them with an apology, and a
+  hope that they would pardon her. She would hinder her cause, she said;
+  and put her soul in danger, if on their account she were to relinquish
+  her name, and she could not do it.</p>
+
+  <p>The deputation next attempted her on her worldly side. If she would
+  obey, they informed her that she would be allowed not only her jointure
+  as Princess Dowager and her own private fortune, but all the settlements
+  which had been made upon her on her marriage with the king.</p>
+
+  <p>She "passed not upon possessions, in regard of this matter," she
+  replied. It touched her conscience, and no worldly considerations were of
+  the slightest moment.</p>
+
+  <p>In disobeying the king, they said; seeing that she was none other than
+  his subject, she might give cause for dissension and disturbance; and she
+  might lose the favour of the people.</p>
+
+  <p>She "trusted not," she replied&mdash;she "never minded it, nor would
+  she"&mdash;she "desired only to save her right; and if she should lose
+  the favour of the people in defending that right, yet she trusted to go
+  to heaven cum famā et infamiā."</p>
+
+  <p>Promises and persuasions being unavailing, they tried threats. She was
+  told that if she persisted in so obstinate a course, the king would be
+  obliged to make known to the world the offers which he had made to her,
+  and the ill reception which they had met with&mdash;and then he would
+  perhaps withdraw those offers, and conceive some evil opinions of high
+  displeasure towards her.</p>
+
+  <p>She answered that there was no manner of offers neither of lands nor
+  goods that she had respect unto in comparison of her cause&mdash;and as
+  to the loss of the king's affection, she trusted to God, to whom she
+  would daily pray for him.</p>
+
+  <p>The learned council might as well have reasoned with the winds; or
+  threatened the waves of the sea. But they were not yet weary, and their
+  next effort was as foolish as it was ungenerous. They suggested, "that if
+  she did reserve the name of queen, it was thought that she would do it of
+  a vain desire and appetite of glory; and further, she might be an
+  occasion that the king would withdraw his love from her most dear
+  daughter the Lady Princess, which should chiefly move her, if none other
+  cause did."</p>
+
+<!-- Page 292 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page292"></a>[pg 292]</span>
+
+  <p>They must have known little of Catherine, if they thought she could be
+  influenced by childish vanity. It was for no vain glory that she cared,
+  she answered proudly; she was the king's true wife, and her conscience
+  forbade her to call herself otherwise; the princess was his true begotten
+  child; and as God hath given her to them, so for her part she would
+  render her again; neither for daughter, family, nor possessions, would
+  she yield in her cause; and she made a solemn protestation, calling on
+  every one present to bear witness to what she said, that the king's wife
+  she was, and such she would take herself to be, and that she would never
+  surrender the name of queen till the pope had decided that she must bear
+  it no longer.</p>
+
+  <p>So ended the first interview. Catherine, before the commissioners left
+  her, desired to have a copy of the proposals which they had brought, that
+  she might translate and send them to Rome. They returned with them the
+  next day, when she requested to see the report which they intended to
+  send to the council of the preceding conversation. It was placed in her
+  hands; and as she read it and found there the name of Princess Dowager,
+  she took a pen and dashed out the words, the mark of which indignant
+  ink-stroke may now be seen in the letter from which this account is
+  taken.<a name="NtA_444"></a><a href="#Nt_444"><sup>444</sup></a> With the
+  accuracy of the rest she appeared to be satisfied&mdash;only when she
+  found again their poor suggestion that she was influenced by vanity, she
+  broke out with a burst of passionate indignation.</p>
+
+  <p>"I would rather be a poor beggar's wife," she said, "and be sure of
+  heaven, than queen of all the world, and stand in doubt thereof by reason
+  of my own consent. I stick not so for vain glory, but because I know
+  myself the king's true wife&mdash;and while you call me the king's
+  subject, I was his subject while he took me for his wife. But if he take
+  me not for his wife, I came not into this Realm as merchandise, nor to be
+  married to any merchant; nor do I continue in the same but as his lawful
+  wife, and not as a subject to live under his dominion otherwise. I have
+  always demeaned myself well and truly towards the king&mdash;and if it
+  can be proved that either in writing to the pope or any other, I have
+  either stirred or procured anything against his Grace, or have been the
+  means to any person to make any motion which might be prejudicial to his
+  Grace or to his Realm, I am content to suffer for it. I have done England
+  little good, and I should be sorry to do it any harm. But if I should
+  agree to your motions and persuasions, I should slander myself, and <!--
+  Page 293 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page293"></a>[pg 293]</span>
+  confess to have been the king's harlot for twenty-four years. The cause,
+  I cannot tell by what subtle means, has been determined here within the
+  king's Realm, before a man of his own making, the Bishop of Canterbury,
+  no person indifferent I think in that behalf; and for the indifference of
+  the place, I think the place had been more indifferent to have been
+  judged in hell; for no truth can be suffered here, whereas the devils
+  themselves I suppose do tremble to see the truth in this cause so sore
+  oppressed."<a name="NtA_445"></a><a href="#Nt_445"><sup>445</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Most noble, spirited, and like a queen. Yet she would never have been
+  brought to this extremity, and she would have shown a truer nobleness, if
+  four years before she could have yielded at the pope's entreaty on the
+  first terms which were proposed to her. Those terms would have required
+  no humiliating confessions; they would have involved no sentence on her
+  marriage nor touched her daughter's legitimacy. She would have broken no
+  law of God, nor seemed to break it. She was required only to forget her
+  own interests; and she would not forget them, though all the world should
+  be wrecked by her refusal. She denied that she was concerned in "motions
+  prejudicial to the king or to the Realm," but she must have placed her
+  own interpretation on the words, and would have considered
+  excommunication and interdict a salutary discipline to the king and
+  parliament. She knew that this sentence was imminent, that in its minor
+  form it had already fallen; and she knew that her nephew and her friends
+  in England were plotting to give effect to the decree. But we may pass
+  over this. It is not for an English writer to dwell upon those faults of
+  Catherine of Arragon, which English remorse has honourably insisted on
+  forgetting. Her injuries, inevitable as they were, and forced upon her in
+  great measure by her own wilfulness, remain among the saddest spots in
+  the pages of our history.</p>
+
+  <p>One other brief incident remains to be noticed here, to bring up
+  before the imagination the features of this momentous summer. It is
+  contained in the postscript of a letter of Cranmer to Hawkins the
+  ambassador in Germany; and the manner in which the story is told is no
+  less suggestive than the story itself.</p>
+
+  <p>The immediate present, however awful its import, will ever seem common
+  and familiar to those who live and breathe in the midst of it. In the
+  days of the September massacre at Paris, the theatres were open as usual;
+  men ate, and drank, and laughed, and cried, and went about their common
+  work, unconscious <!-- Page 294 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page294"></a>[pg 294]</span> that those days which were passing by
+  them, so much like other days, would remain the <i>dies nefasti</i>,
+  accursed in the memory of mankind for ever. Nothing is terrible, nothing
+  is sublime in human things, so long as they are before our eyes. The
+  great man has so much in common with men in general, the routine of daily
+  life, in periods the most remarkable in history, contains so much that is
+  unvarying, that it is only when time has done its work; and all which was
+  unimportant has ceased to be remembered, that such men and such times
+  stand out in their true significance. It might have been thought that to
+  a person like Cranmer, the court at Dunstable, the coronation of the new
+  queen, the past out of which these things had risen, and the future which
+  they threatened to involve, would have seemed at least serious; and that
+  engaged as he had been as a chief actor, in a matter which, if it had
+  done nothing else, had broken the heart of a high-born lady whom once he
+  had honoured as his queen, he would have been either silent about his
+  exploits, or if he had spoken of them, would have spoken not without some
+  show of emotion. We look for a symptom of feeling, but we do not find it.
+  When the coronation festivities were concluded he wrote to his friend an
+  account of what had been done by himself and others in the light
+  gossiping tone of easiest content; as if he were describing the common
+  incidents of a common day. It is disappointing, and not wholly to be
+  approved of. Still less can we approve of the passage with which he
+  concludes his letter.</p>
+
+  <p>"Other news we have none notable, but that one Frith, which was in the
+  Tower in prison,<a name="NtA_446"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_446"><sup>446</sup></a> was appointed by the King's Grace to be
+  examined before me, my Lord of London, my Lord of Winchester, my Lord of
+  Suffolk, my Lord Chancellor, and my Lord of Wiltshire; whose opinion was
+  so notably erroneous that we could not dispatch him, but were fain to
+  leave him to the determination of his ordinary, which is the Bishop of
+  London. His said opinion is of such nature, that he thought it not
+  necessary to be believed as an article of our faith that there is the
+  very corporeal presence of Christ within the host and sacrament of the
+  altar; and holdeth on this point much after the opinion of
+  &#338;colampadius.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 295 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page295"></a>[pg 295]</span>
+
+  <p>"And surely I myself sent for him three or four times to persuade him
+  to leave that imagination. But for all that we could do therein, he would
+  not apply to any counsel. Notwithstanding now he is at a final end with
+  all examinations; for my Lord of London hath given sentence, and
+  delivered him to the secular power when he looketh every day to go unto
+  the fire. And there is also condemned with him one Andrew a tailor for
+  the self-same opinion; and thus fare you well."<a name="NtA_447"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_447"><sup>447</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>These victims went as they were sentenced, dismissed to their martyr's
+  crowns at Smithfield, as Queen Anne Boleyn but a few days before had
+  received her golden crown at the altar of Westminster Abbey. Twenty years
+  later another fire was blazing under the walls of Oxford; and the hand
+  which was now writing these light lines was blackening in the flames of
+  it, paying there the penalty of the same "imagination" for which Frith
+  and the poor London tailor were with such cool indifference condemned. It
+  is affecting to know that Frith's writings were the instruments of
+  Cranmer's conversion; and the fathers of the Anglican church have left a
+  monument of their sorrow for the shedding of this innocent blood in the
+  Order of the Communion service, which closes with the very words on which
+  the primate, with his brother bishops, had sate in judgment.<a
+  name="NtA_448"></a><a href="#Nt_448"><sup>448</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 296 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page296"></a>[pg 296]</span>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PROTESTANTS</h3>
+
+  <p>Where changes are about to take place of great and enduring moment, a
+  kind of prologue, on a small scale, sometimes anticipates the true
+  opening of the drama; like the first drops which give notice of the
+  coming storm, or as if the shadows of the reality were projected forwards
+  into the future, and imitated in dumb show the movements of the real
+  actors in the story.</p>
+
+  <p>Such a rehearsal of the English Reformation was witnessed at the close
+  of the fourteenth century, confused, imperfect, disproportioned, to
+  outward appearance barren of results; yet containing a representative of
+  each one of the mixed forces by which that great change was ultimately
+  effected, and foreshadowing even something of the course which it was to
+  run.</p>
+
+  <p>There was a quarrel with the pope upon the extent of the papal
+  privileges; there were disputes between the laity and the
+  clergy,&mdash;accompanied, as if involuntarily, by attacks on the
+  sacramental system and the Catholic faith,&mdash;while innovation in
+  doctrine was accompanied also with the tendency which characterised the
+  extreme development of the later Protestants&mdash;towards political
+  republicanism, the fifth monarchy, and community of goods. Some account
+  of this movement must be given in this place, although it can be but a
+  sketch only. "Lollardry"<a name="NtA_449"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_449"><sup>449</sup></a> has a history of its own; but it forms
+  no proper part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate
+  phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit
+  at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those
+  fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank
+  into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name
+  of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from
+  their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy into
+  their language; and in the word <i>miscreant</i>, misbeliever, as the
+  synonym <!-- Page 297 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page297"></a>[pg
+  297]</span> of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible
+  record of the popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe.</p>
+
+  <p>The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the
+  see of Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and
+  fifty years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the
+  archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and
+  exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church
+  had recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been
+  conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The practice which then
+  became established was in accordance with the general spirit of the
+  English constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the cathedral chapter
+  applied to the crown for a congé d'élire. The application was a form; the
+  consent was invariable. A bishop was then elected by a majority of
+  suffrages; his name was submitted to the metropolitan, and by him to the
+  pope. If the pope signified his approval, the election was complete;
+  consecration followed; and the bishop having been furnished with his
+  bulls of investiture, was presented to the king, and from him received
+  "the temporalities" of his see. The mode in which the great abbots were
+  chosen was precisely similar; the superiors of the orders to which the
+  abbeys belonged were the channels of communication with the pope, in the
+  place of the archbishops; but the elections in themselves were free, and
+  were conducted in the same manner. The smaller church benefices, the
+  small monasteries or parish churches, were in the hands of private
+  patrons, lay or ecclesiastical; but in the case of each institution a
+  reference was admitted, or was supposed to be admitted, to the court of
+  Rome.</p>
+
+  <p>There was thus in the pope's hand an authority of an indefinite kind,
+  which it was presumed that his sacred office would forbid him to abuse,
+  but which, however, if he so unfortunately pleased, he might abuse at his
+  discretion. He had absolute power over every nomination to an English
+  benefice; he might refuse his consent till such adequate reasons,
+  material or spiritual, as he considered sufficient to induce him to
+  acquiesce, had been submitted to his consideration. In the case of
+  nominations to the religious houses, the superiors of the various orders
+  residing abroad had equal facilities for obstructiveness; and the
+  consequence of so large a confidence in the purity of the higher orders
+  of the Church became visible in an act of parliament which it was found
+  necessary to pass in 1306-7.<a name="NtA_450"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_450"><sup>450</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 298 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page298"></a>[pg 298]</span>
+
+  <p>"Of late," says this act, "it has come to the knowledge of the king,
+  by the grievous complaint of the honourable persons, lords, and other
+  noblemen of his realm, that whereas monasteries, priories, and other
+  religious houses were founded to the honour and glory of God, and the
+  advancement of holy church, by the king and his progenitors, and by the
+  said noblemen and their ancestors; and a very great portion of lands and
+  tenements have been given by them to the said monasteries, priories, and
+  religious houses, and the religious men serving God in them; to the
+  intent that clerks and laymen might be admitted in such houses, and that
+  sick and feeble folk might be maintained, hospitality, almsgiving, and
+  other charitable deeds might be done, and prayers be said for the souls
+  of the founders and their heirs; the abbots, priors, and governors of the
+  said houses, <i>and certain aliens their superiors</i>, as the abbots and
+  priors of the Cistertians, the Premonstrants, the orders of Saint
+  Augustine and of Saint Benedict, and many more of other religions and
+  orders have at their own pleasure set divers heavy, unwonted heavy and
+  importable tallages, payments, and impositions upon every of the said
+  monasteries and houses subject unto them, in England, Ireland, Scotland,
+  and Wales, without the privity of the king and his nobility, contrary to
+  the laws and customs of the said realm; and thereby the number of
+  religious persons being oppressed by such tallages, payments, and
+  impositions, the service of God is diminished, alms are not given to the
+  poor, the sick, and the feeble; the healths of the living and the souls
+  of the dead be miserably defrauded; hospitality, alms-giving, and other
+  godly deeds do cease; and so that which in times past was charitably
+  given to godly uses and to the service of God, is now converted to an
+  evil end, by permission whereof there groweth great scandal to the
+  people." To provide against a continuance of these abuses, it was enacted
+  that no "religious" persons should, under any pretence or form, send out
+  of the kingdom any kind of tax, rent, or tallage; and that "priors
+  aliens" should not presume to assess any payment, charge, or other burden
+  whatever upon houses within the realm.<a name="NtA_451"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_451"><sup>451</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The language of this act was studiously guarded. The pope was not
+  alluded to; the specific methods by which the extortion was practised
+  were not explained; the tax upon presentations to benefices, either
+  having not yet distinguished itself beyond other impositions, or the
+  government trusting that a measure of this general kind might answer the
+  desired end. Lucrative <!-- Page 299 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page299"></a>[pg 299]</span> encroachments, however, do not yield
+  so easily to treatment; nearly fifty years after it became necessary to
+  re-enact the same statute; and while recapitulating the provisions of it,
+  the parliament found it desirable to point out more specifically the
+  intention with which it was passed.</p>
+
+  <p>The popes in the interval had absorbed in their turn from the heads of
+  the religious orders, the privileges which by them had been extorted from
+  the affiliated societies. Each English benefice had become the fountain
+  of a rivulet which flowed into the Roman exchequer, or a property to be
+  distributed as the private patronage of the Roman bishop: and the English
+  parliament for the first time found itself in collision with the Father
+  of Christendom.</p>
+
+  <p>"The pope," says the fourth of the twenty-fifth of Edward III.,
+  "accroaching to himself the signories of the benefices within the realm
+  of England, doth give and grant the same to aliens which did never dwell
+  in England, and to cardinals which could not dwell here, and to others as
+  well aliens as denizens, whereby manifold inconveniences have ensued."
+  "Not regarding" the statute of Edward I., he had also continued to
+  present to bishopricks, abbeys, priories, and other valuable preferments:
+  money in large quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds
+  of these offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the
+  papal nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law,
+  and were conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were
+  sold in the papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an
+  Englishman or a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elections to
+  bishopricks should be free as in time past, that the rights of patrons
+  should be preserved, and penalties of imprisonment, forfeiture, or
+  outlawry, according to the complexion of the offence, should be attached
+  to all impetration of benefices from Rome by purchase or otherwise.<a
+  name="NtA_452"></a><a href="#Nt_452"><sup>452</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>If statute law could have touched the evil, these enactments would
+  have been sufficient for the purpose; but the influence of the popes in
+  England was of that subtle kind which was not so <!-- Page 300 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page300"></a>[pg 300]</span> readily defeated.
+  The law was still defied, or still evaded; and the struggle continued
+  till the close of the century, the legislature labouring patiently, but
+  ineffectually, to confine with fresh enactments their ingenious
+  adversary.<a name="NtA_453"></a><a href="#Nt_453"><sup>453</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>At length symptoms appeared of an intention on the part of the popes
+  to maintain their claims with spiritual censures, and the nation was
+  obliged to resolve upon the course which, in the event of their resorting
+  to that extremity, it would follow. The lay lords<a name="NtA_454"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_454"><sup>454</sup></a> and the House of Commons found no
+  difficulty in arriving at a conclusion. They passed a fresh penal statute
+  with prohibitions even more emphatically stringent, and decided that "if
+  any man brought into this realm any sentence, summons, or
+  excommunication, contrary to the effect of the statute, he should incur
+  pain of life and members, with forfeiture of goods; and if any prelate
+  made execution of such sentence, his temporalities should be taken from
+  him, and should abide in the king's hands till redress was made."<a
+  name="NtA_455"></a><a href="#Nt_455"><sup>455</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>So bold a measure threatened nothing less than open rupture. The act,
+  however, seems to have been passed in haste, without determined
+  consideration; and on second thoughts, it was held more prudent to
+  attempt a milder course. The strength of the opposition to the papacy lay
+  with the Commons.<a name="NtA_456"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_456"><sup>456</sup></a> When the session of parliament was
+  over, a great council was summoned to reconsider what should be done, and
+  an address was drawn up, and forwarded to Rome, with a request that the
+  then reigning pope would devise some manner by which the difficulty could
+  be arranged.<a name="NtA_457"></a><a href="#Nt_457"><sup>457</sup></a>
+  Boniface IX. replied with the same want of judgment which was shown
+  afterwards on an analogous occasion <!-- Page 301 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page301"></a>[pg 301]</span> by Clement VII. He
+  disbelieved the danger; and daring the government to persevere, he
+  granted a prebendal stall at Wells to an Italian cardinal, to which a
+  presentation had been made already by the king. Opposing suits were
+  instantly instituted between the claimants in the courts of the two
+  countries. A decision was given in England in favour of the nominee of
+  the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were
+  excommunicated.<a name="NtA_458"></a><a href="#Nt_458"><sup>458</sup></a>
+  The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a struggle of force,
+  and the government had no alternative but to surrender at discretion, or
+  to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation.</p>
+
+  <p>The proceedings on this occasion seem to have been unusual, and
+  significant of the importance of the crisis. Parliament either was
+  sitting at the time when the excommunication was issued, or else it was
+  immediately assembled; and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of a
+  petition to the king, a declaration of the circumstances which had
+  occurred. After having stated generally the English law on the
+  presentation to benefices, "Now of late," they added, "divers processes
+  be made by his Holiness the Pope, and censures of excommunication upon
+  certain bishops, because they have made execution of the judgments [given
+  in the king's courts], to the open disherison of the crown; whereby, if
+  remedy be not provided, the crown of England, which hath been so free at
+  all times, that it has been in no earthly subjection, should be submitted
+  to the pope; and the laws and statutes of the realm by him be defeated
+  and avoided at his will, in perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of
+  the king our lord, his crown, his regality, and all his realm." The
+  Commons, therefore, on their part, declared, "That the things so
+  attempted were clearly against the king's crown and his regality, used
+  and approved of in the time of all his progenitors, and therefore they
+  and all the liege commons of the realm would stand with their said lord
+  the king, and his said crown, in the cases aforesaid, to live and die."<a
+  name="NtA_459"></a><a href="#Nt_459"><sup>459</sup></a> Whether they made
+  allusion to the act of 1389 does not appear&mdash;a measure passed under
+  protest from one of the estates of the realm was possibly held unequal to
+  meet the emergency&mdash;at all events they would not rely upon it. For
+  after this peremptory assertion of their own opinion, they desired the
+  king, "and required <!-- Page 302 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page302"></a>[pg 302]</span> him in the way of justice," to examine
+  severally the lords spiritual and temporal how they thought, and how they
+  would stand.<a name="NtA_460"></a><a href="#Nt_460"><sup>460</sup></a>
+  The examination was made, and the result was satisfactory. The lay lords
+  replied without reservation that they would support the crown. The
+  bishops (they were in a difficulty for which all allowance must be made)
+  gave a cautious, but also a manly answer. They would not affirm, they
+  said, that the pope had a right to excommunicate them in such cases, and
+  they would not say that he had not. It was clear, however, that legal or
+  illegal, such excommunication was against the privileges of the English
+  crown, and therefore that, on the whole, they would and ought to be with
+  the crown, <i>loialment</i>, like loyal subjects, as they were bound by
+  their allegiance.<a name="NtA_461"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_461"><sup>461</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>In this unusual and emphatic manner, the three estates agreed that the
+  pope should be resisted; and an act passed "that all persons suing at the
+  court of Rome, and obtaining thence any bulls, instruments, sentences of
+  excommunication which touched the king, or were against him, his
+  regality, or his realm, and they which brought the same within the realm,
+  or received the same, or made thereof notification, or any other
+  execution whatever, within the realm or without, they, their notaries,
+  procurators, maintainers and abettors, fautors and counsellors, should be
+  put out of the king's protection, and their lands and tenements, goods
+  and chattels, be forfeited."</p>
+
+  <p>The resolute attitude of the country terminated the struggle. Boniface
+  prudently yielded, and for the moment; and indeed for ever under this
+  especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back. The temper
+  which had been roused in the contest, might perhaps have carried the
+  nation further. The liberties of the crown had been asserted
+  successfully. The analogous liberties of the church might have followed;
+  and other channels, too, might have been cut off, through which the papal
+  exchequer fed itself on English blood. But at this crisis the anti-Roman
+  policy was arrested in its course by another movement, which turned the
+  current of suspicion, and frightened back the nation to conservatism.</p>
+
+  <p>While the crown and the parliament had been engaged with the pope, the
+  undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the
+  people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against
+  the spiritual authorities at home. The parliament had lamented that the
+  duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of
+  the extortions <!-- Page 303 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page303"></a>[pg 303]</span> of their superiors abroad. The people,
+  who were equally convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an
+  interpretation of the phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and
+  attributed it to the temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence
+  generated by enormous wealth.</p>
+
+  <p>This form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great
+  forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the
+  crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of
+  another forerunner of a greater change.</p>
+
+  <p>The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. Lewis, on the authority of
+  Leland,<a name="NtA_462"></a><a href="#Nt_462"><sup>462</sup></a> says
+  that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire. Fuller, though with some
+  hesitation, prefers Durham.<a name="NtA_463"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_463"><sup>463</sup></a> He emerges into distinct notice in
+  1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of
+  Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer
+  in divinity, and having earned for himself powerful friends and powerful
+  enemies. He had made his name distinguished by attacks upon the clergy
+  for their indolence and profligacy: attacks both written and orally
+  delivered&mdash;those written, we observe, being written in English, not
+  in Latin.<a name="NtA_464"></a><a href="#Nt_464"><sup>464</sup></a> In
+  1365, Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him Warden of Canterbury
+  Hall; the appointment, however, was made with some irregularity, and the
+  following year, Archbishop Islip dying, his successor, Langham, deprived
+  Wycliffe, and the sentence was confirmed by the king. It seemed,
+  nevertheless, that no personal reflection was intended by this decision,
+  for Edward III. nominated the ex-warden one of his chaplains immediately
+  after, and employed him on an important mission to Bruges, where a
+  conference on the benefice question was to be held with a papal
+  commission.</p>
+
+  <p>Other church preferment was subsequently given to Wycliffe; but Oxford
+  remained the chief scene of his work. He continued to hold his
+  professorship of divinity; and from this office the character of his
+  history took its complexion. At a time when books were rare and difficult
+  to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from
+  the fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to
+  imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all
+  Europe <!-- Page 304 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page304"></a>[pg
+  304]</span> flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the
+  leader of a party by the mere fact of his position.</p>
+
+  <p>The burden of Wycliffe's teaching was the exposure of the indolent
+  fictions which passed under the name of religion in the established
+  theory of the church. He was a man of most simple life; austere in
+  appearance, with bare feet and russet mantle.<a name="NtA_465"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_465"><sup>465</sup></a> As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his
+  Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate.
+  By the contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought
+  as he did; and gradually, under his captaincy, these "poor priests," as
+  they were called&mdash;vowed to poverty because Christ was
+  poor&mdash;vowed to accept no benefice, lest they should misspend the
+  property of the poor, and because, as apostles, they were bound to go
+  where their Master called them,<a name="NtA_466"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_466"><sup>466</sup></a> spread out over the country as an army
+  of missionaries, to preach the faith which they found in the
+  Bible&mdash;to preach, not of relics and of indulgences, but of
+  repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of the
+  Bible which Wycliffe had translated, leaving here and there, as they
+  travelled, their costly treasures, as shining seed points of light; and
+  they refused to recognise the authority of the bishops, or their right to
+  silence them.</p>
+
+  <p>If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by
+  a prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe
+  might have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against
+  the pope might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move
+  against the church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a
+  century. He was summoned to answer for himself before the Archbishop of
+  Canterbury in 1377. He appeared in court supported by the presence of
+  John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the eldest of Edward's surviving sons,
+  and the authorities were unable to strike him behind so powerful a
+  shield.</p>
+
+  <p>But the "poor priests" had other doctrines besides those which they
+  discovered in the Bible, relating to subjects with which, as apostles,
+  they would have done better if they had shrunk from meddling. The
+  inefficiency of the clergy was occasioned, as Wycliffe thought, by their
+  wealth and by their luxury. He desired to save them from a temptation too
+  heavy for them to bear, and he insisted that by neglect of duty their
+  wealth had been forfeited, and that it was the business of the laity to
+  take it from its unworthy possessors. The invectives with which the <!--
+  Page 305 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page305"></a>[pg 305]</span>
+  argument was accompanied produced a widely-spread irritation. The reins
+  of the country fell simultaneously into the weak hands of Richard II.,
+  and the consequence was a rapid spread of disorder. In the year which
+  followed Richard's accession, consistory judges were assaulted in their
+  courts, sanctuaries were violated, priests were attacked and ill-treated
+  in church, church-yard, and cathedral, and even while engaged in the
+  mass;<a name="NtA_467"></a><a href="#Nt_467"><sup>467</sup></a> the
+  contagion of the growing anarchy seems to have touched even Wycliffe
+  himself, and touched him in a point most deeply dangerous.</p>
+
+  <p>His theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had
+  led him to the near confines of Anabaptism. Expanding his views upon the
+  estates of the church into an axiom, he taught that "charters of
+  perpetual inheritance were impossible;" "that God could not give men
+  civil possessions for ever;"<a name="NtA_468"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_468"><sup>468</sup></a> "that property was founded in grace,
+  and derived from God;" and "seeing that forfeiture was the punishment of
+  treason, and all sin was treason against God, the sinner must
+  consequently forfeit his right to what he held of God." These
+  propositions were nakedly true, as we shall most of us allow; but God has
+  his own methods of enforcing extreme principles; and human legislation
+  may only meddle with them at its peril. The theory as an abstraction
+  could be represented as applying equally to the laity as to the clergy,
+  and the new teaching received a practical comment in 1381, in the
+  invasion of London by Wat, the tyler of Dartford, and 100,000 men, who
+  were to level all ranks, put down the church, and establish universal
+  liberty.<a name="NtA_469"></a><a href="#Nt_469"><sup>469</sup></a> Two
+  priests accompanied the insurgents, not Wycliffe's followers, but the
+  licentious counterfeits of them, who trod inevitably in their footsteps,
+  and were as inevitably countenanced by their doctrines. The insurrection
+  was attended with the bloodshed, destruction, and ferocity natural to
+  such outbreaks. The Archbishop of Canterbury and many gentlemen were
+  murdered; and a great part of London sacked and burnt. It would be absurd
+  to attribute this disaster to Wycliffe, nor was there any desire to hold
+  him responsible for it; but it is equally certain that the doctrines
+  which he had taught were incompatible, at that particular time, with an
+  effective repression of the spirit which had caused the explosion. It is
+  equally certain that he had brought <!-- Page 306 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page306"></a>[pg 306]</span> discredit on his
+  nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject of the utmost
+  difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of the people to
+  confound heterodoxy of opinion with sedition, anarchy, and disorder.</p>
+
+  <p>So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a guarantee for
+  the conduct of his immediate disciples; and although his favour had far
+  declined, a party in the state remained attached to him, with sufficient
+  influence to prevent the adoption of extreme measures against the "poor
+  priests." In the year following the insurrection, an act was passed for
+  their repression in the House of Lords, and was sent down by the king to
+  the Commons. They were spoken of as "evil persons," going from place to
+  place in defiance of the bishops, preaching in the open air to great
+  congregations at markets and fairs, "exciting the people," "engendering
+  discord between the estates of the realm." The ordinaries had no power to
+  silence them, and had therefore desired that commissions should be issued
+  to the sheriffs of the various counties, to arrest all such persons, and
+  confine them, until they would "justify themselves" in the ecclesiastical
+  courts.<a name="NtA_470"></a><a href="#Nt_470"><sup>470</sup></a>
+  Wycliffe petitioned against the bill, and it was rejected; not so much
+  perhaps out of tenderness for the reformer, as because the Lower House
+  was excited by the controversy with the pope; and being doubtfully
+  disposed towards the clergy, was reluctant to subject the people to a
+  more stringent spiritual control.</p>
+
+  <p>But Wycliffe himself meanwhile had received a clear intimation of his
+  own declining position. His opposition to the church authorities, and his
+  efforts at re-invigorating the faith of the country, had led him into
+  doubtful statements on the nature of the eucharist; he had entangled
+  himself in dubious metaphysics on a subject on which no middle course is
+  really possible; and being summoned to answer for his language before a
+  synod in London, he had thrown himself again for protection on the Duke
+  of Lancaster. The duke (not unnaturally under the circumstances) declined
+  to encourage what he could neither approve nor understand;<a
+  name="NtA_471"></a><a href="#Nt_471"><sup>471</sup></a> and Wycliffe, by
+  his great patron's advice, submitted. He read a confession of faith
+  before the bishops, which was held satisfactory; he was forbidden,
+  however, to preach again in Oxford, and retired to his living of
+  Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where two years later he died.</p>
+
+  <p>With him departed all which was best and purest in the movement which
+  he had commenced. The zeal of his followers was <!-- Page 307 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page307"></a>[pg 307]</span> not extinguished,
+  but the wisdom was extinguished which had directed it; and perhaps the
+  being treated as the enemies of order had itself a tendency to make them
+  what they were believed to be. They were left unmolested for the next
+  twenty years, the feebleness of the government, the angry complexion
+  which had been assumed by the dispute with Rome, and the political
+  anarchy in the closing decade of the century, combining to give them
+  temporary shelter; but they availed themselves of their opportunity to
+  travel further on the dangerous road on which they had entered; and on
+  the settlement of the country under Henry IV. they fell under the general
+  ban which struck down all parties who had shared in the late
+  disturbances.</p>
+
+  <p>They had been spared in 1382, only for more sharp denunciation, and a
+  more cruel fate; and Boniface having healed, on his side, the wounds
+  which had been opened, by well-timed concessions, there was no reason
+  left for leniency. The character of the Lollard teaching was thus
+  described (perhaps in somewhat exaggerated language) in the preamble of
+  the act of 1401.<a name="NtA_472"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_472"><sup>472</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"Divers false and perverse people," so runs the act <i>De Heretico
+  comburendo</i>, "of a certain new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of
+  the sacraments of the church, and of the authority of the same, against
+  the law of God and of the church, usurping the office of preaching, do
+  perversely and maliciously, in divers places within the realm, preach and
+  teach divers new doctrines, and wicked erroneous opinions, contrary to
+  the faith and determination of Holy Church. And of such sect and wicked
+  doctrines they make unlawful conventicles, they hold and exercise
+  schools, they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform
+  people, and excite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make
+  great strife and division among the people, and other enormities horrible
+  to be heard, daily do perpetrate and commit. The diocesans cannot by
+  their jurisdiction spiritual, without aid of the King's Majesty,
+  sufficiently correct these said false and perverse people, nor refrain
+  their malice, because they do go from diocess to diocess, and will not
+  appear before the said diocesans; but the jurisdiction spiritual, the
+  keys of the church, and the censures of the same, do utterly contemn and
+  despise; and so their wicked preachings and doctrines they do from day to
+  day continue and exercise, to the destruction of all order and rule,
+  right and reason."</p>
+
+  <p>Something of these violent accusations is perhaps due to the horror
+  with which false doctrine in matters of faith was looked <!-- Page 308
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page308"></a>[pg 308]</span> upon in
+  the Catholic church, the grace by which alone an honest life was made
+  possible being held to be dependent upon orthodoxy. But the Lollards had
+  become political revolutionists as well as religious reformers; the
+  revolt against the spiritual authority had encouraged and countenanced a
+  revolt against the secular; and we cannot be surprised, therefore, that
+  these institutions should have sympathised with each other, and have
+  united to repress a danger which was formidable to both.</p>
+
+  <p>The bishops, by this act, received arbitrary power to arrest and
+  imprison on suspicion, without check or restraint of law, at their will
+  and pleasure. Prisoners who refused to abjure their errors, who persisted
+  in heresy, or relapsed into it after abjuration, were sentenced to be
+  burnt at the stake&mdash;a dreadful punishment, on the wickedness of
+  which the world has long been happily agreed. Yet we must remember that
+  those who condemned teachers of heresy to the flames, considered that
+  heresy itself involved everlasting perdition; that they were but faintly
+  imitating the severity which orthodoxy still ascribes to Almighty God
+  Himself.</p>
+
+  <p>The tide which was thus setting back in favour of the church did not
+  yet, however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to
+  sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of
+  the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410,
+  spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made
+  upon the subject to the king.<a name="NtA_473"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_473"><sup>473</sup></a> The country, too, continued to be
+  agitated with war and treason; and when Henry V. became king, in 1412,
+  the church was still uneasy, and the Lollards were as dangerous as ever.
+  Whether by prudent conduct they might have secured a repeal of the
+  persecuting act is uncertain; it is more likely, from their conduct, that
+  they had made their existence incompatible with the security of any
+  tolerable government.</p>
+
+  <p>A rumour having gone abroad that the king intended to enforce the laws
+  against heresy, notices were found fixed against the doors of the London
+  churches, that if any such measure was attempted, a hundred thousand men
+  would be in arms to oppose it. These papers were traced to Sir John
+  Oldcastle, otherwise called Lord Cobham, a man whose true character is
+  more difficult to distinguish, in the conflict of the evidence which has
+  come down to us about him, than that of almost any noticeable person in
+  history. He was perhaps no worse than a fanatic. He was certainly
+  prepared, if we may trust the <!-- Page 309 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page309"></a>[pg 309]</span> words of a royal proclamation (and
+  Henry was personally intimate with Oldcastle, and otherwise was not
+  likely to have exaggerated the charges against him), he was prepared to
+  venture a rebellion, with the prospect of himself becoming the president
+  of some possible Lollard commonwealth.<a name="NtA_474"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_474"><sup>474</sup></a> The king, with swift decisiveness,
+  annihilated the incipient treason. Oldcastle was himself arrested. He
+  escaped out of the Tower into Scotland; and while Henry was absent in
+  France he seems to have attempted to organise some kind of Scotch
+  invasion; but he was soon after again taken on the Welsh Border, tried
+  and executed. An act which was passed in 1414 described his proceedings
+  as an "attempt to destroy the king, and all other manner of estates of
+  the realm, as well spiritual as temporal, and also all manner of policy,
+  and finally the laws of the land." The sedition was held to have
+  originated in heresy, and for the better repression of such mischiefs in
+  time to come, the lord chancellor, the judges, the justices of the peace,
+  the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and every other officer having government
+  of people, were sworn on entering their office to use their best power
+  and diligence to detect and prosecute all persons suspected of so heinous
+  a crime.<a name="NtA_475"></a><a href="#Nt_475"><sup>475</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus perished Wycliffe's labour,&mdash;not wholly, because his
+  translation of the Bible still remained a rare treasure; as seed of
+  future life, which would spring again under happier circumstances. But
+  the sect which he organised, the special doctrines which he set himself
+  to teach, after a brief blaze of success, sank into darkness; and no
+  trace remained of Lollardry except the black memory of contempt and
+  hatred with which the heretics of the fourteenth century were remembered
+  by the English people, long after the actual Reformation had become the
+  law of the land.<a name="NtA_476"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_476"><sup>476</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 310 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page310"></a>[pg 310]</span>
+
+  <p>So poor a close to a movement of so fair promise was due partly to the
+  agitated temper of the times; partly, perhaps, to a want of judgment in
+  Wycliffe; but chiefly and essentially because it was an untimely birth.
+  Wycliffe saw the evil; he did not see the remedy; and neither in his mind
+  nor in the mind of the world about him, had the problem ripened itself
+  for solution. England would have gained little by the premature overthrow
+  of the church, when the house out of which the evil spirit was cast out
+  could have been but swept and garnished for the occupation of the seven
+  devils of anarchy.</p>
+
+  <p>The fire of heresy continued to smoulder, exploding occasionally in
+  insurrection,<a name="NtA_477"></a><a href="#Nt_477"><sup>477</sup></a>
+  occasionally blazing up in nobler form, when some poor seeker for the
+  truth, groping for a vision of God in the darkness of the years which
+  followed, found his way into that high presence through the martyr's
+  fire. But substantially, the nation relapsed into obedience&mdash;the
+  church was reprieved for a century. Its fall was delayed till the spirit
+  in which it was attacked was winnowed clean of all doubtful
+  elements&mdash;until Protestantism had recommenced its enterprise in a
+  desire, not for a fairer adjustment of the world's good things, but in a
+  desire for some deeper, truer, nobler, holier insight into the will of
+  God. It recommenced not under the auspices of a Wycliffe, not with the
+  partial countenance of a government which was crossing swords with the
+  Father of Catholic Christendom, and menacing the severance of England
+  from the unity of the faith, but under a strong dynasty of undoubted
+  Catholic loyalty, with the entire administrative power, secular as well
+  as spiritual, in the hands of the episcopate. It sprung up spontaneously,
+  unguided, unexcited, by the vital necessity of its nature, among the
+  masses of the nation.</p>
+
+  <p>Leaping over a century, I pass to the year 1525, at which time, or
+  about which time, a society was enrolled in London <!-- Page 311 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page311"></a>[pg 311]</span> calling itself "The
+  Association of Christian Brothers."<a name="NtA_478"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_478"><sup>478</sup></a> It was composed of poor men, chiefly
+  tradesmen, artisans, a few, a very few of the clergy; but it was
+  carefully organised, it was provided with moderate funds, which were
+  regularly audited; and its paid agents went up and down the country
+  carrying Testaments and tracts with them, and enrolling in the order all
+  persons who dared to risk their lives in such a cause. The harvest had
+  been long ripening. The records of the bishops' courts<a
+  name="NtA_479"></a><a href="#Nt_479"><sup>479</sup></a> are filled from
+  the beginning of the century with accounts of prosecutions for
+  heresy&mdash;with prosecutions, that is, of men and women to whom the
+  masses, the pilgrimages, the indulgences, the pardons, the effete
+  paraphernalia of the establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen
+  up in blind resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that
+  whatever was the truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been
+  idle; they had plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim
+  after victim had been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it
+  was all in vain: punishment only multiplied offenders, and "the reek" of
+  the martyrs, as was said when Patrick Hamilton was burnt at St. Andrews,
+  "infected all that it did blow upon."<a name="NtA_480"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_480"><sup>480</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>There were no teachers, however, there were no books, no unity of
+  conviction, only a confused refusal to believe in lies. Copies of
+  Wycliffe's Bible remained, which parties here and there, under death
+  penalties if detected, met to read;<a name="NtA_481"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_481"><sup>481</sup></a> copies, also, of some of his tracts<a
+  name="NtA_482"></a><a href="#Nt_482"><sup>482</sup></a> were extant; but
+  they were unprinted transcripts, most rare and precious, which the
+  watchfulness of the police made it impossible to multiply through the
+  press, and which remained therefore necessarily in the possession of but
+  a few fortunate persons.</p>
+
+  <p>The Protestants were thus isolated in single groups or <!-- Page 312
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page312"></a>[pg 312]</span> families,
+  without organisation, without knowledge of each other, with nothing to
+  give them coherency as a party; and so they might have long continued,
+  except for an impulse from some external circumstances. They were waiting
+  for direction, and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in
+  vain.</p>
+
+  <p>The state of England did but represent the state of all Northern
+  Europe. Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic
+  nature was in the people, there was the same weariness of unreality, the
+  same craving for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a
+  leader in the race of discontent. In Germany, all classes shared the
+  common feeling; in England it was almost confined to the lowest. But,
+  wherever it existed, it was a free, spontaneous growth in each separate
+  breast, not propagated by agitation, but springing self sown, the
+  expression of the honest anger of honest men at a system which had passed
+  the limits of toleration, and which could be endured no longer. At such
+  times the minds of men are like a train of gunpowder, the isolated grains
+  of which have no relation to each other, and no effect on each other,
+  while they remain unignited; but let a spark kindle but one of them, and
+  they shoot into instant union in a common explosion. Such a spark was
+  kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st of October, 1517. In the
+  middle of that day Luther's denunciation of Indulgences was fixed against
+  the gate of All Saints church, Wittenberg, and it became, like the brazen
+  serpent in the wilderness, the sign to which the sick spirits throughout
+  the western world looked hopefully and were healed. In all those millions
+  of hearts the words of Luther found an echo, and flew from lip to lip,
+  from ear to ear. The thing which all were longing for was done, and in
+  two years from that day there was scarcely perhaps a village from the
+  Irish Channel to the Danube in which the name of Luther was not familiar
+  as a word of hope and promise. Then rose a common cry for guidance. Books
+  were called for&mdash;above all things, the great book of all, the Bible.
+  Luther's inexhaustible fecundity flowed with a steady stream, and the
+  printing presses in Germany and in the Free Towns of the Netherlands,
+  multiplied Testaments and tracts in hundreds of thousands. Printers
+  published at their own expense as Luther wrote.<a name="NtA_483"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_483"><sup>483</sup></a> The continent was covered with
+  disfrocked monks who had become the pedlars of these precious wares;<a
+  name="NtA_484"></a><a href="#Nt_484"><sup>484</sup></a> and as the
+  contagion spread, noble young spirits from other countries, eager
+  themselves <!-- Page 313 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page313"></a>[pg 313]</span> to fight in God's battle, came to
+  Wittenberg to learn from the champion who had struck the first blow at
+  their great enemy how to use their weapons. "Students from all nations
+  came to Wittenberg," says one, "to hear Luther and Melancthon. As they
+  came in sight of the town they returned thanks to God with clasped hands;
+  for from Wittenberg, as heretofore from Jerusalem, proceeded the light of
+  evangelical truth, to spread thence to the utmost parts of the earth."<a
+  name="NtA_485"></a><a href="#Nt_485"><sup>485</sup></a> Thither came
+  young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so much
+  potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and
+  thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William
+  Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the
+  Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence
+  to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's
+  family, and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with
+  too warm approval to suit his patron's conservatism,<a
+  name="NtA_486"></a><a href="#Nt_486"><sup>486</sup></a> he fell into
+  disgrace. From Gloucestershire he removed to London, where Cuthbert
+  Tunstall had lately been made bishop, and from whom he looked for
+  countenance in an intention to translate the New Testament. Tunstall
+  showed little encouragement to this enterprise; but a better friend rose
+  where he was least looked for; and a London alderman, Humfrey Monmouth by
+  name, hearing the young dreamer preach on some occasion at St. Dunstan's,
+  took him to his home for half a year, and kept him there: where "the said
+  Tyndal," as the alderman declared, "lived like a good priest, studying
+  both night and day; he would eat but sodden meat, by his good will, nor
+  drink but small single beer; nor was he ever seen to wear linen about him
+  all the time of his being there."<a name="NtA_487"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_487"><sup>487</sup></a> The half year being passed, Monmouth
+  gave him ten pounds, with which provision he went off to Wittenberg; and
+  the alderman, for assisting him in that business, went to the
+  Tower&mdash;escaping, however, we are glad to know, without worse
+  consequences than a short imprisonment. Tyndal saw Luther,<a
+  name="NtA_488"></a><a href="#Nt_488"><sup>488</sup></a> and under <!--
+  Page 314 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page314"></a>[pg 314]</span>
+  his immediate direction translated the Gospels and Epistles while at
+  Wittenberg. Thence he returned to Antwerp, and settling there under the
+  privileges of the city, he was joined by Joy, who shared his great work
+  with him. Young Frith from Cambridge came to him also, and Barnes, and
+  Lambert, and many others of whom no written record remains, to concert a
+  common scheme of action.</p>
+
+  <p>In Antwerp, under the care of these men, was established the printing
+  press, by which books were supplied, to accomplish for the teaching of
+  England what Luther and Melancthon were accomplishing for Germany.
+  Tyndal's Testament was first printed, then translations of the best
+  German books, reprints of Wycliffe's tracts or original commentaries.
+  Such volumes as the people most required were here multiplied as fast as
+  the press could produce them; and for the dissemination of these precious
+  writings, the brave London Protestants dared, at the hazard of their
+  lives, to form themselves into an organised association.</p>
+
+  <p>It is well to pause and look for a moment at this small band of
+  heroes; for heroes they were, if ever men deserved the name. Unlike the
+  first reformers who had followed Wycliffe, they had no earthly object,
+  emphatically none; and equally unlike them, perhaps, because they had no
+  earthly object, they were all, as I have said, poor men&mdash;either
+  students, like Tyndal, or artisans and labourers who worked for their own
+  bread, and in tough contact with reality, had learnt better than the
+  great and the educated the difference between truth and lies. Wycliffe
+  had royal dukes and noblemen for his supporters&mdash;knights and divines
+  among his disciples&mdash;a king and a House of Commons looking upon him,
+  not without favour. The first Protestants of the sixteenth century had
+  for their king the champion of <!-- Page 315 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page315"></a>[pg 315]</span> Holy Church, who had broken a lance
+  with Luther; and spiritual rulers over them alike powerful and imbecile,
+  whose highest conception of Christian virtue was the destruction of those
+  who disobeyed their mandates. The masses of the people were indifferent
+  to a cause which promised them no material advantage; and the Commons of
+  Parliament, while contending with the abuses of the spiritual
+  authorities, were laboriously anxious to wash their hands of heterodoxy.
+  "In the crime of heresy, thanked be God," said the bishops in 1529,
+  "there hath no notable person fallen in our time;" no chief priest, chief
+  ruler, or learned Pharisee&mdash;not one. "Truth it is that certain
+  apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds
+  and lewd idle fellows of corrupt nature, have embraced the abominable and
+  erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them have been some
+  seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if judgment have been
+  exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be without blame. If we
+  have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our duty from
+  henceforth."<a name="NtA_489"></a><a href="#Nt_489"><sup>489</sup></a>
+  Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of their superiors. On one
+  side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of authority, the majority of
+  numbers, the prestige of centuries; here too were the phantom legions of
+  superstition and cowardice; and here were all the worthier influences so
+  pre-eminently English, which lead wise men to shrink from change, and to
+  cling to things established, so long as one stone of them remains upon
+  another, This was the army of conservatism. Opposed to it were a little
+  band of enthusiasts, armed only with truth and fearlessness; "weak things
+  of the world," about to do battle in God's name; and it was to be seen
+  whether God or the world was the stronger. They were armed, I say, with
+  the truth. It was that alone which could have given them victory in so
+  unequal a struggle. They had returned to the essential fountain of life;
+  they re-asserted the principle which has lain at the root of all
+  religions, whatever their name or outward form, which once burnt with
+  divine lustre in that Catholicism which was now to pass away; the
+  fundamental axiom of all real life, that the service which man owes to
+  God is not the service of words or magic forms, or ceremonies or
+  opinions; but the service of holiness, of purity, of obedience to the
+  everlasting laws of duty.</p>
+
+  <p>When we look through the writings of Latimer, the apostle of the
+  English Reformation, when we read the depositions <!-- Page 316 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page316"></a>[pg 316]</span> against the
+  martyrs, and the lists of their crimes against the established faith, we
+  find no opposite schemes of doctrine, no "plans of salvation;" no
+  positive system of theology which it was held a duty to believe; these
+  things were of later growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the
+  living spirit in a perishable body. We find only an effort to express
+  again the old exhortation of the Wise Man&mdash;"Will you hear the
+  beginning and the end of the whole matter? Fear God and keep his
+  commandments; for that is the whole duty of man."</p>
+
+  <p>Had it been possible for mankind to sustain themselves upon this
+  single principle without disguising its simplicity, their history would
+  have been painted in far other colours than those which have so long
+  chequered its surface. This, however, has not been given to us; and
+  perhaps it never will be given. As the soul is clothed in flesh, and only
+  thus is able to perform its functions in this earth, where it is sent to
+  live; as the thought must find a word before it can pass from mind to
+  mind; so every great truth seeks some body, some outward form in which to
+  exhibit its powers. It appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and
+  represent it to themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in
+  sacramental symbols; and these things which in their proper nature are
+  but illustrations, stiffen into essential fact, and become part of the
+  reality. So arises in era after era an outward and mortal expression of
+  the inward immortal life; and at once the old struggle begins to repeat
+  itself between the flesh and the spirit, the form and the reality. For a
+  while the lower tendencies are held in check; the meaning of the
+  symbolism is remembered and fresh; it is a living language, pregnant and
+  suggestive. Bye and bye, as the mind passes into other phases, the
+  meaning is forgotten; the language becomes a dead language; and the
+  living robe of life becomes a winding-sheet of corruption. The form is
+  represented as everything, the spirit as nothing; obedience is dispensed
+  with; sin and religion arrange a compromise; and outward observances, or
+  technical inward emotions, are converted into jugglers' tricks, by which
+  men are enabled to enjoy their pleasures and escape the penalties of
+  wrong. Then such religion becomes no religion, but a falsehood; and
+  honourable men turn away from it, and fall back in haste upon the naked
+  elemental life.</p>
+
+  <p>This, as I understand it, was the position of the early Protestants.
+  They found the service of God buried in a system where obedience was
+  dissipated into superstition; where sin <!-- Page 317 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page317"></a>[pg 317]</span> was expiated by the
+  vicarious virtues of other men; where, instead of leading a holy life,
+  men were taught that their souls might be saved through masses said for
+  them, at a money rate, by priests whose licentiousness disgraced the
+  nation which endured it; a system in which, amidst all the trickery of
+  the pardons, pilgrimages, indulgences,&mdash;double-faced as these
+  inventions are&mdash;wearing one meaning in the apologies of theologians,
+  and quite another to the multitude who live and suffer under their
+  influence&mdash;one plain fact at least is visible. The people
+  substantially learnt that all evils which could touch either their
+  spirits or their bodies, might be escaped by means which resolved
+  themselves, scarcely disguised, into the payment of moneys.</p>
+
+  <p>The superstition had lingered long; the time had come when it was to
+  pass away. Those in whom some craving lingered for a Christian life
+  turned to the heart of the matter, to the book which told them who Christ
+  was, and what he was; and finding there that holy example for which they
+  longed, they flung aside in one noble burst of enthusiastic passion, the
+  disguise which had concealed it from them. They believed in Christ, not
+  in the bowing rood, or the pretended wood of the cross on which he
+  suffered; and when that saintly figure had once been seen&mdash;the
+  object of all love, the pattern of all imitation&mdash;thenceforward
+  neither form nor ceremony should stand between them and their God.</p>
+
+  <p>Under much confusion of words and thoughts, confusion pardonable in
+  all men, and most of all in them, this seems to me to be transparently
+  visible in the aim of these "Christian Brothers;" a thirst for some fresh
+  and noble enunciation of the everlasting truth, the one essential thing
+  for all men to know and believe. And therefore they were strong; and
+  therefore they at last conquered. Yet if we think of it, no common daring
+  was required in those who would stand out at such a time in defence of
+  such a cause. The bishops might seize them on mere suspicion; and the
+  evidence of the most abandoned villains sufficed for their conviction.<a
+  name="NtA_490"></a><a href="#Nt_490"><sup>490</sup></a> By the act of
+  Henry V., every officer, from the lord chancellor to the parish
+  constable, was sworn to seek them out and destroy them; and both bishops
+  and officials had shown no reluctance to execute their duty. Hunted like
+  wild beasts from hiding-place to hiding-place, decimated by the stake,
+  with the certainty that however many years they might be reprieved, their
+  own lives would close at last <!-- Page 318 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page318"></a>[pg 318]</span> in the same fiery trial; beset by
+  informers, imprisoned, racked, and scourged; worst of all, haunted by
+  their own infirmities, the flesh shrinking before the dread of a death of
+  agony&mdash;thus it was that they struggled on; earning for
+  <i>themselves</i> martyrdom&mdash;for <i>us</i>, the free England in
+  which we live and breathe. Among the great, until Cromwell came to power,
+  they had but one friend, and he but a doubtful one, who long believed the
+  truest kindness was to kill them. Henry VIII. was always attracted
+  towards the persons of the reformers. Their open bearing commanded his
+  respect. Their worst crime in the bishops' eyes&mdash;the translating the
+  Bible&mdash;was in his eyes not a crime, but a merit; he had himself long
+  desired an authorised English version, and at length compelled the clergy
+  to undertake it; while in the most notorious of the men themselves, in
+  Tyndal and in Frith, he had more than once expressed an anxious
+  interest.<a name="NtA_491"></a><a href="#Nt_491"><sup>491</sup></a> But
+  the convictions of his early years were long in yielding. His feeling,
+  though genuine, extended no further than to pity, to a desire to recover
+  estimable heretics out of errors which he would endeavour to pardon. They
+  knew, and all the "brethren" knew, that if they persisted, they must look
+  for the worst from the king and from every earthly power; they knew it,
+  and they made their account with it. An informer deposed to the council,
+  that he had asked one of the society "how the King's Grace did take the
+  matter against the sacrament; which answered, the King's Highness was
+  extreme against their opinions, and would punish them grievously; also
+  that my Lords of Norfolk and Suffolk, my Lord Marquis of Exeter, with
+  divers other great lords, were very extreme against them. Then he (the
+  informer) asked him how he and his fellows would do seeing this, the
+  which answered they had two thousand books out against the Blessed
+  Sacrament, in the commons' hands; and if it were once in the commons'
+  heads, they would have no further care."<a name="NtA_492"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_492"><sup>492</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Tyndal then being at work at Antwerp, and the society for the
+  dispersion of his books thus preparing itself in England, the authorities
+  were not slow in taking the alarm. The isolated discontent which had
+  prevailed hitherto had been left to the ordinary tribunals; the present
+  danger called for measures of more systematic coercion. This duty
+  naturally devolved on Wolsey, and the office of Grand Inquisitor, which
+  he now assumed, could not have fallen into more competent hands.</p>
+
+  <p>Wolsey was not cruel. There is no instance, I believe, in <!-- Page
+  319 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page319"></a>[pg 319]</span> which
+  he of his special motion sent a victim to the stake;&mdash;it would be
+  well if the same praise could be allowed to Cranmer. There was this
+  difference between the cardinal and other bishops, that while they seemed
+  to desire to punish, Wolsey was contented to silence; while they, in
+  their conduct of trials, made escape as difficult as possible, Wolsey
+  sought rather to make submission easy. He was too wise to suppose that he
+  could cauterise heresy, while the causes of it, in the corruption of the
+  clergy, remained unremoved; and the remedy to which he trusted, was the
+  infusing new vigour into the constitution of the church.<a
+  name="NtA_493"></a><a href="#Nt_493"><sup>493</sup></a> Nevertheless, he
+  was determined to repress, as far as outward measures could repress it,
+  the spread of the contagion; and he set himself to accomplish his task
+  with the full energy of his nature, backed by the whole power, spiritual
+  and secular, of the kingdom. The country was covered with his secret
+  police, arresting suspected persons and searching for books. In London
+  the scrutiny was so strict that at one time there was a general flight
+  and panic; suspected butchers, tailors, and carpenters, hiding themselves
+  in the holds of vessels in the river, and escaping across the Channel.<a
+  name="NtA_494"></a><a href="#Nt_494"><sup>494</sup></a> Even there they
+  were not safe. Heretics were outlawed by a common consent of the European
+  governments. Special offenders were hunted through France by the English
+  emissaries with the permission and countenance of the court,<a
+  name="NtA_495"></a><a href="#Nt_495"><sup>495</sup></a> and there was an
+  attempt to arrest Tyndal at Brussels, from which, for that time, he
+  happily escaped.<a name="NtA_496"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_496"><sup>496</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Simultaneously the English universities fell under examination, in
+  consequence of the appearance of dangerous symptoms among the younger
+  students. Dr. Barnes, returning from the continent, had used violent
+  language in a pulpit at Cambridge; and Latimer, then a neophyte in
+  heresy, had grown suspect, and had alarmed the heads of houses.
+  Complaints against both of them were forwarded to Wolsey, and they were
+  summoned to London to answer for themselves.</p>
+
+  <p>Latimer, for some cause, found favour with the cardinal, and was
+  dismissed, with a hope on the part of his judge that his accusers might
+  prove as honest as he appeared to be, and even <!-- Page 320 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page320"></a>[pg 320]</span> with a general
+  licence to preach.<a name="NtA_497"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_497"><sup>497</sup></a> Barnes was less fortunate; he was far
+  inferior to Latimer; a noisy, unwise man, without reticence or prudence.
+  In addition to his offences in matters of doctrine, he had attacked
+  Wolsey himself with somewhat vulgar personality; and it was thought well
+  to single him out for a public, though not a very terrible admonition.
+  His house had been searched for books, which he was suspected, and justly
+  suspected, of having brought with him from abroad. These, however,
+  through a timely warning of the danger, had been happily secreted,<a
+  name="NtA_498"></a><a href="#Nt_498"><sup>498</sup></a> or it might have
+  gone harder with him. As it was, he was committed to the Fleet on the
+  charge of having used heretical language. An abjuration was drawn up by
+  Wolsey, which he signed; and while he remained in prison preparations
+  were made for a ceremony, in which he was to bear a part, in St. Paul's
+  church, by which the Catholic authorities hoped to produce some salutary
+  effect on the disaffected spirits of London.</p>
+
+  <p>Vast quantities of Tyndal's publications had been collected by the
+  police. The bishops, also, had subscribed among themselves<a
+  name="NtA_499"></a><a href="#Nt_499"><sup>499</sup></a> to buy up the
+  copies of the New Testament before they <!-- Page 321 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page321"></a>[pg 321]</span> left
+  Antwerp;&mdash;an unpromising method, like an attempt to extinguish fire
+  by pouring oil upon it; they had been successful, however, in obtaining a
+  large immediate harvest, and a pyramid of offending volumes was ready to
+  be consumed in a solemn <i>auto da fé</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>In the morning of Shrove Sunday, then, 1527, we are to picture to
+  ourselves a procession moving along London streets from the Fleet prison
+  to St. Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the
+  knight marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make,"
+  "with bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six
+  men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five
+  pounds' weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the
+  lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which
+  this time, in mercy, was remitted. One of these was Barnes; the other
+  five were "Stillyard men," undistinguishable by any other name, but
+  detected members of the brotherhood.</p>
+
+  <p>It was eight o'clock when they arrived at St. Paul's. The people had
+  flocked in crowds before them. The public seats and benches were filled.
+  All London had hurried to the spectacle. A platform was erected in the
+  centre of the nave, on the top of which, enthroned in pomp of purple and
+  gold and splendour, sate the great cardinal, supported on each side with
+  eighteen bishops, mitred abbots, and priors&mdash;six-and-thirty in all;
+  his chaplains and "spiritual doctors" sitting also where they could find
+  place, "in gowns of damask and satin." Opposite the platform, over the
+  north door of the cathedral, was a great crucifix&mdash;a famous image,
+  in those days called the Rood of Northen; and at the foot of it, inside a
+  rail, a fire was burning, with the sinful books, the Tracts and
+  Testaments, ranged round it in baskets, waiting for the execution of
+  sentence.</p>
+
+  <p>Such was the scene into the midst of which the six prisoners entered.
+  A second platform stood in a conspicuous place in front of the cardinal's
+  throne, where they could be seen and heard by the crowd; and there upon
+  their knees, with their fagots on their shoulders, they begged pardon of
+  God and the Holy Catholic Church for their high crimes and offences. When
+  the confession was finished Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached <!--
+  Page 322 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page322"></a>[pg 322]</span> a
+  sermon: and the sermon over, Barnes turned to the people, declaring that
+  "he was more charitably handled than he deserved, his heresies were so
+  heinous and detestable."</p>
+
+  <p>There was no other religious service: mass had perhaps been said
+  previous to the admission into the church of heretics lying under
+  censure; and the knight marshal led the prisoners down from the stage to
+  the fire underneath the crucifix. They were taken within the rails, and
+  three times led round the blazing pile, casting in their fagots as they
+  passed. The contents of the baskets were heaped upon the fagots, and the
+  holocaust was complete. This time, an unbloody sacrifice was deemed
+  sufficient. The church was satisfied with penance, and Fisher pronounced
+  the prisoners absolved, and received back into communion.<a
+  name="NtA_500"></a><a href="#Nt_500"><sup>500</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>So ended this strange exhibition, designed to work great results on
+  the consciences of the spectators. It may be supposed, however, that men
+  whom the tragedies of Smithfield failed to terrify, were not likely to be
+  affected deeply by melodrame and blazing paper.</p>
+
+  <p>A story follows of far deeper human interest, a story in which the
+  persecution is mirrored with its true lights and shadows, unexaggerated
+  by rhetoric; and which, in its minute simplicity, brings us face to face
+  with that old world, where men like ourselves lived, and worked, and
+  suffered, three centuries ago.</p>
+
+  <p>Two years before the time at which we have now arrived, Wolsey, in
+  pursuance of his scheme of converting the endowments of the religious
+  houses to purposes of education, had obtained permission from the pope to
+  suppress a number of the smaller monasteries. He had added largely to the
+  means thus placed at his disposal from his own resources, and had founded
+  the great college at Oxford, which is now called Christchurch.<a
+  name="NtA_501"></a><a href="#Nt_501"><sup>501</sup></a> Desiring his
+  magnificent institution to be as perfect as art could make it, he had
+  sought his professors in Rome, in the Italian universities, wherever
+  genius or ability could be found; and he had introduced into the
+  foundation several students from Cambridge, who had been reported to him
+  as being of unusual promise. Frith, of whom we have heard, was one of
+  these. Of the rest, John Clark, Sumner, and Taverner are the most <!--
+  Page 323 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page323"></a>[pg 323]</span>
+  noticeable. At the time at which they were invited to Oxford, they were
+  tainted, or some of them were tainted, in the eyes of the Cambridge
+  authorities, with suspicion of heterodoxy;<a name="NtA_502"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_502"><sup>502</sup></a> and it is creditable to Wolsey's
+  liberality, that he set aside these unsubstantiated rumours, not allowing
+  them to weigh against ability, industry, and character. The church
+  authorities thought only of crushing what opposed them, especially of
+  crushing talent, because talent was dangerous. Wolsey's noble anxiety was
+  to court talent, and if possible to win it.</p>
+
+  <p>The young Cambridge students, however, ill repaid his confidence (so,
+  at least, it must have appeared to him), and introduced into Oxford the
+  rising epidemic. Clark, as was at last discovered, was in the habit of
+  reading St. Paul's Epistles to young men in his rooms; and a gradually
+  increasing circle of undergraduates, of three or four years' standing,<a
+  name="NtA_503"></a><a href="#Nt_503"><sup>503</sup></a> from various
+  colleges, formed themselves into a spiritual freemasonry, some of them
+  passionately insisting on being admitted to the lectures, in spite of
+  warnings from Clark himself, whose wiser foresight knew the risk which
+  they were running, and shrank from allowing weak giddy spirits to thrust
+  themselves into so fearful peril.<a name="NtA_504"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_504"><sup>504</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This little party had been in the habit of meeting for about six
+  months,<a name="NtA_505"></a><a href="#Nt_505"><sup>505</sup></a> when at
+  Easter, 1527, Thomas Garret, a fellow of Magdalen,<a
+  name="NtA_506"></a><a href="#Nt_506"><sup>506</sup></a> who had gone out
+  of residence, and was curate at All Hallows church, in London,
+  re-appeared in Oxford. Garret was a secret member of the London Society,
+  and had come down at Clark's instigation, to feel his way in the
+  university. So excellent a beginning had already been made, that he had
+  only to improve upon it. He sought out all such young men as were given
+  to Greek, Hebrew, and the polite Latin;<a name="NtA_507"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_507"><sup>507</sup></a> and in this visit met with so much
+  encouragement, that the Christmas following he returned again, this time
+  bringing with him treasures of <!-- Page 324 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page324"></a>[pg 324]</span> forbidden books, imported by "the
+  Christian Brothers;" New Testaments, tracts and volumes of German
+  divinity, which he sold privately among the initiated.</p>
+
+  <p>He lay concealed, with his store, at "the house of one Radley,"<a
+  name="NtA_508"></a><a href="#Nt_508"><sup>508</sup></a> the position of
+  which cannot now be identified; and there he remained for several weeks,
+  unsuspected by the university authorities, till orders were sent by
+  Wolsey to the Dean of Christchurch, for his arrest. Precise information
+  was furnished at the same time respecting himself, his mission in Oxford,
+  and his place of concealment.<a name="NtA_509"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_509"><sup>509</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The proctors were put upon the scent, and directed to take him; but
+  one of them, Arthur Cole, of Magdalen, by name, not from any sympathy
+  with Garret's objects, as the sequel proved, but probably from old
+  acquaintance, for they were fellows at the same college, gave him
+  information of his danger, and warned him to escape.</p>
+
+  <p>His young friends, more alarmed for their companion than for
+  themselves, held a meeting instantly to decide what should be done; and
+  at this meeting was Anthony Dalaber, an undergraduate of Alban Hall, and
+  one of Clark's pupils, who will now tell the story of what followed.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Christmas before that time, I, Anthony Dalaber, the scholar of
+  Alban Hall, who had books of Master Garret, had been in my country, at
+  Dorsetshire, at Stalbridge, where I had a brother, parson of this parish,
+  who was very desirous to have a curate out of Oxford, and willed me in
+  any wise to get him one there, if I could. This just occasion offered, it
+  was thought good among the brethren (for so we did not only call one
+  another, but were indeed one to another), that Master Garret, changing
+  his name, should be sent forth with my letters into Dorsetshire, to my
+  brother, to serve him there for a time, until he might secretly convey
+  himself from thence some whither over the sea. According hereunto I wrote
+  my letters in all haste possible unto my brother, for Master Garret to be
+  his curate; but not declaring what he was indeed, for my brother was a
+  rank papist, and afterwards was the most mortal enemy that ever I had,
+  for the Gospel's sake.</p>
+
+  <p>"So on Wednesday (Feb. 18), in the morning before Shrovetide, Master
+  Garret departed out of Oxford towards Dorsetshire, with my letter, for
+  his new service."</p>
+
+<!-- Page 325 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page325"></a>[pg 325]</span>
+
+  <p>The most important person being thus, as was supposed, safe from
+  immediate danger, Dalaber was at leisure to think a little about himself;
+  and supposing, naturally, that the matter would not end there, and that
+  some change of residence might be of advantage for his own security, he
+  moved off from Alban Hall (as undergraduates it seems were then at
+  liberty to do) to Gloucester College,<a name="NtA_510"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_510"><sup>510</sup></a> under pretence that he desired to study
+  civil law, for which no facilities existed at the hall. This little
+  matter was affected on the Thursday; and all Friday and Saturday morning
+  he "was so much busied in setting his poor stuff in order, his bed, his
+  books, and such things else as he had," that he had no leisure to go
+  forth anywhere those two days, Friday and Saturday.</p>
+
+  <p>"Having set up my things handsomely," he continues, "the same day,
+  before noon, I determined to spend that whole afternoon, until evensong
+  time, at Frideswide College,<a name="NtA_511"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_511"><sup>511</sup></a> at my book in mine own study; and so
+  shut my chamber door unto me, and my study door also, and took into my
+  head to read Francis Lambert upon the Gospel of St. Luke, which book only
+  I had then within there. All my other books written on the Scriptures, of
+  which I had great numbers, I had left in my chamber at Alban's Hall,
+  where I had made a very secret place to keep them safe in, because it was
+  so dangerous to have any such books. And so, as I was diligently reading
+  in the same book of Lambert upon Luke, suddenly one knocked at my chamber
+  door very hard, which made me astonished, and yet I sat still and would
+  not speak; then he knocked again more hard, and yet I held my peace; and
+  straightway he knocked again yet more fiercely; and then I thought this:
+  peradventure it is somebody that hath need of me; and therefore I thought
+  myself bound to do as I would be done unto; and so, laying my book aside,
+  I came to the door and opened it, and there was Master Garret, as a man
+  amazed, whom I thought to have been with my brother, and one with
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>Garret had set out on his expedition into Dorsetshire, but had been
+  frightened, and had stolen back into Oxford on the Friday, to his old
+  hiding place, where, in the middle of the night, the proctors had taken
+  him. He had been carried to Lincoln, and shut up in a room in the
+  rector's house, where he had been <!-- Page 326 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page326"></a>[pg 326]</span> left all day. In
+  the afternoon the rector went to chapel, no one was stirring about the
+  college, and he had taken advantage of the opportunity to slip the bolt
+  of the door and escape. He had a friend at Gloucester College, "a monk
+  who had bought books of him;" and Gloucester lying on the outskirts of
+  the town, he had hurried down there as the readiest place of shelter. The
+  monk was out; and as no time was to be lost, Garret asked the servant on
+  the staircase to show him Dalaber's rooms.</p>
+
+  <p>As soon as the door was opened, "he said he was undone, for he was
+  taken." "Thus he spake unadvisedly in the presence of the young man, who
+  at once slipped down the stairs," it was to be feared, on no good errand.
+  "Then I said to him," Dalaber goes on, "alas, Master Garret, by this your
+  uncircumspect coming here and speaking so before the young man, you have
+  disclosed yourself and utterly undone me. I asked him why he was not in
+  Dorsetshire. He said he had gone a day's journey and a half; but he was
+  so fearful, his heart would none other but that he must needs return
+  again unto Oxford. With deep sighs and plenty of tears, he prayed me to
+  help to convey him away; and so he cast off his hood and gown wherein he
+  came to me, and desired me to give him a coat with sleeves, if I had any;
+  and he told me that he would go into Wales, and thence convey himself, if
+  he might, into Germany. Then I put on him a sleeved coat of mine. He
+  would also have had another manner of cap of me, but I had none but
+  priestlike, such as his own was.</p>
+
+  <p>"Then kneeled we both down together upon our knees, and lifting up our
+  hearts and hands to God our heavenly Father, desired him, with plenty of
+  tears, so to conduct and prosper him in his journey, that he might well
+  escape the danger of all his enemies, to the glory of His Holy Name, if
+  His good pleasure and will so were. And then we embraced and kissed the
+  one the other, the tears so abundantly flowing out from both our eyes,
+  that we all bewet both our faces, and scarcely for sorrow could we speak
+  one to another. And so he departed from me, apparelled in my coat, being
+  committed unto the tuition of our Almighty and merciful Father.</p>
+
+  <p>"When he was gone down the stairs from my chamber, I straightways did
+  shut my chamber door, and went into my study; and taking the New
+  Testament in my hands, kneeled down on my knees, and with many a deep
+  sigh and salt tear, I did, with much deliberation, read over the tenth
+  chapter of <!-- Page 327 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page327"></a>[pg 327]</span> St. Matthew's Gospel,<a
+  name="NtA_512"></a><a href="#Nt_512"><sup>512</sup></a> praying that God
+  would endue his tender and lately-born little flock in Oxford with
+  heavenly strength by his Holy Spirit; that quietly to their own
+  salvation, with all godly patience, they might bear Christ's heavy cross,
+  which I now saw was presently to be laid on their young and weak backs,
+  unable to bear so huge a burden without the greater help of his Holy
+  Spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>"This done, I laid aside my book safe, folded up Master Garret's gown
+  and hood, and so, having put on my short gown, and shut my doors, I went
+  towards Frideswide (Christchurch), to speak with that worthy martyr of
+  God, Master Clark. But of purpose I went by St. Mary's church, to go
+  first unto Corpus Christi College, to speak with Diet and Udal, my
+  faithful brethren and fellows in the Lord. By chance I met by the way a
+  brother of ours, one Master Eden, fellow of Magdalen, who, as soon as he
+  saw me, said, we were all undone, for Master Garret was returned, and was
+  in prison. I said it was not so; he said it was. I heard, quoth he, our
+  Proctor, Master Cole, say and declare the same this day. Then I told him
+  what was done; and so made haste to Frideswide, to find Master Clark, for
+  I thought that he and others would be in great sorrow.</p>
+
+  <p>"Evensong was begun; the dean and the canons were there in their grey
+  amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came thither. I stood in
+  the choir door and heard Master Taverner play, and others of the chapel
+  there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont to sing also; but now
+  my <!-- Page 328 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page328"></a>[pg
+  328]</span> singing and music were turned into sighing and musing. As I
+  there stood, in cometh Dr. Cottisford,<a name="NtA_513"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_513"><sup>513</sup></a> the commissary, as fast as ever he
+  could go, bareheaded, as pale as ashes (I knew his grief well enough);
+  and to the dean he goeth into the choir, were he was sitting in his
+  stall, and talked with him, very sorrowfully: what, I know not; but
+  whereof I might and did truly guess. I went aside from the choir door to
+  see and hear more. The commissary and dean came out of the choir,
+  wonderfully troubled as it seemed. About the middle of the church, met
+  them Dr. London,<a name="NtA_514"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_514"><sup>514</sup></a> puffing, blustering, and blowing like a
+  hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey. They talked together awhile; but
+  the commissary was much blamed by them, insomuch that he wept for
+  sorrow.</p>
+
+  <p>"The doctors departed, and sent abroad their servants and spies
+  everywhere. Master Clark, about the middle of the compline,<a
+  name="NtA_515"></a><a href="#Nt_515"><sup>515</sup></a> came forth of the
+  choir. I followed him to his chamber, and declared what had happened that
+  afternoon of Master Garret's escape. Then he sent for one Master Sumner
+  and Master Bets, fellows and canons there. In the meantime he gave me a
+  very godly exhortation, praying God to give us all the wisdom of the
+  serpent and the harmlessness of doves, for we should shortly have much
+  need thereof. When Master Sumner and Master Bets came, he caused me to
+  declare again the whole matter to them two. Then desiring them to tell
+  our other brethren in that college, I went to Corpus Christi College, to
+  comfort our brethren there, where I found in Diet's chamber, looking for
+  me, Fitzjames, Diet, and Udal. They all knew the matter before by Master
+  Eden, whom I had sent unto Fitzjames. So I tarried there and supped with
+  them, where they had provided meat and drink for us before my coming; and
+  when we had ended, Fitzjames would needs have me to lie that night with
+  him in my old lodging at Alban's Hall. But small rest and little sleep
+  took we both there that night."</p>
+
+  <p>The next day, which was Sunday, Dalaber rose at five o'clock, and as
+  soon as he could leave the Hall, hastened off to his rooms at Gloucester.
+  The night had been wet and stormy, and his shoes and stockings were
+  covered with mud. The college gates, when he reached them, were still
+  closed, an unusual thing at that hour; and he walked up and down under
+  the walls in the bleak grey morning, till the clock struck seven, "much
+  disquieted, his head full of forecasting cares," but resolved, like a
+  brave man, that <!-- Page 329 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page329"></a>[pg 329]</span> come what would, he would accuse no
+  one, and declare nothing but what he saw was already known. The gates
+  were at last opened; he went to his rooms, and for some time his key
+  would not turn in the door, the lock having been meddled with. At length
+  he succeeded in entering, and found everything in confusion, his bed
+  tossed and tumbled, his study door open, and his clothes strewed about
+  the floor. A monk who occupied the opposite rooms, hearing him return,
+  came to him and said that the commissary and the two proctors had been
+  there looking for Garret. Bills and swords had been thrust through the
+  bed-straw, and every corner of the room searched for him. Finding
+  nothing, they had left orders that Dalaber, as soon as he returned,
+  should appear before the prior of the students.</p>
+
+  <p>"This so troubled me," Dalaber says, "that I forgot to make clean my
+  hose and shoes, and to shift me into another gown; and all bedirted as I
+  was, I went to the said prior's chamber." The prior asked him where he
+  had slept that night. At Alban's Hall, he answered, with his old
+  bedfellow, Fitzjames. The prior said he did not believe him, and asked if
+  Garret had been at his rooms the day before. He replied that he had.
+  Whither had he gone, then? the prior inquired; and where was he at that
+  time? "I answered," says Dalaber, "that I knew not, unless he was gone to
+  Woodstock; he told me that he would go there, because one of the keepers
+  had promised him a piece of venison to make merry with at Shrovetide.
+  This tale I thought meetest, though it were nothing so."<a
+  name="NtA_516"></a><a href="#Nt_516"><sup>516</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 330 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page330"></a>[pg 330]</span>
+
+  <p>At this moment the university beadle entered with two of the
+  commissary's servants, bringing a message to the prior that he should
+  repair at once to Lincoln, taking Dalaber with him. "I was brought into
+  the chapel," the latter continues, "and there I found Dr. Cottisford,
+  commissary; Dr. Higdon, Dean of Cardinal's College; and Dr. London,
+  Warden of New College; standing together at the altar. They called for
+  chairs and sate down, and then [ordered] me to come to them; they asked
+  me what my name was, how long I had been at the university, what I
+  studied," with various other inquiries: the clerk of the university,
+  meanwhile, bringing pens, ink, and paper, and arranging a table with a
+  few loose boards upon tressels. A mass book, he says, was then placed
+  before him, and he was commanded to lay his hand upon it, and swear that
+  he would answer truly such questions as should be asked him. At first he
+  refused; but afterwards, being persuaded, "partly by fair words, and
+  partly by great threats," he promised to do as they would have him; but
+  in his heart he "meant nothing so to do." "So I laid my hand on the
+  book," he goes on, "and one of them gave me my oath, and commanded me to
+  kiss the book. They made great courtesy between them who should examine
+  me; at last, the rankest Pharisee of them all took upon him to do it.</p>
+
+  <p>"Then he asked me again, by my oath, where Master Garret was, and
+  whither I had conveyed him. I said I had not conveyed him, nor yet wist
+  where he was, nor whither he was gone, except he were gone to Woodstock,
+  as I had before said. Surely, they said, I brought him some whither this
+  morning, for they might well perceive by my foul shoes and dirty hosen
+  that I had travelled with him the most part of the night. I answered
+  plainly, that I lay at Alban's Hall with Sir Fitzjames, and that I had
+  good witness thereof. They asked me where I was at evensong. I told them
+  at Frideswide, and that I saw, first, Master Commissary, and then Master
+  Doctor London, come thither to Master Dean. Doctor London and the Dean
+  threatened me that if I would not tell the truth I should surely be sent
+  to the Tower of London, and there be racked, and put into Little-ease.<a
+  name="NtA_517"></a><a href="#Nt_517"><sup>517</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"At last when they could get nothing out of me whereby to hurt or
+  accuse any man, or to know anything of that which they sought, they all
+  three together brought me up a long stairs, into a great chamber, over
+  Master Commissary's chamber, wherein stood a great pair of very high
+  stocks. Then Master Commissary <!-- Page 331 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page331"></a>[pg 331]</span> asked me for my purse and girdle, and
+  took away my money and my knives; and then they put my legs into the
+  stocks, and so locked me fast in them, in which I sate, my feet being
+  almost as high as my head; and so they departed, locking fast the door,
+  and leaving me alone.</p>
+
+  <p>"When they were all gone, then came into my remembrance the worthy
+  forewarning and godly declaration of that most constant martyr of God,
+  Master John Clark, who, well nigh two years before that, when I did
+  earnestly desire him to grant me to be his scholar, said unto me after
+  this sort: 'Dalaber, you desire you wot not what, and that which you are,
+  I fear, unable to take upon you; for though now my preaching be sweet and
+  pleasant to you, because there is no persecution laid on you for it, yet
+  the time will come, and that, peradventure, shortly, if ye continue to
+  live godly therein, that God will lay on you the cross of persecution, to
+  try you whether you can as pure gold abide the fire. You shall be called
+  and judged a heretic; you shall be abhorred of the world; your own
+  friends and kinsfolk will forsake you, and also hate you; you shall be
+  cast into prison, and none shall dare to help you; you shall be accused
+  before bishops, to your reproach and shame, to the great sorrow of all
+  your friends and kinsfolk. Then will ye wish ye had never known this
+  doctrine; then will ye curse Clark, and wish that ye had never known him
+  because he hath brought you to all these troubles.'</p>
+
+  <p>"At which words, I was so grieved that I fell down on my knees at his
+  feet, and with tears and sighs besought him that, for the tender mercy of
+  God, he would not refuse me; saying that I trusted, verily, that he which
+  had begun this in me would not forsake me, but would give me grace to
+  continue therein to the end. When he heard me say so, he came to me, took
+  me in his arms and kissed me, the tears trickling from his eyes; and said
+  unto me: 'The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do; and from henceforth
+  for ever, take me for your father, and I will take you for my son in
+  Christ.'"</p>
+
+  <p>In these meditations the long Sunday morning wore away. A little
+  before noon the commissary came again to see if his prisoner was more
+  amenable; finding him, however, still obstinate, he offered him some
+  dinner&mdash;a promise which we will hope he fulfilled, for here
+  Dalaber's own narrative abruptly forsakes us,<a name="NtA_518"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_518"><sup>518</sup></a> leaving uncompleted, at this point, the
+  most vivid picture which remains to us of a fraction of English life in
+  the <!-- Page 332 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page332"></a>[pg
+  332]</span> reign of Henry VIII. If the curtain fell finally on the
+  little group of students, this narrative alone would furnish us with rare
+  insight into the circumstances under which the Protestants fought their
+  way. The story, however, can be carried something further, and the
+  strangest incident connected with it remains to be told.</p>
+
+  <p>Dalaber breaks off on Sunday at noon. The same day, or early the
+  following morning, he was submitted once more to examination: this time,
+  for the discovery of his own offences, and to induce him to give up his
+  confederates. With respect to the latter he proved "marvellous
+  obstinate." "All that was gotten of him was with much difficulty;" nor
+  would he confess to any names as connected with heresy or heretics except
+  that of Clark, which was already known. About himself he was more open.
+  He wrote his "book of heresy," that is, his confession of faith, "with
+  his own hand"&mdash;his evening's occupation, perhaps, in the stocks in
+  the rector of Lincoln's house; and the next day he was transferred to
+  prison.<a name="NtA_519"></a><a href="#Nt_519"><sup>519</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This offender being thus disposed of, and strict secrecy being
+  observed to prevent the spread of alarm, a rapid search was set on foot
+  for books in all suspected quarters. The fear of the authorities was that
+  "the infect persons would flee," and "convey" their poison "away with
+  them."<a name="NtA_520"></a><a href="#Nt_520"><sup>520</sup></a> The
+  officials, once on the scent of heresy, were skilful in running down the
+  game. No time was lost, and by Monday evening many of "the brethren" had
+  been arrested, their rooms examined, and their forbidden treasures
+  discovered and rifled. Dalaber's store was found "hid with marvellous
+  secresy;" and in one student's desk a duplicate of Garret's
+  list&mdash;the titles of the volumes with which the first "Religious
+  Tract Society" set themselves to convert England.</p>
+
+  <p>Information of all this was conveyed in haste by Dr. London to the
+  Bishop of Lincoln, as the ordinary of the university; and the warden told
+  his story with much self-congratulation. On one point, however, the news
+  which he had to communicate was less satisfactory. Garret himself was
+  gone&mdash;utterly gone. Dalaber was obstinate, and no clue to the track
+  of the fugitive could be discovered. The police were at fault; neither
+  bribes nor threats could elicit anything; and in these desperate
+  circumstances, as he told the bishop, the three heads of houses conceived
+  that they might strain a point of propriety for so good a purpose as to
+  prevent the escape of a heretic. Accordingly, <!-- Page 333 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page333"></a>[pg 333]</span> after a full report
+  of the points of their success, Doctor London went on to relate the
+  following remarkable proceeding:</p>
+
+  <p>"After Master Garret escaped, <i>the commissary being in extreme
+  pensiveness, knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a
+  figure to be made by one expert in astronomy&mdash;and his judjment doth
+  continually persist upon this, that he fled in a tawny coat
+  south-eastward, and is in the middle of London, and will shortly to the
+  sea side</i>. He was curate unto the parson of Honey Lane.<a
+  name="NtA_521"></a><a href="#Nt_521"><sup>521</sup></a> It is likely he
+  is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as soon as I knew the judgment of
+  this astronomer, I thought it expedient and my duty with all speed to
+  ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your
+  lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London. It will
+  be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works, which he
+  carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul, opening of
+  many privy heresies, and extinction of the same."<a name="NtA_522"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_522"><sup>522</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>We might much desire to know what the bishop's sensations were in
+  reading this letter&mdash;to know whether it occurred to him that in this
+  naļve acknowledgment, the Oxford heresy hunters were themselves
+  confessing to an act of heresy; and that by the law of the church, which
+  they were so eager to administer, they were liable to the same death
+  which they were so zealous to secure for the poor vendors of Testaments.
+  So indeed they really were. Consulting the stars had been ruled from
+  immemorial time to be dealing with the devil; the penalty of it was the
+  same as for witchcraft; yet here was a reverend warden of a college
+  considering it his duty to write eagerly of a discovery obtained by these
+  forbidden means, to his own diocesan, begging him to communicate with the
+  Cardinal of York and the Bishop of London, that three of the highest
+  church authorities in England might become <i>participes criminis</i>, by
+  acting on this diabolical information.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, the commissary, not wholly relying on the astrologer, but
+  resolving prudently to make use of the more earthly resources which were
+  at his disposal, had sent information of Garret's escape to the
+  corporations of Dover, Rye, Winchester, Southampton, and Bristol, with
+  descriptions of the person of the fugitive; and this step was taken with
+  so much expedition, that before the end of the week no vessel was allowed
+  to leave either of those harbours without being strictly searched.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 334 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page334"></a>[pg 334]</span>
+
+  <p>The natural method proved more effectual than the supernatural, though
+  again with the assistance of a singular accident. Garret had not gone to
+  London; unfortunately for himself, he had not gone to Wales as he had
+  intended. He left Oxford, as we saw, the evening of Saturday, February
+  21st. That night he reached a village called Corkthrop,<a
+  name="NtA_523"></a><a href="#Nt_523"><sup>523</sup></a> where he lay
+  concealed till Wednesday; and then, not in the astrologer's orange-tawny
+  dress, but in "a courtier's coat and buttoned cap," which he had by some
+  means contrived to procure, he set out again on his forlorn journey,
+  making for the nearest sea-port, Bristol, where the police were looking
+  out to receive him. His choice of Bristol was peculiarly unlucky. The
+  "chapman" of the town was the step-father of Cole, the Oxford proctor: to
+  this person, whose name was Master Wilkyns, the proctor had written a
+  special letter, in addition to the commissary's circular; and the family
+  connection acting as a spur to his natural activity, a coast guard had
+  been set before Garret's arrival, to watch for him down the Avon banks,
+  and along the Channel shore for fifteen miles. All the Friday night "the
+  mayor, with the aldermen, and twenty of the council, had kept privy
+  watch," and searched suspicious houses at Master Wilkyns's instance; the
+  whole population were on the alert, and when the next afternoon, a week
+  after his escape, the poor heretic, footsore and weary, dragged himself
+  into the town, he found that he had walked into the lion's mouth.<a
+  name="NtA_524"></a><a href="#Nt_524"><sup>524</sup></a> He quickly learnt
+  this danger to which he was exposed, and hurried off again with the best
+  speed which he could command; but it was too late. The chapman, alert and
+  indefatigable, had heard that a stranger had been seen in the street; the
+  police were set upon his track, and he was taken at Bedminster, a suburb
+  on the opposite bank of the Avon, and hurried before a magistrate, where
+  he at once acknowledged his identity.</p>
+
+  <p>With such happy success were the good chapman's efforts rewarded. Yet
+  in this world there is no light without shadow; no pleasure without its
+  alloy. In imagination, Master Wilkyns had thought of himself conducting
+  the prisoner in triumph into the streets of Oxford, the hero of the hour.
+  The sour formality of the law condemned him to ill-merited
+  disappointment. Garret had been taken beyond the liberties of the city;
+  it was necessary, therefore, to commit him to the county gaol, and he
+  <!-- Page 335 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page335"></a>[pg
+  335]</span> was sent to Ilchester. "Master Wilkyns offered himself to be
+  bound to the said justice in three hundred pounds to discharge him of the
+  said Garret, and to see him surely to Master Proctor's of Oxford; yet
+  could he not have him, for the justice said that the order of the law
+  would not so serve."<a name="NtA_525"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_525"><sup>525</sup></a> The fortunate captor had therefore to
+  content himself with the consciousness of his exploit, and the favourable
+  report of his conduct which was sent to the bishops; and Garret went
+  first to Ilchester, and thence was taken by special writ, and surrendered
+  to Wolsey.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus unkind had fortune shown herself to the chief criminal, guilty of
+  the unpardonable offence of selling Testaments at Oxford, and therefore
+  hunted down as a mad dog, and a common enemy of mankind. He escaped for
+  the present the heaviest consequences, for Wolsey persuaded him to
+  abjure. A few years later we shall again meet him, when he had recovered
+  his better nature, and would not abjure, and died as a brave man should
+  die. In the meantime we return to the university, where the authorities
+  were busy trampling out the remains of the conflagration.</p>
+
+  <p>Two days after his letter respecting the astrologer, the Warden of New
+  College wrote again to the Diocesan, with an account of his further
+  proceedings. He was an efficient inquisitor, and the secrets of the poor
+  undergraduates had been unravelled to the last thread. Some of "the
+  brethren" had confessed; all were in prison; and the doctor desired
+  instructions as to what should be done with them. It must be said for Dr.
+  London, that he was anxious that they should be treated leniently.
+  Dalaber described him as a roaring lion, and he was a bad man, and came
+  at last to a bad end. But it is pleasant to find that even he, a mere
+  blustering arrogant official, was not wholly without redeeming points of
+  character; and as little good will be said for him hereafter, the
+  following passage in his second letter may be placed to the credit side
+  of his account. The tone in which he wrote was at least humane, and must
+  pass for more than an expression of natural kindness, when it is
+  remembered that he was addressing a person with whom tenderness for
+  heresy was a crime.</p>
+
+  <p>"These youths," he said, "have not been long conversant with Master
+  Garret, nor have greatly perused his mischievous books; and long before
+  Master Garret was taken, divers of them were weary of these works, and
+  delivered them to Dalaber. I am marvellous sorry for the young men. If
+  they be openly <!-- Page 336 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page336"></a>[pg 336]</span> called upon, although they appear not
+  greatly infect, yet they shall never avoid slander, because my Lord's
+  Grace did send for Master Garret to be taken. I suppose his Grace will
+  know of your good lordship everything. Nothing shall be hid, I assure
+  your good lordship, an every one of them were my brother; and I do only
+  make this moan for these youths, for surely they be of the most towardly
+  young men in Oxford; and as far as I do yet perceive, not greatly infect,
+  but much to blame for reading any part of these works."<a
+  name="NtA_526"></a><a href="#Nt_526"><sup>526</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Doctor London's intercession, if timid, was generous; he obviously
+  wished to suggest that the matter should be hushed up, and that the
+  offending parties should be dismissed with a reprimand. If the decision
+  had rested with Wolsey, it is likely that this view would have been
+  readily acted upon. But the Bishop of Lincoln was a person in whom the
+  spirit of humanity had been long exorcised by the spirit of an
+  ecclesiastic. He was staggering along the last years of a life against
+  which his own register<a name="NtA_527"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_527"><sup>527</sup></a> bears dreadful witness, and he would
+  not burden his conscience with mercy to heretics. He would not mar the
+  completeness of his barbarous career. He singled out three of the
+  prisoners&mdash;Garret, Clark, and Ferrars<a name="NtA_528"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_528"><sup>528</sup></a>&mdash;and especially entreated that
+  they should be punished. "They be three perilous men," he wrote to
+  Wolsey, "and have been the occasion of the corruption of youth. They have
+  done much mischief, and for the love of God let them be handled
+  thereafter."<a name="NtA_529"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_529"><sup>529</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Wolsey had Garret in his own keeping, and declined to surrender him.
+  Ferrars had been taken at the Black Friars, in London,<a
+  name="NtA_530"></a><a href="#Nt_530"><sup>530</sup></a> and making his
+  submission, was respited and escaped with abjuration. But Clark was at
+  Oxford, in the bishop's power, and the wicked old man was allowed to work
+  his will upon him. A bill of heresy was drawn, which the prisoner was
+  required to sign. He refused, and must have been sent to the stake, had
+  he not escaped by dying prematurely of the treatment which he had
+  received in prison.<a name="NtA_531"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_531"><sup>531</sup></a> <!-- Page 337 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page337"></a>[pg 337]</span> His last words only
+  are recorded. He was refused the communion, not perhaps as a special act
+  of cruelty, but because the laws of the church would not allow the holy
+  thing to be profaned by the touch of a heretic. When he was told that it
+  would not be suffered, he said "<i>crede et manducāsti</i>"&mdash;"faith
+  is the communion;" and so passed away; a very noble person, so far as the
+  surviving features of his character will let us judge; one who, if his
+  manhood had fulfilled the promise of his youth, would have taken no
+  common part in the Reformation.</p>
+
+  <p>The remaining brethren were then dispersed. Some were sent home to
+  their friends&mdash;others, Anthony Dalaber among them, were placed on
+  their trial, and being terrified at their position, recanted, and were
+  sentenced to do penance. Ferrars was brought to Oxford for the occasion,
+  and we discern indistinctly (for the mere fact is all which survives) a
+  great fire at Carfax; a crowd of spectators, and a procession of students
+  marching up High Street with fagots on their shoulders, the solemn
+  beadles leading them with gowns and maces. The ceremony was repeated to
+  which Dr. Barnes had been submitted at St. Paul's. They were taken three
+  times round the fire, throwing in each first their fagot, and then some
+  one of the offending books, in token that they repented and renounced
+  their errors.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus was Oxford purged of heresy. The state of innocence which Dr.
+  London pathetically lamented<a name="NtA_532"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_532"><sup>532</sup></a> was restored, and the heads of houses
+  had peace till their rest was broken by a ruder storm.</p>
+
+  <p>In this single specimen we may see a complete image of Wolsey's
+  persecution, as with varying details it was carried out in every town and
+  village from the Tweed to the Land's End. I dwell on the stories of
+  individual suffering, not to colour the narrative, or to re-awaken
+  feelings of bitterness which may well rest now and sleep for ever; but
+  because, through the years in which it was struggling for recognition,
+  the history of Protestantism is the history of its martyrs. No rival
+  theology, as I have said, had as yet shaped itself into formulas. We have
+  not to trace any slow growing elaboration of opinion. Protestantism,
+  before it became an establishment, was a refusal to live any longer in a
+  lie. It was a falling back upon the undefined untheoretic rules of truth
+  and piety which lay upon the surface of the Bible, and a determination
+  rather to die than to mock with unreality any longer the Almighty Maker
+  of the <!-- Page 338 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page338"></a>[pg
+  338]</span> world. We do not look in the dawning manifestations of such a
+  spirit for subtleties of intellect. Intellect, as it ever does, followed
+  in the wake of the higher virtues of manly honesty and truthfulness. And
+  the evidences which were to effect the world's conversion were so
+  cunningly arranged syllogistic demonstrations, but once more those
+  loftier evidences which lay in the calm endurance by heroic men of the
+  extremities of suffering, and which touched&mdash;not the mind with
+  conviction, but the heart with admiring reverence.</p>
+
+  <p>In the concluding years of his administration Wolsey was embarrassed
+  with the divorce. Difficulties were gathering round him, from the failure
+  of his hopes abroad and the wreck of his popularity at home; and the
+  activity of the persecution was something relaxed, as the guiding mind of
+  the great minister ceased to have leisure to attend to it. The bishops,
+  however, continued, each in his own diocese, to act with such vigour as
+  they possessed. Their courts were unceasingly occupied with vexatious
+  suits, commenced without reason, and conducted without justice. They
+  summoned arbitrarily as suspected offenders whoever had the misfortune to
+  have provoked their dislike; either compelling them to criminate
+  themselves by questions on the intricacies of theology,<a
+  name="NtA_533"></a><a href="#Nt_533"><sup>533</sup></a> or allowing
+  sentence to be passed against them on the evidence of abandoned persons,
+  who would not have been admissible as witnesses before the secular
+  tribunals.<a name="NtA_534"></a><a href="#Nt_534"><sup>534</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It might have been thought that the clear perception which was shown
+  by the House of Commons of the injustice with which the trials for heresy
+  were conducted, the disregard, shameless and flagrant, of the provisions
+  of the statutes under which the bishops were enabled to proceed, might
+  have led them to reconsider the equity of persecution in itself; or, at
+  least, to remove from the office of judges persons who had shown
+  themselves so signally unfit to exercise that office. It would have been
+  indecent, however, if not impossible, to transfer to a civil tribunal the
+  cognisance of opinion; and, on the other hand, there was as yet among the
+  upper classes of the laity no kind of disposition to be lenient towards
+  those who were really unorthodox. The desire so far was only to check the
+  reckless and random accusations of persons whose offence was to have <!--
+  Page 339 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page339"></a>[pg 339]</span>
+  criticised, not the doctrine but the moral conduct, of the church
+  authorities. The Protestants, although from the date of the meeting of
+  the parliament and Wolsey's fall their ultimate triumph was certain,
+  gained nothing in its immediate consequences. They suffered rather from
+  the eagerness of the political reformers to clear themselves from
+  complicity with heterodoxy; and the bishops were even taunted with the
+  spiritual dissensions of the realm as an evidence of their indolence and
+  misconduct.<a name="NtA_535"></a><a href="#Nt_535"><sup>535</sup></a>
+  Language of this kind boded ill for the "Christian Brethren;" and the
+  choice of Wolsey's successor for the office of chancellor soon confirmed
+  their apprehensions; Wolsey had chastised them with whips; Sir Thomas
+  More would chastise them with scorpions; and the philosopher of the
+  <i>Utopia</i>, the friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty,
+  whose genius was cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to
+  prove to the world that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar
+  attribute of the pedant, the bigot, of the fanatic, but may co-exist with
+  the fairest graces of the human character. The lives of remarkable men
+  usually illustrate some emphatic truth. Sir Thomas More may be said to
+  have lived to illustrate the necessary tendencies of Romanism in an
+  honest mind convinced of its truth; to show that the test of sincerity in
+  a man who professes to regard orthodoxy as an essential of salvation, is
+  not the readiness to endure persecution, but the courage which will
+  venture to inflict it.</p>
+
+  <p>The seals were delivered to the new chancellor in November, 1529. By
+  his oath on entering office he was bound to exert himself to the utmost
+  for the suppression of heretics:<a name="NtA_536"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_536"><sup>536</sup></a> he was bound, however, equally to obey
+  the conditions under which the law allowed them to be suppressed.
+  Unfortunately for his reputation as a judge, he permitted the hatred of
+  "that kind of men," which he did not conceal that he felt,<a
+  name="NtA_537"></a><a href="#Nt_537"><sup>537</sup></a> to obscure his
+  conscience on this important feature of his duty, and tempt him to
+  imitate the worst iniquities of the bishops. I do not intend in this
+  place to relate the stories of his cruelties in his house at Chelsea,<a
+  name="NtA_538"></a><a href="#Nt_538"><sup>538</sup></a> which he himself
+  partially denied, and which at least we may hope were exaggerated. Being
+  obliged to confine <!-- Page 340 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page340"></a>[pg 340]</span> myself to specific instances, I choose
+  rather those on which the evidence is not open to question; and which
+  prove against More, not the zealous execution of a cruel law, for which
+  we may not fairly hold him responsible, but a disregard, in the highest
+  degree censurable, of his obligations as a judge.</p>
+
+  <p>The acts under which heretics were liable to punishment, were the 15th
+  of the 2nd of Henry IV., and the 1st of the 2nd of Henry V.</p>
+
+  <p>By the act of Henry IV., the bishops were bound to bring offenders to
+  trial in open court, within three months of their arrest, if there were
+  no lawful impediment. If conviction followed, they might imprison at
+  their discretion. Except under these conditions, they were not at liberty
+  to imprison.</p>
+
+  <p>By the act of Henry V., a heretic, if he was first indicted before a
+  secular judge, was to be delivered within ten days (or if possible, a
+  shorter period) to the bishop, "to be acquit or convict" by a jury in the
+  spiritual court, and to be dealt with accordingly.<a
+  name="NtA_539"></a><a href="#Nt_539"><sup>539</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The secular judge might detain a heretic for ten days before
+  delivering him to the bishop. The bishop might detain him for three
+  months before his trial. Neither the secular judge nor the bishop had
+  power to inflict indefinite imprisonment at will while the trial was
+  delayed; nor if on the trial the bishop failed in securing a conviction,
+  was he at liberty to detain the accused person any longer on the same
+  charge, because the result was not satisfactory to himself. These
+  provisions were not preposterously lenient. Sir Thomas More should have
+  found no difficulty in observing them himself, and in securing the
+  observance of them by the bishops, at least in cases where he was himself
+  responsible for the first committal. It is to be feared that he forgot
+  that he was a judge in his eagerness to be a partisan, and permitted no
+  punctilious legal scruples to interfere with the more important object of
+  ensuring punishment to heretics.</p>
+
+  <p>The first case which I shall mention is one in which the Bishop of
+  London was principally guilty; not, however, without More's countenance,
+  and, if Foxe is to be believed, his efficient support.</p>
+
+  <p>In December, 1529, the month succeeding his appointment as chancellor,
+  More, at the instance of the Bishop of London,<a name="NtA_540"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_540"><sup>540</sup></a> arrested a citizen of London, Thomas
+  Philips by name, on a charge of heresy.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 341 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page341"></a>[pg 341]</span>
+
+  <p>The prisoner was surrendered in due form to his diocesan, and was
+  brought to trial on the 4th of February; a series of articles being
+  alleged against him by Foxford, the bishop's vicar-general. The articles
+  were of the usual kind. The prisoner was accused of having used
+  unorthodox expressions on transubstantiation, on purgatory, pilgrimages,
+  and confession. It does not appear whether any witnesses were produced.
+  The vicar-general brought his accusations on the ground of general
+  rumour, and failed to maintain them. Whether there were witnesses or not,
+  neither the particular offences, nor even the fact of the general rumour,
+  could be proved to the satisfaction of the jury. Philips himself
+  encountered each separate charge with a specific denial, declaring that
+  he neither was, nor ever had been, other than orthodox; and the result of
+  the trial was, that no conviction could be obtained. The prisoner "was
+  found so clear from all manner of infamous slanders and suspicions, that
+  all the people before the said bishop, shouting in judgment as with one
+  voice, openly witnessed his good name and fame, to the great reproof and
+  shame of the said bishop, if he had not been ashamed to be ashamed."<a
+  name="NtA_541"></a><a href="#Nt_541"><sup>541</sup></a> The case had
+  broken down; the proceedings were over, and by law the accused person was
+  free. But the law, except when it was on their own side, was of little
+  importance to the church authorities. As they had failed to prove Philips
+  guilty of heresy, they called upon him to confess his guilt by abjuring
+  it; "as if," he says, "there were no difference between a nocent and an
+  innocent, between a guilty and a not guilty."<a name="NtA_542"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_542"><sup>542</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>He refused resolutely, and was remanded to prison, in open violation
+  of the law. The bishop, in conjunction with Sir Thomas More,<a
+  name="NtA_543"></a><a href="#Nt_543"><sup>543</sup></a> sent for him from
+  time to time, submitting him to private examinations, which again were
+  illegal; and urged the required confession, in order, as Philips says,
+  "to save the bishop's credit."</p>
+
+  <p>The further they advanced, the more difficult it was to recede; and
+  the bishop at length, irritated at his failure, concluded the process
+  with an arbitrary sentence of excommunication. From this sentence,
+  whether just or unjust, there was then no appeal, except to the pope. The
+  wretched man, in virtue of it, was no longer under the protection of the
+  law, and was committed to the Tower, where he languished for three years,
+  protesting, <!-- Page 342 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page342"></a>[pg 342]</span> but protesting fruitlessly, against
+  the tyranny which had crushed him, and clamouring for justice in the deaf
+  ears of pedants who knew not what justice meant.</p>
+
+  <p>If this had occurred at the beginning of the century, the prisoner
+  would have been left to die, as countless multitudes had already died,
+  unheard, uncared for, unthought of; the victim not of deliberate cruelty,
+  but of that frightfullest portent, folly armed with power. Happily the
+  years of his imprisonment had been years of swift revolution. The House
+  of Commons had become a tribunal where oppression would not any longer
+  cry wholly unheard; Philips appealed to it for protection, and recovered
+  his liberty.<a name="NtA_544"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_544"><sup>544</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The weight of guilt in this instance presses essentially on Stokesley;
+  yet a portion of the blame must be borne also by the chancellor, who
+  first placed Philips in Stokesley's hands; who took part in the illegal
+  private examinations, and who could not have been ignorant of the
+  prisoner's ultimate fate. If, however, it be thought unjust to charge a
+  good man's memory with an offence in which his part was only secondary,
+  the following iniquity was wholly and exclusively his own. I relate the
+  <!-- Page 343 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page343"></a>[pg
+  343]</span> story without comment in the address of the injured person to
+  More's successor.<a name="NtA_545"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_545"><sup>545</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"<i>To the Right Hon. the Lord Chancellor of England. (Sir T. Audeley)
+  and other of the King's Council.</i></p>
+
+  <p>"In most humble wise showeth unto your goodness your poor bedeman John
+  Field, how that the next morrow upon twelfth day,<a name="NtA_546"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_546"><sup>546</sup></a> in the twenty-first year of our
+  sovereign lord the King's Highness, Sir Thomas More, Knight, then being
+  Lord Chancellor of England, did send certain of his servants, and caused
+  your said bedeman, with certain others, to be brought to his place at
+  Chelsea, and there kept him (after what manner and fashion it were now
+  long to tell), by the space of eighteen days;<a name="NtA_547"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_547"><sup>547</sup></a> and then set him at liberty, binding
+  him to appear before him again the eighth day following in the Star
+  Chamber, which was Candlemas eve; at which day your said bedeman
+  appeared, and was then sent to the Fleet, where he continued until Palm
+  Sunday two years after [in violation of both the statutes], kept so close
+  the first quarter that his keeper only might visit him; and always after
+  closed up with those that were handled most straitly; often searched,
+  sometimes even at midnight; besides snares and traps laid to take him in.
+  Betwixt Michaelmas and Allhalloween tide next after his coming to prison
+  there was taken from your bedeman a Greek vocabulary, price five
+  shillings; Saint Cyprian's works, with a book of the same Sir Thomas
+  More's making, named the <i>Supplication of Souls</i>. For what cause it
+  was done he committeth to the judgment of God, that seeth the souls of
+  all persons. The said Palm Sunday, which was also our Lady's day, towards
+  night there came two officers of the Fleet, named George Porter and John
+  Butler, and took your bedeman into a ward alone, and there, after long
+  searching, found his purse hanging at his girdle; which they took, and
+  shook out the money to the sum of ten shillings, which was sent him to
+  buy such necessaries as he lacked, and delivered him again his purse,
+  well and truly keeping the money to themselves, as they said for their
+  fees; and forthwith carried him from the Fleet (where he lost such poor
+  bedding as he then had, and could never since get it), and delivered him
+  to the Marshalsea, under our gracious sovereign's commandment and Sir
+  Thomas More's. When the Sunday before the Rogation <!-- Page 344 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page344"></a>[pg 344]</span> week following,
+  your bedeman fell sick; and the Whitsun Monday was carried out on four
+  men's backs, and delivered to his friends to be recovered if it so
+  pleased God. At which time the keeper took for your bedeman's fees other
+  ten shillings, when four shillings should have sufficed if he had been
+  delivered in good health.</p>
+
+  <p>"Within three weeks it pleased God to set your bedeman on his feet, so
+  that he might walk abroad. Whereof when Sir Thomas More heard (who went
+  out of his chancellorship about the time your bedeman was carried out of
+  prison), although he had neither word nor deed which he could ever truly
+  lay to your bedeman's charge, yet made he such means by the Bishops of
+  Winchester and London, as your bedeman heard say, to the Hon. Lord Thomas
+  Duke of Norfolk, that he gave new commandment to the keeper of the
+  Marshalsea to attach again your said bedeman; which thing was speedily
+  done the Sunday three weeks after his deliverance. And so he continued in
+  prison again until Saint Lawrence tide following; at which time money was
+  given to the keeper, and some things he took which were not given, and
+  then was your bedeman re-delivered through the king's goodness, under
+  sureties bound in a certain sum, that he should appear the first day of
+  the next term following, and then day by day until his dismission. And so
+  hath your bedeman been at liberty now twelve months waiting daily from
+  term to term, and nothing laid to his charge as before.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wherefore, the premises tenderly considered, and also your said
+  bedeman's great poverty, he most humbly beseecheth your goodness that he
+  may now be clearly discharged; and if books, money, or other things seem
+  to be taken or kept from him otherwise than justice would, eftsoons he
+  beseecheth you that ye will command it to be restored.</p>
+
+  <p>"As for his long imprisonment, with other griefs thereto appertaining,
+  he looketh not to have recompense of man; but committeth his whole cause
+  to God, to whom your bedeman shall daily pray, according as he is bound,
+  that ye may so order and govern the realm that it may be to the honour of
+  God and your heavenly and everlasting reward."</p>
+
+  <p>I do not find the result of this petition, but as it appeared that
+  Henry had interested himself in the story, it is likely to have been
+  successful. We can form but an imperfect judgment on the merits of the
+  case, for we have only the sufferer's <i>ex parte</i> complaint, and More
+  might probably have been able to make some counter-statement. But the
+  illegal imprisonment cannot <!-- Page 345 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page345"></a>[pg 345]</span> be explained away, and cannot be
+  palliated; and when a judge permits himself to commit an act of arbitrary
+  tyranny, we argue from the known to the unknown, and refuse reasonably to
+  give him credit for equity where he was so little careful of law.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet a few years of misery in a prison was but an insignificant
+  misfortune when compared with the fate under which so many other poor men
+  were at this time overwhelmed. Under Wolsey's chancellorship the stake
+  had been comparatively idle; he possessed a remarkable power of making
+  recantation easy; and there is, I believe, no instance in which an
+  accused heretic was brought under his immediate cognisance, where he
+  failed to arrange some terms by which submission was made possible. With
+  Wolsey heresy was an error&mdash;with More it was a crime. Soon after the
+  seals changed hands the Smithfield fires recommenced; and, the chancellor
+  acting in concert with them, the bishops resolved to obliterate, in these
+  edifying spectacles, the recollection of their general infirmities. The
+  crime of the offenders varied&mdash;sometimes it was a denial of the
+  corporal presence, more often it was a reflection too loud to be endured
+  on the character and habits of the clergy; but whatever it was, the
+  alternative lay only between abjuration humiliating as ingenuity could
+  make it, or a dreadful death. The hearts of many failed them in the
+  trial, and of all the confessors those perhaps do not deserve the least
+  compassion whose weakness betrayed them, who sank and died
+  broken-hearted. Of these silent sufferers history knows nothing. A few,
+  unable to endure the misery of having, as they supposed, denied their
+  Saviour, returned to the danger from which they had fled, and washed out
+  their fall in martyrdom. Latimer has told us the story of his friend
+  Bilney&mdash;little Bilney, or Saint Bilney,<a name="NtA_548"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_548"><sup>548</sup></a> as he calls him, his companion at
+  Cambridge, to whom he owed his own conversion. Bilney, after escaping
+  through Wolsey's hands in 1527, was again cited in 1529 before the Bishop
+  of London. Three times he refused to recant. He was offered a fourth and
+  last chance. The temptation was too strong, and he fell. For two years he
+  was hopelessly miserable; at length his braver nature prevailed. There
+  was no pardon for a relapsed heretic, and if he was again in the bishop's
+  hands he knew well the fate which awaited him.</p>
+
+  <p>He told his friends, in language touchingly significant, that "he
+  would go up to Jerusalem;" and began to preach in the <!-- Page 346
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page346"></a>[pg 346]</span> fields.
+  The journey which he had undertaken was not to be a long one. He was
+  heard to say In a sermon, that of his personal knowledge certain things
+  which had been offered in pilgrimage had been given to abandoned women.
+  The priests, he affirmed, "take away the offerings, and hang them about
+  their women's necks; and after that they take them off the women, if they
+  please them not, and hang them again upon the images."<a
+  name="NtA_549"></a><a href="#Nt_549"><sup>549</sup></a> This was Bilney's
+  heresy, or formed the ground of his arrest; he was orthodox on the mass,
+  and also on the power of the keys; but the secrets of the sacred order
+  were not to be betrayed with impunity. He was seized, and hurried before
+  the Bishop of Norwich; and being found heterodox on the papacy and the
+  mediation of the saints by the Bishop of Norwich he was sent to the
+  stake.</p>
+
+  <p>Another instance of recovered courage, and of martyrdom consequent
+  upon it, is that of James Bainham, a barrister of the Middle Temple. This
+  story is noticeable from a very curious circumstance connected with
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Bainham had challenged suspicion by marrying the widow of Simon Fish,
+  the author of the famous <i>Beggars' Petition</i>, who had died in 1528;
+  and, soon after his marriage, was challenged to give an account of his
+  faith. He was charged with denying transubstantiation, with questioning
+  the value of the confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence
+  of authoritative Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a
+  yet larger belief. He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or
+  a Saracen do trust in God and keep his law, he is a good Christian
+  man,"<a name="NtA_550"></a><a href="#Nt_550"><sup>550</sup></a>&mdash;a
+  conception of Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but
+  feebly dare to whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against
+  him commenced with a demand that he should give up his books, and also
+  the names of other barristers with whom he was suspected to have held
+  intercourse. He refused; and in consequence his wife was imprisoned, and
+  he himself was racked in the Tower by order of Sir Thomas More. Enfeebled
+  by suffering, he was then brought before Stokesley, and terrified by the
+  cold merciless eyes of his judge, he gave way, not about his friends, but
+  about himself: he abjured, and was dismissed heartbroken. This was on the
+  seventeenth of February. He was only able to endure his wretchedness for
+  a month. At the end of it, he appeared at a secret meeting of the
+  Christian Brothers, in "a <!-- Page 347 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page347"></a>[pg 347]</span> warehouse in Bow Lane," where he asked
+  forgiveness of God and all the world for what he had done; and then went
+  out to take again upon his shoulders the heavy burden of the cross.</p>
+
+  <p>The following Sunday, at the church of St. Augustine, he rose in his
+  seat with the fatal English Testament in his hand, and "declared openly,
+  before all the people, with weeping tears, that he had denied God,"
+  praying them all to forgive him, and beware of his weakness; "for if I
+  should not return to the truth," he said, "this Word of God would damn
+  me, body and soul, at the day of judgment." And then he prayed "everybody
+  rather to die than to do as he did, for he would not feel such a hell
+  again as he did feel for all the world's good."<a name="NtA_551"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_551"><sup>551</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Of course but one event was to be looked for; he knew it, and himself
+  wrote to the bishop, telling him what he had done. No mercy was possible:
+  he looked for none, and he found none.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet perhaps he found what the wise authorities thought to be some act
+  of mercy. They could not grant him pardon in this world upon any terms;
+  but they would not kill him till they had made an effort for his soul. He
+  was taken to the Bishop of London's coal cellar at Fulham, the favourite
+  episcopal penance chamber, where he was ironed and put in the stocks; and
+  there was left for many days, in the chill March weather, to bethink
+  himself. This failing to work conviction, he was carried to Sir Thomas
+  More's house at Chelsea, where for two nights he was chained to a post
+  and whipped; thence, again, he was taken back to Fulham for another week
+  of torture; and finally to the Tower, for a further fortnight, again with
+  ineffectual whippings.</p>
+
+  <p>The demands of charity were thus satisfied. The pious bishop and the
+  learned chancellor had exhausted their means of conversion; they had
+  discharged their consciences; and the law was allowed to take its course.
+  The prisoner was brought to trial on the 20th of April, as a relapsed
+  heretic. Sentence followed; and on the last of the month the drama closed
+  in the usual manner at Smithfield. Before the fire was lighted Bainham
+  made a farewell address to the people, laying his death expressly to
+  More, whom he called his accuser and his judge.<a name="NtA_552"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_552"><sup>552</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It is unfortunately impossible to learn the feelings with which these
+  dreadful scenes were witnessed by the people. There are stories which
+  show that, in some instances, familiarity had produced the usual effect;
+  that the martyrdom of saints was at times of no more moment to an English
+  crowd than the execution <!-- Page 348 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page348"></a>[pg 348]</span> of ordinary felons&mdash;that it was a
+  mere spectacle to the idle, the hardened, and the curious. On the other
+  hand, it is certain that the behaviour of the sufferers was the argument
+  which at last converted the nation; and an effect which in the end was so
+  powerful with the multitude, must have been visible long before in the
+  braver and better natures. The increasing number of prosecutions in
+  London shows, also, that the leaven was spreading. There were five
+  executions in Smithfield between 1529 and 1533, besides those in the
+  provinces. The prisons were crowded with offenders who had abjured and
+  were undergoing sentence; and the list of those who were "troubled" in
+  various ways is so extensive, as to leave no doubt of the sympathy which,
+  in London at least, must have been felt by many, very many, of the
+  spectators of the martyrs' deaths. We are left, in this important point,
+  mainly to conjecture; and if we were better furnished with evidence, the
+  language of ordinary narrative would fail to convey any real notion of
+  perplexed and various emotions. We have glimpses, however, into the inner
+  world of men, here and there of strange interest; and we must regret that
+  they are so few.</p>
+
+  <p>A poor boy at Cambridge, John Randall, of Christ's College, a relation
+  of Foxe the martyrologist, destroyed himself in these years in religious
+  desperation; he was found in his study hanging by his girdle, before an
+  open Bible, with his dead arm and finger stretched pitifully towards a
+  passage on predestination.<a name="NtA_553"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_553"><sup>553</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>A story even more remarkable is connected with Bainham's execution.
+  Among the lay officials present at the stake, was "one Pavier," town
+  clerk of London. This Pavier was a Catholic fanatic, and as the flames
+  were about to be kindled he burst out into violent and abusive language.
+  The fire blazed up, and the dying sufferer, as the red flickering tongues
+  licked the flesh from off his bones, turned to him and said, "May God
+  forgive thee, and shew more mercy than thou, angry reviler, shewest to
+  me." The scene was soon over; the town clerk went home. A week after, one
+  morning when his wife had gone to mass, he sent all his servants out of
+  his house on one pretext or another, a single girl only being left, and
+  he withdrew to a garret at the top of the house, which he used as an
+  oratory. A large crucifix was on the wall, and the girl having some
+  question to ask, went to the room, and found him standing before it
+  "bitterly weeping." He told her to take his sword, which was rusty, and
+  clean it. She went away, and left him; when <!-- Page 349 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page349"></a>[pg 349]</span> she returned, a
+  little time after, he was hanging from a beam, dead. He was a singular
+  person. Edward Hall, the historian, knew him, and had heard him say, that
+  "if the king put forth the New Testament in English, he would not live to
+  bear it."<a name="NtA_554"></a><a href="#Nt_554"><sup>554</sup></a> And
+  yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What was it? Had the meaning
+  of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross suddenly revealed
+  itself? Had some inner voice asked him whether, in the prayer for his
+  persecutors with which Christ had parted out of life, there might be some
+  affinity with words which had lately sounded in his own ears? God, into
+  whose hands he threw himself, self-condemned in his wretchedness, only
+  knows the agony of that hour. Let the secret rest where it lies, and let
+  us be thankful for ourselves that we live in a changed world.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, however, the struggle went forward; a forlorn hope of saints led
+  the way up the breach, and paved with their bodies a broad road into the
+  new era; and the nation the meanwhile was unconsciously waiting till the
+  works of the enemy were won, and they could walk safely in and take
+  possession. While men like Bilney and Bainham were teaching with words
+  and writings, there were stout English hearts labouring also on the
+  practical side of the same conflict, instilling the same lessons, and
+  meeting for themselves the same consequences. Speculative superstition
+  was to be met with speculative denial. Practical idolatry required a
+  rougher method of disenchantment.</p>
+
+  <p>Every monastery, every parish church, had in those days its special
+  relics, its special images, its special something, to attract the
+  interest of the people. The reverence for the remains of noble and pious
+  men, the dresses which they had worn, or the bodies in which their
+  spirits had lived, was in itself a natural and pious emotion; but it had
+  been petrified into a dogma; and like every other imaginative feeling
+  which is submitted to that bad process, it had become a falsehood, a mere
+  superstition, a substitute for piety, not a stimulus to it, and a
+  perpetual occasion of fraud. The people brought offerings to the shrines
+  where it was supposed that the relics were of greatest potency. The
+  clergy, to secure the offerings, invented the relics, and invented the
+  stories of the wonders which had been worked by them. The greatest
+  exposure of these things took place at the visitation of the religious
+  houses. In the meantime, Bishop Shaxton's unsavoury inventory of what
+  passed under the name of relics in the diocese of Salisbury, will furnish
+  an adequate <!-- Page 350 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page350"></a>[pg 350]</span> notion of these objects of popular
+  veneration. There "be set forth and commended unto the ignorant people,"
+  he said, "as I myself of certain which be already come to my hands, have
+  perfect knowledge, stinking boots, mucky combes, ragged rochettes, rotten
+  girdles, pyl'd purses, great bullocks' horns, locks of hair, and filthy
+  rags, gobbetts of wood, under the name of parcels of the holy cross, and
+  such pelfry beyond estimation."<a name="NtA_555"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_555"><sup>555</sup></a> Besides matters of this kind, there
+  were images of the Virgin or of the Saints; above all, roods or
+  crucifixes, of especial potency, the virtues of which had begun to grow
+  uncertain, however, to sceptical Protestants; and from doubt to denial,
+  and from denial to passionate hatred, there were but a few brief steps.
+  The most famous of the roods was that of Boxley in Kent, which used to
+  smile and bow, or frown and shake its head, as its worshippers were
+  generous or closehanded. The fortunes and misfortunes of this image I
+  shall by and bye have to relate. There was another, however, at
+  Dovercourt, in Suffolk, of scarcely inferior fame. This image was of such
+  power that the door of the church in which it stood was open at all hours
+  to all comers, and no human hand could close it. Dovercourt therefore
+  became a place of great and lucrative pilgrimage, much resorted to by the
+  neighbours on all occasions of difficulty.</p>
+
+  <p>Now it happened that within the circuit of a few miles there lived
+  four young men, to whom the virtues of the rood had become greatly
+  questionable. If it could work miracles, it must be capable, so they
+  thought, of protecting its own substance; and they agreed to apply a
+  practical test which would determine the extent of its abilities.
+  Accordingly (about the time of Bainham's first imprisonment), Robert King
+  of Dedham, Robert Debenham of Eastbergholt, Nicholas Marsh of Dedham, and
+  Robert Gardiner of Dedham, "their consciences being burdened to see the
+  honour of Almighty God so blasphemed by such an idol," started off "on a
+  wondrous goodly night" in February, with hard frost and a clear full
+  moon, ten miles across the wolds, to the church.</p>
+
+  <p>The door was open as the legend declared; but nothing daunted, they
+  entered bravely, and lifting down the "idol" from its shrine, with its
+  coat and shoes, and the store of tapers which were kept for the services,
+  they carried it on their shoulders for a quarter of a mile from the place
+  where it had stood, "without any resistance of the said idol." There
+  setting it on the <!-- Page 351 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page351"></a>[pg 351]</span> ground, they struck a light, fastened
+  the tapers to the body, and with the help of them, sacrilegiously burnt
+  the image down to a heap of ashes; the old dry wood "blazing so brimly,"
+  that it lighted them a full mile on their way home.<a
+  name="NtA_556"></a><a href="#Nt_556"><sup>556</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>For this night's performance, which, if the devil is the father of
+  lies, was a stroke of honest work against him and his family, the world
+  rewarded these men after the usual fashion. One of them, Robert Gardiner,
+  escaped the search which was made, and disappeared till better times; the
+  remaining three were swinging in chains six months later on the scene of
+  their exploit. Their fate was perhaps inevitable. Men who dare to be the
+  first in great movements are ever self-immolated victims. But I suppose
+  that it was better for them to be bleaching on their gibbets, than
+  crawling at the feet of a wooden rood, and believing it to be God.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+  <p>These were the first Paladins of the Reformation; the knights who slew
+  the dragons and the enchanters, and made the earth habitable for common
+  flesh and blood. They were rarely, as we have said, men of great ability,
+  still more rarely men of "wealth and station;" but men rather of clear
+  senses and honest hearts. Tyndal was a remarkable person, and so Clark
+  and Frith promised to become; but the two last were cut off before they
+  had found scope to show themselves; and Tyndal remaining abroad, lay
+  outside the battle which was being fought in England, doing noble work,
+  indeed, and ending as the rest ended, with earning a martyr's crown; but
+  taking no part in the actual struggle except with his pen. As yet but two
+  men of the highest order of power were on the side of
+  Protestantism&mdash;Latimer and Cromwell. Of them we have already said
+  something; but the time was now fast coming when they were to step
+  forward, pressed by circumstances which could no longer dispense with
+  them, into scenes of far wider activity; and the present seems a fitting
+  occasion to give some closer account of their history. When the breach
+  with the pope was made irreparable, and the papal party at home had
+  assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the fortunes of the
+  Protestants entered into a new phase. The persecution ceased; and those
+  who but lately were carrying fagots in the streets, or hiding for their
+  lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the sunshine of
+  political favour. The summer was but a brief one, followed soon by
+  returning winter; but Cromwell and <!-- Page 352 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page352"></a>[pg 352]</span> Latimer had
+  together caught the moment as it went by; and before it was over, a work
+  had been done in England which, when it was accomplished once, was
+  accomplished for ever. The conservative party recovered their power, and
+  abused it as before; but the chains of the nation were broken, and no
+  craft of kings or priests or statesmen could weld the magic links
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a pity that of two persons to whom England owes so deep a debt,
+  we can piece together such scanty biographies. I must attempt, however,
+  to give some outline of the little which is known.</p>
+
+  <p>The father of Latimer was a solid English yeoman, of Thurcaston, in
+  Leicestershire. "He had no lands of his own," but he rented a farm "of
+  four pounds by the year," on which "he tilled so much as kept half a
+  dozen men;" "he had walk for a hundred sheep, and meadow ground for
+  thirty cows."<a name="NtA_557"></a><a href="#Nt_557"><sup>557</sup></a>
+  The world prospered with him; he was able to save money for his son's
+  education and his daughters' portions; but he was freehanded and
+  hospitable; he kept open house for his poor neighbours; and he was a good
+  citizen, too, for "he did find the king a harness with himself and his
+  horse," ready to do battle for his country, if occasion called. His
+  family were brought up "in godliness and the fear of the Lord;" and in
+  all points the old Latimer seems to have been a worthy, sound, upright
+  man, of the true English mettle.</p>
+
+  <p>There were several children.<a name="NtA_558"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_558"><sup>558</sup></a> The Reformer was born about 1490, some
+  five years after the usurper Richard had been killed at Bosworth.
+  Bosworth being no great distance from Thurcaston, Latimer the father is
+  likely to have been present in the battle, on one side or the
+  other&mdash;the right side in those times it was no easy matter to
+  choose&mdash;but he became a good servant of the new government&mdash;and
+  the little Hugh, when a boy of seven years old, helped to buckle<a
+  name="NtA_559"></a><a href="#Nt_559"><sup>559</sup></a> on his armour for
+  him, "when he went to Blackheath field."<a name="NtA_560"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_560"><sup>560</sup></a> Being a soldier himself, the old
+  gentleman was careful to give his sons, whatever else he gave them, a
+  sound soldier's training. "He was diligent," says Latimer, "to teach me
+  to shoot with the bow: he taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in
+  the bow&mdash;not to draw with strength of arm, as other nations do, but
+  with the strength <!-- Page 353 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page353"></a>[pg 353]</span> of the body. I had my bows bought me
+  according to my age and strength; as I increased in these, my bows were
+  made bigger and bigger."<a name="NtA_561"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_561"><sup>561</sup></a> Under this education, and in the
+  wholesome atmosphere of the farmhouse, the boy prospered well; and by and
+  bye, showing signs of promise, he was sent to school. When he was
+  fourteen, the promises so far having been fulfilled, his father
+  transferred him to Cambridge.<a name="NtA_562"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_562"><sup>562</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>He was soon known at the university as a sober, hard-working student.
+  At nineteen, he was elected fellow of Clare Hall; at twenty, he took his
+  degree, and became a student in divinity, when he accepted quietly, like
+  a sensible man, the doctrines which he had been brought up to believe. At
+  the time when Henry VIII. was writing against Luther, Latimer was
+  fleshing his maiden sword in an attack upon Melancthon;<a
+  name="NtA_563"></a><a href="#Nt_563"><sup>563</sup></a> and he remained,
+  he said, till he was thirty, "in darkness and the shadow of death." About
+  this time he became acquainted with Bilney, whom he calls "the instrument
+  whereby God called him to knowledge." In Bilney, doubtless, he found a
+  sound instructor; but a careful reader of his sermons will see traces of
+  a teaching for which he was indebted to no human master. His deepest
+  knowledge was that which stole upon him unconsciously through the
+  experience of life and the world. His words are like the clear impression
+  of a seal; the account and the result of observations, taken first hand,
+  on the condition of the English men and women of his time, in all ranks
+  and classes, from the palace to the prison. He shows large acquaintance
+  with books; with the Bible, most of all; with patristic divinity and
+  school divinity; and history, sacred and profane: but if this had been
+  all, he would not have been the Latimer of the <!-- Page 354 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page354"></a>[pg 354]</span> Reformation, and
+  the Church of England would not, perhaps, have been here to-day. Like the
+  physician, to whom a year of practical experience in a hospital teaches
+  more than a life of closest study, Latimer learnt the mental disorders of
+  his age in the age itself; and the secret of that art no other man,
+  however good, however wise, could have taught him. He was not an echo,
+  but a voice; and he drew his thoughts fresh from the fountain&mdash;from
+  the facts of the era in which God had placed him.</p>
+
+  <p>He became early famous as a preacher at Cambridge, from the first, "a
+  seditious fellow," as a noble lord called him in later life, highly
+  troublesome to unjust persons in authority. "None, except the
+  stiff-necked and uncircumcised, ever went away from his preaching, it was
+  said, without being affected with high detestation of sin, and moved to
+  all godliness and virtue."<a name="NtA_564"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_564"><sup>564</sup></a> And, in his audacious simplicity, he
+  addressed himself always to his individual hearers, giving his words a
+  personal application, and often addressing men by name. This habit
+  brought him first into difficulty in 1525. He was preaching before the
+  university, when the Bishop of Ely came into the church, being curious to
+  hear him. He paused till the bishop was seated; and when he recommenced,
+  he changed his subject, and drew an ideal picture of a prelate as a
+  prelate ought to be; the features of which, though he did not say so,
+  were strikingly unlike those of his auditor. The bishop complained to
+  Wolsey, who sent for Latimer, and inquired what he had said. Latimer
+  repeated the substance of his sermon; and other conversation then
+  followed, which showed Wolsey very clearly the nature of the person with
+  whom he was speaking. No eye saw more rapidly than the cardinal's the
+  difference between a true man and an impostor; and he replied to the
+  Bishop of Ely's accusations by granting the offender a licence to preach
+  in any church in England. "If the Bishop of Ely cannot abide such
+  doctrine as you have here repeated," he said, "you shall preach it to his
+  beard, let him say what he will."<a name="NtA_565"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_565"><sup>565</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus fortified, Latimer pursued his way, careless of the university
+  authorities, and probably defiant of them. He was still orthodox in
+  points of theoretic belief. His mind was practical rather than
+  speculative, and he was slow in arriving at conclusions which had no
+  immediate bearing upon action. <!-- Page 355 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page355"></a>[pg 355]</span> No charge could be fastened upon him,
+  definitely criminal; and he was too strong to be crushed by that
+  compendious tyranny which treated as an act of heresy the exposure of
+  imposture or delinquency.</p>
+
+  <p>On Wolsey's fall, however, he would have certainly been silenced: if
+  he had fallen into the hands of Sir Thomas More, he would have perhaps
+  been prematurely sacrificed. But, fortunately, he found a fresh protector
+  in the king. Henry heard of him, sent for him, and, with instinctive
+  recognition of his character, appointed him one of the royal chaplains.
+  He now left Cambridge and removed to Windsor, but only to treat his royal
+  patron as freely as he had treated the Cambridge doctors&mdash;not with
+  any absence of respect, for he was most respectful, but with that highest
+  respect which dares to speak unwelcome truth where the truth seems to be
+  forgotten. He was made chaplain in 1530&mdash;during the new persecution,
+  for which Henry was responsible by a more than tacit acquiescence.
+  Latimer, with no authority but his own conscience, and the strong
+  certainty that he was on God's side, threw himself between the spoilers
+  and their prey, and wrote to the king, protesting against the injustice
+  which was crushing the truest men in his dominions. The letter is too
+  long to insert; the close of it may show how a poor priest could dare to
+  address the imperious Henry VIII.:</p>
+
+  <p>"I pray to God that your Grace may take heed of the worldly wisdom
+  which is foolishness before God; that you may do that [which] God
+  commandeth, and not that [which] seemeth good in your own sight, without
+  the word of God; that your Grace may be found acceptable in his sight,
+  and one of the members of his church; and according to the office that he
+  hath called your Grace unto, you may be found a faithful minister of his
+  gifts, and not a defender of his faith: for he will not have it defended
+  by man or man's power, but by his word only, by the which he hath
+  evermore defended it, and that by a way far above man's power or
+  reason.</p>
+
+  <p>"Wherefore, gracious king, remember yourself; have pity upon your
+  soul; and think that the day is even at hand when you shall give account
+  for your office, and of the blood that hath been shed by your sword. In
+  which day, that your Grace may stand steadfastly, and not be ashamed, but
+  be clear and ready in your reckoning, and have (as they say), your
+  <i>quietus est</i> sealed with the blood of our Saviour Christ, which
+  only serveth at that day, is my daily prayer to Him that suffered death
+  for <!-- Page 356 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page356"></a>[pg
+  356]</span> our sins, which also prayeth to his Father for grace for us
+  continually; to whom be all honour and praise for ever. Amen. The Spirit
+  of God preserve your Grace."<a name="NtA_566"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_566"><sup>566</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>These words, which conclude an address of almost unexampled grandeur,
+  are unfortunately of no interest to us, except as illustrating the
+  character of the priest who wrote them, and the king to whom they were
+  written. The hand of the persecutor was not stayed. The rack and the lash
+  and the stake continued to claim their victims. So far it was labour in
+  vain. But the letter remains, to speak for ever for the courage of
+  Latimer; and to speak something, too, for a prince that could respect the
+  nobleness of the poor yeoman's son, who dared in such a cause to write to
+  him as a man to a man. To have written at all in such a strain was as
+  brave a step as was ever deliberately ventured. Like most brave acts, it
+  did not go unrewarded; for Henry remained ever after, however widely
+  divided from him in opinion, his unshaken friend.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1531, the king gave him the living of West Kingston, in Wiltshire,
+  where for a time he now retired. Yet it was but a partial rest. He had a
+  special licence as a preacher from Cambridge, which continued to him
+  (with the king's express sanction)<a name="NtA_567"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_567"><sup>567</sup></a> the powers which he had received from
+  Wolsey. He might preach in any diocese to which he was invited; and the
+  repose of a country parish could not be long allowed in such stormy times
+  to Latimer. He had bad health, being troubled with headache, pleurisy,
+  colic, stone; his bodily constitution meeting feebly the demands which he
+  was forced to make upon it.<a name="NtA_568"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_568"><sup>568</sup></a> But he struggled on, travelling up and
+  down to London, to Kent, to Bristol, wherever opportunity called him;
+  marked for destruction by the bishops, if he was betrayed into an
+  imprudent word, and himself living in constant expectation of death.<a
+  name="NtA_569"></a><a href="#Nt_569"><sup>569</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>At length the Bishop of London believed that Latimer was in his power.
+  He had preached at St. Abb's, in the city, "at the request of a company
+  of merchants,"<a name="NtA_570"></a><a href="#Nt_570"><sup>570</sup></a>
+  in the beginning of the winter of 1531; and soon after his return to his
+  living, he was informed that he was to be cited before Stokesley. His
+  friends in the neighbourhood wrote to him, evidently in great alarm, <!--
+  Page 357 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page357"></a>[pg 357]</span>
+  and more anxious that he might clear himself, than expecting that he
+  would be able to do so;<a name="NtA_571"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_571"><sup>571</sup></a> he himself, indeed, had almost made up
+  his mind that the end was coming.<a name="NtA_572"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_572"><sup>572</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The citation was delayed for a few weeks. It was issued at last, on
+  the 10th of January, 1531-2,<a name="NtA_573"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_573"><sup>573</sup></a> and was served by Sir Walter
+  Hungerford, of Farley.<a name="NtA_574"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_574"><sup>574</sup></a> The offences with which he was charged
+  were certain "excesses and irregularities" not specially defined; and the
+  practice of the bishops in such cases was not to confine the prosecution
+  to the acts committed; but to draw up a series of articles, on which it
+  was presumed that the orthodoxy of the accused person was open to
+  suspicion, and to question him separately upon each. Latimer was first
+  examined by Stokesley; subsequently at various times by the bishops
+  collectively; and finally, when certain formulas had been submitted to
+  him, which he refused to sign, his case was transferred to convocation.
+  The convocation, as we know, were then in difficulty with their
+  premunire; they had consoled themselves in their sorrow with burning the
+  body of Tracy; and they would gladly have taken further comfort by
+  burning Latimer.<a name="NtA_575"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_575"><sup>575</sup></a> He was submitted to the closest
+  cross-questionings, in the hope that he would commit himself. They felt
+  that he was the most dangerous person to them in the kingdom, and they
+  laboured with unusual patience to ensure his conviction.<a
+  name="NtA_576"></a><a href="#Nt_576"><sup>576</sup></a> <!-- Page 358
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page358"></a>[pg 358]</span> With a
+  common person they would have rapidly succeeded. But Latimer was in no
+  haste to be a martyr; he would be martyred patiently when the time was
+  come for martyrdom; but he felt that no one ought "to consent to die," as
+  long as he could honestly live;<a name="NtA_577"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_577"><sup>577</sup></a> and he baffled the episcopal
+  inquisitors with their own weapons. He has left a most curious account of
+  one of his interviews with them.</p>
+
+  <p>"I was once in examination," he says,<a name="NtA_578"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_578"><sup>578</sup></a> "before five or six bishops, where I
+  had much turmoiling. Every week, thrice, I came to examination, and many
+  snares and traps were laid to get something. Now, God knoweth, I was
+  ignorant of the law; but that God gave me answer and wisdom what I should
+  speak. It was God indeed, for else I had never escaped them. At the last,
+  I was brought forth to be examined into a chamber hanged with arras,
+  where I was before wont to be examined, but now, at this time, the
+  chamber was somewhat altered: for whereas before there was wont ever to
+  be a fire in the chimney,<a name="NtA_579"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_579"><sup>579</sup></a> now the fire was taken away, and an
+  arras hanging hanged over the chimney; and the table stood near the
+  chimney's end, so that I stood between the table and the chimney's end.
+  There was among these bishops that examined me one with whom I had been
+  very familiar, and took him for my great friend, an aged man, and he sate
+  next the table end. Then, among all other questions, he put forth one, a
+  very subtle and crafty one, and such one indeed as I could not think so
+  great danger in. And when I would make answer, 'I pray you, Master
+  Latimer,' said he, 'speak out; I am very thick of hearing, and here be
+  many that sit far off.' I marvelled at this, that I was bidden to speak
+  out, and began to misdeem, and gave an ear to the chimney; and, sir,
+  there I heard a pen walking in the chimney, behind the cloth. They had
+  appointed one there to write all mine answers; for they made sure work
+  that I should not start from them: there was no starting from them: God
+  was my good Lord, and gave me answer; I could never else have escaped it.
+  The question was this: 'Master Latimer, do you not think, on your
+  conscience, that you have been suspected of heresy?'&mdash;a subtle
+  question&mdash;a very subtle question. There was no holding of peace
+  would serve. To hold my peace had been to grant myself faulty. To answer
+  was every way full of danger. But God, which hath always given rile
+  answer, helped me, or else I could never have escaped it. <i>Ostendite
+  mihi numisma</i> <!-- Page 359 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page359"></a>[pg 359]</span> <i>censūs</i>. Shew me, said he, a
+  penny of the tribute money. They laid snares to destroy him, but he
+  overturneth them in their own traps."<a name="NtA_580"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_580"><sup>580</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The bishops, however, were not men who were nice in their adherence to
+  the laws; and it would have gone ill with Latimer, notwithstanding his
+  dialectic ability. He was excommunicated and imprisoned, and would soon
+  have fallen into worse extremities; but at the last moment he appealed to
+  the king, and the king, who knew his value, would not allow him to be
+  sacrificed. He had refused to subscribe the articles proposed to him.<a
+  name="NtA_581"></a><a href="#Nt_581"><sup>581</sup></a> Henry intimated
+  to the convocation that it was not his pleasure that the matter should be
+  pressed further; they were to content themselves with a general
+  submission, which should be made to the archbishop, without exacting more
+  special acknowledgments. This was the reward to Latimer for his noble
+  letter. He was absolved, and returned to his parish, though snatched as a
+  brand out of the fire.</p>
+
+  <p>Soon after, the tide turned, and the Reformation entered into a new
+  phase.</p>
+
+  <p>Such is a brief sketch of the life of Hugh Latimer, to the time when
+  it blended with the broad stream of English history. With respect to the
+  other very great man whom the exigencies of the state called to power
+  simultaneously with him, our information is far less satisfactory. Though
+  our knowledge of Latimer's early story comes to us in fragments only, yet
+  there are certain marks in it by which the outline can be determined with
+  certainty. A cloud rests over the youth and early manhood of Thomas
+  Cromwell, through which, only at intervals, we catch glimpses of
+  authentic facts; and these few fragments of reality seem rather to belong
+  to a romance than to the actual life of a man.</p>
+
+  <p>Cromwell, the malleus monachorum, was of good English family,
+  belonging to the Cromwells of Lincolnshire. One of these, probably a
+  younger brother, moved up to London and conducted an ironfoundry, or
+  other business of that description, at Putney. He married a lady of
+  respectable connections, of whom we know only that she was sister of the
+  wife of a gentleman in Derbyshire, but whose name does not appear.<a
+  name="NtA_582"></a><a href="#Nt_582"><sup>582</sup></a> The old <!-- Page
+  360 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page360"></a>[pg 360]</span>
+  Cromwell dying early, the widow was re-married to a cloth-merchant; and
+  the child of the first husband, who made himself so great a name in
+  English story, met with the reputed fortune of a stepson, and became a
+  vagabond in the wide world. The chart of his course wholly fails us. One
+  day in later life he shook by the hand an old bell-ringer at Sion House
+  before a crowd of courtiers, and told them that "this man's father had
+  given him many a dinner in his necessities." And a strange random account
+  is given by Foxe of his having joined a party in an expedition to Rome to
+  obtain a renewal from the pope of certain immunities and indulgences for
+  the town of Boston; a story which derives some kind of credibility from
+  its connection with Lincolnshire, but is full of incoherence and
+  unlikelihood. Following still the popular legend, we find him in the
+  autumn of 1515 a ragged stripling at the door of Frescobaldi's
+  banking-house in Florence, begging for help. Frescobaldi had an
+  establishment in London,<a name="NtA_583"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_583"><sup>583</sup></a> with a large connection there; and
+  seeing an English face, and seemingly an honest one, he asked the boy who
+  and what he was. "I am, sir," quoth he, "of England, and my name is
+  Thomas Cromwell; my father is a poor man, and by occupation a
+  cloth-shearer; I am strayed from my country, and am now come into Italy
+  with the camp of Frenchmen that were overthrown at Garigliano, where I
+  was page to a footman, carrying after him his pike and burganet."
+  Something in the boy's manner was said to have attracted the banker's
+  interest; he took him into his house, and after keeping him there as long
+  as he desired to stay, he gave him a horse and sixteen ducats to help him
+  home to England.<a name="NtA_584"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_584"><sup>584</sup></a> Foxe is the first English authority for
+  the story; and Foxe took it from Bandello, the novelist; but it is
+  confirmed by, or harmonises with, a sketch of Cromwell's early life in a
+  letter of Chappuys, the imperial ambassador, to Chancellor Granvelle.
+  "Master Cromwell," wrote Chappuys in 1535, "is the son of a poor
+  blacksmith, who lived in a small village four miles from London, and is
+  buried in a common grave in the parish churchyard. In his youth, for some
+  offence, he was imprisoned, and had to leave the country. He went to
+  Flanders, and thence to Rome and other places in Italy."<a
+  name="NtA_585"></a><a href="#Nt_585"><sup>585</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Returning to England, he married the daughter of a woollen-dealer,
+  <!-- Page 361 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page361"></a>[pg
+  361]</span> and became a partner in the business, where he amassed or
+  inherited a considerable fortune.<a name="NtA_586"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_586"><sup>586</sup></a> Circumstances afterwards brought him,
+  while still young, in contact with Wolsey, who discovered his merit, took
+  him into service, and in 1525, employed him in the most important work of
+  visiting and breaking up the small monasteries, which the pope had
+  granted for the foundation of the new colleges. He was engaged with this
+  business for two years, and was so efficient that he obtained an
+  unpleasant notoriety, and complaints of his conduct found their way to
+  the king. Nothing came of these complaints, however, and Cromwell
+  remained with the cardinal till his fall.<a name="NtA_587"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_587"><sup>587</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It was then that the truly noble nature which was in him showed
+  itself. He accompanied his master through his dreary confinement at
+  Esher,<a name="NtA_588"></a><a href="#Nt_588"><sup>588</sup></a> doing
+  all that man could do to soften the outward wretchedness of it; and at
+  the meeting of parliament, in which he obtained a seat, he rendered him a
+  still more gallant service. The Lords had passed a bill of impeachment
+  against Wolsey, violent, vindictive, and malevolent. It was to be
+  submitted to the Commons, and Cromwell prepared to attempt an opposition.
+  Cavendish has left a most characteristic <!-- Page 362 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page362"></a>[pg 362]</span> description of his
+  leaving Esher at this trying time. A cheerless November evening was
+  closing in with rain and storm. Wolsey was broken down with sorrow and
+  sickness; and had been unusually tried by parting with his retinue, whom
+  he had sent home, as unwilling to keep them attached any longer to his
+  fallen fortunes. When they were all gone, "My lord," says Cavendish,
+  "returned to his chamber, lamenting the departure of his servants, making
+  his moan unto Master Cromwell, who comforted him the best he could, and
+  desired my lord to give him leave to go to London, where he would either
+  make or mar before he came again, which was always his common saying.
+  Then after long communication with my lord in secret, he departed, and
+  took his horse and rode to London; at whose departing I was by, whom he
+  bade farewell, and said, ye shall hear shortly of me, and if I speed well
+  I will not fail to be here again within these two days."<a
+  name="NtA_589"></a><a href="#Nt_589"><sup>589</sup></a> He did speed
+  well. "After two days he came again with a much pleasanter countenance,
+  and meeting with me before he came to my lord, said unto me, that he had
+  adventured to put in his foot where he trusted shortly to be better
+  regarded or all were done." He had stopped the progress of the
+  impeachment in the Lower House, and was answering the articles one by
+  one. In the evening he rode down to Esher for instructions. In the
+  morning he was again at his place in Parliament; and he conducted the
+  defence so skilfully, that finally he threw out the bill, saved Wolsey,
+  and himself "grew into such estimation in every man's opinion, for his
+  honest behaviour in his master's cause, that he was esteemed the most
+  faithfullest servant, [and] was of all men greatly commended."<a
+  name="NtA_590"></a><a href="#Nt_590"><sup>590</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Henry admired his chivalry, and perhaps his talent. The loss of Wolsey
+  had left him without any very able man, unless we may consider Sir Thomas
+  More such, upon his council, and he could not calculate on More for
+  support in his anti-Roman policy; he was glad, therefore, to avail
+  himself of the service of a man who had given so rare a proof of
+  fidelity, and who had been trained by the ablest statesman of the age.<a
+  name="NtA_591"></a><a href="#Nt_591"><sup>591</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>To Wolsey Cromwell could render no more service except as a friend,
+  and his warm friend he remained to the last. He became the king's
+  secretary, representing the government in <!-- Page 363 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page363"></a>[pg 363]</span> the House of
+  Commons, and was at once on the high road to power. I cannot call him
+  ambitious; an ambitious man would scarcely have pursued so refined a
+  policy, or have calculated on the admiration which he gained by adhering
+  to a fallen minister. He did not seek greatness&mdash;greatness rather
+  sought him as the man in England most fit to bear it. His business was to
+  prepare the measures which were to be submitted to Parliament by the
+  government. His influence, therefore, grew necessarily with the rapidity
+  with which events were ripening; and when the conclusive step was taken,
+  and the king was married, the virtual conduct of the Reformation passed
+  into his hands. His Protestant tendencies were unknown as yet, perhaps,
+  even to his own conscience; nor to the last could he arrive at any
+  certain speculative convictions. He was drawn towards the Protestants as
+  he rose into power by the integrity of his nature, which compelled him to
+  trust only those who were honest like himself.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 364 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page364"></a>[pg 364]</span>
+
+<h2>APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>WILL OF THOMAS CROMWELL&mdash;1529.</h3>
+
+  <p>In the name of God, Amen. The 12th day of July, in the year of our
+  Lord God MCCCCCXXIX., and in the 21st year of the reign of our Sovereign
+  Lord, King Henry VIII., I, Thomas Cromwell, of London, Gentleman, being
+  whole in body and in good and perfect memory, lauded be the Holy Trinity,
+  make, ordain, and declare this my present testament, containing my last
+  will, in manner as following:&mdash;First I bequeath my soul to the great
+  God of heaven, my Maker, Creator, and Redeemer, beseeching the most
+  glorious Virgin and blessed Lady Saint Mary the Virgin and Mother, with
+  all the holy company of heaven, to be mediators and intercessors for me
+  to the Holy Trinity, so that I may be able, when it shall please Almighty
+  God to call me out of this miserable world and transitory life, to
+  inherit the kingdom of heaven amongst the number of good Christian
+  people; and whensoever I shall depart this present life I bequeath my
+  body to be buried where it shall please God to ordain me to die, and to
+  be ordered after the discretion of mine executors undernamed. And for my
+  goods which our Lord hath lent me in this world, I will shall be ordered
+  and disposed in manner and form as hereafter shall ensue. First I give
+  and bequeath unto my son Gregory Cromwell six hundred threescore six
+  pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence, of lawful money of England,
+  with the which six hundred threescore six pounds, thirteen shillings, and
+  fourpence, I will mine executors undernamed immediately or as soon as
+  they conveniently may after my decease, shall purchase lands, tenements,
+  and hereditaments to the clear yearly value of £33 6<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i>
+  by the year above all charges and reprises to the use of my said son
+  Gregory, for term of his life; and after the decease of the said Gregory
+  to the heirs male of his body lawfully to be begotten, and for lack of
+  heirs male of the body of the said Gregory, lawfully begotten, to the
+  heirs general of his body lawfully begotten. And for lack of such heirs
+  to the right heirs of me the said Thomas Cromwell, in fee. I will also
+  that immediately and as soon as the said lands, tenements, and
+  hereditaments shall be so purchased after my death as is aforesaid by
+  mine executors, that the yearly profits thereof shall be wholly spent and
+  employed in and about the education and finding honestly of my said son
+  Gregory, in virtue, good learning, and manners, until such time as he
+  shall come to the full age of 24 years. During which time I heartily
+  desire and require my said executors to be good unto my said you Gregory,
+  and to see he do lose no time, but to see him virtuously ordered and
+  brought up according to my trust.</p>
+
+  <p>Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory, (when he shall come
+  to his full age of 24 years), two hundred pounds of lawful English money
+  to order them as our Lord shall give him grace and discretion, which £200
+  I will shall be put in surety to the intent the same may come to his
+  hands at his said age of 24 years. Item. I give and bequeath to my said
+  son Gregory of such household stuff as God hath lent me, three of my best
+  featherbeds with their bolsters; and, the best pair of blankets of
+  fustian, my best coverlet of tapestry, and my quilt of yellow Turkey
+  satin; one pair of my best sheets, four pillows of down, with four pair
+  of the best pillowberes, four of my best table-cloths, four of my best
+  towels, two <!-- Page 365 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page365"></a>[pg 365]</span> dozen of my finest napkins, and two
+  dozen of my other napkins, two garnish of my best vessel, three of my
+  best brass pots, three of my best brass pans, two of my best kettles, two
+  of my best spits, my best joined bed of Flanders work, with the best
+  &mdash;&mdash; and tester, and other the appurtenances thereto belonging;
+  my best press, carven of Flanders work, and my best cupboard, carven of
+  Flanders work, with also six joined stools of Flanders work, and six of
+  my best cushions. Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory a
+  basin with an ewer parcel-gilt, my best salt gilt, my best cup gilt,
+  three of my best goblets; three other of my goblets parcel-gilt, twelve
+  of my best silver spoons, three of my best drinking ale-pots gilt; all
+  the which parcels of plate and household stuff I will shall be safely
+  kept to the use of my said you Gregory till he shall come to his said
+  full age of 24. And all the which plate, household stuff, napery, and all
+  other the premises, I will mine executors do put in safe keeping until my
+  said son come to the said years or age of 24. And if he die before the
+  age of 24, then I will all the said plate, vessel, and household stuff
+  shall be sold by mine executors. And the money thereof coming to be given
+  and equally divided amongst my poor kinsfolk, that is to say, amongst the
+  children as well of mine own sisters Elizabeth and Katherine, as of my
+  late wife's sister Joan, wife to John Williamson;<a name="NtA_592"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_592"><sup>592</sup></a> and if it happen that all the children
+  of my said sisters and sister-in-law do die before the partition be made,
+  and none of them be living, then I will that all the said plate, vessel,
+  and household stuff shall be sold and given to other my poor kinsfolk
+  then being in life, and other poor and indigent people, in deeds of
+  charity for my soul, my father and mother their souls, and all Christian
+  souls.</p>
+
+  <p>[<a name="NtA_593"></a><a href="#Nt_593"><sup>593</sup></a> Item. I
+  give and bequeath to my daughter Anne an hundred marks of lawful money of
+  England when she shall come to her lawful age or happen to be married,
+  and £40 toward her finding until the time that she shall be of lawful age
+  or be married, which £40 I will shall be delivered to my friend John
+  Cook, one of the six Clerks of the King's Chancery, to the intent he may
+  order the same and cause the same to be employed in the best wise he can
+  devise about the virtuous education and bringing up of my said daughter
+  till she shall come to her lawful age or marriage. Then I will that the
+  said 100 marks, and so much of the said £40 as then shall be unspent and
+  unemployed at the day of the death of my said daughter Anne, I will it
+  shall remain to Gregory my son, if he then be in life; and if he be dead,
+  the same hundred marks, and also so much of the said £40 as then shall be
+  unspent, to be departed amongst my sisters' children, in manner and form
+  aforesaid. And if it happen my said sisters' children then to be all
+  dead, then I will the said 100 marks and so much of the said £40 as shall
+  be unspent, shall be divided amongst my kinsfolk, such as then, shall be
+  in life.] Item. I give and bequeath unto my sister Elizabeth Wellyfed
+  £40, three goblets without a cover, a mazer, and a nut. Item. I give and
+  bequeath to my nephew Richard Willyams [<a name="NtA_594"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_594"><sup>594</sup></a> servant with my Lord Marquess Dorset,
+  £66 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i>], £40 sterling, my [<a name="NtA_594"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_594"><sup>594</sup></a> fourth] best gown, doublet, and jacket.
+  Item. I give and bequeath to my nephew, Christopher Wellyfed £40, [<a
+  name="NtA_594"></a><a href="#Nt_594"><sup>594</sup></a> £20] my fifth
+  gown, doublet, and jacket. Item. I give and bequeath to my nephew William
+  Wellyfed the younger £20, [<a name="NtA_594"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_594"><sup>594</sup></a> £40]. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+  niece Alice Wellyfed, to her marriage, £20. And if it happen her to die
+  before marriage, then I will that the said £20 shall remain to her
+  brother Christopher. And if it happen him to die, the same £20 to remain
+  to Wm. Wellyfed the younger, his brother. And if it happen them all to
+  die before their lawful age or marriage, then I will that all their parts
+  shall remain to Gregory my son. And if it happen him to die before them,
+  then I will all the said parts shall <!-- Page 366 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page366"></a>[pg 366]</span> remain [<a
+  name="NtA_594"></a><a href="#Nt_594"><sup>594</sup></a> to Anne and
+  Grace, my daughters] to Richard Willyams and Walter Willyams, my nephews.
+  And if it happen them to die, then I will that all the said parts shall
+  be distributed in deeds of charity for my soul, my father's and mother's
+  souls, and all Christian souls. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+  mother-in-law Mercy Prior, £40 of lawful English money, and her chamber,
+  with certain household stuff; that is to say, a featherbed, a bolster,
+  two pillows with their beres, six pair of sheets, a pair of blankets, a
+  garnish of vessel, two pots, two pans, two spits, with such other of my
+  household stuff as shall be thought meet for her by the discretion of
+  mine executors, and such as she will reasonably desire, not being
+  bequeathed to other uses in this my present testament and last will.
+  Item. I give and bequeath to my said mother-in-law a little salt of
+  silver, a mazer, six silver spoons, and a drinking-pot of silver. And
+  also I charge mine executors to be good unto her during her life. Item. I
+  give and bequeath to my brother-in-law William Wellyfed, £20, my third
+  gown, jacket, and doublet. Item. I give and bequeath to John Willyams my
+  brother-in-law, 100 marks, a gown, a doublet, a jacket, a featherbed, a
+  bolster, six pair of sheets, two table-cloths, two dozen napkins, two
+  towels, two brass pots, two brass pans, a silver pot, a nut parcel-gilt;
+  and to Joan, his wife, £40. Item. I give and bequeath to Joan Willyams,
+  their daughter, to her marriage, £20, and to every other of their
+  children, £12 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> Item. I bequeath to Walter Willyams,
+  my nephew, £20. item. I give and bequeath to Ralph Sadler, my servant,
+  200 marks of lawful English money, my second gown, jacket, and doublet,
+  and all my books. Item. I give and bequeath to Hugh Whalley, my servant,
+  £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> Item. I give and bequeath to Stephen Vaughan,
+  sometime my servant, 100 marks, a gown, jacket, and doublet. Item. I give
+  and bequeath to Page, my servant, otherwise called John De Fount, £6
+  13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> [<a name="NtA_594"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_594"><sup>594</sup></a> Item. I give and bequeath to Elizabeth
+  Gregory, sometime my servant, £20, six pair of sheets, a featherbed, a
+  pair of blankets, a coverlet, two table-cloths, one dozen napkins, two
+  brass pots, two pans, two spits.] And also to Thomas Averey, my servant,
+  £6 13<i>s.</i>4<i>d.</i> [Item. I give and bequeath to John
+  Cooke, one of the six Master Clerks of the Chancery, £10, my second gown,
+  doublet, and jacket. Item. I give and bequeath to Roger More, servant of
+  the King's bakehouse, £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i>, three yards of satin;
+  and to Maudelyn, his wife, £3 6<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i>] Item. I give and
+  bequeath to John Horwood, £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> [Item. I give and
+  bequeath to my little daughter Grace 100 marks of lawful English money
+  when she shall come to her lawful age or marriage; and also £40 towards
+  her exhibition and finding until such time she shall be of lawful age or
+  be married, which £40 I will shall be delivered to my brother-in-law,
+  John Willyams, to the intent he may order and cause the same to be
+  employed in and about the virtuous education and bringing up of my said
+  daughter, till she shall come to her lawful age of marriage. And if it
+  happen my said daughter to die before she come to her lawful age or
+  marriage, then I will that the said 100 marks, and so much of the said
+  £40 as shall then be unspent and unemployed about the finding of my said
+  daughter at the day of the death of my said daughter shall remain and be
+  delivered to Gregory my son, if he then shall happen to be in life; and
+  if he be dead, then the said 100 marks, and the said residue of the said
+  £40, to be evenly departed among my grown kinsfolk&mdash;that is to say,
+  my sisters' children aforesaid.] Item. That the rest of mine apparel
+  before not given or bequeathed in this my testament and last will shall
+  be given and equally departed amongst my servants after the order and
+  discretion of mine executors. Item. I will also that mine executors shall
+  take the yearly profits above the charges of my farm of Carberry, and all
+  other things contained in my said lease of Carberry, in the county of
+  Middlesex, and with the profits thereof shall <!-- Page 367 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page367"></a>[pg 367]</span> yearly pay unto my
+  brother-in-law William (Wellyfed) and Elizabeth his wife, mine only
+  sister, twenty pounds; give and distribute for my soul quarterly 40
+  shillings during their lives and the longer of them; and after the
+  decease of the said William and Elizabeth, the profits of the said farm
+  over and above the yearly rent to be kept to the use of my son Gregory
+  till he be come to the age of 24 years. And at the years of 24 the said
+  lease and farm of Carberry, I do give and bequeath to my son Gregory, to
+  have the same to him, his executors and assigns. And if it fortune the
+  said Gregory my son to die before, my said brother-in-law and sister
+  being dead, he shall come to the age of 24 years, then I will my said
+  cousin Richard Willyams shall have the farm with the appurtenances to him
+  and to his executors and assigns; and if it happen my said
+  brother-in-law, my sister, my son Gregory, and my said cousin Richard, to
+  die before the accomplishment of this my will touching the said farm,
+  then I will mine executors shall sell the said farm, and the money
+  thereof coming to employ in deeds of charity, to pray for my soul and all
+  Christian souls. Item. I will mine executors shall conduct and hire a
+  priest, being an honest person of continent and good living, to sing for
+  my soul by the space of seven years next after my death, and to give him
+  for the same £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> for his stipend. Item. I give and
+  bequeath towards the making of highways in this realm, where it shall be
+  thought most necessary, £20 to be disposed by the discretion of mine
+  executors. Item. I give and bequeath to every the five orders of Friars
+  within the City of London, to pray for my soul, 20 shillings. Item. I
+  give and bequeath to 60 poor maidens in marriage, £40, that is to say,
+  13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> to every of the said poor maidens, to be given and
+  distributed by the discretion of mine executors. Item. I will that there
+  shall be dealt and given after my decease amongst poor people
+  householders, to pray for my soul, £20, such as by mine executors shall
+  be thought most needful. Item. I give and bequeath to the poor
+  parishioners of the parish where God shall ordain me to have my
+  dwellingplace at the time of my death, £10, to be truly distributed
+  amongst them by the discretion of mine executors. Item. I give and
+  bequeath to my parish church for my tithes forgotten, 20 shillings. Item.
+  To the poor prisoners of Newgate, Ludgate, King's Bench, and Marshalsea,
+  to be equally distributed amongst them, £10. Willing, charging, and
+  desiring mine executors underwritten, that they shall see this my will
+  performed in every point according to my true meaning and intent as they
+  will answer to God, and discharge their consciences. The residue of all
+  my goods, chattels, and debts not bequeathed, my funeral and burial
+  performed, which I will shall be done without any earthly pomp, and my
+  debts paid, I will shall be sold, and the money thereof coming, to be
+  distributed in works of charity and pity, after the good discretion of
+  mine executors undernamed. Whom I make and ordain, Stephen Vaughan, Ralph
+  Sadler, my servants, and John Willyams my brother-in-law. Praying and
+  desiring the same mine executors to be good unto my son Gregory, and to
+  all other my poor friends and kinsfolk and servants aforenamed in this my
+  testament. And of this my present testament and last will I make Roger
+  More mine overseer; unto whom and also to every of the other mine
+  executors I give and bequeath £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> for their pains
+  to be taken in the execution of this my last will and testament, over and
+  above such legacies as herebefore I have bequeathed them in this same
+  testament and will. In witness whereof, to this my present testament and
+  last will I have set to my hand in every leaf contained in this book, the
+  day and year before limited.</p>
+
+  <p>THOMAS CROMWELL.</p>
+
+  <p>Item. I give and bequeath to William Brabazon, my servant, £20
+  8<i>s.</i>, a gun, a doublet, a jacket, and my second gelding.</p>
+
+  <p>It. to John Avery, Yeoman of the Bedchamber with the King's Highness,
+  £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i>, and a doublet of satin.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 368 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page368"></a>[pg 368]</span>
+
+  <p>It. to Thurston, my cook. £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i></p>
+
+  <p>It. to William Body, my servant, £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i></p>
+
+  <p>It. to Peter Mewtas, my servant, £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i></p>
+
+  <p>It. to Ric. Sleysh, my servant, £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i></p>
+
+  <p>It. to George Wilkinson, my servant, £6 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i></p>
+
+  <p>It. to my friend, Thomas Alvard. £10, and my best gelding.</p>
+
+  <p>It. to my friend, Thomas Rush, £10.</p>
+
+  <p>It. to my servant, John Hynde, my horsekeeper, £3 6<i>s.</i>
+  8<i>d.</i></p>
+
+  <p>Item. I will that mine executors shall safely keep the patent of the
+  manor of Romney to the use of my son Gregory, and the money growing
+  thereof, till he shall come to his lawful age, to be yearly received to
+  the use of my said son, and the whole revenue thereof coming to be truly
+  paid unto him at such time as he shall come to the age of 24 years.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 369 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page369"></a>[pg 369]</span>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY</h3>
+
+  <p>I have now to resume the thread of the political history where it was
+  dropped at the sentence of divorce pronounced by Cranmer, and the
+  coronation of the new queen. The effect was about to be ascertained of
+  these bold measures upon Europe; and of what their effect would be, only
+  so much could be foretold with certainty, that the time for trifling was
+  past, and the pope and Francis of France would be compelled to declare
+  their true intentions. If these intentions were honest, the subordination
+  of England to the papacy might be still preserved in a modified form. The
+  papal jurisdiction was at end, but the spiritual supremacy of the Bishop
+  of Rome, with a diminished but considerable revenue attached to it,
+  remained unaffected; and it was for the pope to determine whether, by
+  fulfilling at last his original engagements, he would preserve these
+  remnants of his power and privileges, or boldly take up the gage,
+  excommunicate his disobedient subjects, and attempt by force to bring
+  them back to their allegiance.</p>
+
+  <p>The news of what had been done did not take him wholly by surprise. It
+  was known at Brussels at the end of April that the king had married. The
+  queen regent<a name="NtA_595"></a><a href="#Nt_595"><sup>595</sup></a>
+  spoke of it to the ambassador sternly and significantly, not concealing
+  her expectation of the mortal resentment which would be felt by her
+  brothers;<a name="NtA_596"></a><a href="#Nt_596"><sup>596</sup></a> and
+  the information was forwarded with the least <!-- Page 370 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page370"></a>[pg 370]</span> possible delay to
+  the cardinals of the imperial faction at Rome. The true purposes which
+  underlay the contradiction of Clement's language are undiscoverable.
+  Perhaps in the past winter he had been acting out a deep
+  intrigue&mdash;perhaps he was drifting between rival currents, and
+  yielded in any or all directions as the alternate pressure varied; yet
+  whatever had been the meaning of his language, whether it was a scheme to
+  deceive Henry, or was the expression only of weakness and good-nature
+  desiring to avoid a quarrel to the latest moment, the decisive step which
+  had been taken in the marriage, even though it was nominally undivulged,
+  obliged him to choose his course and openly adhere to it. After the
+  experience of the past, there could be no doubt what that course would
+  be.</p>
+
+  <p>On the 12th of May a citation was issued against the King of England,
+  summoning him to appear by person or proxy at a stated day. It had been
+  understood that no step of such a kind was to be taken before the meeting
+  of the pope and Francis; Bennet, therefore, Henry's faithful secretary,
+  hastily inquired the meaning of this measure. The pope told him that it
+  could not be avoided, and the language which he used revealed to the
+  English agent the inevitable future. The king, he said, had defied the
+  inhibitory brief which had been lately issued, and had incurred
+  excommunication; the imperialists insisted that he should be proceeded
+  against for contempt, and that the excommunication should at once be
+  pronounced. However great might be his own personal reluctance, it was
+  not possible for him to remain passive; and if he declined to resort at
+  once to the more extreme exercise of his power, the hesitation was merely
+  until the emperor was prepared to enforce the censures of the church with
+  the strong hand. It stood not "with his honour to execute such censures,"
+  he said, "and the same not to be regarded."<a name="NtA_597"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_597"><sup>597</sup></a> But there was no wish to spare Henry;
+  and if Francis could be detached from his ally, and if the condition of
+  the rest of Christendom became such as to favour the enterprise, <!--
+  Page 371 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page371"></a>[pg 371]</span>
+  England might evidently look for the worst which the pope, with the
+  Catholic powers, could execute. If the papal court was roused into so
+  menacing a mood by the mere intimation of the secret marriage, it was
+  easy to foresee what would ensue when the news arrived of the proceedings
+  at Dunstable. Bennet entreated that the process should be delayed till
+  the interview; but the pope answered coldly that he had done his best and
+  could do no more; the imperialists were urgent, and he saw no reason to
+  refuse their petition.<a name="NtA_598"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_598"><sup>598</sup></a> This was Clement's usual language, but
+  there was something peculiar in his manner. He had been often violent,
+  but he had never shown resolution, and the English agents were perplexed.
+  The mystery was soon explained. He had secured himself on the side of
+  France; and Francis, who at Calais had told Henry that his negotiations
+  with the see of Rome were solely for the interests of England, that for
+  Henry's sake he was marrying his son into a family beneath him in rank,
+  that Henry's divorce was to form the especial subject of his conference
+  with the pope, had consented to allow these dangerous questions to sink
+  into a secondary place, and had relinquished his intention, if he had
+  ever seriously entertained it, of becoming an active party in the English
+  quarrel.</p>
+
+  <p>The long-talked-of interview was still delayed. First it was to have
+  taken place in the winter, then in the spring; June was the date last
+  fixed for it, and now Bennet had to inform the king that it would not
+  take place before September; and that, from the terms of a communication
+  which had just passed between the parties who were to meet, the subjects
+  discussed at the conference would not be those which he had been led to
+  expect. Francis, in answer to a question from the pope, had specified
+  three things which he proposed particularly to "intreat." The first
+  concerned the defence of Christendom against the Turks, the second
+  concerned the general council, and the third concerned "the extinction of
+  the Lutheran sect."<a name="NtA_599"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_599"><sup>599</sup></a> These were the points which the Most
+  Christian king was anxious to discuss with the pope. For the latter good
+  object especially, "he would devise and treat for the provision of an
+  army." In the King of England's cause, he trusted "some means might be
+  <!-- Page 372 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page372"></a>[pg
+  372]</span> found whereby it might be compounded;"<a
+  name="NtA_600"></a><a href="#Nt_600"><sup>600</sup></a> but if persuasion
+  failed, there was no fear lest he should have recourse to any other
+  method.</p>
+
+  <p>It was this which had given back to the pope his courage. It was this
+  which Bennet had now to report to Henry. The French alliance, it was too
+  likely, would prove a broken reed, and pierce the hand that leant upon
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry knew the danger; but danger was not a very terrible thing either
+  to him or to his people. If he had conquered his own reluctance to risk a
+  schism in the church, he was not likely to yield to the fear of
+  isolation; and if there was something to alarm in the aspect of affairs,
+  there was also much to encourage. His parliament was united and resolute.
+  His queen was pregnant. The Nun of Kent had assigned him but a month to
+  live after his marriage; six months had passed, and he was alive and
+  well; the supernatural powers had not declared against him; and while
+  safe with respect to enmity from above, the earthly powers he could
+  afford to defy. When he finally divorced Queen Catherine, he must have
+  foreseen his present position at least as a possibility, and if not
+  prepared for so swift an apostasy in Francis, and if not yet wholly
+  believing it, we may satisfy ourselves he had never absolutely trusted a
+  prince of metal so questionable.</p>
+
+  <p>The Duke of Norfolk was waiting at the French court, with a
+  magnificent embassy, to represent the English king at the interview. The
+  arrival of the pope had been expected in May. It was now delayed till
+  September; and if Clement came after all, it would be for objects in
+  which England had but small concern. It was better for England that there
+  should be no meeting at all, than a meeting to devise schemes for the
+  massacre of Lutherans. Henry therefore wrote to the Duke, telling him
+  generally what he had heard from Rome; he mentioned the three topics
+  which he understood were to form the matter of discussion; but he
+  skilfully affected to regard them as having originated with the
+  imperialists, and not with the French king. In a long paper of
+  instructions, in which earnestness and irony were strangely blended, he
+  directed the ambassador to treat his good brother as if he were still
+  exclusively devoted to the interests of England; and to urge upon him, on
+  the ground of this fresh delay, that the interview should not take place
+  at all.<a name="NtA_601"></a><a href="#Nt_601"><sup>601</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 373 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page373"></a>[pg 373]</span>
+
+  <p>"Our pleasure is," he wrote, "that ye shall say&mdash;that we be not a
+  little moved in our heart to see our good brother and us, being such
+  princes of Christendom, to be so handled with the pope, so much to our
+  dishonour, and to the pope's and the emperor's advancement; seeming to be
+  at the pope's commandment to come or tarry as he or his cardinals shall
+  appoint; and to depend upon his pleasure when to meet&mdash;that is to
+  say, when he list or never. If our good brother and we were either
+  suitors to make request, the obtaining whereof we did much set by, or had
+  any particular matter of advantage to entreat with him, these proceedings
+  might be the better tolerated; but our good brother having no particular
+  matter of his own, and being ... that [no] more glory nor surety could
+  happen to the emperour than to obtain the effect of the three articles
+  moved by the pope and his cardinals, we think it not convenient to attend
+  the pleasure of the pope, to go or to abyde. We could have been content
+  to have received and taken at the pope's hand, jointly with our good
+  brother, pleasure and friendship in our great cause; [but] on the other
+  part, we cannot esteem the pope's part so high, as to have our good
+  brother an attendant suitor therefore ... desiring him, therefore, in
+  anywise to disappoint for his part the said interview; and if he have
+  already granted thereto&mdash;upon some new good occasion, which he now
+  undoubtedly hath&mdash;to depart from the same.</p>
+
+  <p>"For we, ye may say, having the justness of our cause for us, with
+  such an entire and whole consent of our nobility and commons of our realm
+  and subjects, and being all matters passed, and in such terms as they now
+  be, do not find such lack and want of that the pope might do, with us or
+  against us, as we would for the obtaining thereof be contented to have a
+  French king our so perfect a friend, to be not only a mediator but a
+  suitor therein, and a suitor attendant to have audience upon liking and
+  after the advice of such cardinals as repute it among pastymes to play
+  and dally with kings and princes; whose honour, ye may say, is above all
+  things, and more dear to us in the person of our good brother, than is
+  any piece of our cause at the pope's hands. And therefore, if there be
+  none other thing but our cause, and the other causes whereof we be
+  advertised, our advice, counsel, special desire also and request is,
+  [that our good brother shall] break off the interview, unless the pope
+  will make suit to him; and [unless] our said good brother hath such
+  causes of his own as may particularly tend to his own benefit, honour,
+  and profit&mdash;wherein he shall do great <!-- Page 374 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page374"></a>[pg 374]</span> and singular
+  pleasure unto us; <i>giving to understand to the pope, that me know
+  ourselves and him both, and look to be esteemed accordingly.</i>"</p>
+
+  <p>Should it appear that on receipt of this communication, Francis was
+  still resolved to persevere, and that he had other objects in view to
+  which Henry had not been made privy, the ambassadors were then to remind
+  him of the remaining obligations into which he had entered; and to
+  ascertain to what degree his assistance might be calculated upon, should
+  the pope pronounce Henry deposed, and the emperor attempt to enforce the
+  sentence.</p>
+
+  <p>After forwarding these instructions, the king's next step was to
+  anticipate the pope by an appeal which would neutralise his judgment
+  should he venture upon it; and which offered a fresh opportunity of
+  restoring the peace of Christendom, if there was true anxiety to preserve
+  that peace. The hinge of the great question, in the form which at last it
+  assumed, was the validity or invalidity of the dispensation by which
+  Henry had married his brother's widow. Being a matter which touched the
+  limit of the pope's power, the pope was himself unable to determine it in
+  his own favour; and the only authority by which the law could be ruled,
+  was a general council. In the preceding winter, the pope had volunteered
+  to submit the question to this tribunal; but Henry believing that it was
+  on the point of immediate solution in another way, had then declined, on
+  the ground that it would cause a needless delay. He was already married,
+  and he had hoped that sentence might be given in his favour in time to
+  anticipate the publication of the ceremony. But he was perfectly
+  satisfied that justice was on his side; and was equally confident of
+  obtaining the verdict of Europe, if it could be fairly pronounced. Now,
+  therefore, under the altered circumstances, he accepted the offered
+  alternative. He anticipated with tolerable certainty the effect which
+  would be produced at Rome, when the news should arrive there of the
+  Dunstable divorce; and on the 29th of June, he appealed formally, in the
+  presence of the Archbishop of York, from the pope's impending sentence,
+  to the next general council.<a name="NtA_602"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_602"><sup>602</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 375 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page375"></a>[pg 375]</span>
+
+  <p>Of this curious document the substance was as follows:&mdash;It
+  commenced with a declaration that the king had no intention of acting
+  otherwise than became a good Catholic prince; or of injuring the church
+  or attacking the privileges conceded by God to the Holy See. If his words
+  could be lawfully shown to have such a tendency he would revoke, emend,
+  and correct them in a Catholic spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>The general features of the case were then recapitulated. His marriage
+  with his brother's wife had been pronounced illegal by the principal
+  universities of Europe, by the clergy of the two provinces of the Church
+  of England, by the most learned theologians and canonists, and finally,
+  by the public judgment of the church.<a name="NtA_603"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_603"><sup>603</sup></a> He therefore had felt himself free;
+  and, "by the inspiration of the Host High, had lawfully married another
+  woman." Furthermore, "for the common weal and tranquillity of the realm
+  of England, and for the wholesome rule and government of the same, he had
+  caused to be enacted certain statutes and ordinances, by authority of
+  parliaments lawfully called for that purpose." "Now, however," he
+  continued, "we fearing that his Holyness the Pope ... having in our said
+  cause treated us far otherwise than either respect for our dignity and
+  desert, or the duty of his own office required at his hands, and having
+  done us many injuries which we now of design do suppress, but which
+  hereafter we shall be ready, should circumstances so require, to divulge
+  ... may now proceed to acts of further injustice, and heaping wrong on
+  wrong, may pronounce the censures and other penalties of the spiritual
+  sword against ourselves, our realm, and subjects, seeking thereby to
+  deprive us of the use of the sacraments, and to cut us off, in the sight
+  of the world, from the unity of the church, to the no slight hurt and
+  injury of our realm and subjects:</p>
+
+  <p>"Fearing these things, and desiring to preserve from detriment not
+  only ourselves, our own dignity and estimation, but also our subjects,
+  committed to us by Almighty God; to keep them in the unity of the
+  Christian faith, and in the wonted participation in the sacraments; that,
+  when in truth they be not cut off from the integrity of the church, nor
+  can nor will be so cut off in any manner, they may not appear to be so
+  cut off in the estimation of men; [desiring further] to check and hold
+  back our people <!-- Page 376 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page376"></a>[pg 376]</span> whom God has given to us, lest, in the
+  event of such injury, they refuse utterly to obey any longer the Roman
+  Pontiff, as a hard and cruel pastor: [for these causes] and believing,
+  from reasons probable, conjectures likely, and words used to our injury
+  by his Holiness the Pope, which in divers manners have been brought to
+  our ears, that some weighty act may be committed by him or others to the
+  prejudice of ourselves and of our realm;&mdash;We, therefore, in behalf
+  of all and every of our subjects, and of all persons adhering to us in
+  this our cause, do make our appeal to the next general council, which
+  shall be lawfully held, in place convenient, with the consent of the
+  Christian princes, and of such others as it may concern&mdash;not in
+  contempt of the Holy See, but for defence of the truth of the Gospel, and
+  for the other causes afore rehearsed. And we do trust in God that it
+  shall not be interpreted as a thing ill done on our part, if preferring
+  the salvation of our soul and the relief of our conscience to any mundane
+  respects or favours, we have in this cause regarded more the Divine law
+  than the laws of man, and have thought it rather meet to obey God than to
+  obey man."<a name="NtA_604"></a><a href="#Nt_604"><sup>604</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>By the appeal and the causes which were assigned for it, Henry
+  pre-occupied the ground of the conflict; he entrenched himself in the
+  "debateable land" of legal uncertainty; and until his position had been
+  pronounced untenable by the general voice of Christendom, any sentence
+  which the pope could issue would have but a doubtful validity. It was,
+  perhaps, but a slight advantage; and the niceties of technical fencing
+  might soon resolve themselves into a question of mere strength; yet, in
+  the opening of great conflicts, it is well, even when a resort to force
+  is inevitable, to throw on the opposing party the responsibility of
+  violence; and Henry had been led, either by a refinement of policy, or by
+  the plain straightforwardness of his intentions, into a situation where
+  he could expect without alarm the unrolling of the future.</p>
+
+  <p>The character of that future was likely soon to be decided. The appeal
+  was published on the 29th of June; and as the pope must have heard, by
+  the middle of the month at latest, of the trial and judgment at
+  Dunstable, a few days would bring an account of the manner in which he
+  had received the intelligence. Prior to the arrival of the couriers,
+  Bennet, with the assistance of Cardinal Tournon, had somewhat soothed
+  down his exasperation. Francis, also, having heard that immediate process
+  was threatened, had written earnestly to deprecate such a <!-- Page 377
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page377"></a>[pg 377]</span> measure;<a
+  name="NtA_605"></a><a href="#Nt_605"><sup>605</sup></a> and though he
+  took the interference "very displeasantly,"<a name="NtA_606"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_606"><sup>606</sup></a> the pope could not afford to lose, by
+  premature impatience; the fruit of all his labour and diplomacy, and had
+  yielded so far as to promise that nothing of moment should be done. To
+  this state of mind he had been brought one day in the second week of
+  June. The morning after, Bennet found him "sore altered." The news of "my
+  Lord of Canterbury's proceedings" had arrived the preceding night; and
+  "his Holiness said that [such] doings were too sore for him to stand
+  still at and do nothing."<a name="NtA_607"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_607"><sup>607</sup></a> It was "against his duty towards God
+  and the world to tolerate them." The imperialist cardinals, impatient
+  before, clamoured that the evil had been caused by the dilatory timidity
+  with which the case had been handled from the first.<a
+  name="NtA_608"></a><a href="#Nt_608"><sup>608</sup></a> The consistory
+  sate day after day with closed doors;<a name="NtA_609"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_609"><sup>609</sup></a> and even such members of it as had
+  before inclined to the English side, joined in the common indignation.
+  "Some extreme process" was instantly looked for, and the English agents,
+  in their daily interviews with the pope, were forced to listen to
+  language which it was hard to bear with equanimity. Bennet's well-bred
+  courtesy carried him successfully through the difficulty; his companion
+  Bonner was not so fortunate. Bonner's tongue was insolent, and under bad
+  control. He replied to menace by impertinence; and on one occasion was so
+  exasperating, that Clement threatened to burn him alive, or boil him in a
+  caldron of lead.<a name="NtA_610"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_610"><sup>610</sup></a> When fairly roused, the old man was
+  dangerous; and the future Bishop of London wrote to England in extremity
+  of alarm. His letter has not been found, but the character of it may be
+  perceived from the reassuring reply of the king. The agents, Henry said,
+  were not to allow themselves to be frightened; they were to go on calmly,
+  with their accustomed diligence and dexterity, disputing the ground from
+  point to point, and trust to him. Their cause was good, and, with God's
+  help, he would be able to defend them from the malice of their
+  adversaries.<a name="NtA_611"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_611"><sup>611</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 378 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page378"></a>[pg 378]</span>
+
+  <p>Fortunately for Bonner, the pope's passion was of brief duration, and
+  the experiment whether Henry's arm could reach to the dungeons of the
+  Vatican remained untried. The more moderate of the cardinals, also,
+  something assuaged the storm; and angry as they all were, the majority
+  still saw the necessity of prudence. In the heat of the irritation, final
+  sentence was to have been pronounced upon the entire cause, backed by
+  interdict, excommunication, and the full volume of the papal thunders. At
+  the close of a month's deliberation they resolved to reserve judgement on
+  the original question, and to confine themselves for the present to
+  revenging the insult to the pope by "my Lord of Canterbury." Both the
+  king and the archbishop had disobeyed a formal inhibition. On the 12th of
+  July, the pope issued a brief, declaring Cranmer's judgment to have been
+  illegal, the English process to have been null and void, and the king, by
+  his disobedience, to have incurred, <i>ipso facto</i>, the threatened
+  penalties of excommunication. Of his clemency he suspended these censures
+  till the close of the following September, in order that time might be
+  allowed to restore the respective parties to their old positions: if
+  within that period the parties were not so restored, the censures would
+  fall.<a name="NtA_612"></a><a href="#Nt_612"><sup>612</sup></a> This
+  brief was sent into Flanders, and fixed in the usual place against the
+  door of a church in Dunkirk.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry was prepared for a measure which was no more than natural. He
+  had been prepared for it as a possibility when he married. Both he and
+  Francis must have been prepared for it on their meeting at Calais, when
+  the French king advised him to marry, and promised to support him through
+  the consequences. His own measures had been arranged beforehand, and he
+  had secured himself in technical entrenchments by his appeal. After the
+  issue of the brief, however, he could allow no English embassy to
+  compliment Clement by its presence on his visit to France. He "knew the
+  pope," as he said. Long experience had shown him that nothing was to be
+  gained by yielding in minor points; and the only chance which now
+  remained of <!-- Page 379 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page379"></a>[pg 379]</span> preserving the established order of
+  Christendom, was to terrify the Vatican court into submission by the
+  firmness of his attitude. For the present complications, the court of
+  Rome, not he, was responsible. The pope, with a culpable complacency for
+  the emperor, had shrunk from discharging a duty which his office imposed
+  upon him; and the result had been, that the duty was discharged by
+  another. Henry could not blame himself for the consequences of Clement's
+  delinquency. He rather felt himself wronged in having been driven to so
+  extreme a measure against his will. He resolved, therefore, to recall the
+  embassy, and once more, though with no great hope that he would be
+  successful, to invite Francis to fulfil his promise, and to unite with
+  himself in expressing his resentment at the pope's conduct.</p>
+
+  <p>His despatch to the Duke of Norfolk on this occasion was the natural
+  sequel of what he had written a few weeks previously. That letter had
+  failed wholly of its effect. The interview was resolved upon for quite
+  other reasons than those which were acknowledged, and therefore was not
+  to be given up. A promise, however, had been extracted, that it should be
+  given up, if in the course of the summer the pope "innovated anything"
+  against the King of England; and Henry now required, formally, that this
+  engagement should be observed. "A notorious and notable innovation" had
+  been made, and Francis must either deny his words, or adhere to them. It
+  would be evident to all the world, if the interview took place under the
+  present circumstances, that the alliance with England was no longer of
+  the importance with him which it had been; that his place in the
+  struggle, when the struggle came, would be found on the papal side.</p>
+
+  <p>The language of Henry throughout this paper was very fine and noble.
+  He reminded Francis that substantially the cause at issue was the cause
+  of all princes; the pope claiming a right to summon them to plead in the
+  courts of Rome, and refusing to admit their exemption as sovereign
+  rulers. He had been required not only to undo his marriage, and cancel
+  the sentence of divorce, but, as a condition of reconciliation with the
+  Holy See, to undo also, the Act of Appeals, and to restore the papal
+  jurisdiction. He desired it to be understood, with emphasis, that these
+  points were all equally sacred, and the repeal of the act was as little
+  to be thought of as the annulling the marriage. "The pope," he said, "did
+  inforce us to excogitate some new thing, whereby we might be healed and
+  relieved of that continual disease, to care for our cause at Rome, where
+  such defence <!-- Page 380 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page380"></a>[pg 380]</span> was taken from us, as by the laws of
+  God, nature, and man, is due unto us. Hereupon depended the wealth of our
+  realm; hereupon consisted the surety of our succession, which by no other
+  means could be well assured." "And therefore," he went on, "you [the
+  Duke] shall say to our good brother, that the pope persisting in the ways
+  he hath entered, ye must needs despair in any meeting between the French
+  king and the pope, to produce any such effect as to cause us to meet in
+  concord with the pope; but we shall be even as far asunder as is between
+  yea and nay. For to the pope's enterprise to revoke or put back anything
+  that is done here, either in marriage, statute, sentence, or
+  proclamation<a name="NtA_613"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_613"><sup>613</sup></a>&mdash;of which four members is knit and
+  conjoined the surety of our matter, nor any can be removed from the
+  other, lest thereby the whole edifice should be destroyed&mdash;we will
+  and shall, by all ways and means say nay, and declare our nay in such
+  sort as the world shall hear, and the pope feel it. Wherein ye may say
+  our firm trust, perfect hope, and assured confidence is, that our good
+  brother will agree with us; as well for that it should be partly
+  dishonourable for him to see decay the thing that was of his own
+  foundation and planting: as also that it should be too much dishonourable
+  for us&mdash;having travelled so far in this matter, and brought it to
+  this point, that all the storms of the year passed, it is now come to
+  harvest, trusting to see shortly the fruit of our marriage, to the
+  wealth, joy, and comfort of all our realm, and our own singular
+  consolation&mdash;that anything should now be done by us to impair the
+  same, and to put our issue either in peril of bastardy, or otherwise
+  disturb that [which] is by the whole agreement of our realm established
+  for their and our commodity, wealth, and benefit. And in this
+  determination ye know us to be so fixed, and the contrary hereof to be so
+  infeasible, either at our hands, or by the consent of the realm, that ye
+  must needs despair of any order to be taken by the French king with the
+  pope. For if any were by him taken wherein any of these four pieces
+  should be touched&mdash;that is to say, the marriage of the queen our
+  wife, the revocation of the Bishop of Canterbury's sentence, the statute
+  of our realm, or our late proclamation, which be as it were one&mdash;and
+  as walls, covering, the foundation make a house, so they knit together,
+  establish, and make one matter&mdash;ye be well assured, and be so
+  ascertained from us, that in no wise we will relent, but will, as we have
+  before written, withstand the same. Whereof ye may say that <!-- Page 381
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page381"></a>[pg 381]</span> ye have
+  thought good to advertise him, to the intent he make no farther promise
+  to the pope therein than may be performed."</p>
+
+  <p>The ambassadors were the more emphatically to insist on the king's
+  resolution, lest Francis, in his desire for conciliation, might hold out
+  hopes to the pope which could not be realised. They were to say, however,
+  that the King of England still trusted that the interview would not take
+  place. The see of Rome was asserting a jurisdiction which, if conceded,
+  would encourage an unlimited usurpation. If princes might be cited to the
+  papal courts in a cause of matrimony, they might be cited equally in
+  other causes at the pope's pleasure; and the free kingdoms of Europe
+  would be converted into dependent provinces of the see of Rome. It
+  concerned alike the interest and the honour of all sovereigns to resist
+  encroachments which pointed to such an issue; and, therefore, Henry said
+  he hoped that his good brother would use the pope as he had deserved,
+  "doing him to understand his folly, and [that] unless he had first made
+  amends, he could not find in his heart to have further amity with
+  him."</p>
+
+  <p>If notwithstanding, the instructions concluded, "all these persuasions
+  cannot have place to let the said meeting, and the French king shall say
+  it is expedient for him to have in his hands the duchess,<a
+  name="NtA_614"></a><a href="#Nt_614"><sup>614</sup></a> under pretence of
+  marriage for his son, which he cannot obtain but by this means, ye shall
+  say that ye remember ye heard him say once he would never conclude that
+  marriage but to do us good, which is now infaisible; and now in the voice
+  of the world shall do us both more hurt in the diminution of the
+  reputation of our amity than it should do otherwise profit. Nevertheless,
+  [if] ye cannot let his precise determination, [ye] can but lament and
+  bewail your own chance to depart home in this sort; and that yet of the
+  two inconvenients, it is to you more tolerable to return to us nothing
+  done, than to be present at the interview and to be compelled to look
+  patiently upon your master's enemy."</p>
+
+  <p>After having entered thus their protest against the French king's
+  conduct, the embassy was to return to England, leaving a parting
+  intimation of the single condition under which Henry would consent to
+  treat. If the pope would declare that "the matrimony with the Lady
+  Catherine was and is nought, he should do somewhat not to be refused;"
+  except with this preliminary, no offer whatever could be entertained.<a
+  name="NtA_615"></a><a href="#Nt_615"><sup>615</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This communication, as Henry anticipated, was not more <!-- Page 382
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page382"></a>[pg 382]</span> effectual
+  than the former in respect of its immediate object. At the meeting of
+  Calais the interests of Francis had united him with England, and in
+  pursuing the objects of Henry he was then pursuing his own. The pope and
+  the emperor had dissolved the coalition by concessions on the least
+  dangerous side. The interests of Francis lay now in the other direction,
+  and there are few instances in history in which governments have adhered
+  to obligations against their advantage from a spirit of honour, when the
+  purposes with which they contracted those obligations have been otherwise
+  obtained. The English embassy returned as they were ordered; the French
+  court pursued their way to Marseilles; not quarrelling with England;
+  intending to abide by the alliance, and to give all proofs of amity which
+  did not involve inconvenient sacrifices; but producing on the world at
+  large by their conduct the precise effect which Henry had foretold. The
+  world at large, looking to acts rather than to words, regarded the
+  interview as a contrivance to reconcile Francis and the emperor through
+  the intervention of the pope, as a preliminary for a packed council, and
+  for a holy war against the Lutherans<a name="NtA_616"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_616"><sup>616</sup></a>&mdash;a combination of ominous augury
+  to Christendom, from the consequences of which, if Germany was to be the
+  first sufferer, England would be inevitably the second.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, as the French alliance threatened to fail, the English
+  government found themselves driven at last to look for a connection among
+  those powers from whom they had hitherto most anxiously disconnected
+  themselves. At such a time. Protestant Germany, not Catholic France, was
+  England's natural friend. The Reformation was essentially a Teutonic
+  movement; the Germans, the English, the Scotch, the Swedes, the
+  Hollanders, all were struggling on their various roads towards an end
+  essentially the same. The same dangers threatened them, the same
+  inspiration moved them; and in the eyes of the orthodox Catholics they
+  were united in a black communion of heresy. Unhappily, though this
+  identity was obvious to their enemies, it was far from obvious to
+  themselves. <!-- Page 383 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page383"></a>[pg 383]</span> The odium theologicum is ever hotter
+  between sections of the same party which are divided by trifling
+  differences, than between the open representatives of antagonist
+  principles; and Anglicans and Lutherans, instead of joining hands across
+  the Channel, endeavoured only to secure each a recognition of themselves
+  at the expense of the other. The English plumed themselves on their
+  orthodoxy. They were "not as those publicans," heretics, despisers of the
+  keys, disobedient to authority; they desired only the independence of
+  their national church, and they proved their zeal for the established
+  faith with all the warmth of persecution. To the Germans national freedom
+  was of wholly minor moment, in comparison with the freedom of the soul;
+  the orthodoxy of England was as distasteful to the disciples of Luther as
+  the orthodoxy of Rome&mdash;and the interests of Europe were sacrificed
+  on both sides to this foolish and fatal disunion. Circumstances indeed
+  would not permit the division to remain in its first intensity, and their
+  common danger compelled the two nations into a partial understanding. Yet
+  the reconciliation, imperfect to the last, was at the outset all but
+  impossible. Their relations were already embittered by many reciprocal
+  acts of hostility. Henry VIII. had won his spurs as a theologian by an
+  attack on Luther. Luther had replied by a hailstorm of invectives. The
+  Lutheran books had been proscribed, the Lutherans themselves had' been
+  burnt by Henry's bishops. The Protestant divines in Germany had attempted
+  to conciliate the emperor by supporting the cause of Catherine; and
+  Luther himself had spoken loudly in condemnation of the king. The
+  elements of disunion were so many and so powerful, that there was little
+  hope of contending against them successfully. Nevertheless, as Henry saw,
+  the coalition of Francis and the emperor, if the pope succeeded in
+  cementing it, was a most serious danger, to which an opposite alliance
+  would alone be an adequate counterpoise; and the experiment might at
+  least be tried whether such an alliance was possible. At the beginning of
+  August, therefore, Stephen Vaughan was sent on a tentative mission to the
+  Elector of Saxe, John Frederick, at Weimar.<a name="NtA_617"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_617"><sup>617</sup></a> He was the bearer of letters containing
+  a proposal for a resident English ambassador; and if the elector gave his
+  consent, he was to proceed with similar offers to the courts of the
+  Landgrave of Hesse and the Duke of Lunenberg.<a name="NtA_618"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_618"><sup>618</sup></a> Vaughan <!-- Page 384 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page384"></a>[pg 384]</span> arrived in due time
+  at the elector's court, was admitted to audience and delivered his
+  letters. The prince read them, and in the evening of the same day
+  returned for answer a polite but wholly absolute refusal. Being but a
+  prince elector, he said, he might not aspire to so high an honour as to
+  be favoured with the presence of an English ambassador. It was not the
+  custom in Germany, and he feared that if he consented he should displease
+  the emperor.<a name="NtA_619"></a><a href="#Nt_619"><sup>619</sup></a>
+  The meaning of such a reply delivered in a few hours was not to be
+  mistaken, however disguised in courteous language. The English emissary
+  saw that he was an unwelcome visitor, and that he must depart with the
+  utmost celerity. "The elector," he wrote,<a name="NtA_620"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_620"><sup>620</sup></a> "thirsted to have me gone from him,
+  which I right well perceived by evident tokens which declared unto me the
+  same." He had no anxiety to expose to hazard the toleration which the
+  Protestant dukedoms as yet enjoyed from the emperor, by committing
+  himself to a connection with a prince with whose present policy he had no
+  sympathy, and whose conversion to the cause of the Reformation he had as
+  yet no reason to believe sincere.<a name="NtA_621"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_621"><sup>621</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The reception which Vaughan met with at Weimar satisfied him that he
+  need go no further; neither the Landgrave nor the Duke of Lunenberg would
+  be likely to venture on a course which the elector so obviously feared.
+  He, therefore, gave up his mission, and returned to England.</p>
+
+  <p>The first overtures in this direction issued in complete failure, nor
+  was the result wholly to be regretted. It taught Henry (or it was a first
+  commencement of the lesson) that so long as he pursued a merely English
+  policy he might not expect that other nations would embroil themselves in
+  his defence. He must <!-- Page 385 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page385"></a>[pg 385]</span> allow the Reformation a wider scope,
+  he must permit it to comprehend within its possible consequences the
+  breaking of the chains by which his subjects' minds were bound&mdash;not
+  merely a change of jailors. Then perhaps the German princes might return
+  some other answer.</p>
+
+  <p>The disappointment, however, fell lightly; for before the account of
+  the failure had reached England, an event had happened, which, poor as
+  the king might be in foreign alliances, had added most material strength
+  to his position in England. The full moment of that event he had no means
+  of knowing. In its immediate bearing it was matter for most abundant
+  satisfaction. On the seventh of September, between three and four in the
+  afternoon, at the palace of Greenwich, was born a princess, named three
+  days later in her baptism, after the king's mother, Elizabeth.<a
+  name="NtA_622"></a><a href="#Nt_622"><sup>622</sup></a> A son had been
+  hoped for. The child was a daughter only; yet at least Providence had not
+  pronounced against the marriage by a sentence of barrenness; at least
+  there was now an heir whose legitimacy the nation had agreed to accept.
+  Te Deums were sung in all the churches; again the river decked itself in
+  splendour; again all London steeples were musical with bells. A font of
+  gold was presented for the christening. Francis, in compensation for his
+  backslidings, had consented to be godfather; and the infant, who was soon
+  to find her country so rude a stepmother, was received with all the
+  outward signs of exulting welcome. To Catherine's friends the offspring
+  of the rival marriage was not welcome, but was an object rather of bitter
+  hatred; and the black cloud of a sister's jealousy gathered over the
+  cradle whose innocent occupant had robbed her of her title and her
+  expectations. To the king, to the parliament, to the healthy heart of
+  England, she was an object of eager hope and an occasion for thankful
+  gratitude; but the seeds were sown with her birth of those misfortunes
+  which were soon to overshadow her, and to form the school of the great
+  nature which in its maturity would re-mould the world.</p>
+
+  <p>Leaving Elizabeth for the present, we return to the continent, and to
+  the long-promised interview, which was now at last approaching. Henry
+  made no further attempt to remonstrate with Francis; and Francis assured
+  him, and with all sincerity, that he would use his best efforts to move
+  the pope to make the necessary concessions. The English embassy meanwhile
+  was withdrawn. The excommunication had been received as an act <!-- Page
+  386 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page386"></a>[pg 386]</span> of
+  hostility, of which Henry would not even condescend to complain; and it
+  was to be understood distinctly that in any exertions which might be made
+  by the French king, the latter was acting without commission on his own
+  responsibility. The intercession was to be the spontaneous act of a
+  mutual friend, who, for the interests of Christendom, desired to heal a
+  dangerous wound; but neither directly nor indirectly was it to be
+  interpreted as an expression of a desire for a reconciliation on the
+  English side.</p>
+
+  <p>It was determined further, on the recal of the Duke of Norfolk, that
+  the opportunity of the meeting should be taken to give a notice to the
+  pope of the king's appeal to the council; and for this purpose, Bennet
+  and Bonner were directed to follow the papal court from Rome. Bennet
+  never accomplished this journey, dying on the route, worn out with much
+  service.<a name="NtA_623"></a><a href="#Nt_623"><sup>623</sup></a> His
+  death delayed Bonner, and the conferences had opened for many days before
+  his arrival. Clement had reached Marseilles by ship from Genoa, about the
+  20th of October. As if pointedly to irritate Henry, he had placed himself
+  under the conduct of the Duke of Albany.<a name="NtA_624"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_624"><sup>624</sup></a> He was followed two days later by his
+  fair niece, Catherine de Medici; and the preparations for the marriage
+  were commenced with the utmost swiftness and secrecy. The conditions of
+  the contract were not allowed to transpire, but they were concluded in
+  three days; and on this 25th of October the pope bestowed his precious
+  present on the Duke of Orleans, he himself performing the nuptial
+  ceremony, and accompanying it with his paternal benediction on the young
+  pair, and on the happy country which was to possess them for its king and
+  queen. France being thus securely riveted to Rome, other matters could be
+  talked of more easily. Francis made all decent overtures to the pope in
+  behalf of Henry; if the pope was to be believed indeed, he was vehemently
+  urgent.<a name="NtA_625"></a><a href="#Nt_625"><sup>625</sup></a> Clement
+  in turn made suggestions for terms of alliance between Francis and
+  Charles, "to the advantage of the Most Christian <!-- Page 387 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page387"></a>[pg 387]</span> king;"<a
+  name="NtA_626"></a><a href="#Nt_626"><sup>626</sup></a> and thus parried
+  the remonstrances. The only point positively clear to the observers, was
+  the perfect understanding which existed between the King of France and
+  his spiritual father.<a name="NtA_627"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_627"><sup>627</sup></a> Unusual activity was remarked in the
+  dockyards; Italian soldiers of fortune were about the court in unusual
+  numbers, and apparently in favour.<a name="NtA_628"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_628"><sup>628</sup></a> An invasion of Lombardy was talked of
+  among the palace retinue; and the emperor was said to distrust the
+  intentions of the conference. Possibly experience had taught all parties
+  to doubt each other's faith. Possibly they were all in some degree
+  waiting upon events; and had not yet resolved upon their conduct.</p>
+
+  <p>In the midst of this scene arrived Doctor Bonner, in the beginning of
+  November, with Henry's appeal. He was a strange figure to appear in such
+  a society. There was little probity, perhaps, either in the court of
+  France, or in their Italian visitors: but of refinement, of culture, of
+  those graces which enable men to dispense with the more austere
+  excellences of character&mdash;which transform licentiousness into
+  elegant frailty, and treachery and falsehood into pardonable
+  finesse&mdash;of these there was very much: and when a rough, coarse,
+  vulgar Englishman was plunged among these delicate ladies and gentlemen,
+  he formed an element which contrasted strongly with the general
+  environment. Yet Banner, perhaps, was not without qualifications which
+  fitted him for his mission. He was not, indeed, virtuous; but he had a
+  certain downright honesty about him, joined with an entire insensibility
+  to those finer perceptions which would have interfered with plain
+  speaking, where plain speaking was desirable; he had a broad, not
+  ungenial humour, which showed him things and persons in their genuine
+  light, and enabled him to picture them for us with a distinctness for
+  which we owe him lasting thanks.</p>
+
+  <p>He appeared at Marseilles on the 7th of November, and had much
+  difficulty in procuring an interview. At length, weary of waiting, and
+  regardless of the hot lead with which he had been lately threatened, he
+  forced his way into the room where "the pope was standing, with the
+  Cardinals De Lorraine and Medici, ready apparelled with his stole to go
+  to the consistory."</p>
+
+  <p>"Incontinently upon my coming thither," he wrote to Henry,<a
+  name="NtA_629"></a><a href="#Nt_629"><sup>629</sup></a> "the pope, whose
+  sight is incredulous quick, eyed me, and that <!-- Page 388 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page388"></a>[pg 388]</span> divers times;
+  making a good pause in one place; at which time I desired the datary to
+  advertise his Holiness that I would speak with him; and albeit the datary
+  made no little difficulty therein, yet perceiving that upon refusal I
+  would have gone forthwith to the pope, he advertised the pope of my said
+  desire. His Holiness dismissing as then the said cardinals, and letting
+  his vesture fall, went to a window in the said chamber, calling me unto
+  him. At which time I showed unto his Holiness how that your Highness had
+  given me express and strait commandment to intimate unto him how that
+  your Grace had solemnly provoked and appealed unto the general council;
+  submitting yourself to the tuition and defence thereof; which provocation
+  and appeal I had under authentic writings then with me, to show for that
+  purpose. And herewithal I drew out the said writing, showing his said
+  Holiness that I brought the same in proof of the premises, and that his
+  Holiness might see and perceive all the same. The pope having this for a
+  breakfast, only pulled down his head to his shoulders, after the Italian
+  fashion, and said that because he was as then fully ready to go into the
+  consistory, he would not tarry to hear or see the said writings, but
+  willed me to come at afternoon."</p>
+
+  <p>The afternoon came, and Bonner returned, and was admitted. There was
+  some conversation upon indifferent matters; the pope making good-natured
+  inquiries about Bennet, and speaking warmly and kindly of him.</p>
+
+  <p>"Presently," Bonner continues, "falling out of that, he said that he
+  marvelled your Highness would use his Holiness after such sort as it
+  appears ye did. I said that your Highness no less did marvel that his
+  Holiness having found so much benevolence and kindness at your hands in
+  all times past, would for acquittal show such unkindness as of late he
+  did. And here we entered in communication upon two points: one was that
+  his Holiness, having committed in times past, and in most ample form, the
+  cause into the realm, promising not to revoke the said commission, and
+  over that, to confirm the process and sentence of the commissaries,
+  should not at the point of sentence have advoked the cause, retaining it
+  at Rome&mdash;forasmuch as Rome was a place whither your Highness could
+  not, ne yet ought, personally to come unto, and also was not bound to
+  send thither your proctor. The second point was, that your Highness's
+  cause being, in the opinion of the best learned men in Christendom,
+  approved good and just, and so [in] many ways known <!-- Page 389
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page389"></a>[pg 389]</span> unto his
+  Holiness, the same should not so long have retained it in his hands
+  without judgment.</p>
+
+  <p>"His Holiness answering the same, as touching the first point, said
+  that if the queen (meaning the late wife of Prince Arthur, calling her
+  always in his conversation the queen) had not given an oath refusing the
+  judges as suspect, he would not have advoked the matter at all, but been
+  content that it should have been determined and ended in your realm. But
+  seeing she gave that oath, appealing also to his court, he might and
+  ought to hear her, his promise made to your Highness, which was
+  qualified, notwithstanding. As touching the second point, his Holiness
+  said that your Highness only was the default thereof, because ye would
+  not send a proxy to the cause. These matters, however, he said, had been
+  many times fully talked upon at Rome; and therefore [he] willed me to
+  omit further communication thereupon, and to proceed to the doing of such
+  things that I was specially sent for.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whereupon making protestation of your Highness's mind and intent
+  towards the see apostolic&mdash;not intending anything to do in contempt
+  of the same&mdash;I exhibited unto his Holiness the commission which your
+  Highness had sent unto me; and his Holiness delivering it to the datary,
+  commanded him to read it; and hearing in the same the words (referring to
+  the injuries which he had done to your Highness), he began to look up
+  after a new sort, and said, 'O questo et multo vero! (this is much
+  true!)' meaning that it was not true indeed. And verily, sure not only in
+  this, but also in many parts of the said commission, he showed himself
+  grievously offended; insomuch that, when those words, 'To the next
+  general council which shall be lawfully held in place convenient,' were
+  read, he fell in a marvellous great choler and rage, not only declaring
+  the same by his gesture and manner, but also by words: speaking with
+  great vehemence, and saying, 'Why did not the king, when I wrote to my
+  nuncio this year past, to speak unto him for this general council, give
+  no answer unto my said nuncio, but referred him for answer to the French
+  king? at what time he might perceive by my doing, that I was very well
+  disposed, and much spake for it.' 'The thing so standing, now to speak of
+  a general council! Oh, good Lord! but well! his commission and all his
+  other writings cannot be but welcome unto me;' which words methought he
+  spake willing to hide his choler, and make me believe that he was nothing
+  angry with their doings, when in vary deed I perceived, by many
+  arguments, that it was otherwise. And one among <!-- Page 390 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page390"></a>[pg 390]</span> others was taken
+  here for infallible with them that knoweth the pope's conditions, that he
+  was continually folding up and unwinding of his handkerchief, which he
+  never doth but when he is tickled to the very heart with great
+  choler."</p>
+
+  <p>At length the appeal was read through; and at the close of it Francis
+  entered, and talked to the pope for some time, but in so low a voice that
+  Bonner could not hear what was passing. When he had gone, his Holiness
+  said that he would deliberate upon the appeal with the consistory, and
+  after hearing their judgments would return his answer.</p>
+
+  <p>Three days passed, and then the English agent was informed that he
+  might again present himself. The pope had recovered his calmness. When he
+  had time to collect himself, Clement could speak well and with dignity;
+  and if we could forget that his conduct was substantially unjust, and
+  that in his conscience he knew it to be unjust, he would almost persuade
+  us to believe him honest. "He said," wrote Bonner, "that his mind towards
+  your Highness always had been to minister justice, and to do pleasure to
+  you; albeit it hath not been so taken: and he never unjustly grieved your
+  Grace that he knoweth, nor intendeth hereafter to do. As concerning the
+  appeal, he said that, forasmuch as there was a constitution of Pope Pius,
+  his predecessor, that did condemn and reprove all such appeals, he did
+  therefore reject your Grace's appeal as frivolous, forbidden, and
+  unlawful." As touching the council, he said generally, that he would do
+  his best that it should meet; but it was to be understood that the
+  calling a general council belonged to him, and not to the King of
+  England.</p>
+
+  <p>The audience ended, and Bonner left the pope convinced that he
+  intended, on his return to Rome, to execute the censures and continue the
+  process without delay. That the sentence which he would pronounce would
+  be against the king appeared equally certain.</p>
+
+  <p>It appeared certain, yet after all no certain conclusion is possible.
+  Francis I., though not choosing to quarrel with the see of Rome to do a
+  pleasure to Henry, was anxious to please his ally to the extent of his
+  convenience; at any rate, he would not have gratuitously deceived him;
+  and still less would he have been party to an act of deliberate
+  treachery. When Bonner was gone he had a last interview with the pope, in
+  which he urged upon him the necessity of complying with Henry's demands;
+  and the pope on this occasion said that he was satisfied that the King of
+  England was right; that his cause was <!-- Page 391 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page391"></a>[pg 391]</span> good; and that he
+  had only to acknowledge the papal jurisdiction by some formal act, to
+  find sentence immediately pronounced in his favour. Except for his
+  precipitation, and his refusal to depute a proxy to plead for him, his
+  wishes would have been complied with long before. In the existing posture
+  of affairs, and after the measures which had been passed in England with
+  respect to the see of Rome, he himself, the pope said, could not make
+  advances without some kind of submission; but a single act of
+  acknowledgment was all which he required.<a name="NtA_630"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_630"><sup>630</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Extraordinary as it must seem, the pope certainly bound himself by
+  this engagement: and who can tell with what intention? To believe him
+  sincere and to believe him false seems equally impossible. If he was
+  persuaded that Henry's cause <i>was</i> good, why did he in the following
+  year pronounce finally for Catherine? why had he imperilled so needlessly
+  the interests of the papacy in England? why had his conduct from the
+  beginning pointed steadily to the conclusion at which he at last arrived?
+  and why throughout Europe were the ultramontane party, to a man, on
+  Catherine's side? On the other hand, what object at such a time can be
+  conceived for falsehood? Can we suppose that he designed to dupe Henry
+  into submission by a promise which he had predetermined to break? It is
+  hard to suppose even Clement capable of so elaborate an act of perfidy;
+  and it is, perhaps, idle to waste conjectures on the motives of a weak,
+  much-agitated man. He was, probably, but giving a fresh example of his
+  disposition to say at each moment whatever would be most agreeable to his
+  hearers. This was his unhappy habit, by which he earned for himself a
+  character for dishonesty, I labour to think, but half deserved.</p>
+
+  <p>If, however, Clement meant to deceive, he succeeded, undoubtedly, in
+  deceiving the French king. Francis, in communicating to Henry the
+  language which the pope had used, entreated him to reconsider his
+  resolution. The objection to pleading at Rome might be overcome; for the
+  pope would meet him in a middle course. Judges could be appointed, who
+  should sit at Cambray, and pass a sentence in condemnation of the
+  original marriage; with a definite promise that their sentence should not
+  again be called in question. To this arrangement there could be no
+  reasonable objection; and Francis implored that a proposal so liberal
+  should not be rejected. Sufficient danger already threatened Christendom,
+  from heretics <!-- Page 392 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page392"></a>[pg 392]</span> within and from the Turks without; and
+  although the English parliament were agreed to maintain the second
+  marriage, it was unwise to provoke the displeasure of foreign princes. To
+  allow time for the preliminary arrangements, the execution of the
+  censures had been further postponed; and if Henry would make up the
+  quarrel, the French monarch was commissioned to offer a league, offensive
+  and defensive, between England, France, and the Papacy. He himself only
+  desired to be faithful to his engagements to his good brother; and as a
+  proof of his good faith, he said that he had been offered the Duchy of
+  Milan, if he would look on while the emperor and the pope attacked
+  England.<a name="NtA_631"></a><a href="#Nt_631"><sup>631</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This language bears all the character of sincerity; and when we
+  remember that it followed immediately upon a close and intimate
+  communication of three weeks with Clement, it is not easy to believe that
+  he could have mistaken the extent of the pope's promises. We may suppose
+  Clement for the moment to have been honest, or wavering between honesty
+  and falsehood; we may suppose further that Francis trusted him because it
+  was undesirable to be suspicious, in the belief that he was discharging
+  the duty of a friend to Henry, and of a friend to the church, in offering
+  to mediate upon these terms.</p>
+
+  <p>But Henry was far advanced beyond the point at which fair words could
+  move him. He had trusted many times, and had been many times deceived. It
+  was not easy to entangle him again. It mattered little whether Clement
+  was weak or false; the result was the same&mdash;he could not be trusted.
+  To an open English understanding there was something monstrous in the
+  position of a person professing to be a judge, who admitted that a cause
+  which lay before him was so clear that he could bind himself to a
+  sentence upon it, and could yet refuse to pronounce that sentence, except
+  upon conditions. It was scarcely for the interests of justice to leave
+  the distribution of it in hands so questionable.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 393 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page393"></a>[pg 393]</span>
+
+  <p>Instead, therefore, of coming forward, as Francis hoped, instead of
+  consenting to entangle himself again in the meshes of diplomatic
+  intrigue, the king returned a peremptory refusal.</p>
+
+  <p>The Duke of Norfolk, and such of the council as dreaded the completion
+  of the schism, assured d'Inteville, the French ambassador, that for
+  themselves they considered Francis was doing the best for England which
+  could be done, and that they deprecated violent measures as much as
+  possible; but in all this party there was a secret leaning to Queen
+  Catherine, a dislike of Queen Anne and the whole Boleyn race, and a
+  private hope and belief that the pope would after all be firm. Their
+  tongues were therefore tied. They durst not speak except alone in
+  whispers to each other; and the French ambassador, who did dare, only
+  drew from Henry a more determined expression of his resolution.</p>
+
+  <p>As to his measures in England, the king said, the pope had begun the
+  quarrel by issuing censures and by refusing to admit his reasons for
+  declining to plead at Rome. He was required to send a proctor, and was
+  told that the cause should be decided in favour of whichever party was so
+  represented there. For the sake of all other princes as well as himself,
+  he would send no proctor, nor would he seem to acquiesce in the pretences
+  of the papal see. The King of France told him that the pope admitted the
+  justice of his cause. Let the pope do justice, then. The laws passed in
+  parliament were for the benefit of the commonwealth, and he would never
+  revoke them. He demanded no reparation, and could make no reparation. He
+  asked only for his right, and if he could not obtain it, he had God and
+  truth on his side, and that was enough. In vain d'Inteville answered
+  feebly, that his master had done all that was in his power; the king
+  replied that the French council wished to entangle him with the pope; but
+  for his own part he would never more acknowledge the pope in his
+  pretended capacity. He might be bishop of Rome, or pope also, if he
+  preferred the name; but the see of Rome should have no more jurisdiction
+  in England, and he thought he would be none the worse Christian on that
+  account, but rather the better. Jesus Christ he would acknowledge, and
+  him only, as the true Lord of Christian men, and Christ's word only
+  should be preached in England. The Spaniards might invade him as they
+  threatened. He did not fear them. They might come, but they might not
+  find it so easy to return.<a name="NtA_632"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_632"><sup>632</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 394 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page394"></a>[pg 394]</span>
+
+  <p>The King had taken his position and was prepared for the consequences.
+  He had foreseen for more than a year the possibility of an attempted
+  invasion; and since his marriage, he had been aware that the chances of
+  success in the adventure had been discussed on the Continent by the papal
+  and imperial party. The pope had spoken of his censures being enforced,
+  and Francis had revealed to Henry the nature of the dangerous overtures
+  which had been made to himself. The Lutheran princes had hurriedly
+  declined to connect themselves in any kind of alliance with England; and
+  on the 25th of September, Stephen Vaughan had reported that troops were
+  being raised in Germany, which rumour destined for Catherine's service.<a
+  name="NtA_633"></a><a href="#Nt_633"><sup>633</sup></a> Ireland, too, as
+  we shall hear in the next chapter, was on the verge of an insurrection,
+  which had been fomented by papal agents.</p>
+
+  <p>Nevertheless, there was no real danger from an invasion, unless it was
+  accompanied with an insurrection at home, or with a simultaneous attack
+  from Scotland; and while of the first there appeared upon the surface no
+  probability, with Scotland a truce for a year had been concluded on the
+  1st of October.<a name="NtA_634"></a><a href="#Nt_634"><sup>634</sup></a>
+  The king, therefore, had felt himself reasonably secure. Parliament had
+  seemed unanimous; the clergy were submissive; the nation acquiescent or
+  openly approving;<a name="NtA_635"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_635"><sup>635</sup></a> and as late as the beginning of
+  November, 1533, no suspicion seems to have been entertained of the spread
+  of serious disaffection. A great internal revolution had been
+  accomplished; a conflict of centuries between the civil and spiritual
+  powers had been terminated without a life lost or a blow struck. Partial
+  murmurs there had been, but murmurs were inevitable, and, so far as the
+  government yet knew, were harmless. The Scotch war had threatened to be
+  dangerous, but it had been extinguished. Impatient monks had denounced
+  the king from the pulpits, and disloyal language had been reported from
+  other quarters, which had roused vigilance, but <!-- Page 395 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page395"></a>[pg 395]</span> had not created
+  alarm. The Nun of Kent had forced herself into the royal presence with
+  menacing prophecies; but she had appeared to be a harmless dreamer, who
+  could only be made of importance by punishment. The surface of the nation
+  was in profound repose. Cromwell, like Walsingham after him, may perhaps
+  have known of the fire which was smouldering below, and have watched it
+  silently till the moment came at which to trample it out; but no symptom
+  of uneasiness appears either in the conduct of the government or in the
+  official correspondence. The organisation of the friars, the secret
+  communication of the Nun with Catherine and the Princess Mary, with the
+  papal nuncio, or with noble lords and reverend bishops, was either
+  unknown, or the character of those communications was not suspected. That
+  a serious political conspiracy should have shaped itself round the
+  ravings of a seeming lunatic, to all appearance had not occurred as a
+  possibility to a single member of the council, except to those whose
+  silence was ensured by their complicity.</p>
+
+  <p>So far as we are able to trace the story (for the links of the chain
+  which led to the discovery of the design's which were entertained, are
+  something imperfect), the suspicions of the government were first roused
+  in the following manner:</p>
+
+  <p>Queen Catherine, as we have already seen, had been called upon, at the
+  coronation of Anne Boleyn, to renounce her title, and she had refused.
+  Mary had been similarly deprived of her rank as princess; but either her
+  disgrace was held to be involved in that of her mother, or some other
+  cause, perhaps the absence of immediate necessity, had postponed the
+  demand for her own personal submission. As, however, on the publication
+  of the second marriage, it had been urged on Catherine that there could
+  not be two queens in England, so on the birth of the Princess Elizabeth,
+  an analogous argument required the disinheritance of Mary. It was a hard
+  thing; but her mother's conduct obliged the king to be peremptory. She
+  might have been legitimatised by act of parliament, if Catherine would
+  have submitted. The consequences of Catherine's refusal might be cruel,
+  but they were unavoidable.</p>
+
+  <p>Mary was not with her mother. It had been held desirable to remove her
+  from an influence which would encourage her in a useless opposition; and
+  she was residing at Beaulieu, afterwards New Hall, in Essex, under the
+  care of Lord Hussey and the Countess of Salisbury. Lord Hussey was a
+  dangerous guardian; he was subsequently executed for his complicity in
+  the Pilgrimage <!-- Page 396 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page396"></a>[pg 396]</span> of Grace, the avowed object of which
+  was the restoration of Mary to her place as heir-apparent. We may
+  believe, therefore, that while under his surveillance she experienced no
+  severe restraint, nor received that advice with respect to her conduct
+  which prudence would have dictated. Lord Hussey, however, for the present
+  enjoyed the confidence of the king, and was directed to inform his
+  charge, that for the future she was to consider herself not as princess,
+  but as the king's natural daughter, the Lady Mary Tudor. The message was
+  a painful one; painful, we will hope, more on her mother's account than
+  on her own; but her answer implied that, as yet, Henry VIII. was no
+  object of especial terror to his children.</p>
+
+  <p>"Her Grace replied," wrote Lord Hussey to the council in communicating
+  the result of his undertaking,<a name="NtA_636"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_636"><sup>636</sup></a> that "she could not a little marvel
+  that I being alone, and not associate with some other the king's most
+  honourable council, nor yet sufficiently authorised neither by commission
+  not by any other writing from the King's Highness, would attempt to
+  declare such a high enterprise and matter of no little weight and
+  importance unto her Grace, in diminishing her said estate and name; her
+  Grace not doubting that she is the king's true and legitimate daughter
+  and heir procreate in good and lawful matrimony; [and] further adding,
+  that unless she were advertised from his Highness by his writing that his
+  Grace was so minded to diminish her estate, name, and dignity, which she
+  trusteth his Highness will never do, she would not believe it."</p>
+
+  <p>Inasmuch as Mary was but sixteen at this time, the resolution which
+  she displayed in sending such a message was considerable. The early
+  English held almost Roman notions on the nature of parental authority,
+  and the tone of a child to a father was usually that of the most
+  submissive reverence. Nor was she contented with replying indirectly
+  through her guardian. She wrote herself to the king, saying that she
+  neither could nor would in her conscience think the contrary, but that
+  she was his lawful daughter born in true matrimony, and that she thought
+  that he in his own conscience did judge the same.<a name="NtA_637"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_637"><sup>637</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Such an attitude in so young a girl was singular, yet not necessarily
+  censurable. Henry was not her only parent, and if we suppose her to have
+  been actuated by affection for her mother, her conduct may appear not
+  pardonable only, but spirited and <!-- Page 397 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page397"></a>[pg 397]</span> creditable. In
+  insisting upon her legitimacy, nevertheless, she was not only asserting
+  the good name and fame of Catherine of Arragon, but unhappily her own
+  claim to the succession to the throne. It was natural that under the
+  circumstances she should have felt her right to assert that claim; for
+  the injury which she had suffered was patent not only to herself, but to
+  Europe. Catherine might have been required to give way that the king
+  might have a son, and that the succession might be established in a
+  prince; but so long as the child of the second marriage was a daughter
+  only, it seemed substantially monstrous to set aside the elder for the
+  younger. Yet the measure was a harsh necessity; a link in the chain which
+  could not be broken. The harassed nation insisted above all things that
+  no doubt should hang over the future, and it was impossible in the
+  existing complications to recognise the daughter of Catherine without
+  excluding Elizabeth, and excluding the prince who was expected to follow
+  her. By asserting her title, Mary was making herself the nucleus of
+  sedition, which on her father's death would lead to a convulsion in the
+  realm. She might not mean it, but the result would not be affected by a
+  want of purpose in herself; and it was possible that her resolution might
+  create immediate and far more painful complications. The king's
+  excommunication was imminent, and if the censures were enforced by the
+  emperor, she would be thrust into the unpermitted position of her
+  father's rival.</p>
+
+  <p>The political consequences of her conduct, notwithstanding, although
+  evident to statesmen, might well be concealed from a headstrong,
+  passionate girl. There was no suspicion that she herself was encouraging
+  any of these dangerous thoughts, and Henry looked upon her answer to Lord
+  Hussey and her letter to himself as expressions of petulant folly. Lord
+  Oxford, the Earl of Essex, and the Earl of Sussex were directed to repair
+  to Beaulieu, and explain to her the situation in which she had placed
+  herself.</p>
+
+  <p>"Considering," wrote the king to them, "how highly such contempt and
+  rebellion done by our daughter and her servants doth touch not only us,
+  and the surety of our honour and person, but also the tranquillity of our
+  realm; and not minding to suffer the pernicious example hereof to spread
+  far abroad, but to put remedy to the same in due time, we have given you
+  commandment to declare to her the great folly, temerity, and indiscretion
+  that she hath used herein, with the peril she hath incurred by reason of
+  her so doing. By these her ungodly doings hitherto <!-- Page 398 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page398"></a>[pg 398]</span> she hath most
+  worthily deserved our high indignation and displeasure, and thereto no
+  less pain and punition than by the order of the laws of our realm doth
+  appertain in case of high treason, unless our mercy and clemency should
+  be shewed in that behalf. [If, however, after] understanding our mind and
+  pleasure, [she will] conform herself humbly and obediently to the
+  observation of the same, according to the office and duty of a natural
+  daughter, and of a true and faithful subject, she may give us cause
+  hereafter to incline our fatherly pity to her reconciliation, her benefit
+  and advancement."<a name="NtA_638"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_638"><sup>638</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The reply of Mary to this message is not discoverable; but it is
+  certain that she persisted in her resolution, and clung either to her
+  mother's "cause" or to her own rank and privilege, in sturdy defiance of
+  her father. To punish her insubordination or to tolerate it was equally
+  difficult; and the government might have been in serious embarrassment
+  had not a series of discoveries, following rapidly one upon the other,
+  explained the mystery of these proceedings, and opened a view with
+  alarming clearness into the under-currents of the feeling of the
+  country.</p>
+
+  <p>Information from time to time had reached Henry from Rome, relating to
+  the correspondence between Catherine and the pope. Perhaps, too, he knew
+  how assiduously she had importuned the emperor to force Clement to a
+  decision.<a name="NtA_639"></a><a href="#Nt_639"><sup>639</sup></a> No
+  effort, however, had been hitherto made to interfere with her
+  hospitalities, or to oblige her visitors to submit to scrutiny before
+  they could be <!-- Page 399 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page399"></a>[pg 399]</span> admitted to her presence. She was the
+  mistress of her own court and of her own actions; and confidential
+  agents, both from Rome, Brussels, and Spain, had undoubtedly passed and
+  repassed with reciprocal instructions and directions.</p>
+
+  <p>The crisis which was clearly approaching had obliged Henry, in the
+  course of this autumn, to be more watchful; and about the end of October,
+  or the beginning of November,<a name="NtA_640"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_640"><sup>640</sup></a> two friars were reported as having been
+  at Bugden, whose movements attracted suspicion from their anxiety to
+  escape observation. Secret agents of the government, who had been "set"
+  for the purpose, followed the friars to London, and notwithstanding "many
+  wiles and cautells by them invented to escape," the suspected persons
+  were arrested and brought before Cromwell. Cromwell, "upon examination"
+  could gather nothing from them of any moment or great importance; but,
+  "entering on further communication," he said, "he found one of them a
+  very seditious person, and so committed them to ward." The king was
+  absent from London, but had left directions that, in the event of any
+  important occurrence of the kind, Archbishop Cranmer should be sent for;
+  but Cranmer not being immediately at hand, Cromwell wrote to Henry for
+  instructions; inasmuch as, he said, "it is undoubted that they (the
+  monks) have intended, and would confess, some great matter, if they might
+  be examined as they ought to be&mdash;that is to say, by pains."</p>
+
+  <p>The curtain here falls over the two prisoners; we do not know whether
+  they were tortured, whether they confessed, or what they confessed; but
+  we may naturally connect this letter, directly or indirectly, with the
+  events which immediately followed. In the middle of November we find a
+  commission sitting at Lambeth, composed of Cromwell, Cranmer, and
+  Latimer, ravelling out the threads of a story, from which, when the whole
+  was disentangled, it appeared that by Queen Catherine, the Princess Mary,
+  and a large and formidable party in the country, the king, on the faith
+  of a pretended revelation, was supposed to have forfeited the crown; that
+  his death, either by visitation of God or by visitation of man, was daily
+  expected; and that whether his death took place or not, a revolution was
+  immediately looked for, which would place the princess on the throne.</p>
+
+  <p>The Nun of Kent, as we remember, had declared that if Henry persisted
+  in his resolution of marrying Anne, she was commissioned by God to tell
+  him that he should lose his power and <!-- Page 400 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page400"></a>[pg 400]</span> authority. She had
+  not specified the manner in which the sentence would be carried into
+  effect against him. The form of her threats had been also varied
+  occasionally; she said that he should die, but whether by the hands of
+  his subjects, or by a providential judgment, she left to conjecture;<a
+  name="NtA_641"></a><a href="#Nt_641"><sup>641</sup></a> and the period
+  within which his punishment was to fall upon him was stated variously at
+  one month or at six.<a name="NtA_642"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_642"><sup>642</sup></a> She had attempted no secresy with these
+  prophecies; she had confined herself in appearance to words; and the
+  publicity which she courted having prevented suspicion of secret
+  conspiracy, Henry quietly accepted the issue, and left the truth of the
+  prophecy to be confuted by the event. He married. The one month passed;
+  the six months passed; eight&mdash;nine months. His child was born and
+  was baptised, and no divine thunder had interposed; only a mere harmless
+  verbal thunder, from a poor old man at Rome. The illusion, as he
+  imagined, had been lived down, and had expired of its own vanity.</p>
+
+  <p>But the Nun and her friar advisers were counting on other methods of
+  securing the fulfilment of the prophecy than supernatural assistance. It
+  is remarkable that hypocrites and impostors as they knew themselves to
+  be, they were not without a half belief that some supernatural
+  intervention was imminent; but the career on which they had entered was
+  too fascinating to allow them to forsake it when their expectation failed
+  them. They were swept into the stream which was swelling to resist the
+  Reformation, and allowed themselves to be hurried forward either to
+  victory or to destruction.</p>
+
+  <p>The first revelation being apparently confuted by facts, a second was
+  produced as an interpretation of it; which, however, was not published
+  like the other, but whispered in secret to persons whose dispositions
+  were known.<a name="NtA_643"></a><a href="#Nt_643"><sup>643</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"When the King's Grace," says the report of the commissioners, "had
+  continued in good health, honour, and prosperity <!-- Page 401 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page401"></a>[pg 401]</span> more than a month,
+  Dr. Bocking shewed the said Nun, that as King Saul, abjected from his
+  kingdom by God, yet continued king in the sight of the world, so her said
+  revelations might be taken. And therefore the said Nun, upon this
+  information, forged another revelation, that her words should be
+  understanded to mean that the King's Grace should not be king in the
+  reputation or acceptation of God, not one month or one hour after that he
+  married the Queen's Grace that now is. The first revelation had moved a
+  great number of the king's subjects, both high and low, to grudge against
+  the said marriage before it was concluded and perfected; and also induced
+  such as were stiffly bent against that marriage, daily to look for the
+  destruction of the King's Grace within a month after he married the
+  Queen's Grace that now is. And when they were deluded in that
+  expectation, the second revelation was devised not only as an
+  interpretation of the former, but to the intent to induce the king's
+  subjects to believe that God took the King's Grace for no king of this
+  realm, and that they should likewise take him for no righteous king, and
+  themselves not bounden to be his subjects; which might have put the King
+  and the Queen's Grace in jeopardy of their crown and of their issue, and
+  the people of this realm in great danger of destruction."<a
+  name="NtA_644"></a><a href="#Nt_644"><sup>644</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It was no light matter to pronounce the king to be in the position of
+  Saul after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending
+  excommunication, the Nun's words could mean nothing but treason. The
+  speaker herself was in correspondence with the pope; she had attested her
+  divine commission by miracles, and had been recognised as a saint by an
+  Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout the
+  realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission
+  recollected that the king was threatened further with dying "a villain's
+  death;" and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written out,
+  and were in private circulation through the country, the matter assumed a
+  dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain how far,
+  and among what classes of the state, these things had penetrated. The
+  Friars Mendicant were discovered to be in league with her, and these
+  itinerants were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They had privilege
+  of vagrancy without check or limit; and owing to their universal
+  distribution and the freemasonry among themselves, the secret disposition
+  of every family in England was intimately known to them. No movement,
+  therefore, <!-- Page 402 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page402"></a>[pg 402]</span> could be securely over-looked in which
+  these orders had a share; the country might be undermined in secret; and
+  the government might only learn their danger at the moment of
+  explosion.</p>
+
+  <p>No sooner, therefore, were the commissioners in possession of the
+  general facts, than the principal parties&mdash;that is to say, the Nun
+  herself and five of the monks of Christ Church at Canterbury&mdash;with
+  whom her intercourse was most constant, were sent to the Tower to be
+  "examined"&mdash;the monks it is likely by "torture," if they could not
+  otherwise be brought to confession. The Nun was certainly not tortured.
+  On her first arrest, she was obstinate in maintaining her prophetic
+  character; and she was detected in sending messages to her friends, "to
+  animate them to adhere to her and to her prophecies."<a
+  name="NtA_645"></a><a href="#Nt_645"><sup>645</sup></a> But her courage
+  ebbed away under the hard reality of her position. She soon made a full
+  confession, in which her accomplices joined her; and the half-completed
+  web of conspiracy was ravelled out. They did not attempt to conceal that
+  they had intended, if possible, to create an insurrection. The five
+  monks&mdash;Father Bocking, Father Rich, Father Rysby, Father Dering, and
+  Father Goold&mdash;had assisted the Nun in inventing her "Revelations;"
+  and as apostles, they had travelled about the country to communicate them
+  in whatever quarters they were likely to be welcome. When we remember
+  that Archbishop Warham had been a dupe of this woman, and that even
+  Wolsey's experience and ability had not prevented him from believing in
+  her power, we are not surprised to find high names among those who were
+  implicated. Vast numbers of abbots and priors, and of regular and secular
+  clergy, had listened eagerly; country gentlemen also, and London
+  merchants. The Bishop of Rochester had "wept for joy" at the first
+  utterances of the inspired prophetess; and Sir Thomas More, "who at first
+  did little regard the said revelations, afterwards did greatly rejoice to
+  hear of them."<a name="NtA_646"></a><a href="#Nt_646"><sup>646</sup></a>
+  We learn, also, that the Nun had continued to <i>communicate with "the
+  Lady Princess Dowager" and "the Lady Mary, her daughter."</i><a
+  name="NtA_647"></a><a href="#Nt_647"><sup>647</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>These were names which might have furnished cause for regret, but
+  little for surprise or alarm. The commissioners must have found occasion
+  for other feelings, however, when among the persons implicated were found
+  the Countess of Salisbury and the Marchioness of Exeter, with their
+  chaplains, <!-- Page 403 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page403"></a>[pg 403]</span> households, and servants; Sir Thomas
+  Arundel, Sir George Carew, and "many of the nobles of England."<a
+  name="NtA_648"></a><a href="#Nt_648"><sup>648</sup></a> A combination
+  headed by the Countess of Salisbury, if she were supported even by a
+  small section of the nobility, would under any circumstances have been
+  dangerous; and if such a combination was formed in support of an
+  invasion, and was backed by the blessings of the pope and the fanaticism
+  of the clergy, the result might be serious indeed. So careful a silence
+  is observed in the official papers on this feature of the Nun's
+  conspiracy, that it is uncertain how far the countess had committed
+  herself; but she had listened certainly to avowals of treasonable
+  intentions without revealing them, which of itself was no slight evidence
+  of disloyalty; and that the government were really alarmed may be
+  gathered from the simultaneous arrest of Sir William and Sir George
+  Neville, the brothers of Lord Latimer. The connection and significance of
+  these names I shall explain presently; in the meantime I return to the
+  preparations which had been made by the Nun.</p>
+
+  <p>As the final judgment drew near&mdash;which, unless the king
+  submitted, would be accompanied, with excommunication, and a declaration
+  that the English nation was absolved from allegiance,&mdash;"the said
+  false Nun," says the report, "surmised herself to have made a petition to
+  God to know, when fearful war should come, whether any man should take my
+  Lady Mary's part or no; and she feigned herself to have answer by
+  revelation that no man should fear but that she should have succour and
+  help enough; and that no man should put her from her right that she was
+  born unto. And petitioning next to know when it was the pleasure of God
+  that her revelations should be put forth to the world, she had answer
+  that knowledge should be given to her ghostly father when it should be
+  time."<a name="NtA_649"></a><a href="#Nt_649"><sup>649</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>With this information Father Goold had hastened down to Bugden,
+  encouraging Catherine to persevere in her resistance;<a
+  name="NtA_650"></a><a href="#Nt_650"><sup>650</sup></a> and while the
+  imperialists at Rome were pressing the pope for <!-- Page 404 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page404"></a>[pg 404]</span> sentence (we cannot
+  doubt at Catherine's instance), the Nun had placed herself in readiness
+  to seize the opportunity when it offered, and to blow the trumpet of
+  insurrection in the panic which might be surely looked for when that
+  sentence should be published.</p>
+
+  <p>For this purpose she had organised, with considerable skill, a corps
+  of fanatical friars, who, when the signal was given, were simultaneously
+  to throw themselves into the midst of the people, and call upon them to
+  rise in the name of God. "To the intent," says the report, "to set forth
+  this matter, certain spiritual and religious persons were appointed, as
+  they had been chosen of God, to preach the false revelations of the said
+  Nun, when the time should require, if warning were given them; and some
+  of these preachers have confessed openly, and subscribed their names to
+  their confessions, that if the Nun had so sent them word, they would have
+  preached to the king's subjects that the pleasure of God was that they
+  should take him no longer for their king; and some of these preachers
+  were such as gave themselves to great fasting, watching, long prayers,
+  wearing of shirts of hair and great chains of iron about their middle,
+  whereby the people had them in high estimation of their great
+  holiness,&mdash;and this strait life they took on them by the counsel and
+  exhortation of the said Nun."<a name="NtA_651"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_651"><sup>651</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Here, then, was the explanation of the attitude of Catherine and Mary.
+  Smarting under injustice, and most naturally blending their private
+  quarrel with the cause of the church, they had listened to these
+  disordered visions as to a message from heaven, and they had lent
+  themselves to the first of those religious conspiracies which held
+  England in chronic agitation for three quarters of a century. The
+  innocent Saint at Bugden was the forerunner of the prisoner at
+  Fotheringay; and the Observant friars, with their chain girdles and
+  shirts of hair, were the antitypes of Parsons and Campion. How critical
+  the situation of England really was, appears from the following letter of
+  the French ambassador. The project for the marriage of the Princess Mary
+  with the Dauphin had been revived by the Catholic party; and a private
+  arrangement, of which this marriage was to form the connecting link, was
+  contemplated between the Ultramontanes in France, the pope, and the
+  emperor.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 405 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page405"></a>[pg 405]</span>
+
+<p class="center"><i>D'Inteville to Cardinal Tournon.</i><a name="NtA_652"></a><a href="#Nt_652"><sup>652</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>"MY LORD,&mdash;You will be so good as to tell the Most Christian king
+  that the emperor's ambassador has communicated with the old queen. The
+  emperor sends a message to her and to her daughter, that he will not
+  return to Spain till he has seen them restored to their rights.</p>
+
+  <p>"The people are so much attached to the said ladies that they will
+  rise in rebellion, and join any prince who will undertake their quarrel.
+  You probably know from other quarters the intensity of this feeling. It
+  is shared by all classes, high and low, and penetrates even into the
+  royal household.</p>
+
+  <p>"The nation is in marvellous discontent. Every one but the relations
+  of the present queen, is indignant on the ladies' account. Some fear the
+  overthrow of religion; others fear war and injury to trade. Up to this
+  time, the cloth, hides, wool, lead, and other merchandise of England have
+  found markets in Flanders, Spain, and Italy; now it is thought navigation
+  will be so dangerous that English merchants must equip their ships for
+  war if they trade to foreign countries; and besides the risk of losing
+  all to the enemy, the expense of the armament will swallow the profits of
+  the voyage. In like manner, the emperor's subjects and the pope's
+  subjects will not be able to trade with England. The coasts will be
+  blockaded by the ships of the emperor and his allies; and at this moment
+  men's fears are aggravated by the unseasonable weather throughout the
+  summer, and the failure of the crops. There is not corn enough for half
+  the ordinary consumption.</p>
+
+  <p>"The common people, foreseeing these inconveniences, are so violent
+  against the queen, that they say a thousand shameful things of her, and
+  of all who have supported her in her intrigues. On them is cast the odium
+  of all the calamities anticipated from the war.</p>
+
+  <p>"When the war comes, no one doubts that the people will rebel as much
+  from fear of the dangers which I have mentioned, as from the love which
+  is felt for the two ladies, and especially for the Princess. She is so
+  entirely beloved that, notwithstanding the law made at the last
+  Parliament, and the menace of death contained in it, they persist in
+  regarding her as Princess. No Parliament, they say, can make her anything
+  but the king's <!-- Page 406 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page406"></a>[pg 406]</span> daughter, born in marriage; and so the
+  king and every one else regarded her before that Parliament.</p>
+
+  <p>"Lately, when she was removed from Greenwich, a vast crowd of women,
+  wives of citizens and others, walked before her at their husbands'
+  desire, weeping and crying that notwithstanding all she was Princess.
+  Some of them were sent to the Tower, but they would not retract.</p>
+
+  <p>"Things are now so critical, and the fear of war is so general, that
+  many of the greatest merchants in London have placed themselves in
+  communication with the emperor's ambassador, telling him, that if the
+  emperor will declare war, the English nation will join him for the love
+  they bear the Lady Mary.</p>
+
+  <p>"You, my Lord, will remember that when you were here, it was said you
+  were come to tell the king that he was excommunicated, and to demand the
+  hand of the Princess for the Dauphin. The people were so delighted that
+  they have never ceased to pray for you. We too, when we arrived in
+  London, were told that the people were praying for us. They thought our
+  embassy was to the Princess. They imagined her marriage with the Dauphin
+  had been determined on by the two kings, and the satisfaction was intense
+  and universal.</p>
+
+  <p>"They believe that, except by this marriage, they cannot possibly
+  escape war; whereas, can it be brought about, they will have peace with
+  the emperor and all other Christian princes. They are now so disturbed
+  and so desperate that, although at one time they would have preferred a
+  husband for her from among themselves, that they might not have a foreign
+  king, there now is nothing which they desire more. Unless the Dauphin
+  will take her, they say she will continue disinherited; or, if she come
+  to her rights, it can only be by battle, to the great incommodity of the
+  country. The Princess herself says publicly that the Dauphin is her
+  husband, and that she has no hope but in him. I have been told this by
+  persons who have heard it from her own lips.</p>
+
+  <p>"The emperor's ambassador inquired, after you came, whether we had
+  seen her. He said he knew she was most anxious to speak with us; she
+  thought we had permission to visit her, and she looked for good news. He
+  told us, among other things, that she had been more strictly guarded of
+  late, by the orders of the queen that now is, who, knowing her feeling
+  for the Dauphin, feared there might be some practice with her, or some
+  attempt to carry her off.</p>
+
+  <p>"The Princess's ladies say that she calls herself the Dauphin's <!--
+  Page 407 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page407"></a>[pg 407]</span>
+  wife. A time will come, she says, when God will see that she has suffered
+  pain and tribulation sufficient; the Dauphin will then demand her of the
+  king her father, and the king her father will not be able to refuse.</p>
+
+  <p>"The lady who was my informant heard, also, from the Princess, that
+  her governess, and the other attendants whom the queen had set to watch
+  her, had assured her that the Dauphin was married to the daughter of the
+  emperor; but she, the Princess, had answered it was not true&mdash;the
+  Dauphin could not have two wives, and they well knew that she was his
+  wife: they told her that story, she said, to make her despair, and agree
+  to give up her rights; but she would never part with her hopes.</p>
+
+  <p>"You may have heard of the storm that broke out between her and her
+  governess when we went to visit her little sister. She was carried off by
+  force to her room, that she might not speak with us; and they could
+  neither pacify her nor keep her still, till the gentleman who escorted us
+  told her he had the king's commands that she was not to show herself
+  while we were in the house. You remember the message the same gentleman
+  brought to you from her, and the charge which was given by the queen.</p>
+
+  <p>"Could the king be brought to consent to the marriage, it could be a
+  fair union of two realms, and to annex Britain to the crown of France
+  would be a great honour to our Sovereign; the English party desire
+  nothing better; the pope will be glad of it; the pope fears that, if war
+  break out again, France will draw closer to England on the terms which
+  the King of England desires; and he may thus lose the French tribute as
+  he has lost the English. He therefore will urge the emperor to agree, and
+  the emperor will assist gladly for the love which he bears to his
+  cousin.</p>
+
+  <p>"If the emperor be willing, the King of England can then be informed;
+  and he can be made to feel that, if he will avoid war, he must not refuse
+  his consent. The king, in fact, has no wish to disown the Princess, and
+  he knows well that the marriage with the Dauphin was once agreed on.</p>
+
+  <p>"Should he be unwilling, and should his wife's persuasions stil have
+  influence with him, he will hesitate before he will defy, for her sake,
+  the King of France and the emperor united. His regard for the queen is
+  less than it was, and diminishes every day. He has a new fancy,<a
+  name="NtA_653"></a><a href="#Nt_653"><sup>653</sup></a> as you are
+  aware."</p>
+
+<!-- Page 408 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page408"></a>[pg 408]</span>
+
+  <p>The actual conspiracy, in the form which it had so far assumed, was
+  rather an appeal to fanaticism than a plot which could have laid hold of
+  the deeper mind of the country; but as an indication of the unrest which
+  was stealing over the minds of men, it assumed an importance which it
+  would not have received from its intrinsic character.</p>
+
+  <p>The guilt of the principal offenders admitted of no doubt. As soon as
+  the commissioners were satisfied that there was nothing further to be
+  discovered, the Nun, with the monks, was brought to trial before the Star
+  Chamber; and conviction followed as a matter of course.<a
+  name="NtA_654"></a><a href="#Nt_654"><sup>654</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The unhappy girl finding herself at this conclusion, after seven years
+  of vanity, in which she had played with popes, and queens, and
+  princesses, and archbishops, now, when the dream was thus rudely broken,
+  in the revulsion of feeling could see nothing in herself but a convicted
+  impostor. We need not refuse to pity her. The misfortunes of her sickness
+  had exposed her to temptations far beyond the strength of an ordinary
+  woman: and the guilt which she passionately claimed for herself rested
+  far more truly with the knavery of the Christ Church monks and the
+  incredible folly of Archbishop Warham.<a name="NtA_655"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_655"><sup>655</sup></a> But the times were too stern to admit
+  of nice distinctions. No immediate sentence was pronounced, but it was
+  thought desirable for the satisfaction of the people that a confession
+  should be made in public by the Nun and her companions. The Sunday
+  following their trial they were placed on a raised platform at Paul's
+  Cross by the side of the pulpit, and when the sermon was over they one by
+  one delivered their "bills" to the preacher, which by him were read to
+  the crowd.<a name="NtA_656"></a><a href="#Nt_656"><sup>656</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 409 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page409"></a>[pg 409]</span>
+
+  <p>After an acknowledgment of their imposture the prisoners were remanded
+  to the Tower, and their ultimate fate reserved for the consideration of
+  parliament, which was to meet in the middle of January.</p>
+
+  <p>The chief offenders being thus disposed of, the council resolved next
+  that peremptory measures should be taken with respect to the Princess
+  Mary.<a name="NtA_657"></a><a href="#Nt_657"><sup>657</sup></a> Her
+  establishment was broken up, and she was sent to reside as the Lady Mary
+  in the household of the Princess Elizabeth&mdash;a hard but not
+  unwholesome discipline.<a name="NtA_658"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_658"><sup>658</sup></a> As soon as this was done, being
+  satisfied that the leading shoot of the conspiracy was broken, and that
+  no immediate danger was now to be feared, they proceeded leisurely to
+  follow the clue of the Nun's confession, and to extend their inquiries.
+  The Countess of Salisbury was mentioned as one of the persons with whom
+  the woman had been in correspondence. This lady was the daughter of the
+  Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV. Her mother was a Neville, a child
+  of Richard the Kingmaker, the famous Earl of Warwick, and her only
+  brother had been murdered to secure the shaking throne of Henry VII.
+  Margaret Plantagenet, in recompense for the lost honours of the house,
+  was made Countess of Salisbury in her own right. The title descended from
+  her grandfather, who was Earl of Salisbury and Warwick; but the prouder
+  title had been dropped as suggestive of dangerous associations. The
+  Earldom of Warwick remained in abeyance, and the castle and the estates
+  attached to it were forfeited to the Crown. The countess was married
+  after her brother's death to a Sir Richard Pole, a supporter and
+  relation<a name="NtA_659"></a><a href="#Nt_659"><sup>659</sup></a> of the
+  king; and when left a widow she received from Henry VIII. the respectful
+  honour which was due to the most nobly born of his subjects, the only
+  remaining Plantagenet of unblemished descent. In his kindness to her
+  children the king had attempted to obliterate the recollection of her
+  brother's wrongs, and she had been herself selected to preside over the
+  household of the Princess Mary. During the first twenty years of Henry's
+  reign the countess seems to have acknowledged his attentions with loyal
+  regard, and if she had <!-- Page 410 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page410"></a>[pg 410]</span> not forgotten her birth and her
+  childhood, she never connected herself with the attempts which during
+  that time were made to revive the feuds of the houses. Richard de la
+  Pole, nephew of Edward IV.,<a name="NtA_660"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_660"><sup>660</sup></a> and called while he lived "the White
+  Rose," had more than once endeavoured to excite an insurrection in the
+  eastern counties; but Lady Salisbury was never suspected of holding
+  intercourse with him; she remained aloof from political disputes, and in
+  lofty retirement she was contented to forget her greatness for the sake
+  of the Princess Mary, to whom she and her family were deeply attached.
+  Her relations with the king had thus continued undisturbed until his
+  second marriage. As the representative of the House of York she was the
+  object of the hopes and affections of the remnants of their party, but
+  she had betrayed no disposition to abuse her influence, or to disturb the
+  quiet of the nation for personal ambition of her own.</p>
+
+  <p>If it be lawful to interpret symptoms in themselves trifling by the
+  light of later events, it would seem as if her attitude now underwent a
+  material change. Her son Reginald had already quarrelled with the king
+  upon the divorce. He was in suspicious connection with the pope, and
+  having been required to return home upon his allegiance, had refused
+  obedience. His mother, and his mother's attached friend, the Marchioness
+  of Exeter, we now find among those to whom the Nun of Kent communicated
+  her prophecies and her plans. It does not seem that the countess thought
+  at any time of reviving her own pretensions; it does seem that she was
+  ready to build a throne for the Princess Mary out of the ruined
+  supporters of her father's family. The power which she could wield might
+  at any moment become formidable. She had two sons in England, Lord
+  Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole. Her cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, a
+  grandson himself of Edward IV.,<a name="NtA_661"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_661"><sup>661</sup></a> was, with the exception of the Duke of
+  Norfolk, the most powerful nobleman in the realm; and he, to judge by
+  events, was beginning to look coldly on the king.<a name="NtA_662"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_662"><sup>662</sup></a> We find her surrounded also by the
+  representatives of her mother's family&mdash;Lord Abergavenny, who had
+  been under suspicion when the Duke of Buckingham was executed, Sir Edward
+  Neville, afterwards executed, Lord Latimer, Sir George and Sir William
+  Neville, all of them were <!-- Page 411 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page411"></a>[pg 411]</span> her near connections, all collateral
+  heirs of the King-maker, inheriting the pride of their birth, and
+  resentfully conscious of their fallen fortunes. The support of a party so
+  composed would have added formidable strength to the preaching friars of
+  the Nun of Kent; and as I cannot doubt that the Nun was endeavouring to
+  press her intrigues in a quarter where disaffection if created would be
+  most dangerous, so the lady who ruled this party with a patriarchal
+  authority had listened to her suggestions; and the repeated interviews
+  with her which were sought by the Marchioness of Exeter were rendered
+  more than suspicious by the secresy with which these interviews were
+  conducted.<a name="NtA_663"></a><a href="#Nt_663"><sup>663</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>These circumstances explain the arrest, to which I alluded above, of
+  Sir William and Sir George Neville, brothers of Lord Latimer. They were
+  not among "the many noblemen" to whom the commissioners referred; for
+  their confessions remain, and contain no allusion to the Nun; but they
+  were examined at this particular time on general suspicion; and the
+  arrest, under such circumstances, of two near relatives of Lady
+  Salisbury, indicates clearly an alarm in the council, lest she might be
+  contemplating some serious movements. At any rate, either on her account
+  or on their own, the Nevilles fell under suspicion, and while they had no
+  crimes to reveal, their depositions, especially that of Sir William
+  Neville, furnish singular evidence of the temper of the times.</p>
+
+  <p>The confession of the latter begins with an account of the loss of
+  certain silver spoons, for the recovery of which Sir William sent to a
+  wizard who resided in Cirencester. The wizard took the opportunity of
+  telling Sir William's fortune: his wife was to die, and he himself was to
+  marry an heiress, and be made a baron; with other prospective splendours.
+  The wizard concluded, however, with recommending him to pay a visit to
+  another dealer in the dark art more learned than himself, whose name was
+  Jones, at Oxford.</p>
+
+  <p>"So after that," said Sir William [Midsummer, 1532], "I went to
+  Oxford, intending that my brother George and I should kill a buck with
+  Sir Simon Harcourt, which he had promised me; and there at Oxford, in the
+  said Jones's chamber, I did see certain stillatories, alembics, and other
+  instruments of glass, and also a sceptre and other things, which he said
+  did appertain to the conjuration of the four kings; and also an image of
+  white <!-- Page 412 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page412"></a>[pg
+  412]</span> metal; and in a box, a serpent's skin, as he said, and divers
+  books and things, whereof one was a book which he said was my Lord
+  Cardinal's, having pictures in it like angels. He told me he could make
+  rings of gold, to obtain favour of great men; and said that my Lord
+  Cardinal had such; and promised my said brother and me, either of us, one
+  of them; and also he showed me a round thing like a ball of crystal.</p>
+
+  <p>"He said that if the King's Grace went over to France [the Calais
+  visit of October, 1532], his Grace should marry my Lady Marchioness of
+  Pembroke before that his Highness returned again; and that it would be
+  dangerous to his Grace, and to the most part of the noblemen that should
+  go with him; saying also that he had written to one of the king's council
+  to advise his Highness not to go over, for if he did, it should not be
+  for his Grace's profit."</p>
+
+  <p>The wizard next pretended that he had seen a vision of a certain room
+  in a tower, in which a spirit had appeared with a coat of arms in his
+  hand, and had "delivered the same to Sir William Neville." The arms being
+  described as those of the Warwick family, Sir William, his brother, and
+  Jones rode down from Oxford to Warwick, where they went over the castle.
+  The wizard professed to recognise in a turret chamber the room in which
+  he had seen the spirit, and he prophesied that Sir William should recover
+  the earldom, the long-coveted prize of all the Neville family.</p>
+
+  <p>On their return to Oxford, Jones, continues Sir William, said further,
+  "That there should be a field in the north about a se'n-night before
+  Christmas, in which my Lord my brother [Lord Latimer] should be slain;
+  the realm should be long without a king; and much robbery would be within
+  the realm, specially of abbeys and religious houses, and of rich men, as
+  merchants, graziers, and others; so that, if I would, he at that time
+  would advise me to find the means to enter into the said castle for mine
+  own safeguard, and divers persons would resort unto me. <i>None of
+  Cadwallader's blood</i>, he told me, <i>should reign more than
+  twenty-four years;</i> and also that Prince Edward [son of Henry VI. and
+  Margaret of Anjou, killed at Tewkesbury], had issue a son which was
+  conveyed over sea; and there had issue a son which was yet alive, either
+  in Saxony or Almayne; and that either he or the King of Scots should
+  reign next after the King's Grace that now is. To all which I answered,"
+  Sir William concluded, "that there is nothing which the will of God is
+  that a man shall obtain, but that he of his goodness will put in his <!--
+  Page 413 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page413"></a>[pg 413]</span>
+  mind the way whereby he shall come by it; and that surely I had no mind
+  to follow any such fashion; and that, also, the late Duke of Buckingham
+  and others had cast themselves away by too much trust in prophecies, and
+  other jeoparding of themselves, and therefore I would in no wise follow
+  any such way. He answered, if I would not, it would be long ere I
+  obtained it. Then I said I believed that well, and if it never came, I
+  trusted to God to live well enough."<a name="NtA_664"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_664"><sup>664</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Sir George Neville confirmed generally his brother's story, protesting
+  that they had never intended treason, and that "at no time had he been of
+  counsel" when any treason was thought of.<a name="NtA_665"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_665"><sup>665</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The wizard himself was next sent for. The prophecies about the king he
+  denied wholly. He admitted that he had seen an angel in a dream giving
+  Sir William Neville the shield of the earldom in Warwick Castle, and that
+  he had accompanied the two brothers to Warwick, to examine the tower.
+  Beyond that, he said that he knew nothing either of them or of their
+  intentions. He declared himself a good subject, and he would "jeopard his
+  life" to make the philosopher's stone for the king in twelve months if
+  the king pleased to command him. He desired "no longer space than twelve
+  months upon silver and twelve and a half upon gold;" to be kept in prison
+  till he had done it; and it would be "better to the King's Grace than a
+  thousand men."<a name="NtA_666"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_666"><sup>666</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The result of these examinations does not appear, except it be that
+  the Nevilles were dismissed without punishment; and the story itself may
+  be thought too trifling to have deserved a grave notice. I see in it,
+  however, an illustration very noticeworthy of the temper which was
+  working in the country. The suspicion of treason in the Neville family
+  may not have been confirmed, although we see them casting longing looks
+  on the lost inheritance of Warwick; but their confessions betray the
+  visions of impending change, anarchy, and confusion, which were haunting
+  the popular imagination. A craving after prophecies, a restless eagerness
+  to search into the future by abnormal means, had infected all ranks from
+  the highest to the lowest; and such symptoms, when they appear, are a
+  sure evidence of approaching disorder, for they are an evidence of a
+  present madness which has brought down wisdom to a common level with
+  folly. At such times, the idlest fancy is more potent <!-- Page 414
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page414"></a>[pg 414]</span> with the
+  mind than the soundest arguments of reason. The understanding abdicates
+  its functions; and men are given over, as if by magic, to the
+  enchantments of insanity.</p>
+
+  <p>Phenomena of this eccentric kind always accompany periods of
+  intellectual change. Most men live and think by habit; and when habit
+  fails them, they are like unskilful sailors who have lost the landmarks
+  of their course, and have no compass and no celestial charts by which to
+  steer. In the years which preceded the French Revolution, Cagliostro was
+  the companion of princes&mdash;at the dissolution of paganism the
+  practicers of curious arts, the watches and the necromancers, were the
+  sole objects of reverence in the Roman world;&mdash;and so, before the
+  Reformation, archbishops and cardinals saw an inspired prophetess in a
+  Kentish servant girl; Oxford heads of colleges sought out heretics with
+  the help of astrology; Anne Boleyn blessed a basin of rings, her royal
+  fingers pouring such virtue into the metal that no disorder could resist
+  it;<a name="NtA_667"></a><a href="#Nt_667"><sup>667</sup></a> Wolsey had
+  a magic crystal; and Cromwell, while in Wolsey's household, "did haunt to
+  the company of a wizard."<a name="NtA_668"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_668"><sup>668</sup></a> These things were the counterpart of a
+  religion which taught that slips of paper, duly paid for, could secure
+  indemnity for sin. It was well for England that the chief captain at
+  least was proof against the epidemic&mdash;no random scandal seems ever
+  to have whispered that such delusions had touched the mind of the king.<a
+  name="NtA_669"></a><a href="#Nt_669"><sup>669</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>While the government were prosecuting these inquiries at home, the law
+  at the Vatican had run its course; November passed, and as no submission
+  had arrived, the sentence of the 12th of July came into force, and the
+  king, the queen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury were declared to have
+  incurred the threatened censures.</p>
+
+  <p>The privy council met on the 2nd of December, and it was determined in
+  consequence that copies of the "Act of Appeals," and of the king's
+  "provocation" to a general council, should be fixed without delay on
+  every church door in England. Protests were at the same time to be drawn
+  up and sent into Flanders, and to the other courts in Europe, "to the
+  intent the falsehood and injustice of the Bishop of Rome might appear to
+  all the world." The defences of the country were to be looked <!-- Page
+  415 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page415"></a>[pg 415]</span> to;
+  and "spies" to be sent into Scotland to see "what they intended there,"
+  "and whether they would confeder themselves with any outward princes."
+  Finally, it was proposed that the attempt to form an alliance with the
+  Lutheran powers should be renewed on a larger scale; that certain
+  discreet and grave persons should be appointed to conclude "some league
+  or amity with the princes of Germany"&mdash;"that is to say, the King of
+  Poland, the King of Hungary,<a name="NtA_670"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_670"><sup>670</sup></a> the Duke of Saxony, the Duke of
+  Bavaria, the Duke of Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse, and other
+  potentates."<a name="NtA_671"></a><a href="#Nt_671"><sup>671</sup></a>
+  Vaughan's mission had been merely tentative, and had failed. Yet the
+  offer of a league, offensive and defensive, the immediate and avowed
+  object of which was a general council at which the Protestants should be
+  represented, might easily succeed where vague offers of amity had come to
+  nothing. The formation of a Protestant alliance, however, would have been
+  equivalent to a declaration of war against Catholic Europe; and it was a
+  step which could not be taken, consistently with the Treaty of
+  Calais,&mdash;without first communicating with Francis.</p>
+
+  <p>Henry, therefore, by the advice of the council, wrote a despatch to
+  Sir John Wallop, the ambassador at Paris, which was to be laid before the
+  French court. He explained the circumstances in which he was placed, with
+  the suggestion which the council had made to him. He gave a list of the
+  princes with whom he had been desired by his ministers to connect
+  himself&mdash;and the object was nothing less than a coalition of
+  Northern Europe. He recapitulated the injuries which he had received from
+  the pope, who at length was studying "to subvert the rest and peace of
+  the realm;" "yea, and so much as in him was, utterly to destroy the
+  same." The nobles and council, he said, for their own sake as well as for
+  the sake of the kingdom, had entreated him to put an end, once for all,
+  to the pope's usurpation; and to invite the Protestant princes, for the
+  universal weal of Christendom, to unite in a common alliance. In his
+  present situation he was inclined to act upon this advice. "As concerning
+  his own realm, he had already taken such order with his nobles and
+  subjects, as he would shortly be able to give to the pope such a buffet
+  as he never had heretofore;" but as a German alliance was a matter of
+  <!-- Page 416 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page416"></a>[pg
+  416]</span> great weight and importance, "although," he concluded, "we
+  consider it to be right expedient to set forth the same with all
+  diligence, yet we intend nothing to do therein without making our good
+  brother first privy thereunto. And for this cause and consideration only,
+  you may say that we have at this time addressed these letters unto you,
+  commanding you to declare our said purpose unto our good brother, and to
+  require of him on our behalf his good address and best advice. Of his
+  answer we require you to advertise us with all diligence, for according
+  thereunto we intend to attemper our proceedings. We have lately had
+  advertisements how that our said good brother should, by the labour of
+  divers affectionate Papists, be minded to set forth something with his
+  clergy in advancement of the pope and his desires. This we cannot believe
+  that he will do."<a name="NtA_672"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_672"><sup>672</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The meaning of this letter lies upon the surface. If the European
+  powers were determined to leave him no alternative, the king was prepared
+  to ally himself with the Lutherans. But however he might profess to
+  desire that alliance, it was evident that he would prefer, if possible, a
+  less extreme resource. The pope had ceased to be an object of concern to
+  him; but he could not contemplate, without extreme unwillingness, a
+  separation from the orderly governments who professed the Catholic faith.
+  The pope had injured him; Francis had deceived him; they had tempted his
+  patience because they knew his disposition. The limit of endurance had
+  been reached at length; yet, on the verge of the concluding rupture, he
+  turned once more, as if to offer a last opportunity of peace.</p>
+
+  <p>The reply of Francis was an immediate mission of the Bishop of Bayonne
+  (now Bishop of Paris), first into England, and from England to Rome,
+  where he was to endeavour, to the best of his ability, to seam together
+  the already gaping rent in the church with fair words&mdash;a hopeless
+  task&mdash;the results of which, however, were unexpectedly considerable,
+  as will be presently seen.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, on the side of Flanders, the atmosphere was dubious and
+  menacing. The refugee friars, who were reported to be well supplied with
+  money from England, were labouring to exasperate the people, Father Peto
+  especially distinguishing himself upon this service.<a
+  name="NtA_673"></a><a href="#Nt_673"><sup>673</sup></a> The English
+  ambassador, Sir John <!-- Page 417 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page417"></a>[pg 417]</span> Hacket, still remained at Brussels,
+  and the two governments were formally at peace; but when Hacket required
+  the queen-regent to forbid the publication of the brief of July in the
+  Netherlands, he was met with a positive refusal. "M. Ambassador," she
+  said, "the Emperor, the King of Hungary, the Queen of France, the King of
+  Portugal, and I, understand what are the rights of our aunt&mdash;our
+  duty is to her&mdash;and such letters of the pope as come hither in her
+  favour we shall obey. Your master has no right to complain either of the
+  emperor or of myself, if we support our aunt in a just cause."<a
+  name="NtA_674"></a><a href="#Nt_674"><sup>674</sup></a> At the same time,
+  formal complaints were made by Charles of the personal treatment of Queen
+  Catherine, and the clouds appeared to be gathering for a storm. Yet here,
+  too, there was an evident shrinking from extremities. A Welsh gentleman
+  had been at Brussels to offer his services against Henry, and had met
+  with apparent coldness. Sir John Hacket wrote, on the 15th of December,
+  that he was assured by well-informed persons, that so long as Charles
+  lived, he would never be the first to begin a war with England, "which
+  would rebound to the destruction of the Low Countries."<a
+  name="NtA_675"></a><a href="#Nt_675"><sup>675</sup></a> A week later,
+  when the queen-regent was suffering from an alarming illness, he said it
+  was reported that, should she die, Catherine or Mary, if either of them
+  was allowed to leave England, would be held "meet to have governance of
+  the Low Countries."<a name="NtA_676"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_676"><sup>676</sup></a> This was a generous step, if the
+  emperor seriously contemplated it. The failure of the Nun of Kent had
+  perhaps taught him that there was no present prospect of a successful
+  insurrection. In his conduct towards England, he was seemingly governing
+  himself by the prospect which might open for a successful attack upon it.
+  If occasion offered to strike the government in connection with an
+  efficient Catholic party in the nation itself, he would not fail to avail
+  himself of it.<a name="NtA_677"></a><a href="#Nt_677"><sup>677</sup></a>
+  Otherwise, he would perhaps content himself with an <!-- Page 418
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page418"></a>[pg 418]</span> attitude
+  of inactive menace; unless menaced himself by a Protestant
+  confederation.</p>
+
+  <p>Amidst these uneasy symptoms at home and abroad, parliament
+  re-assembled on the 15th of January. It was a changed England since these
+  men first came together on the fall of Wolsey. Session after session had
+  been spent in clipping the roots of the old tree which had overshadowed
+  them for centuries. On their present meeting they were to finish their
+  work, and lay it prostrate for ever. Negotiations were still pending with
+  the See of Rome, and this momentous session had closed before the final
+  catastrophe. The measures which were passed in the course of it are not,
+  therefore, to be looked upon as adopted hastily, in a spirit of
+  retaliation, but as the consistent accomplishment of a course which had
+  been deliberately adopted, to reverse the positions of the civil and
+  spiritual authority within the realm, and to withdraw the realm itself
+  from all dependence on a foreign power.</p>
+
+  <p>The Annates and Firstfruits' Bill had not yet received the royal
+  assent; but the pope had refused to grant the bulls for bishops recently
+  appointed, and he was no longer to receive payment for services which he
+  refused to render. Peter's pence were still paid, and might continue to
+  be paid, if the pope would recollect himself; but, like the Sibyl of
+  Cuma, Henry destroyed some fresh privilege with each delay of justice,
+  demanding the same price for the preservation of what remained. The
+  secondary streams of tribute now only remained to the Roman See; and
+  communion with the English church, which it was for Clement to accept or
+  refuse.</p>
+
+  <p>The circumstances under which the session opened were, however, grave
+  and saddening. Simultaneously with the concluding legislation on the
+  church, the succession to the throne was to be determined in terms which
+  might, perhaps, be accepted as a declaration of war by the emperor; and
+  the affair of the Nun of Kent had rendered necessary an inquiry into the
+  conduct of honoured members of the two Houses, who were lying under the
+  shadow of high treason. The conditions were for the first time to be
+  plainly seen under which the Reformation was to fight its way. The road
+  which lay before it was beset not merely with external obstacles, which a
+  strong will and a strong hand could crush, but with the phantoms of dying
+  faiths, which haunted the hearts of all living men; the superstitions,
+  the prejudices, the hopes, the fears, the passions, which swayed stormily
+  and fitfully through the minds of every actor in the great drama.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 419 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page419"></a>[pg 419]</span>
+
+  <p>The uniformity of action in the parliament of 1529, during the seven
+  years which it continued, is due to the one man who saw his way
+  distinctly, Thomas Cromwell. The nation was substantially united in the
+  divorce question, could the divorce be secured without a rupture with the
+  European powers. It was united also on the necessity of limiting the
+  jurisdiction of the clergy, and cutting short the powers of the
+  consistory courts. But in questions of "opinion" there was the most
+  sensitive jealousy; and from the combined instincts of prejudice and
+  conservatism, the majority of the country in a count of heads would
+  undoubtedly have been against a separation from Rome.</p>
+
+  <p>The clergy professed to approve the acts of the government, but it was
+  for the most part with the unwilling acquiescence of men who were without
+  courage to refuse. The king was divided against himself. Nine days in ten
+  he was the clear-headed, energetic, powerful statesman; on the tenth he
+  was looking wistfully to the superstition which he had left, and the
+  clear sunshine was darkened with theological clouds, which broke in
+  lightning and persecution. Thus there was danger at any moment of a
+  reaction, unless opportunity was taken at the flood, unless the work was
+  executed too completely to admit of reconsideration, and the nation
+  committed to a course from which it was impossible to recede. The action
+  of the conservatives was paralysed for the time by the want of a fixed
+  purpose. The various parts of the movement were so skilfully linked
+  together, that partial opposition to it was impossible; and so long as
+  the people had to choose between the pope and the king, their loyalty
+  would not allow them to hesitate. But very few men actively adhered to
+  Cromwell. Cromwell had struck the line on which the forces of nature were
+  truly moving&mdash;the resultant, not of the victory of either of the
+  extreme parties, but of the joint action of their opposing forces. To him
+  belonged the rare privilege of genius, to see what other men could not
+  see; and therefore he was condemned to rule a generation which hated him,
+  to do the will of God, and to perish in his success. He had no party. By
+  the nobles he was regarded with the same mixed contempt and fear which
+  had been felt for Wolsey. The Protestants, perhaps, knew what he was, but
+  he could only purchase their toleration by himself checking their
+  extravagance. Latimer was the only person of real power on whose
+  friendship he could calculate, and Latimer was too plain spoken on
+  dangerous questions to be useful as a political supporter.</p>
+
+  <p>The session commenced on the 15th of January.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 420 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page420"></a>[pg 420]</span>
+
+  <p>The first step was to receive the final submission of convocation. The
+  undignified resistance was at last over, and the clergy had promised to
+  abstain for the future from unlicensed legislation. To secure their
+  adherence to their engagements, an act<a name="NtA_678"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_678"><sup>678</sup></a> was passed to make the breach of that
+  engagement penal; and a commission of thirty-two persons, half of whom
+  were to be laymen, was designed for the revision of the Canon law.<a
+  name="NtA_679"></a><a href="#Nt_679"><sup>679</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The next most important movement was to assimilate the trials for
+  heresy with the trials for other criminal offences. I have already
+  explained at length the manner in which the bishops abused their judicial
+  powers. These powers were not absolutely taken away, but ecclesiastics
+  were no longer permitted to arrest <i>ex officio</i> and examine at their
+  pleasure. Where a charge of heresy was to be brought against a man,
+  presentments were to be made by lawful witnesses before justices of the
+  peace; and then, and not otherwise, he might fall under the authority of
+  the "ordinary." Secret examinations were declared illegal. The offender
+  was to be tried in open court, and, previous to his trial, had a right to
+  be admitted to bail, unless the bishop could show cause to the contrary
+  to the satisfaction of two magistrates.<a name="NtA_680"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_680"><sup>680</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This was but a slight instalment of lenity; but it was an indication
+  of the turning tide. Limited as it was, the act operated as an effective
+  check upon persecution till the passing of the Six Articles Bill.</p>
+
+  <p>Turning next to the relations between England and Rome, the parliament
+  reviewed the Annates Act,<a name="NtA_681"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_681"><sup>681</sup></a> which had been left unratified in the
+  hope that the pope might have consented to a compromise, and that "by
+  some gentle ways the said exaction might have been redressed and
+  reformed." The expectation had been disappointed. The pope had not
+  condescended to reply to the communication which had been made to him,
+  and the act had in consequence received the royal assent. An alteration
+  had thus become necessary in the manner of presentation to vacant
+  bishoprics. The anomalies of the existing practice have been already
+  described. By the Great Charter the chapters had acquired the right of
+  free election. A <i>congé d'élire</i> was granted by the king on the
+  occurrence of a vacancy, <!-- Page 421 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page421"></a>[pg 421]</span> with no attempt at a nomination. The
+  chapters were supposed to make their choice freely, and the name of the
+  bishop-elect was forwarded to the pope, who returned the Pallium and the
+  Bulls, receiving the Annates in exchange. The pope's part in the matter
+  was now terminated. No Annates would be sent any longer to Rome, and no
+  Bulls would be returned from Rome. The appointments lay between the
+  chapters and the crown; and it might have seemed, at first sight, as if
+  it would have been sufficient to omit the reference to the papacy, and as
+  if the remaining forms might continue as they were. The chapters,
+  however, had virtually long ceased to elect freely; the crown had
+  absorbed the entire functions of presentation, sometimes appointing
+  foreigners,<a name="NtA_682"></a><a href="#Nt_682"><sup>682</sup></a>
+  sometimes allowing the great ecclesiastical ministers to nominate
+  themselves;<a name="NtA_683"></a><a href="#Nt_683"><sup>683</sup></a>
+  while the rights of the chapters, though existing in theory, were not
+  officially recognised either by the pope or by the crown. The king
+  affected to accept the names of the prelates-elect, when returned to him
+  from Rome, as nominations by the pope; and the pope, in communicating
+  with the chapters, presented them with their bishops as from himself.<a
+  name="NtA_684"></a><a href="#Nt_684"><sup>684</sup></a> The papal share
+  in the matter was a shadow, but it was acknowledged under the forms of
+  courtesy; the share of the chapters was wholly and absolutely ignored.
+  The crisis of a revolution was not the moment at which their legal
+  privileges could be safely restored to them. The problem of
+  re-arrangement was a difficult one, and it was met in a manner peculiarly
+  English. The practice of granting the <i>congé d'élire</i> to the
+  chapters on the occurrence of a vacancy, which had fallen into desuetude,
+  was again adopted, and the church resumed the forms of liberty: but the
+  licence to elect a bishop was to be accompanied with the name of the
+  person whom the chapter was required to elect; and if within twelve days
+  the person so named <!-- Page 422 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page422"></a>[pg 422]</span> had not been chosen, the nomination of
+  the crown was to become absolute, and the chapter would incur a
+  Premunire.<a name="NtA_685"></a><a href="#Nt_685"><sup>685</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This act, which I conceive to have been more arbitrary in form than in
+  intention, was followed by a closing attack upon the remaining
+  "exactions" of the Bishop of Rome. The Annates were gone. There were yet
+  to go, "Pensions, Censes, Peter's Pence, Procurations, Fruits, Suits for
+  Provision, Delegacies and Rescripts in causes of Contention and Appeals,
+  Jurisdictions legatine&mdash;also Dispensations, Licenses, Faculties,
+  Grants, Relaxations, Writs called Perinde valere, Rehabilitations,
+  Abolitions," with other unnamed (the parliament being wearied of naming
+  them) "infinite sorts of Rules, Briefs, and instruments of sundry
+  natures, names, and kinds." All these were perennially open sluices,
+  which had drained England of its wealth for centuries, returning only in
+  showers of paper, and the Commons were determined that streams so
+  unremunerative should flow no longer. They conceived that they had been
+  all along imposed upon, and that the "Bishop of Rome was to be blamed for
+  having allured and beguiled the English nation, persuading them that he
+  had power to dispense with human laws, uses, and customs, contrary to
+  right and conscience." If the king so pleased, therefore, they would not
+  be so beguiled any more. These and all similar exactions should cease;
+  and all powers claimed by the Bishop of Rome within the realm <!-- Page
+  423 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page423"></a>[pg 423]</span> should
+  cease, and should be transferred to the crown. At the same time they
+  would not press upon the pope too hardly; they would repeat the same
+  conditions which they had offered with the Annates. He had received these
+  revenues as the supreme judge in the highest court in Europe, and he
+  might retain his revenues or receive compensation for them, if he dared
+  to be just. It was for himself to resolve, and three months were allowed
+  for a final decision.</p>
+
+  <p>In conclusion, the Commons thought it well to assert that they were
+  separating, not from the church of Christ, but only from the papacy. A
+  judge who allowed himself to be overawed against his conscience by a
+  secular power, could not any longer be recognised; but no thing or things
+  contained in the act should be afterwards "interpreted or expounded, that
+  his Grace (the king), his nobles and subjects, intended by the same to
+  decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's church in anything
+  concerning the articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom, or in any
+  other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary
+  for salvation; but only to make an ordinance, by policies necessary and
+  convenient, to repress vice, and for the good conservation of the realm
+  in peace, unity, and tranquillity, from ravin and spoil&mdash;ensuing
+  much the old antient customs of the realm in that behalf."<a
+  name="NtA_686"></a><a href="#Nt_686"><sup>686</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The most arduous business was thus finished&mdash;the most painful
+  remained. The Nun of Kent and her accomplices were to be proceeded
+  against by act of parliament; and the bill of their attainder was
+  presented for the first time in the House of Lords, on the 18th of
+  February. The offence of the principal conspirators was plainly high
+  treason; their own confessions removed uncertainty; the guilt was
+  clear&mdash;the sentence was inevitable. But the fault of those who had
+  been listeners only was less easy of measurement, and might vary from
+  comparative innocence to a definite breach of allegiance.</p>
+
+  <p>The government were unwilling to press with severity on the noble
+  lords and ladies whose names had been unexpectedly brought to light; and
+  there were two men of high rank only, whose complicity it was thought
+  necessary to notice. The Bishop of Rochester's connection with the Nun
+  had been culpably encouraging; and the responsibility of Sir Thomas More
+  was held also to be very great in having countenanced, however lightly,
+  such perilous schemers.</p>
+
+  <p>In the bill, therefore, as it was first read, More and Fisher <!--
+  Page 424 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page424"></a>[pg 424]</span>
+  found themselves declared guilty of misprision of treason. But the object
+  of this measure was rather to warn than to punish, nor was there any real
+  intention of continuing their prosecution. Cromwell, under instructions
+  from the king, had communicated privately with both of them. He had sent
+  a message to Fisher through his brother, telling him that he had only to
+  ask for forgiveness to receive it;<a name="NtA_687"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_687"><sup>687</sup></a> and he had begged More through his
+  son-in-law, Mr. Roper, to furnish him with an explicit account of what
+  had passed at any time between himself and the Nun,<a
+  name="NtA_688"></a><a href="#Nt_688"><sup>688</sup></a> with an
+  intimation that, if honestly made, it would be accepted in his
+  favour.</p>
+
+  <p>These advances were met by More in the spirit in which they were
+  offered. He heartily thanked Cromwell, "reckoning himself right deeply
+  beholden to him;"<a name="NtA_689"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_689"><sup>689</sup></a> and replied with a long, minute, and
+  evidently veracious story, detailing an interview which he had held with
+  the woman in the chapel of Sion Monastery. He sent at the same time a
+  copy of a letter which he had written to her, and described various
+  conversations with the friars who were concerned in the forgery. He did
+  not deny that he had believed the Nun to have been inspired, or that he
+  had heard of the language which she was in the habit of using respecting
+  the king. He protested, however, that he had himself never entertained a
+  treasonable thought. He told Cromwell that "he had done a very
+  meritorious deed in bringing forth to light such detestable hypocrisy,
+  whereby every other wretch might take warning, and be feared to set forth
+  their devilish dissembled falsehoods under the manner and colour of the
+  wonderful work of God."<a name="NtA_690"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_690"><sup>690</sup></a> More's offence had not been great. His
+  acknowledgments were open and unreserved; and Cromwell laid his letter
+  before the king, adding his own intercession that the matter might be
+  passed over. Henry consented, expressing only his grief and concern that
+  Sir Thomas More should have acted so unwisely.<a name="NtA_691"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_691"><sup>691</sup></a> He required, nevertheless, as Cromwell
+  suggested, that a formal letter should be written, with a confession of
+  fault, and a request for forgiveness. More obeyed; he wrote, gracefully
+  reminding the king of a promise <!-- Page 425 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page425"></a>[pg 425]</span> when he resigned the chancellorship,
+  that in any suit which he might afterwards have to his Grace, either
+  touching his honour or his profit, he should find his Highness his good
+  and gracious lord.<a name="NtA_692"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_692"><sup>692</sup></a> Henry acknowledged his claim; his name
+  was struck out of the bill, and the prosecution against him was
+  dropped.</p>
+
+  <p>Fisher's conduct was very different; his fault had been far greater
+  than More's, and promises more explicit had been held out to him of
+  forgiveness. He replied to these promises by an elaborate and ridiculous
+  defence&mdash;not writing to the king, as Cromwell desired him, but
+  vindicating himself as having committed no fault; although he had
+  listened eagerly to language which was only pardonable on the assumption
+  that it was inspired, and had encouraged a nest of fanatics by his
+  childish credulity. The Nun "had showed him not," he said, "that any
+  prince or temporal lord should put the king in danger of his crown." He
+  knew nothing of the intended insurrection. He believed the woman to have
+  been a saint; he supposed that she had herself told the king all which
+  she had told to him; and therefore he said that he had nothing for which
+  to reproach himself.<a name="NtA_693"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_693"><sup>693</sup></a> He was unable to see that the exposure
+  of the imposture had imparted a fresh character to his conduct, which he
+  was bound to regret. Knowingly or unknowingly, he had lent his
+  countenance to a conspiracy; and so long as he refused to acknowledge his
+  indiscretion, the government necessarily would interpret his actions in
+  the manner least to his advantage.</p>
+
+  <p>If he desired that his conduct should be forgotten, it was
+  indispensable that he should change his attitude, and so Cromwell warned
+  him. "Ye desire," the latter wrote, "for the passion of Christ, that ye
+  be no more quickened in this matter; for if ye be put to that strait ye
+  will not lose your soul, but ye will speak as your conscience leadeth
+  you; with many more words of great courage. My Lord, if ye had taken my
+  counsel sent unto you by your brother, and followed the same, submitting
+  yourself by your letter to the King's Grace for your offences in this
+  behalf, I would have trusted that ye should never be quickened in the
+  matter more. But now where ye take upon you to defy the whole matter as
+  ye were in no default, I cannot so far promise you. Wherefore, my Lord, I
+  would eftsoons advise you that, laying apart all such excuses as ye have
+  alleged in your letters, which in my opinion be of small <!-- Page 426
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page426"></a>[pg 426]</span> effect, ye
+  beseech the King's Grace to be your gracious lord and to remit unto you
+  your negligence, oversight, and offence committed against his Highness in
+  this behalf; and I dare undertake that his Highness shall benignly accept
+  you into his gracious favour, all matter of displeasure past afore this
+  time forgotten and forgiven."<a name="NtA_694"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_694"><sup>694</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Fisher must have been a hopelessly impracticable person. Instead of
+  following More's example, and accepting well-meant advice, he persisted
+  in the same tone, and drew up an address to the House of Lords, in which
+  he repeated the defence which he had made to Cromwell. He expressed no
+  sorrow that he had been engaged in a criminal intrigue, no pleasure that
+  the intrigue had been discovered; and he doggedly adhered to his
+  assertions of his own innocence.<a name="NtA_695"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_695"><sup>695</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>There was nothing to be done except to proceed with his attainder. The
+  bill passed three readings, and the various prisoners were summoned to
+  the Star Chamber to be heard in arrest of judgment. The Bishop of
+  Rochester's attendance was dispensed with on the ground of illness, and
+  because he had made his defence in writing.<a name="NtA_696"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_696"><sup>696</sup></a> Nothing of consequence was urged by
+  either of the accused. The bill was most explicit in its details, going
+  carefully through the history of the imposture, and dwelling on the
+  separate acts of each offender. They were able to disprove no one of its
+  clauses, and on the 12th of March it was read a last time. On the 21st it
+  received the royal assent, and there remained only to execute the
+  sentence. The Nun herself, Richard Masters, and the five friars being
+  found guilty of high treason, were to die; the Bishop of Rochester,
+  Father Abel, Queen Catherine's confessor, and four more, were sentenced
+  for misprision of treason to forfeiture of goods and imprisonment. All
+  other persons implicated whose names did not appear, were declared
+  pardoned at the intercession of Queen Anne.<a name="NtA_697"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_697"><sup>697</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The chief offenders suffered at Tyburn on the 21st of April, meeting
+  death calmly, as it appears; receiving a fate most necessary and most
+  deserved,<a name="NtA_698"></a><a href="#Nt_698"><sup>698</sup></a> yet
+  claiming from us that partial <!-- Page 427 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page427"></a>[pg 427]</span> respect which is due to all persons
+  who will risk their lives in an unselfish cause. For the Nun herself, we
+  may feel even a less qualified regret. Before her death she was permitted
+  to speak a few words to the people, which at the distance of three
+  centuries will not be read without emotion.</p>
+
+  <p>"Hither am I come to die," she said, "and I have not been the only
+  cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved; but also I am
+  the cause of the death of all these persons which at this time here
+  suffer. And yet I am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was
+  well known unto these learned men that I was a poor wench without
+  learning; and therefore they might have easily perceived that the things
+  which were done by me could not proceed in no such sort; but their
+  capacities and learning could right well judge that they were altogether
+  feigned. But because the things which I feigned were profitable unto
+  them, therefore they much praised me, and bare me in hand that it was the
+  Holy Ghost and not I that did them. And I being puffed up with their
+  praises, fell into a pride and foolish fantasye with myself, and thought
+  I might feign what I would, which thing hath brought me to this case, and
+  for the which I now cry God and the King's Highness most heartily mercy,
+  and desire all you good people to pray to God to have mercy on me, and on
+  all them that here suffer with me."<a name="NtA_699"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_699"><sup>699</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>And now the closing seal was to be affixed to the agitation of the
+  great question of the preceding years. I have said that throughout these
+  years the uncertainty of the succession had been the continual anxiety of
+  the nation. The birth of a prince or princess could alone provide an
+  absolute security; and to beget a prince appeared to be the single feat
+  which Henry was unable to accomplish. The marriage so dearly bought had
+  been followed as yet only by a girl; and if the king were to die, <!--
+  Page 428 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page428"></a>[pg 428]</span>
+  leaving two daughters circumstanced as Mary and Elizabeth were
+  circumstanced, a dispute would open which the sword only could decide. To
+  escape the certainty of civil war, therefore, it was necessary to lay
+  down the line of inheritance by a peremptory order; to cut off resolutely
+  all rival claims; and in legislating upon a matter so vital, and hitherto
+  so uncertain and indeterminate, to enforce the decision with the most
+  stringent and exacting penalties. From the Heptarchy downwards English
+  history furnished no fixed rule of inheritance, but only a series of
+  precedents of uncertainty; and while at no previous time had the
+  circumstances of the succession been of a nature so legitimately
+  embarrassing, the relations of England with the pope and with foreign
+  powers doubly enhanced the danger. But I will not use my own language on
+  so important a subject. The preamble of the Act of Succession is the best
+  interpreter of the provisions of that act.</p>
+
+  <p>"In their most humble wise show unto your Majesty your most humble and
+  obedient subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons, in
+  this present parliament assembled; that since it is the natural
+  inclination of every man gladly and willingly to provide for the safety
+  of both his title and succession, although it touch only his private
+  cause; we therefore, most rightful and dreadful Sovereign Lord, reckon
+  ourselves much more bounden to beseech and intreat your Highness
+  (although we doubt not of your princely heart and wisdom, mixed with a
+  natural affection to the same) to foresee and provide for the most
+  perfect surety of both you and of your most lawful successors and heirs,
+  upon which dependeth all our joy and wealth; in whom also is united and
+  knit the only mere true inheritance and title of this realm without any
+  contradiction. We, your said most humble and obedient servants, call to
+  our remembrance the great divisions which in times past hath been in this
+  realm by reason of several titles pretended to the imperial crown of the
+  same; which some time and for the most part ensued by occasion of
+  ambiguity, and [by] doubts then not so perfectly declared but that men
+  might upon froward intents expound them to every man's sinister appetite
+  and affection after their senses; whereof hath ensued great destruction
+  and effusion of man's blood, as well of a great number of the nobles as
+  of other the subjects and specialty inheritors in the same. The greatest
+  occasion thereof hath been because no perfect and substantial provision
+  by law hath been made within this realm itself when doubts and questions
+  have been moved; <!-- Page 429 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page429"></a>[pg 429]</span> by reason whereof the Bishops of Rome
+  and See Apostolic have presumed in times past to invest who should please
+  them to inherit in other men's kingdoms and dominions, which thing we
+  your most humble subjects, both spiritual and temporal, do much abhor and
+  detest. And sometimes other foreign princes and potentates of sundry
+  degrees, minding rather dissension and discord to continue in the realm
+  than charity, equity, or unity, have many times supported wrong titles,
+  whereby they might the more easily and facilly aspire to the superiority
+  of the same.</p>
+
+  <p>"The continuance and sufferance of these things, deeply considered and
+  pondered, is too dangerous and perilous to be suffered any longer; and
+  too much contrary to unity, peace, and tranquillity, being greatly
+  reproachable and dishonourable to the whole realm. And in consideration
+  thereof, your said subjects, calling further to their remembrance, that
+  the good unity, peace, and wealth of the realm, specially and
+  principally, above all worldly things, consisteth in the surety and
+  certainty of the procreation and posterity of your Highness, in whose
+  most Royal person at this time is no manner of doubt, do therefore most
+  humbly beseech your Highness that it may be enacted, with the consent of
+  the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in this present
+  parliament assembled&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"1. That the marriage between your Highness and the Lady Catherine,
+  widow of the late Prince Arthur, be declared to have been from the
+  beginning, null, the issue of it illegitimate, and the separation
+  pronounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury good and valid.</p>
+
+  <p>"2. That the marriage between your Highness and your most dear and
+  entirely beloved wife, Queen Anne, be established and held good, and
+  taken for undoubtful, true, sincere, and perfect, ever hereafter."<a
+  name="NtA_701"></a><a href="#Nt_701"><sup>701</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The act then assumed a general character, laying down a table of
+  prohibited degrees, within which marriage might not under any pretence be
+  in future contracted; and demanding that any marriage which might already
+  exist within those degrees should be at once dissolved. After this
+  provision, it again returned to the king, and fixed the order in which
+  his children by Queen Anne were to succeed. The details of the
+  regulations were minute and elaborate, and the rule to be observed was
+  the same as that which exists at present. First, the sons were to succeed
+  <!-- Page 430 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page430"></a>[pg
+  430]</span> with their heirs. If sons failed, then the daughters, with
+  their heirs; and, in conclusion, it was resolved that any person who
+  should maliciously do anything by writing, printing, or other external
+  act or deed to the peril of the king, or to the prejudice of his marriage
+  with Queen Anne, or to the derogation of the issue of that marriage,
+  should be held guilty of high treason; and whoever should speak against
+  that marriage, should be held guilty of misprision of
+  treason&mdash;severe enactments, such as could not be justified at
+  ordinary times, and such as, if the times had been ordinary, would not
+  have been thought necessary&mdash;but the exigencies of the country could
+  not tolerate an uncertainty of title in the heir to the crown; and the
+  title could only be secured by prohibiting absolutely the discussion of
+  dangerous questions.</p>
+
+  <p>The mere enactment of a statute, whatever penalties were attached to
+  the violation of it, was still, however, an insufficient safeguard. The
+  recent investigation had revealed a spirit of disloyalty, where such a
+  spirit had not been expected. The deeper the inquiry had penetrated, the
+  more clearly appeared tokens, if not of conspiracy, yet of excitement, of
+  doubt, of agitation, of alienated feeling, if not of alienated act. All
+  the symptoms were abroad which provide disaffection with its opportunity;
+  and in the natural confusion which attended the revolt from the papacy,
+  the obligations of duty, both political and religious, had become
+  indefinite and contradictory, pointing in all directions, like the
+  magnetic needle in a thunderstorm.</p>
+
+  <p>It was thought well, therefore, to vest a power in the crown, of
+  trying the tempers of suspected persons, and examining them upon oath, as
+  to their willingness to maintain the decision of parliament. This measure
+  was a natural corollary of the statute, and depended for its
+  justification on the extent of the danger to which the state was exposed.
+  If a difference of opinion on the legitimacy of the king's children, or
+  of the pope's power in England, was not dangerous, it was unjust to
+  interfere with the natural liberty of speech or thought. If it was
+  dangerous, and if the state had cause for supposing that opinions of the
+  kind might spread in secret so long as no opportunity was offered for
+  detecting their progress, to require the oath was a measure of reasonable
+  self-defence, not permissible only, but in a high degree necessary and
+  right.</p>
+
+  <p>Under the impression, then, that the circumstances of the country
+  demanded extraordinary precautions, a commission was appointed,
+  consisting of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord <!-- Page 431
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page431"></a>[pg 431]</span>
+  Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Duke of Suffolk; and these four,
+  or any three of them, were empowered to administer, at the pleasure of
+  the king, "to all and singular liege subjects of the realm," the
+  following oath:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Ye shall swear to bear your faith, truth, and obedience only to the
+  King's Majesty, and to the heirs of his body, according to the limitation
+  and rehearsal within the statute of succession; and not to any other
+  within this realm, or foreign authority, prince, or potentate: and in
+  case any oath be made or hath been made by you to any other person or
+  persons, that then you do repute the same as vain and annihilate: and
+  that to your cunning, wit, and utmost of your power, without guile,
+  fraud, or other undue means, ye shall observe, keep, maintain, and defend
+  this act above specified, and all the whole contents and effects thereof;
+  and all other acts and statutes made since the beginning of this present
+  parliament, in confirmation or for due execution of the same, or of
+  anything therein contained. And thus ye shall do against all manner of
+  persons, of what estate, dignity, degree, or condition soever they be;
+  and in no wise do or attempt, or to your power suffer to be done or
+  attempted, directly or indirectly, any thing or things, privily or
+  apertly, to the let, hindrance, damage, or derogation thereof, by any
+  manner of means, or for any pretence or cause, so help you God and all
+  saints."<a name="NtA_702"></a><a href="#Nt_702"><sup>702</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>With this last resolution the House rose, having sat seventy-five
+  days, and despatched their business swiftly. A week later, the news
+  arrived from Rome that there too all was at length over; that the cause
+  was decided, and decided against the king. The history of the closing
+  catastrophe is as obscure as it is strange, and the account of the manner
+  in which it was brought about is unfortunately incomplete in many
+  important particulars. The outline only can be apprehended, and that very
+  imperfectly.</p>
+
+<!-- Page 432 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page432"></a>[pg 432]</span>
+
+  <p>On the receipt in Paris of the letter in which Henry threatened to
+  organise a Protestant confederacy, Du Bellay, in genuine anxiety for the
+  welfare of Christendom, had volunteered his services for a final effort.
+  Not a moment was to be lost, for the courts of Rome were already busy
+  with the great cause; but the king's evident reluctance to break with the
+  Catholic powers, gave room for hope that something might still be done;
+  and going in person to England, the bishop had induced Henry, at the last
+  extremity, either to entrust him with representative powers, or else to
+  allow him after all to make some kind of concession. I am unable to learn
+  the extent to which Henry yielded, but that an offer was made of some
+  kind is evident from the form of the story.<a name="NtA_703"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_703"><sup>703</sup></a> The winter was very cold, but the
+  bishop made his way to Rome with the haste of good will, and arrived in
+  time to stay judgment, which was on the point of being pronounced. It
+  seemed, for the moment, as if he would succeed. He was permitted to make
+  engagements on the part of Henry; and that time might be allowed for
+  communication with England, the pope agreed to delay sentence till the
+  23rd of March. This bishop's terms were approved by the king, and a
+  courier was sent off with letters of confirmation; Sir Edward Karne and
+  Dr. Revett following leisurely, with a more ample commission. The stone
+  which had been laboriously rolled to the summit of the hill was trembling
+  on the brink, and in a moment might rebound into the plain.</p>
+
+  <p>But this was not to be the end. Some accidental cause delayed the
+  courier; the 23rd of March came, and he had not arrived. Du Bellay
+  implored a further respite. The King of England, he said, had waited six
+  years; it was not a great thing for the papal council to wait six days.
+  The cardinals were divided; but the Spanish party were the strongest, and
+  when the votes were taken carried the day. The die was cast, and the
+  pope, in spite of himself, his promises, and his conscience, drove at
+  length upon the rocks to which he had been so long drifting.<a
+  name="NtA_704"></a><a href="#Nt_704"><sup>704</sup></a> In deference to
+  the opinion of the majority of the cardinals, he pronounced the original
+  marriage to have been valid, the dispensation <!-- Page 433 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page433"></a>[pg 433]</span> by which it was
+  permitted to have been legal; and, as a natural consequence, Henry, King
+  of England, should he fail in obedience to this judgment, was declared to
+  be excommunicate from the fellowship of the church, and to have forfeited
+  the allegiance of his subjects.</p>
+
+  <p>Lest the censures should be discredited by a blank discharge,
+  engagements were entered into, that within four months of the
+  promulgation of the sentence, the emperor would invade England, and Henry
+  should be deposed.<a name="NtA_705"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_705"><sup>705</sup></a> The imperialists illuminated Rome;
+  cannon were fired; bonfires blazed; and great bodies of men paraded the
+  streets with shouts of "the Empire and Spain."<a name="NtA_706"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_706"><sup>706</sup></a> Already, in their eager expectation,
+  England was a second Netherlands, a captured province under the regency
+  of Catherine or Mary.</p>
+
+  <p>Two days later, the courier arrived. The pope, at the entreaties of
+  the Bishop of Paris, re-assembled the consistory, to consider whether the
+  steps which had been taken should be undone. They sat debating all night,
+  and the result was nothing. No dependence could be placed on the
+  cardinals, Du Bellay said, for they spoke one way, and voted another.<a
+  name="NtA_707"></a><a href="#Nt_707"><sup>707</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus all was over. In a scene of general helplessness the long drama
+  closed, and, what we call accident, for want of some better word, cut the
+  knot at last over which human incapacity had so vainly laboured. The
+  Bishop of Paris retired from Rome in despair. On his way back, he met the
+  English commissioners at Bologna, and told them that their errand was
+  hopeless, and that they need not proceed. "When we asked him," wrote Sir
+  Edward Karne to the king, "the cause of such hasty process, he made
+  answer that the imperialists at Rome had strengthened themselves in such
+  a manner, that they coacted the said Bishop of Rome to give sentence
+  contrary to his own mind, and the expectation of himself and of the
+  French king. He showed us also that the Lady Princess Dowager sent
+  lately, in the month of March past, letters to the Bishop of Rome, and
+  also to her proctors, whereby the Bishop of Rome was much moved for her
+  part. The imperials, before the sentence was given, promised, in the
+  emperor's behalf, that he would be the executor of the sentence."<a
+  name="NtA_708"></a><a href="#Nt_708"><sup>708</sup></a></p>
+
+<!-- Page 434 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page434"></a>[pg 434]</span>
+
+  <p>This is all which we are able to say of the immediate catastrophe
+  which decided the fate of England, and through England, of the world. The
+  deep impenetrable falsehood of the Roman ecclesiastics prevents us from
+  discovering with what intentions the game of the last few weeks or months
+  had been played; it is sufficient for Englishmen to remember that,
+  whatever may have been the explanation of his conduct, the pope, in the
+  concluding passage of his connection with this country, furnished the
+  most signal justification which was ever given for the revolt from an
+  abused authority. The supreme judge in Christendom had for six years
+  trifled with justice, out of fear of an earthly prince; he concluded
+  these years with uniting the extreme of folly with the extreme of
+  improbity, and pronounced a sentence, willingly or unwillingly, which he
+  had acknowledged to be unjust.</p>
+
+  <p>Charity may possibly acquit Clement of conscious duplicity. He was one
+  of those men who waited upon fortune, and waited always without success;
+  who gave his word as the interest of the moment suggested, trusting that
+  it might be convenient to observe it; and who was too long accustomed to
+  break his promises to look with any particular alarm on that contingency.
+  It is possible, also,&mdash;for of this Clement was capable&mdash;that he
+  knew from the beginning the conclusion to which he would at last be
+  driven; that he had engaged himself with Charles to decide in Catherine's
+  favour as distinctly as he had engaged himself with Francis to decide
+  against her; and that all his tortuous scheming was intended either to
+  weary out the patience of the King of England, or to entangle him in
+  acknowledgments from which he would not be able to extricate himself.</p>
+
+  <p>He was mistaken, certainly, in the temper of the English nation; he
+  believed what the friars told him; and trusting to the promises of
+  disaffection, insurrection, invasion&mdash;those <i>ignes fatui</i> which
+  for sixty years floated so delusively before the Italian imagination, he
+  imagined, perhaps, that he might trifle with Henry with impunity. This
+  only is impossible, that, if he had seriously intended to fulfil the
+  promises which he had made to the French king, the accidental delay of a
+  courier could have made so large a difference in his determination. It is
+  not possible that, if he had assured himself, as he pretended, that
+  justice was on the side against which he had declared, he would not have
+  availed himself of any pretext to retreat from a position which ought to
+  have been intolerable to him.</p>
+
+  <p>The question, however, had ended, "as all things in this <!-- Page 435
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page435"></a>[pg 435]</span> world do
+  have their end." The news of the sentence arrived in England at the
+  beginning of April, with an intimation of the engagements which had been
+  entered upon by the imperial ambassador for an invasion. Du Bellay
+  returned to Paris at the same time, to report the failure of his
+  undertaking; and Francis, disappointed, angry, and alarmed, sent the Duke
+  of Guise to London with promises of support if an attempt to invade was
+  really made, and with a warning at the same time to Henry to prepare for
+  danger. Troops were gathering in Flanders; detachments were on their way
+  out of Italy, Germany, and Bohemia, to be followed by three thousand
+  Spaniards, and perhaps many more; and the object avowed for these
+  preparations was wholly incommensurate with their magnitude.<a
+  name="NtA_709"></a><a href="#Nt_709"><sup>709</sup></a> For his own sake
+  Francis could not permit a successful invasion of England, unless,
+  indeed, he himself was to take part in it; and therefore, with entire
+  sincerity, he offered his services. The cordial understanding for which
+  Henry had hoped was at an end; but the political confederacy remained,
+  which the interests of the two countries combined for the present to
+  preserve unbroken.</p>
+
+  <p>Guise proposed another interview at Calais between the sovereigns. The
+  king for the moment was afraid to leave England,<a name="NtA_710"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_710"><sup>710</sup></a> lest the opportunity should be made use
+  of for an insurrection; but prudence taught him, though disappointed in
+  Francis, to make the best of a connection too convenient to be
+  sacrificed. The German league was left in abeyance till the immediate
+  danger was passed, and till the effect of the shock in England itself had
+  been first experienced. He gladly accepted, in lieu of it, an offer that
+  the French fleet should guard the Channel through the summer; and
+  meanwhile, he collected himself resolutely, to abide the issue, whatever
+  the issue was to be.</p>
+
+  <p>The Tudor spirit was at length awake in the English sovereign. He had
+  exhausted the resources of patience; he had stooped even to indignity to
+  avoid the conclusion which had come at last. There was nothing left but
+  to meet defiance by defiance, and accept the position to which the pope
+  had driven <!-- Page 436 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page436"></a>[pg 436]</span> him. In quiet times occasionally
+  wayward and capricious, Henry, like Elizabeth after him, reserved his
+  noblest nature for the moment of danger, and was ever greatest when peril
+  was most immediate. Woe to those who crossed him now, for the time was
+  grown stern, and to trifle further was to be lost. The suspended act of
+  parliament was made law on the day (it would seem) of the arrival of the
+  sentence. Convocation, which was still sitting, hurried through a
+  declaration that the pope had no more power in England than any other
+  bishop.<a name="NtA_711"></a><a href="#Nt_711"><sup>711</sup></a> Five
+  years before, if a heretic had ventured so desperate an opinion, the
+  clergy would have shut their ears and run upon him: now they only
+  contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness. The houses of
+  the Observants at Canterbury and Greenwich, which had been implicated
+  with the Nun of Kent, were suppressed, and the brethren were scattered
+  among monasteries where they could be under surveillance. The Nun and her
+  friends were sent to execution.<a name="NtA_712"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_712"><sup>712</sup></a> The ordnance stores were examined, the
+  repairs of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were strengthened
+  along the coast. Everywhere the realm armed itself for the struggle,
+  looking well to the joints of its harness and to the temper of its
+  weapons.</p>
+
+  <p>The commission appointed under the Statute of Succession opened its
+  sittings to receive the oaths of allegiance. Now, more than ever, was it
+  necessary to try men's dispositions, when the pope had challenged their
+  obedience. In words all went well: the peers swore; bishops, abbots,
+  priors, heads of colleges swore<a name="NtA_713"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_713"><sup>713</sup></a> with scarcely an exception,&mdash;the
+  nation seemed to unite in an unanimous declaration of freedom. In one
+  quarter only, and that a very painful one, was there refusal. It was
+  found solely among the persons who had been implicated in the late
+  conspiracy. Neither Sir Thomas More nor the Bishop of Rochester could
+  expect that their recent conduct would exempt them from an obligation
+  which the people generally accepted with good will. They had connected
+  themselves, perhaps unintentionally, with a body of confessed traitors.
+  An opportunity was offered them of giving evidence of their loyalty, and
+  escaping from the shadow of distrust. More had been treated leniently;
+  Fisher had been treated far more than leniently. It <!-- Page 437
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page437"></a>[pg 437]</span> was both
+  fair and natural that they should be called upon to give proof that their
+  lesson had not been learnt in vain; and, in fact, no other persons, if
+  they had been passed over, could have been called upon to swear, for no
+  other persons had laid themselves open to so just suspicion.</p>
+
+  <p>Their conduct so exactly tallied, that they must have agreed
+  beforehand on the course which they would adopt; and in following the
+  details, we need concern ourselves only with the nobler figure.</p>
+
+  <p>The commissioners sate at the archbishop's palace at Lambeth; and at
+  the end of April, Sir Thomas More received a summons to appear before
+  them.<a name="NtA_714"></a><a href="#Nt_714"><sup>714</sup></a> He was at
+  his house at Chelsea, where for the last two years he had lived in deep
+  retirement, making ready for evil times. Those times at length were come.
+  On the morning on which he was to present himself, he confessed and
+  received the sacrament in Chelsea church; and "whereas," says his
+  great-grandson, "at other times, before he parted from his wife and
+  children, they used to bring him to his boat, and he there kissing them
+  bade them farewell, at this time he suffered none of them to follow him
+  forth of his gate, but pulled the wicket after him, and with a heavy
+  heart he took boat with his son Roper."<a name="NtA_715"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_715"><sup>715</sup></a> He was leaving his home for the last
+  time, and he knew it. He sat silent for some minutes, and then, with a
+  sudden start, said, "I thank our Lord, the field is won." Lambeth Palace
+  was crowded with people who had come on the same errand with himself.
+  More was called in early, and found Cromwell present with the four
+  commissioners, and also the Abbot of Westminster. The oath was read to
+  him. It implied that he should keep the statute of succession in all its
+  parts, and he desired to see the statute itself. He read it through, and
+  at once replied that others might do as they pleased; he would blame no
+  one for taking the oath; but for himself it was impossible. He would
+  swear willingly to the part of it which secured the succession to the
+  children of Queen Anne.<a name="NtA_716"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_716"><sup>716</sup></a> That was a matter on which parliament
+  was competent to decide, and he had no right to make objections. If he
+  might <!-- Page 438 --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page438"></a>[pg
+  438]</span> be allowed to take an oath to this portion of the statute in
+  language of his own, he would do it; but as the words stood, he would
+  "peril his soul" by using them. The Lord Chancellor desired him to
+  re-consider his answer. He retired to the garden, and in his absence
+  others were called in; among them the Bishop of Rochester, who refused in
+  the same terms. More was then recalled. He was asked if he persisted in
+  his resolution; and when he replied that he did, he was requested to
+  state his reasons. He said that he was afraid of increasing the king's
+  displeasure, but if he could be assured that he might explain himself
+  safely he was ready to do so. If his objection could then be answered to
+  his satisfaction, he would swear; in the meantime, he repeated, very
+  explicitly, that he judged no one&mdash;he spoke only for himself.</p>
+
+  <p>An opening seemed to be offered in these expressions which was caught
+  at by Cranmer's kind-hearted casuistry. If Sir Thomas More could not
+  condemn others for taking the oath, the archbishop said, Sir Thomas More
+  could not be sure that it was sin to take it; while his duty to his king
+  and to the parliament was open and unquestioned.</p>
+
+  <p>More hesitated for an instant, but he speedily recovered his firmness.
+  He had considered what he ought to do, he said; his conscience was clear
+  about it, and he could say no more than he had said already. They
+  continued to argue with him, but without effect; he had made up his mind;
+  the victory, as he said, had been won.</p>
+
+  <p>Cromwell was deeply affected. In his passionate regret, he exclaimed,
+  that he had rather his only son had lost his head than that More should
+  have refused the oath. No one knew better than Cromwell that intercession
+  would be of no further use; that he could not himself advise the king to
+  give way. The parliament, after grave consideration, had passed a law
+  which they held necessary to secure the peace of the country; and two
+  persons of high rank refused obedience to it, whose example would tell in
+  every English household. Either, therefore, the act was not worth the
+  parchment on which it was written, or the penalties of it must be
+  enforced: no middle way, no compromise, no acquiescent reservations,
+  could in such a case be admitted. The law must have its way.</p>
+
+  <p>The recusants were committed for four days to the keeping of the Abbot
+  of Westminster; and the council met to determine on the course to be
+  pursued. Their offence, by the act, was misprision of treason. On the
+  other hand, they had both offered <!-- Page 439 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page439"></a>[pg 439]</span> to acknowledge the
+  Princess Elizabeth as the lawful heir to the throne; and the question was
+  raised whether this offer should be accepted. It was equivalent to a
+  demand that the form should be altered, not for them only, but for every
+  man. If persons of their rank and notoriety were permitted to swear with
+  a qualification, the same privilege must be conceded to all. But there
+  was so much anxiety to avoid extremities, and so warm a regard was
+  personally felt for Sir Thomas More, that this objection was not allowed
+  to be fatal. It was thought that possibly an exception might be made, yet
+  kept a secret from the world; and the fact that they had sworn under any
+  form might go far to silence objectors and reconcile the better class of
+  the disaffected.<a name="NtA_717"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_717"><sup>717</sup></a> This view was particularly urged by
+  Cranmer, always gentle, hoping, and illogical.<a name="NtA_718"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_718"><sup>718</sup></a> But, in fact, secresy was impossible.
+  If More's discretion could have been relied upon, Fisher's babbling
+  tongue would have trumpeted his victory to all the winds. Nor would the
+  government consent to pass censure on its own conduct by evading the
+  question whether the act was or was not just. If it was not just, it
+  ought not to be: maintained at all; if it was just, there must be no
+  respect of persons.</p>
+
+  <p>The clauses to which the bishop and the ex-chancellor declined to bind
+  themselves were those which declared illegal the marriage of the king
+  with Catherine, and the marriage legal between the king and Queen Anne.
+  To refuse these was to declare Mary legitimate, to declare Elizabeth
+  illegitimate, and would do more to strengthen Mary's claims than could be
+  undone by a thousand oaths. However large might be More's estimate of the
+  power of parliament, he could have given no clear answer&mdash;and far
+  less could Fisher have given a clear answer&mdash;if they had been
+  required to say the part which they would take, should the emperor invade
+  the kingdom under the pope's sanction. The emperor would come to execute
+  a sentence which in their consciences they believed to be just; how could
+  they retain their allegiance to Henry, when their convictions must be
+  with the invading army?</p>
+
+  <p>What ought to have been done let those say who disapprove of what was
+  actually done. The high character of the prisoners, while it increased
+  the desire, increased the difficulty of sparing them; and to have given
+  way would have been a confession of a doubtful cause, which at such a
+  time would not have been dangerous, but would have been fatal. Anne
+  Boleyn is said to <!-- Page 440 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page440"></a>[pg 440]</span> have urged the king to remain
+  peremptory;<a name="NtA_719"></a><a href="#Nt_719"><sup>719</sup></a> but
+  the following letter of Cromwell's explains the ultimate resolution of
+  the council in a very reasonable manner. It was written to Cranmer in
+  reply to his arguments for concession.</p>
+
+  <p>"My Lord, after mine humble commendation, it may please your Grace to
+  be advertised that I have received your letter, and showed the same to
+  the King's Highness; who, perceiving that your mind and opinion is, that
+  it were good that the Bishop of Rochester and Master More should be sworn
+  to the act of the king's succession, and not to the preamble of the same,
+  thinketh that if their oaths should be taken, it were an occasion to all
+  men to refuse the whole, or at least the like. For, in case they be sworn
+  to the succession, and not to the preamble, it is to be thought that it
+  might be taken not only as a confirmation of the Bishop of Rome's
+  authority, but also as a reprobation of the king's second marriage.
+  Wherefore, to the intent that no such things should be brought into the
+  heads of the people, by the example of the said Bishop of Rochester and
+  Master More, the King's Highness in no wise willeth but that they shall
+  be sworn as well to the preamble as to the act. Wherefore his Grace
+  specially trusteth that ye will in no wise attempt to move him to the
+  contrary; for as his Grace supposeth, that manner of swearing, if it
+  shall be suffered, may be an utter destruction to his whole cause, and
+  also to the effect of the law made for the same." <a
+  name="NtA_720"></a><a href="#Nt_720"><sup>720</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Thus, therefore, with much regret the council decided&mdash;and, in
+  fact, why should they have decided otherwise? They were satisfied that
+  they were right in requiring the oath; and their duty to the English
+  nation obliged them to persevere. They must go their way; and those who
+  thought them wrong must go theirs; and the great God would judge between
+  them. It was a hard thing to suffer for an opinion; but there are times
+  when opinions are as dangerous as acts; and liberty of conscience was a
+  plea which could be urged with a bad grace for men who, while in power,
+  had fed the stake with heretics. They were summoned for a last time, to
+  return the same answer as they had returned before; and nothing remained
+  but to pronounce against them the penalties of the statute, imprisonment
+  at the king's pleasure, and forfeiture. The latter part of the sentence
+  was not enforced. More's family were left in the enjoyment of his
+  property. Fisher's bishoprick was not taken <!-- Page 441 --><span
+  class="pagenum"><a name="page441"></a>[pg 441]</span> from him. They were
+  sent to the Tower, where for the present we leave them.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, in accordance with the resolution taken in council on the
+  and of December,<a name="NtA_721"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_721"><sup>721</sup></a> but which seems to have been suspended
+  till the issue of the trial at Rome was decided, the bishops, who had
+  been examined severally on the nature of the papal authority, and whose
+  answers had been embodied in the last act of parliament, were now
+  required to instruct the clergy throughout their dioceses&mdash;and the
+  clergy in turn to instruct the people&mdash;in the nature of the changes
+  which had taken place. A bishop was to preach each Sunday at Paul's
+  Cross, on the pope's usurpation. Every secular priest was directed to
+  preach on the same subject week after week, in his parish church. Abbots
+  and priors were to teach their convents; noblemen and gentlemen their
+  families and servants; mayors and aldermen the boroughs. In town and
+  country, in all houses, at all dinner-tables, the conduct of the pope and
+  the causes of the separation from Rome were to be the one subject of
+  conversation; that the whole nation might be informed accurately and
+  faithfully of the grounds on which the government had acted. No wiser
+  method could have been adopted. The imperial agents would be busy under
+  the surface; and the mendicant friars, and all the missionaries of
+  insurrection. The machinery of order was set in force to counteract the
+  machinery of sedition.</p>
+
+  <p>Further, every bishop, in addition to the oath of allegiance, had
+  sworn obedience to the king as Supreme Head of the Church;<a
+  name="NtA_722"></a><a href="#Nt_722"><sup>722</sup></a> and this was the
+  title under which he was to be spoken of in all churches of the realm. A
+  royal order had been issued, "that all manner of prayers, rubrics, canons
+  of Mass books, and all other books in the churches wherein the Bishop of
+  Rome was named, or his presumptuous and proud pomp and authority
+  preferred, should utterly be abolished, eradicated, and rased out, and
+  his name and memory should be never more, except to his contumely and
+  reproach, remembered; but perpetually be suppressed and obscured."<a
+  name="NtA_723"></a><a href="#Nt_723"><sup>723</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Nor were these mere idle sounds, like the bellow of unshotted cannon;
+  but words with a sharp, prompt meaning, which the king intended to be
+  obeyed. He had addressed his orders to the clergy, because the clergy
+  were the officials who had possession of the pulpits from which the
+  people were to be taught; but he knew their nature too well to trust
+  them. They were too <!-- Page 442 --><span class="pagenum"><a
+  name="page442"></a>[pg 442]</span> well schooled in the tricks of
+  reservation; and, for the nonce, it was necessary to reverse the posture
+  of the priest and of his flock, and to set the honest laymen to overlook
+  their pastors.</p>
+
+  <p>With the instructions to the bishops circulars went round to the
+  sheriffs of the counties, containing a full account of these
+  instructions, and an appeal to their loyalty to see that the royal orders
+  were obeyed. "We," the king wrote to them, "seeing, esteeming, and
+  reputing you to be of such singular and vehement zeal and affection
+  towards the glory of Almighty God, and of so faithful, loving, and
+  obedient heart towards us, as you will accomplish, with all power,
+  diligence, and labour, whatsoever shall be to the preferment and setting
+  forth of God's word, have thought good, not only to signify unto you by
+  these our letters, the particulars of the charge given by us to the
+  bishops, but also to require and straitly charge you, upon pain of your
+  allegiance, and as ye shall avoid our high indignation and displeasure,
+  [that] at your uttermost peril, laying aside all vain affections,
+  respects, and other carnal considerations, and setting only before your
+  eyes the mirrour of the truth, the glory of God, the dignity of your
+  Sovereign Lord and King, and the great concord and unity, and inestimable
+  profit and utility, that shall by the due execution of the premises ensue
+  to yourselves and to all other faithful and loving subjects, ye make or
+  cause to be made diligent search and wait, whether the said bishops do
+  truly and sincerely, without all manner of cloke, colour, or
+  dissimulation, execute and accomplish our will and commandment, as is
+  aforesaid. And in case ye shall hear that the said bishops, or any other
+  ecclesiastical person, do omit and leave undone any part or parcel of the
+  premises, or else in the execution and setting forth of the same, do
+  coldly and feignedly use any manner of sinister addition, wrong
+  interpretation, or painted colour, then we straitly charge and command
+  you that you do make, undelayedly, and with all speed and diligence,
+  declaration and advertisement to us and to our council of the said
+  default.</p>
+
+  <p>"And forasmuch as we upon the singular trust which we have in you, and
+  for the special love which we suppose you bear towards us, and the weal
+  and tranquillity of this our realm, have specially elected and chosen you
+  among so many for this purpose, and have reputed you such men as unto
+  whose wisdom and fidelity we might commit a matter of such great weight
+  and importance: if ye should, contrary to our expectation and trust which
+  we have in you, and against your duty and allegiance <!-- Page 443
+  --><span class="pagenum"><a name="page443"></a>[pg 443]</span> towards
+  us, neglect, or omit to do with all your diligence, whatsoever shall be
+  in your power for the due performance of our pleasure to you declared, or
+  halt or stumble at any part or specialty of the same; Be ye assured that
+  we, like a prince of justice, will so extremely punish you for the same,
+  that all the world beside shall take by you example, and beware contrary
+  to their allegiance to disobey the lawful commandment of their Sovereign
+  Lord and Prince.</p>
+
+  <p>"Given under our signet, at our Palace of Westminster, the 9th day of
+  June, 1534."<a name="NtA_724"></a><a
+  href="#Nt_724"><sup>724</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>So Henry spoke at last. There was no place any more for nice
+  distinctions and care of tender consciences. The general, when the shot
+  is flying, cannot qualify his orders with dainty periods. Swift command
+  and swift obedience can alone be tolerated; and martial law for those who
+  hesitate.</p>
+
+  <p>This chapter has brought many things to a close. Before ending it we
+  will leap over three months, to the termination of the career of the pope
+  who has been so far our companion. Not any more was the distracted
+  Clement to twist his handkerchief, or weep, or flatter, or wildly wave
+  his arms in angry impotence; he was to lie down in his long rest, and vex
+  the world no more. He had lived to set England free&mdash;an exploit
+  which, in the face of so persevering an anxiety to escape a separation,
+  required a rare genius and a combination of singular qualities. He had
+  finished his work, and now he was allowed to depart.</p>
+
+  <p>In him, infinite insincerity was accompanied with a grace of manner
+  which regained confidence as rapidly as it was forfeited. Desiring
+  sincerely, so far as he could be sincere in anything, to please every one
+  by turns, and reckless of truth to a degree in which he was without a
+  rival in the world, he sought only to escape his difficulties by
+  inactivity, and he trusted to provide himself with a refuge against all
+  contingencies by waiting upon time. Even when at length he was compelled
+  to act, and to act in a distinct direction, his plausibility long enabled
+  him to explain away his conduct; and, honest in the excess of his
+  dishonesty, he wore his falsehood with so easy a grace that it assumed
+  the character of truth. He was false, deceitful, treacherous; yet he had
+  the virtue of not pretending to be virtuous. He was a real man, though
+  but an indifferent one; and we can refuse to no one, however grave his
+  faults, a certain ambiguous sympathy, when in his perplexities he shows
+  us features so truly human in their weakness as those of Clement VII.</p>
+
+<hr /><a name="Footnotes"></a><h2>Notes.</h2><div class="note">
+  <p><a name="Nt_1"></a><a href="#NtA_1">1</a> Printed in FOXE, vol. iv. p.
+  659, Townsend's edition.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_2"></a><a href="#NtA_2">2</a> 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_3"></a><a href="#NtA_3">3</a> Bishop Latimer, in a sermon
+  at Paul's Cross, suggested another purpose which this act might answer.
+  One of his audience, writing to the Mayor of Plymouth, after describing
+  the exceedingly disrespectful language in which he spoke of the high
+  church dignitaries, continues, "The king," quoth he, "made a marvellous
+  good act of parliament that certain men should sow every of them two
+  acres of hemp; but it were all too little were it so much more to hang
+  the thieves that be in England."&mdash;<i>Suppression of the
+  Monasteries</i>, Camden Society's publications, p. 38.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_4"></a><a href="#NtA_4">4</a> 32 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_5"></a><a href="#NtA_5">5</a> 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_6"></a><a href="#NtA_6">6</a> <i>Antiquities of
+  Hengrave</i>, by Sir T. GAGE.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_7"></a><a href="#NtA_7">7</a> See especially 2 Hen. VII.
+  capp. 16 and 19.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_8"></a><a href="#NtA_8">8</a> 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_9"></a><a href="#NtA_9">9</a> See especially the 4th of
+  the 5th of Elizabeth.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_10"></a><a href="#NtA_10">10</a> 10 Ed. III. cap. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_11"></a><a href="#NtA_11">11</a> Statutes of the Realm,
+  vol. i. (edit. 1817), pp. 227-8.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_12"></a><a href="#NtA_12">12</a> "The artificers and
+  husbandmen make most account of such meat as they may soonest come by and
+  have it quickliest ready. Their food consisteth principally in beef, and
+  such meat as the butcher selleth, that is to say, mutton, veal, lamb,
+  pork, whereof the one findeth great store in the markets adjoining;
+  besides souse, brawn, bacon, fruit, pies of fruit, fowls of sundry sorts,
+  as the other wanteth it not at home by his own provision, which is at the
+  best hand and commonly least charge. In feasting, this latter
+  sort&mdash;I mean the husbandmen&mdash;do exceed after their manner,
+  especially at bridals and such odd meetings, where it is incredible to
+  tell what meat is consumed and spent."&mdash;HARRISON'S <i>Description of
+  England</i>, p. 282.</p>
+
+  <p>The Spanish nobles who came into England with Philip were astonished
+  at the diet which they found among the poor.</p>
+
+  <p>"These English," said one of them, "have their houses made of sticks
+  and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king."&mdash;Ibid. p.
+  313.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_13"></a><a href="#NtA_13">13</a> <i>State Papers</i>, Hen.
+  VIII. vol. ii. p. 10.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_14"></a><a href="#NtA_14">14</a> HALL, p. 646.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_15"></a><a href="#NtA_15">15</a> 25 Ed. III. cap. I.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_16"></a><a href="#NtA_16">16</a> <i>Statutes of the
+  Realm</i>, vol. i. p. 199.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_17"></a><a href="#NtA_17">17</a> 3 Ed. IV. cap. 2.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_18"></a><a href="#NtA_18">18</a> 10 Hen. VI. cap. 2.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_19"></a><a href="#NtA_19">19</a> STOW'S
+  <i>Chronicle.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_20"></a><a href="#NtA_20">20</a> <i>Statutes of Philip and
+  Mary.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_21"></a><a href="#NtA_21">21</a> From 1565 to 1575 there
+  was a rapid and violent rise in the prices of all kinds of grain. Wheat
+  stood at four and five times its earlier rates; and in 1576, when
+  Harrison wrote, was entirely beyond the reach of the labouring classes.
+  "The poor in some shires," he says, "are enforced to content themselves
+  with rye or barley, yea, and in time of dearth many with bread made
+  either of peas, beans, or oats, or of all together and some acorns among,
+  of which scourge the poorest do soonest taste, sith they are least able
+  to provide themselves of better. I will not say that this extremity is
+  oft so well seen in time of plenty as of dearth, but if I should I could
+  easily bring my trial. For, albeit that there be much more ground eared
+  now almost in every place than hath been of late years, yet such a price
+  of corn continues in each town and market, that the artificer and poor
+  labouring man is not able to reach to it, but is driven to content
+  himself with beans, peas, oats, tares, and lentils."&mdash;HARRISON, p.
+  283. The condition of the labourer was at this period deteriorating
+  rapidly. The causes will be described in the progress of this
+  history.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_22"></a><a href="#NtA_22">22</a> <i>Chronicle</i>,
+  p.568.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_23"></a><a href="#NtA_23">23</a> 33 Hen. VIII. cap. II.
+  The change in the prices of such articles commenced in the beginning of
+  the reign of Edward VI., and continued till the close of the century. A
+  discussion upon the subject, written in 1581 by Mr. Edward Stafford, and
+  containing the clearest detailed account of the alteration, is printed in
+  the <i>Harleian Miscellany</i>, vol. ix. p.139, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_24"></a><a href="#NtA_24">24</a> Leland, <i>Itin.</i>,
+  vol. vi. p.17. In large households beef used to be salted in great
+  quantities for winter consumption. The art of fatting cattle in the stall
+  was imperfectly understood, and the loss of substance in the destruction
+  of fibre by salt was less than in the falling off of flesh on the failure
+  of fresh grass. The Northumberland Household Book describes the storing
+  of salted provision for the earl's establishment at Michaelmas; and men
+  now living can remember the array of salting tubs in old-fashioned
+  country houses. So long as pigs, poultry, and other articles of food,
+  however, remained cheap and abundant, the salt diet could not, as Hume
+  imagines, have been carried to an extent injurious to health; and fresh
+  meat, beef as well as mutton, was undoubtedly sold in all markets the
+  whole year round in the reign of Henry VIII., and sold at a uniform
+  price, which it could not have been if there had been so much difficulty
+  in procuring it. Latimer (<i>Letters</i>, p.412), writing to Cromwell on
+  Christmas Eve, 1538, speaks of his winter stock of "beeves" and muttons
+  as a thing of course.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_25"></a><a href="#NtA_25">25</a> STAFFORD'S <i>Discourse
+  on the State of the Realm</i>. It is to be understood, however, that
+  these rates applied only to articles of ordinary consumption. Capons
+  fatted for the dinners of the London companies were sometimes provided at
+  a shilling apiece. Fresh fish was also extravagantly dear, and when two
+  days a week were observed strictly as fasting days, it becomes a curious
+  question to know how the supply was kept up. The inland counties were
+  dependent entirely on ponds and rivers. London was provided either from
+  the Thames or from the coast of Sussex. An officer of the Fishmongers'
+  Company resided at each of the Cinque Ports whose business it was to buy
+  the fish wholesale from the boats and to forward it on horseback. Three
+  hundred horses were kept for this service at Rye alone. And when an
+  adventurous fisherman, taking advantage of a fair wind, sailed up the
+  Thames with his catch and sold it first hand at London Bridge, the
+  innovation was considered dangerous, and the Mayor of Rye petitioned
+  against it.</p>
+
+  <p>Salmon, sturgeon, porpoise, roach, dace, flounders, eels, etc., were
+  caught in considerable quantities in the Thames, below London Bridge, and
+  further up, pike and trout. The fishermen had great nets that stretched
+  all across Limehouse-reach four fathoms deep.</p>
+
+  <p>Fresh fish, however, remained the luxury of the rich, and the poor
+  were left to the salt cod, ling, and herring brought in annually by the
+  Iceland fleet.</p>
+
+  <p>Fresh herrings sold for five or six a penny in the time of Henry
+  VIII., and were never cheaper. Fresh salmon five and six shillings
+  apiece. Roach, dace, and flounders from two to four shillings a hundred.
+  Pike and barbel varied with their length. The barbel a foot long sold for
+  five-pence, and twopence was added for each additional inch: a pike a
+  foot long sold for sixteen pence, and increased a penny an
+  inch.&mdash;<i>Guildhall MSS. Journals</i> 12, 13, 14, 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_26"></a><a href="#NtA_26">26</a> "When the brewer buyeth a
+  quarter of malt for two shillings, then he shall sell a gallon of the
+  best ale for two farthings; when he buyeth a quarter malt for four
+  shillings, the gallon shall be four farthings, and so forth... and that
+  he sell a quart of ale upon his table for a farthing."&mdash; Assize of
+  Brewers: from a MS. in Balliol College, Oxford.</p>
+
+  <p>By an order of the Lord Mayor and Council of the City of London, in
+  September, 1529, the price of a kilderkin of single beer was fixed at a
+  shilling, the kilderkin of double beer at two shillings; but this
+  included the cask; and the London brewers replied with a remonstrance,
+  saying that the casks were often destroyed or made away with, and that an
+  allowance had to be made for bad debts. "Your beseechers," they said,
+  "have many city debtors, for many of them which have taken much beer into
+  their houses suddenly goeth to the sanctuary, some keep their
+  houses&mdash;some purchase the king's protection, and some, when they
+  die, be reckoned poor, and of no value, and many of your said beseechers
+  be for the most part against such debtors remediless and suffer great
+  losses."</p>
+
+  <p>They offered to supply then: customers with sixteen gallon casks of
+  single beer for eleven pence, and the same quantity of double beer for a
+  shilling, the cask included. And this offer was accepted.</p>
+
+  <p>The corporation, however, returned two years after to their original
+  order. <i>Guildhall Records</i>, MS. Journal 13, pp. 210, 236.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_27"></a><a href="#NtA_27">27</a> 28 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  14.</p>
+
+  <p>The prices assessed, being a maximum, applied to the best wines of
+  each class. In 1531, the mayor and corporation "did straitly charge and
+  command that all such persons as sold wines by retail within the city and
+  liberties of the same, should from henceforth sell two gallons of the
+  best red wine for eightpence, and not above; the gallon of the best white
+  wine for eightpence, and not above; the pottle, quart, and pint after the
+  same rate, upon pain of imprisonment."</p>
+
+  <p>The quality of the wine sold was looked into from time to time, and
+  when found tainted, or unwholesome, "according to the antient customs of
+  the city," the heads of the vessels were broken up, and the wines in them
+  put forth open into the kennels, in example of all other offenders.
+  <i>Guildhall MS.</i> Journals 12 and 13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_28"></a><a href="#NtA_28">28</a> <i>Sermons</i>,
+  p.101.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_29"></a><a href="#NtA_29">29</a> See HARRISON, p. 318. At
+  the beginning of the century farms let for four pounds a year, which in
+  1576 had been raised to forty, fifty, or a hundred. The price of produce
+  kept pace with the rent. The large farmers prospered; the poor forfeited
+  their tenures.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_30"></a><a href="#NtA_30">30</a> The wages were fixed at a
+  maximum, showing that labour was scarce, and that its natural tendency
+  was towards a higher rate of remuneration. Persons not possessed of other
+  means of subsistence were punishable if they refused to work at the
+  statutable rate of payment; and a clause in the act of Hen. VIII.
+  directed that where the practice had been to give lower wages, lower
+  wages should be taken. This provision was owing to a difference in the
+  value of money in different parts of England. The price of bread at
+  Stratford, for instance, was permanently twenty-five per cent. below the
+  price in London. (Assize of Bread in England: <i>Balliol MS</i>.) The
+  statute, therefore, may be taken as a guide sufficiently conclusive as to
+  the practical scale. It is of course uncertain how far work was constant.
+  The ascending tendency of wages is an evidence, so far as it goes, in the
+  labourer's favour; and the proportion between the wages of the household
+  farm servant and those of the day labourer, which furnishes a further
+  guide, was much the same as at present. By the same statute of Henry
+  VIII. the common servant of husbandry, who was boarded and lodged at his
+  master's house, received 16<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i> a year in money, with
+  4<i>s.</i> for his clothes; while the wages of the out-door labourer,
+  supposing his work constant, would have been £5 a year. Among ourselves,
+  on an average of different counties, the labourer's wages are £25 to £30
+  a year, supposing his work constant. The farm servant, unless in the
+  neighbourhood of large towns, receives about £6, or from that to £8.</p>
+
+  <p>Where meat and drink was allowed it was calculated at 2<i>d.</i> a
+  day, or 1<i>s.</i> 2<i>d.</i> a week. In the household of the Earl of
+  Northumberland the allowance was 2½<i>d.</i> Here, again, we observe an
+  approach to modern proportions. The estimated cost of the board and
+  lodging of a man servant in an English gentleman's family is now about
+  £25 a year.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_31"></a><a href="#NtA_31">31</a> Mowers, for instance,
+  were paid 8<i>d.</i> a day.&mdash;<i>Privy Purse Expenses of Henry
+  VIII.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_32"></a><a href="#NtA_32">32</a> In 1581 the agricultural
+  labourer, as he now exists, was only beginning to appear. "There be such
+  in the realm," says Stafford, "as live only by the labour of their hands
+  and the profit which they can make upon the commons."&mdash;STAFFORD'S
+  <i>Discourse</i>. This novel class had been called into being by the
+  general raising of rents, and the wholesale evictions of the smaller
+  tenantry which followed the Reformation. The progress of the causes which
+  led to the change can be traced from the beginning of the century.
+  Harrison says he knew old men who, comparing things present with things
+  past, spoke of two things grown to be very grievous&mdash;to wit, "the
+  enhancing of rents, and the daily oppression of copyholders, whose lords
+  seek to bring their poor tenants almost into plain servitude and misery,
+  daily devising new means, and seeking up all the old, how to cut them
+  shorter and shorter; doubling, trebling, and now and then seven times
+  increasing their fines; driving them also for every trifle to lose and
+  forfeit their tenures, by whom the greatest part of the realm doth stand
+  and is maintained, to the end they may fleece them yet more: which is a
+  lamentable hearing."&mdash;<i>Description of England</i>, p.318.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_33"></a><a href="#NtA_33">33</a> HALL, p. 581. Nor was the
+  act in fact observed even in London itself, or towards workmen employed
+  by the Government. In 1538, the Corporation of London, "for certain
+  reasonable and necessary considerations," assessed the wages of common
+  labourers at 7<i>d.</i> and 8<i>d.</i> the day, classing them with
+  carpenters and masons.&mdash;<i>Guildhall MSS. Journal</i> 14, fol. 10.
+  Labourers employed on Government works in the reign of Hen. VIII. never
+  received less than 6<i>d.</i> a day, and frequently
+  more.&mdash;<i>Chronicle of Calais</i>, p. 197, etc. Sixpence a day is
+  the usual sum entered as the wages of a day's labour in the innumerable
+  lists of accounts in the Record Office. And 6<i>d.</i> a day again was
+  the lowest pay of the common soldier, not only on exceptional service in
+  the field, but when regularly employed in garrison duty. Those who doubt
+  whether this was really the practice, may easily satisfy themselves by
+  referring to the accounts of the expenses of Berwick, or of Dover, Deal,
+  or Walmer Castles, to be found in the Record Office in great numbers. The
+  daily wages of the soldier are among the very best criteria for
+  determining the average value of the unskilled labourer's work. No
+  government gives higher wages than it is compelled to give by the market
+  rate.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_34"></a><a href="#NtA_34">34</a> The wages of the day
+  labourer in London, under this act of Elizabeth, were fixed at 9<i>d.</i>
+  the day, and this, after the restoration of the depreciated
+  currency.&mdash;<i>Guildhall MSS. Journal</i> 18, fol. 157, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_35"></a><a href="#NtA_35">35</a> 4 Hen. VII. cap. 16. By
+  the same parliament these provisions were extended to the rest of
+  England. 4 Hen. VII. cap. 19.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_36"></a><a href="#NtA_36">36</a> HALL, p. 863.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_37"></a><a href="#NtA_37">37</a> 27 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  22.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_38"></a><a href="#NtA_38">38</a> There is a cause of
+  difficulty "peculiar to England, the increase of pasture, by which sheep
+  may be now said to devour men and unpeople not only villages but towns.
+  For wherever it is found that the sheep yield a softer and richer wool
+  than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men the
+  abbots, not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor
+  thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the
+  public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of
+  agriculture.... One shepherd can look after a flock which will stock an
+  extent of ground that would require many hands if it were ploughed and
+  reaped. And this likewise in many places raises the price of corn. The
+  price of wool is also risen ... since, though sheep cannot be called a
+  monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person; yet they are in
+  so few hands, and these are so rich, that as they are not prest to sell
+  them sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it till they
+  have raised the price as high as possible."&mdash;Sir THOMAS MORE'S
+  <i>Utopia</i>, Burnet's Translation, pp. 17-19.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_39"></a><a href="#NtA_39">39</a> I find scattered among
+  the <i>State Papers</i> many loose memoranda, apparently of privy
+  councillors, written on the backs of letters, or on such loose scraps as
+  might be at hand. The following fragment on the present subject is
+  curious. I do not recognise the hand:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Mem. That an act may be made that merchants shall employ their goods
+  continually in the traffic of merchandise, and not in the purchasing of
+  lands; and that craftsmen, also, shall continually use their crafts in
+  cities and towns, and not leave the same and take farms in the country;
+  and that no merchant shall hereafter purchase above £40 lands by the
+  year."&mdash;<i>Cotton MS.</i> Titus, b. i. 160.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_40"></a><a href="#NtA_40">40</a> When the enclosing
+  system was carried on with greatest activity and provoked insurrection.
+  In expressing a sympathy with the social policy of the Tudor government,
+  I have exposed myself to a charge of opposing the received and
+  ascertained conclusions of political economy. I disclaim entirely an
+  intention so foolish; but I believe that the science of political economy
+  came into being with the state of things to which alone it is applicable.
+  It ought to be evident that principles which answer admirably when a
+  manufacturing system capable of indefinite expansion multiplies
+  employment at home&mdash;when the soil of England is but a fraction of
+  its empire, and the sea is a highway to emigration&mdash;would have
+  produced far different effects, in a condition of things which habit had
+  petrified into form, when manufactures could not provide work for one
+  additional hand, when the first colony was yet unthought of, and where
+  those who were thrown out of the occupation to which they had been bred
+  could find no other. The tenants evicted, the labourers thrown out of
+  employ, when the tillage lands were converted into pastures, had scarcely
+  an alternative offered them except to beg, to rob, or to starve.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_41"></a><a href="#NtA_41">41</a> <i>Lansdowne MS.</i> No.
+  I. fol. 26.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_42"></a><a href="#NtA_42">42</a> GIUSTINIANI'S <i>Letters
+  from the Court of Henry VIII</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_43"></a><a href="#NtA_43">43</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_44"></a><a href="#NtA_44">44</a> 22 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  18.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_45"></a><a href="#NtA_45">45</a> Under Hen. VI. the
+  household expenses were £23,000 a year&mdash;Cf. <i>Proceedings and
+  Ordinances of the Privy Council</i>, vol. vi. p. 35. The particulars of
+  the expenses of the household of Hen. VIII. are in an MS. in the Rolls
+  House. They cover the entire outlay except the personal expenditure of
+  the king, and the sum total amounts to £14,365 10<i>s.</i> 7<i>d.</i>
+  This would leave above £5000 a year for the privy purse, not, perhaps,
+  sufficient to cover Henry's gambling extravagances in his early life.
+  Curious particulars of his excesses in this matter will be found in a
+  publication wrongly called <i>The Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the
+  Eighth</i>. It is a diary of general payments, as much for purposes of
+  state as for the king himself. The high play was confined for the most
+  part to Christmas or other times of festivity, when the statutes against
+  unlawful games were dispensed with for all classes.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_46"></a><a href="#NtA_46">46</a> 18 Hen. VI. cap. 11.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_47"></a><a href="#NtA_47">47</a> 4 Hen. VII. cap. 12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_48"></a><a href="#NtA_48">48</a> During the quarter
+  sessions time they were allowed 4<i>s.</i> a day.&mdash;Ric. II. xii.
+  10.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_49"></a><a href="#NtA_49">49</a> The rudeness of the
+  furniture in English country houses has been dwelt upon with much
+  emphasis by Hume and others. An authentic inventory of the goods and
+  chattels in a parsonage in Kent proves that there has been much
+  exaggeration in this matter. It is from an MS. in the Rolls House.</p>
+
+  <p><i>The Inventory of the Goods and Catales of Richd. Master, Clerk,
+  Parson of Aldington, being in his Parsonage on the 20th Day of April, in
+  the 25th Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King Henry VIII.</i></p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>Plate</i></p>
+      <p>Silver spoons, twelve.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Hall</i></p>
+      <p>Two tables and two forms.</p>
+      <p>Item, a painted cloth hanging at the upper part of the hall.</p>
+      <p>Item, a green banker hung on the bench in the hall.</p>
+      <p>Item, a laver of laten.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Parlour</i></p>
+      <p>A hanging of old red and green saye.</p>
+      <p>Item, a banker of woven carpet of divers colours.</p>
+      <p>Item, two cushions.</p>
+      <p>Item, one table, two forms, one cupboard, one chair.</p>
+      <p>Item, two painted pictures and a picture of the names of kings of England</p>
+      <p class="i4">pinned on the said hanging.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Chamber on the North Side of the said Parlour</i></p>
+      <p>A painted hanging.</p>
+      <p>Item, a bedstedyll with a feather bed, one bolster, two pillows, one blanket,</p>
+      <p class="i4">one roulett of rough tapestry, a testner of green and red saye.</p>
+      <p>Item, two forms.</p>
+      <p>Item, one jack to set a basin on.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Chamber over the Parlour</i></p>
+      <p>Two bedsteads.</p>
+      <p>Item, another testner of painted cloth.</p>
+      <p>Item, a painted cloth.</p>
+      <p>Item, two forms.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>At the Stairs' Hed beside the Parson's Bedchamber</i></p>
+      <p>One table, two trestylls, four beehives.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Parson's Lodging-chamber</i></p>
+      <p>A bedstedyll and a feather bed, two blankets, one payr of sheets, one</p>
+      <p class="i4">coverlet of tapestry lined with canvas, one bolster, one pillow with</p>
+      <p class="i4">a pillocote.</p>
+      <p>Item, one gown of violet cloth lined with red saye.</p>
+      <p>Item, a gown of black cloth, furred with lamb.</p>
+      <p>Item, two hoods of violet cloth, whereof one is lined with green sarsenet.</p>
+      <p>Item, one jerkyn of tawny camlet.</p>
+      <p>Item, a jerkyn of cloth furred with white.</p>
+      <p>Item, a jacket of cloth furred.</p>
+      <p>Item, a sheet to put in cloth.</p>
+      <p>Item, one press.</p>
+      <p>Item, a leather mail.</p>
+      <p>Item, one table, two forms, four chairs, two trestylls.</p>
+      <p>Item, a tester of painted cloth.</p>
+      <p>Item, a pair of hangings of green saye, with two pictures thereupon.</p>
+      <p>Item, one cupboard, two chests.</p>
+      <p>Item, a little flock bed, with a bolster and a coverlet.</p>
+      <p>Item, one cushion, one mantell, one towel, and, by estimation, a pound</p>
+      <p class="i4">of wax candles.</p>
+      <p>Item, Greek books covered with boards, 42.</p>
+      <p>Item, small books covered with boards, 33.</p>
+      <p>Item, books covered with leather and parchment, 38.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the said Chest in the said Chamber</i></p>
+      <p>Three pieces of red saye and green.</p>
+      <p>Item, one tyke for a bolster, two tykes for pillows.</p>
+      <p>Item, a typpett of cloth.</p>
+      <p>Item, diaper napkins, 4, diaper towels, 2.</p>
+      <p>Item, four pairs of sheets, and one shete, two tablecloths.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the other Chest in the same Chamber</i></p>
+      <p>One typpett of sarsenett.</p>
+      <p>Item, two cotes belonging to the crosse of Underbill, whereupon hang</p>
+      <p class="i4">thirty-three pieces of money, rings, and other things, and three</p>
+      <p class="i4">crystal stones closed in silver.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Study</i></p>
+      <p>Two old boxes, a wicker hamper full of papers.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Chamber behind the Chimney</i></p>
+      <p>One seam and a half of old malt.</p>
+      <p>Item, a trap for rats.</p>
+      <p>Item, a board of three yards length.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Chamber next adjoining westwards</i></p>
+      <p>One bedstedyll, one flock bed, one bolster.</p>
+      <p>One form, two shelf boards, one little table, two trestylls, two awgyes, one</p>
+      <p class="i4">nett, called a stalker, a well rope, five quarters of hemp.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Buttery</i></p>
+      <p>Three basins of pewter, five candlesticks, one ewer of lateen, one chafing</p>
+      <p class="i4">dish, two platters, one dish, one salter, three podingers [? porringer],</p>
+      <p class="i4">a saltseller of pewter, seven kilderkyns, three keelers, one form, five</p>
+      <p class="i4">shelves, one byn, one table, one glasse bottell.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Priest's Chamber</i></p>
+      <p>One bedstedyll, one feather bed, two forms, one press.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Woman's Keeping</i></p>
+      <p>Two tablecloths, two pairs of sheets.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Servant's Chamber</i></p>
+      <p>One painted hanging, a bedstedyll, one feather bed, a press, and a shelf.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Kitchen</i></p>
+      <p>Eight bacon flitches, a little brewing lead, three brass pots, three kettles,</p>
+      <p class="i4">one posnett, one frying-pan, a dripping-pan, a great pan, two trivetts,</p>
+      <p class="i4">a chopping knife, a skimmer, one fire rake, a pothanger, one pothooke,</p>
+      <p class="i4">one andiron, three spits, one gridiron, one firepan, a coal rake of iron,</p>
+      <p class="i4">two bolts [? butts], three wooden platters, six boldishes, three forms,</p>
+      <p class="i4">two stools, seven platters, two pewter dishes, four saucers, a covering</p>
+      <p class="i4">of a saltseller, a podynger, seven tubbs, a caldron, two syffs, a capon</p>
+      <p class="i4">cope, a mustard quern, a ladder, two pails, one beehive.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Mill-house</i></p>
+      <p>Seven butts, two cheeses, an old sheet, an old brass pan, three podyngers,</p>
+      <p class="i4">a pewter dish.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Boulting-house</i></p>
+      <p>One brass pan, one quern, a boulting hutch, a boulting tub, three little</p>
+      <p class="i4">tubbys, two keelers, a tolvett, two boulters, one tonnell.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Larder</i></p>
+      <p>One sieve, one bacon trough, a cheese press, one little tub, eight shelves,</p>
+      <p class="i4">one graper for a well.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>Wood</i></p>
+      <p>Of tall wood ten load, of ash wood a load and a half.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>Poultry</i></p>
+      <p>Nine hens, eight capons, one cock, sixteen young chickens, three old</p>
+      <p class="i4">geese, seventeen goslings, four ducks.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>Cattle</i></p>
+      <p>Five young hoggs, two red kyne, one red heifer two years old, one bay</p>
+      <p class="i4">gelding lame of spavins, one old grey mare having a mare colt.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Entries</i></p>
+      <p>Two tubbs, one trough, one ring to bear water and towel, a chest to keep</p>
+      <p>cornes.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the same House</i></p>
+      <p>Five seams of lime.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Woman's Chamber</i></p>
+      <p>One bedstedyll of hempen yarn, by estimation 20 lbs.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>Without the House</i></p>
+      <p>Of tyles, &mdash;&mdash;, of bricks, &mdash;&mdash;, seven planks, three rafters, one ladder.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Gate-house</i></p>
+      <p>One form, a leather sack, three bushels of wheat.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Still beside the Gate</i></p>
+      <p>Two old road saddles, one bridle, a horse-cloth.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Barn next the Gate</i></p>
+      <p>Of wheat unthrashed, by estimation, thirty quarters, of barley unthrashed,</p>
+      <p class="i4">by estimation, five quarters.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Cartlage</i></p>
+      <p>One weene with two whyles, one dung-cart without whyles, two shod-whyles,</p>
+      <p class="i4">two yokes, one sledge.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Barn next the Church</i></p>
+      <p>Of oats unthrashed, by estimation, one quarter.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Garden-house</i></p>
+      <p>Of oats, by estimation, three seams four bushels.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p><i>In the Court</i></p>
+      <p class="i4">Two racks, one ladder.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_50"></a><a href="#NtA_50">50</a> Two hundred poor were fed
+  daily at the house of Tomas Cromwell. This fact is perfectly
+  authenticated. Stowe the historian, who did not like Cromwell, lived in
+  an adjoining house, and reports it as an eye witness.&mdash;<i>See</i>
+  STOWE'S <i>Survey of London.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_51"></a><a href="#NtA_51">51</a> HARRISON'S <i>Description
+  of Britain</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_52"></a><a href="#NtA_52">52</a> The Earl and Countess of
+  Northumberland breakfasted together alone at seven. The meal consisted of
+  a quart of ale, a quart of wine, and a chine of beef: a loaf of bread is
+  not mentioned, but we hope it may be presumed. On fast days the beef was
+  exchanged for a dish of sprats or herrings, fresh or
+  salt.&mdash;<i>Northumberland Household Book</i>, quoted by Hume.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_53"></a><a href="#NtA_53">53</a> Some notice of the style
+  of living sometimes witnessed in England in the old times may be gathered
+  from the details of a feast given at the installation of George Neville,
+  brother of Warwick the King Maker, when made Archbishop of York.</p>
+
+  <p>The number of persons present including servants was about 3500.</p>
+
+  <p>The provisions were as follow&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>Wheat, 300 quarters.</p>
+      <p>Ale, 300 tuns.</p>
+      <p>Wine, 104 tuns.</p>
+      <p>Ipocras, 1 pipe.</p>
+      <p>Oxen, 80.</p>
+      <p>Wild bulls, 6.</p>
+      <p>Muttons, 1004.</p>
+      <p>Veal, 300.</p>
+      <p>Porkers, 300.</p>
+      <p>Geese, 3000.</p>
+      <p>Capons, 2300.</p>
+      <p>Pigs, 2000.</p>
+      <p>Peacocks, 100.</p>
+      <p>Cranes, 200.</p>
+      <p>Kids, 200.</p>
+      <p>Chickens, 2000.</p>
+      <p>Pigeons, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Conies, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Bitterns, 204.</p>
+      <p>Mallards and teals, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Heronshaws, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Fesants, 200.</p>
+      <p>Partridges, 500.</p>
+      <p>Woodcocks, 400.</p>
+      <p>Plovers, 400.</p>
+      <p>Curlews, 100.</p>
+      <p>Quails, 100.</p>
+      <p>Egrets, 1000</p>
+      <p>Rees, 200.</p>
+      <p>Harts, bucks, and roes, 400 and odd.</p>
+      <p>Pasties of venison, cold, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Pasties of venison, hot, 1506.</p>
+      <p>Dishes of jelly, pasted, 1000.</p>
+      <p>Plain dishes of jelly, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Cold tarts, baken, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Cold custards, 4000.</p>
+      <p>Custards, hot, 2000.</p>
+      <p>Pikes, 300.</p>
+      <p>Breams, 300.</p>
+      <p>Seals, 8.</p>
+      <p>Porpoises, 4.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_54"></a><a href="#NtA_54">54</a> LATIMER'S <i>Sermons</i>,
+  p. 64.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_55"></a><a href="#NtA_55">55</a> <i>Statutes of the
+  Realm</i>, 1 Ed. VI. cap. 12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_56"></a><a href="#NtA_56">56</a> HOOKER'S <i>Life of Sir
+  Peter Carew</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_57"></a><a href="#NtA_57">57</a> In a subsequent letter he
+  is described as learning French, etymology, casting of accounts, playing
+  at weapons, and other such exercises.&mdash;ELLIS, third series, vol. i.
+  p. 342-3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_58"></a><a href="#NtA_58">58</a> It has been objected that
+  inasmuch as the Statute Book gives evidence of extensive practices of
+  adulteration, the guild system was useless, nay, it has been even said
+  that it was the cause of the evil. Cessante causā cessat
+  effectus;&mdash;when the companies lost their authority, the adulteration
+  ought to have ceased, which in the face of recent exposures will be
+  scarcely maintained. It would be as reasonable to say that the police are
+  useless because we have still burglars and pickpockets among us.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_59"></a><a href="#NtA_59">59</a> Throughout the old
+  legislation, morality went along with politics and economics, and formed
+  the life and spirit of them. The fruiterers in the streets were
+  prohibited from selling plums and apples, because the apprentices played
+  dice with them for their wares, or because the temptation induced
+  children and servants to steal money to buy. When Parliament came to be
+  held regularly in London, an order of Council fixed the rates which the
+  hotel-keeper might charge for dinners. Messes were served for four at
+  twopence per head; the bill of fare providing bread, fish, salt and
+  fresh, two courses of meat, ale, with fire and candles. And the care of
+  the Government did not cease with their meals, and in an anxiety that
+  neither the burgesses nor their servants should be led into sin,
+  stringent orders were issued against street-walkers coming near their
+  quarters.&mdash;<i>Guildhall MSS. Journals</i> 12 and 15.</p>
+
+  <p>The sanitary regulations for the city are peculiarly interesting. The
+  scavengers, constables and officers of the wards were ordered, "on pain
+  of death," to see all streets and yards kept clear of dung and rubbish
+  and all other filthy and corrupt things. Carts went round every Monday,
+  Wednesday, and Saturday, to carry off the litter from the houses, and on
+  each of those days twelve buckets of water were drawn for "every person,"
+  and used in cleaning their rooms and passages.</p>
+
+  <p>Particular pains were taken to keep the Thames clean, and at the mouth
+  of every sewer or watercourse there was a strong iron grating two feet
+  deep.&mdash;<i>Guildhall MSS. Journal</i> 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_60"></a><a href="#NtA_60">60</a> And not in England alone,
+  but throughout Europe.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_61"></a><a href="#NtA_61">61</a> 27 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  25.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_62"></a><a href="#NtA_62">62</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_63"></a><a href="#NtA_63">63</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_64"></a><a href="#NtA_64">64</a> 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 4; 28
+  Hen. VIII. cap. 5.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_65"></a><a href="#NtA_65">65</a> <i>Statut. Winton.</i> 13
+  Edw. I. cap. 6.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_66"></a><a href="#NtA_66">66</a> 12 Rich. II. cap. 6: 11
+  Hen. IV. cap. 4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_67"></a><a href="#NtA_67">67</a> ELLIS'S <i>Original
+  Letters</i>, first series, vol. i. p. 226.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_68"></a><a href="#NtA_68">68</a> It has been stated again
+  and again that the policy of Henry the Eighth was to make the crown
+  despotic by destroying the remnants of the feudal power of the nobility.
+  How is such a theory to be reconciled with statutes the only object of
+  which was the arming and training of the country population, whose
+  natural leaders were the peers, knights, and gentlemen? We have heard too
+  much of this random declamation.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_69"></a><a href="#NtA_69">69</a> 33 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_70"></a><a href="#NtA_70">70</a> From my experience of
+  modern archery I found difficulty in believing that these figures were
+  accurately given. Few living men could send the lightest arrow 220 yards,
+  even with the greatest elevation, and for effective use it must be
+  delivered nearly point blank. A passage in HOLINSHED'S <i>Description of
+  Britain</i>, however, prevents me from doubting that the words of the
+  statute are correct. In his own time, he says that the strength of the
+  English archers had so notoriously declined that the French soldiers were
+  in the habit of disrespectfully turning their backs, at long range,
+  "bidding them shoot," whereas, says Holinshed, "had the archers been what
+  they were wont to be, these fellows would have had their breeches nailed
+  unto their buttocks." In an order for bowstaves, in the reign of Henry
+  the Eighth, I find this direction: "Each bowstave ought to be <i>three
+  fingers thick</i> and squared, and <i>seven feet long</i>: to be got up
+  well polished and without knots."&mdash;Butler to Bullinger: <i>Zurich
+  Letters</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_71"></a><a href="#NtA_71">71</a> Page 735, quarto
+  edition.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_72"></a><a href="#NtA_72">72</a> The Personages, Dresses,
+  and Properties of a Mystery Play, acted at Greenwich, by command of Henry
+  VIII. <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_73"></a><a href="#NtA_73">73</a> Hall says "collar of the
+  <i>garter</i> of St. Michael," which, however, I venture to correct.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_74"></a><a href="#NtA_74">74</a> Rich. II. 12, cap. 7, 8,
+  9; Rich. II. 15, cap. 6.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_75"></a><a href="#NtA_75">75</a> <i>Lansdowne MSS.</i> 1,
+  fol. 26.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_76"></a><a href="#NtA_76">76</a> Injunctions to the
+  Monasteries: BURNET'S <i>Collect.</i> pp. 77-8.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_77"></a><a href="#NtA_77">77</a> Letter of Thomas Dorset
+  to the Mayor of Plymouth: <i>Suppression of the Monasteries</i>, p.
+  36.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_78"></a><a href="#NtA_78">78</a> "Divers of your noble
+  predecessors, kings of this realm, have given lands to monasteries, to
+  give a certain sum of money yearly to the poor people, whereof for the
+  ancienty of the time they never give one penny. Wherefore, if your Grace
+  will build to your poor bedemen a sure hospital that shall never fail,
+  take from them these things.... Tie the holy idle thieves to the cart to
+  be whipped, naked, till they fall to labour, that they, by their
+  importunate begging take not away the alms that the good charitable
+  people would give unto us sore, impotent, miserable people, your
+  bedemen."&mdash;FISH'S <i>Supplication</i>: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 664.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_79"></a><a href="#NtA_79">79</a> 27 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  25.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_80"></a><a href="#NtA_80">80</a> Roads, harbours,
+  embankments, fortifications at Dover and at Berwick, etc.&mdash;STRYPE's
+  <i>Memorials</i>, vol. 1. p. 326 and 419.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_81"></a><a href="#NtA_81">81</a> It is to be remembered
+  that the criminal law was checked on one side by the sanctuary system, on
+  the other by the practice of benefit of clergy. Habit was too strong for
+  legislation, and these privileges continued to protect criminals long
+  after they were abolished by statute. There is abundant evidence that the
+  execution of justice was as lax in practice as it was severe in
+  theory.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_82"></a><a href="#NtA_82">82</a> 27 Ed. III. stat. 1; 38
+  Ed. III. stat. 2; 16 Rich. cap. 5.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_83"></a><a href="#NtA_83">83</a> 25 Ed. III. stat. 4;
+  stat. 5, cap. 22; 13 Rich. II. stat. 2, cap. 2; 2 Hen. IV. cap. 3; 9 Hen.
+  IV. cap. 8.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_84"></a><a href="#NtA_84">84</a> See p. 42.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_85"></a><a href="#NtA_85">85</a> <i>Lansdowne MS.</i> 1,
+  fol. 26; STOW'S <i>Chron.</i> ed. 1630, p. 338.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_86"></a><a href="#NtA_86">86</a> 2 Hen. IV. cap. 3; 9 Hen.
+  IV. cap. 8.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_87"></a><a href="#NtA_87">87</a> 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_88"></a><a href="#NtA_88">88</a> Hen. VII. cap. 4. Among
+  the miscellaneous publications of the Record Commission, there is a
+  complaint presented during this reign, by the gentlemen and the farmers
+  of Carnarvonshire, accusing the clergy of systematic seduction of their
+  wives and daughters.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_89"></a><a href="#NtA_89">89</a> Hen. IV. cap. 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_90"></a><a href="#NtA_90">90</a> MORTON'S <i>Register</i>,
+  MS. Lambeth. See vol. ii. cap. 10, of the second edition of this work for
+  the results of Morton's investigation.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_91"></a><a href="#NtA_91">91</a> MORTON'S <i>Register</i>;
+  and see WILKINS'S <i>Concilia</i>, vol. iii. pp. 618-621.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_92"></a><a href="#NtA_92">92</a> Quibus Dominus intimavit
+  qualis infamia super illos in dictā civitate crescit quod complures
+  eorundem tabernas pandoxatorias, sive caupones indies exerceant ibidem
+  expectando fere per totum diem. Quare Dominus consuluit et monuit eosdem
+  quod in posterum talia dimittant, et quod dimittant suos longos crines et
+  induantur togis non per totum apertis.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_93"></a><a href="#NtA_93">93</a> The expression is
+  remarkable. They were not to dwell on the offences of their brethren
+  coram laicis qui semper clericis sunt infesti.&mdash;WILKINS, vol. iii.
+  p. 618.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_94"></a><a href="#NtA_94">94</a> Johannes permissione
+  divinā Cantuar. episcop. totius Anglię primas cum in pręsenti
+  convocatione pie et salubriter consideratum fuit quod nonnulli sacerdotes
+  et alii clerici ejusdem nostrę provincię in sacris ordinibus constituti
+  honestatem clericalem in tantum abjecerint ac in comā tonsurāque et
+  superindumentis suis quę in anteriori sui parte totaliter aperta existere
+  dignoscuntur, sic sunt dissoluti et adeo insolescant quod inter eos et
+  alios laicos et sęculares viros nulla vel modica comę vel habituum sive
+  vestimentorum distinctio esse videatur quo fiet in brevi ut a multis
+  verisimiliter formidatur quod sicut populus ita et sacerdos erit, et nisi
+  celeriori remedio tantę lascivię ecclesiasticarum personarum quanto ocyus
+  obviemus et clericorum mores hujusmodi maturius compescamus, <i>Ecclesia
+  Anglicana quę superioribus diebus vitā famā et compositis moribus
+  floruisse dignoscitur nostris temporibus quod Deus avertat, pręcipitanter
+  ruet</i>;</p>
+
+  <p>Desiring, therefore, to find some remedy for these disorders, lest the
+  blood of those committed to him should be required at his hands, the
+  archbishop decrees and ordains,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>Ne aliquis sacerdos vel clericus in sacris ordinibus constitutus togam
+  gerat nisi clausam a parte anteriori et non totaliter apertam neque
+  utatur ense nec sicā nec zonā aut marcipio deaurato vel auri ornatum
+  habente. Incedent etiam omnes et singuli presbyteri et clerici ejusdem
+  nostrę provincię coronas et tonsuras gerentes aures patentes ostendendo
+  juxta canonicas sanctiones.&mdash;WILKINS, vol. iii. p. 619.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_95"></a><a href="#NtA_95">95</a> See WARHAM'S
+  <i>Register</i>, MS. Lambeth.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_96"></a><a href="#NtA_96">96</a> 21 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_97"></a><a href="#NtA_97">97</a> ROY'S <i>Satire against
+  the Clergy</i>, written about 1528, is so plain-spoken, and goes so
+  directly to the point of the matter, that it is difficult to find a
+  presentable extract. The following lines on the bishops are among the
+  most moderate in the poem:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"What are the bishops divines&mdash;</p>
+      <p>Yea, they can best skill of wines</p>
+      <p>Better than of divinity;</p>
+      <p>Lawyers are they of experience,</p>
+      <p>And in cases against conscience</p>
+      <p>They are parfet by practice.</p>
+      <p>To forge excommunications,</p>
+      <p>For tythes and decimations</p>
+      <p>Is their continual exercise.</p>
+      <p>As for preaching they take no care,</p>
+      <p>They would rather see a course at a hare;</p>
+      <p>Rather than to make a sermon</p>
+      <p>To follow the chase of wild deer,</p>
+      <p>Passing the time with jolly cheer.</p>
+      <p>Among them all is common</p>
+      <p>To play at the cards and dice;</p>
+      <p>Some of them are nothing nice</p>
+      <p>Both at hazard and momchance;</p>
+      <p>They drink in golden bowls</p>
+      <p>The blood of poor simple souls</p>
+      <p>Perishing for lack of sustenance.</p>
+      <p>Their hungry cures they never teach,</p>
+      <p>Nor will suffer none other to preach," etc.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_98"></a><a href="#NtA_98">98</a> LATIMER'S <i>Sermons</i>,
+  pp. 70, 71.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_99"></a><a href="#NtA_99">99</a> A peculiarly hateful form
+  of clerical impost, the priests claiming the last dress worn in life by
+  persons brought to them for burial.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_100"></a><a href="#NtA_100">100</a> Fitz James to Wolsey,
+  FOXE, vol. iv. p. 196.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_101"></a><a href="#NtA_101">101</a> <i>Supplication of the
+  Beggars</i>; FOXE, vol. iv. p. 661. The glimpses into the condition of
+  the monasteries which had been obtained in the imperfect visitation of
+  Morton, bear out the pamphleteer too completely. See chapter x. of this
+  work, second edition.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_102"></a><a href="#NtA_102">102</a> FOXE, vol. iv. p.
+  658.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_103"></a><a href="#NtA_103">103</a> 13 Ric. II. stat. ii.
+  c. 2; 2 Hen. IV. c. 3; 9 Hen. IV. c. 8. Lingard is mistaken in saying
+  that the Crown had power to dispense with these statutes. A dispensing
+  power was indeed granted by the 12th of the 7th of Ric. II. But by the
+  2nd of the 13th of the same reign, the king is expressly and by name
+  placed under the same prohibitions as all other persons.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_104"></a><a href="#NtA_104">104</a> HALL, p. 784.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_105"></a><a href="#NtA_105">105</a> 25 Hen. VIII. c.
+  22.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_106"></a><a href="#NtA_106">106</a> 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.
+  Speech of Sir Ralph Sadler in parliament, <i>Sadler Papers</i>, vol. iii.
+  p. 323.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_107"></a><a href="#NtA_107">107</a> Nor was the theory
+  distinctly admitted, or the claim of the house of York would have been
+  unquestionable.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_108"></a><a href="#NtA_108">108</a> 25 Hen. VIII. c. 22,
+  Draft of the Dispensation to be granted to Henry VIII. <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i> It has been asserted by a writer in the <i>Tablet</i> that there
+  is no instance in the whole of English history where the ambiguity of the
+  marriage law led to a dispute of title. This was not the opinion of those
+  who remembered the wars of the fifteenth century. "Recens in quorundam
+  vestrorum animis adhuc est illius cruenti temporis memoria," said Henry
+  VIII. in a speech in council, "quod a Ricardo tertio cum avi nostri
+  materni Edwardi quarti statum in controversiam vocāsset ejusque heredes
+  regno atque vitā privāsset illatum est."-WILKINS'S <i>Concilia</i>, vol.
+  iii. p. 714. Richard claimed the crown on the ground that a precontract
+  rendered his brother's marriage invalid, and Henry VII. tacitly allowed
+  the same doubt to continue. The language of the 22nd of the 25th of Hen.
+  VIII. is so clear as to require no additional elucidation; but another
+  distinct evidence of the belief of the time upon the subject is in one of
+  the papers laid before Pope Clement.</p>
+
+  <p>"Constat, in ipso regno quam plurima gravissima bella sępe exorta,
+  confingentes ex justis et legitimis nuptiis quorundam Anglię regum
+  procreatos illegitimos fore propter aliquod consangunitatis vel
+  affinitatis confictum impedimentum et propterea inhabiles esse ad regni
+  successionem."&mdash;<i>Rolls House MS.</i>; WILKINS'S <i>Concilia</i>,
+  vol. iii. p. 707.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_109"></a><a href="#NtA_109">109</a> 28 Hen. VIII. c.
+  24.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_110"></a><a href="#NtA_110">110</a> <i>Appendix 2 to the
+  Third Report of the Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records</i>, p. 241.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_111"></a><a href="#NtA_111">111</a> <i>Sadler Papers</i>,
+  vol. iii. p. 323.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_112"></a><a href="#NtA_112">112</a> 28 Hen. VIII. c.
+  24.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_113"></a><a href="#NtA_113">113</a> <i>Four Years at the
+  Court of Henry the Eighth</i>, vol. ii. pp. 315-16.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_114"></a><a href="#NtA_114">114</a> Sir Charles Brandon,
+  created Duke of Suffolk, and married to Mary Tudor, widow of Louis
+  XII.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_115"></a><a href="#NtA_115">115</a> 28 Hen. VIII. c.
+  24.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_116"></a><a href="#NtA_116">116</a> The treaty was in
+  progress from Dec. 24, 1526, to March 2, 1527 [LORD HERBERT, pp. 80, 81],
+  and during this time the difficulty was raised. The earliest intimation
+  which I find of an intended divorce was in June, 1527, at which time
+  Wolsey was privately consulting the bishops.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>
+  vol. i. p. 189.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_117"></a><a href="#NtA_117">117</a> It was for some time
+  delayed; and the papal agent was instructed to inform Ferdinand that a
+  marriage which was at variance a jure et laudabilibus moribus could not
+  be permitted nisi maturo consilio et necessitatis causā.&mdash;Minute of
+  a brief of Julius the Second, dated March 13, 1504, <i>Rolls House
+  MS</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_118"></a><a href="#NtA_118">118</a> LORD HERBERT, p.
+  114.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_119"></a><a href="#NtA_119">119</a> LORD HERBERT, p. 117,
+  Kennett's edition. The act itself is printed in BURNET'S
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, vol. iv. (Nares' edition) pp. 5, 6. It is dated June
+  27, 1505. Dr. Lingard endeavours to explain away the renunciation as a
+  form. The language of Moryson, however, leaves no doubt either of its
+  causes or its meaning. "Non multo post sponsalia contrahuntur," he says,
+  "Henrico plus minus tredecim annos jam nato. Sed rerum non recte
+  inceptarum successus infelicior homines non prorsus oscitantes plerumque
+  docet quid recte gestum quid perperam, quid factum superi volunt quid
+  infectum. Nimirum Henricus Septimus nullā ęgritudinis prospecta causā
+  repente in deteriorem valetudinem prolapsus est, nec unquam potuit
+  affectum corpus pristinum statum recuperare. Uxor in aliud ex alio malum
+  regina omnium laudatissimia non multo post morbo periit. Quid mirum si
+  Rex tot irati numinis indiciis admonitus c&#339;perit cogitare rem male
+  illis succedere qui vellent hoc nomine cum Dei legibus litem instituere
+  ut diutius cum homine amicitiam gerere possent. Quid deinceps egit? Quid
+  aliud quam quod decuit Christianissimum regem? Filium ad se accersiri
+  jubet, accersitur. Adest, adsunt et multi nobilissimi homines. Rex filium
+  regno natum hortatur ut secum una cum doctissimis ac optimis viris
+  cogitavit nefarium esse putare leges Dei leges Dei non esse cum papa
+  volet. Non ita longā oratione usus filium patri obsequentissimum a
+  sententiā nullo negotio abduxit. Sponsalia contracta infirmantur,
+  pontificięque auctoritatis beneficio palam renunciatum est. Adest
+  publicus tabellio&mdash;fit instrumentum. Rerum gestarum testes rogati
+  sigilla apponunt. Postremo filius patri fidem se illam uxorem nunquam
+  ducturum."&mdash;<i>Apomaxis</i> RICARDI MORYSINI. Printed by Berthelet,
+  1537.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_120"></a><a href="#NtA_120">120</a> See LINGARD, sixth
+  edition, vol. iv. p. 164.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_121"></a><a href="#NtA_121">121</a> HALL, p. 507.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_122"></a><a href="#NtA_122">122</a> He married Catherine,
+  June 3, 1509. Early in the spring of 1510 she miscarried.&mdash;<i>Four
+  Years at the Court of Henry VIII.</i> vol. i. p. 83.</p>
+
+  <p>Jan. 1, 1511. A prince was born, who died Feb. 22.&mdash;HALL.</p>
+
+  <p>Nov. 1513. Another prince was born, who died
+  immediately.&mdash;LINGARD, vol. iv, p. 290.</p>
+
+  <p>Dec. 1514. Badoer, the Venetian ambassador, wrote that the queen had
+  been delivered of a still-born male child, to the great grief of the
+  whole nation.</p>
+
+  <p>May 3, 1515. The queen was supposed to be pregnant. If the supposition
+  was right, she must have miscarried.&mdash;<i>Four Years at the Court of
+  Henry VIII.</i> vol. i. p. 81.</p>
+
+  <p>Feb. 18, 1516. The Princess Mary was born.</p>
+
+  <p>July 3, 1518. "The Queen declared herself quick with child." (Pace to
+  Wolsey: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. p. 2,) and again miscarried.</p>
+
+  <p>These misfortunes we are able to trace accidentally through casual
+  letters, and it is probable that these were not all. Henry's own words
+  upon the subject are very striking:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"All such issue male as I have received of the queen died incontinent
+  after they were born, so that I doubt the punishment of God in that
+  behalf. Thus being troubled in waves of a scrupulous conscience, and
+  partly in despair of any issue male by her, it drove me at last to
+  consider the estate of this realm, and the danger it stood in for lack of
+  issue male to succeed me in this imperial dignity."&mdash;CAVENDISH, p.
+  220.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_123"></a><a href="#NtA_123">123</a> "If a man shall take
+  his brother's wife it is an unclean thing. He hath uncovered his
+  brother's nakedness. They shall be childless."&mdash;<i>Leviticus</i> xx.
+  21. It ought to be remembered, that if the present law of England be
+  right, the party in favour of the divorce was right.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_124"></a><a href="#NtA_124">124</a> <i>Letters of the
+  Bishop of Bayonne</i>, LEGRAND, vol. iii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_125"></a><a href="#NtA_125">125</a> Legates to the Pope,
+  printed in BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 40.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_126"></a><a href="#NtA_126">126</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 117.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_127"></a><a href="#NtA_127">127</a> <i>Letters of the
+  Bishop of Bayonne</i>, LEGRAND, vol. iii.; HALL, 669.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_128"></a><a href="#NtA_128">128</a> They were shut up in
+  the Castle of St. Angelo.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_129"></a><a href="#NtA_129">129</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. pp. 18, 19.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_130"></a><a href="#NtA_130">130</a> The fullest account of
+  Wolsey's intentions on church reform will be found in a letter addressed
+  to him by Fox, the old blind Bishop of Winchester, in 1528. The letter is
+  printed in STRYPE'S <i>Memorials Eccles.</i> vol. i. Appendix 10.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_131"></a><a href="#NtA_131">131</a> <i>Letters of the
+  Bishop of Bayonne</i>, LEGRAND, vol. iii. It is not uncommon to find
+  splendid imaginations of this kind haunting statesmen of the 16th
+  century; and the recapture of Constantinople always formed a feature in
+  the picture. <i>A Plan for the Reformation of Ireland</i>, drawn up in
+  1515, contains the following curious passage: "The prophecy is, that the
+  King of England shall put this land of Ireland into such order that the
+  wars of the land, whereof groweth the vices of the same, shall cease for
+  ever; and after that God shall give such grace and fortune to the same
+  king that he shall with the army of England and of Ireland subdue the
+  realm of France to his obeysance for ever, and shall rescue the Greeks,
+  and recover the great city of Constantinople, and shall vanquish the
+  Turks and win the Holy Cross and the Holy Land, and shall die Emperor of
+  Rome, and eternal blisse shall be his end."&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. ii. pp. 30, 31.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_132"></a><a href="#NtA_132">132</a> Knight to Henry:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. pp. 2, 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_133"></a><a href="#NtA_133">133</a> Wolsey to Cassalis:
+  Ibid. p. 26.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_134"></a><a href="#NtA_134">134</a> The dispensing power
+  of the popes was not formally limited. According to the Roman lawyers, a
+  faculty lay with them of granting extraordinary dispensations in cases
+  where dispensations would not be usually admissible&mdash;which faculty
+  was to be used, however, dummodo causa cogat urgentissima ne regnum
+  aliquod funditus pereat; the pope's business being to decide on the
+  question of urgency.&mdash;Sir Gregory Cassalis to Henry VIII., Dec. 26,
+  1532. <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_135"></a><a href="#NtA_135">135</a> Knight and Cassalis to
+  Wolsey: BURNET'S <i>Collect.</i> p. 12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_136"></a><a href="#NtA_136">136</a> STRYPE'S
+  <i>Memorials</i>, vol. i., Appendix p. 66.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_137"></a><a href="#NtA_137">137</a> Sir F. Bryan and Peter
+  Vannes to Henry; <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 144.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_138"></a><a href="#NtA_138">138</a> STRYPE'S
+  <i>Memorials</i>, Appendix, vol. i. p. 100.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_139"></a><a href="#NtA_139">139</a> Ibid. Appendix, vol.
+  i. pp. 105-6; BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_140"></a><a href="#NtA_140">140</a> Wolsey to the Pope,
+  BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 16: Vereor quod tamen nequeo tacere, ne
+  Regia Majestas, humano divinoque jure quod habet ex omni Christianitate
+  suis his actionibus adjunctum freta, postquam viderit sedis Apostolicę
+  gratiam et Christi in terris Vicarii clementiam desperatam Cęsaris
+  intuitu, in cujus manu neutiquam est tam sanctos conatus reprimere, ea
+  tunc moliatur, ea suę causę perquirat remedia, quę non solum huic Regno
+  sed etiam aliis Christianis principibus occasionem subministrarent sedis
+  Apostolicę auctoritatem et jurisdictionem imminuendi et vilipendendi.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_141"></a><a href="#NtA_141">141</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 20. Wolsey to John Cassalis: "If his Holyness,
+  which God forbid, shall shew himself unwilling to listen to the king's
+  demands, to me assuredly it will be but grief to live longer, for the
+  innumerable evils which I foresee will then follow. One only sure remedy
+  remains to prevent the worst calamities. If that be neglected, there is
+  nothing before us but universal and inevitable ruin."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_142"></a><a href="#NtA_142">142</a> Gardiner and Fox to
+  Wolsey; STRYPE'S <i>Memorials</i>, vol. i. Appendix, p. 92.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_143"></a><a href="#NtA_143">143</a> His Holiness being yet
+  in captivity, as he esteemed himself to be, so long as the Almayns and
+  Spaniards continue in Italy, he thought if he should grant this
+  commission that he should have the emperour his perpetual enemy without
+  any hope of reconciliation. Notwithstanding he was content rather to put
+  himself in evident ruin, and utter undoing, than the king or your Grace
+  shall suspect any point of ingratitude in him; heartily desiring with
+  sighs and tears that the king and your Grace which have been always fast
+  and good to him, will not now suddenly precipitate him for ever: which
+  should be done if immediately on receiving the commission your Grace
+  should begin process. He intendeth to save all upright thus. If M. de
+  Lautrec would set forwards, which he saith daily that he will do, but yet
+  he doth not, at his coming the Pope's Holiness may have good colour to
+  say, "He was required of the commission by the ambassador of England, and
+  denying the same, he was, eftsoons, required by M. de Lautrec to grant
+  the said commission, inasmuch as it was but a letter of justice." And by
+  this colour he would cover the matter so that it might appear unto the
+  emperour that the pope did it not as he that would gladly do displeasure
+  unto the emperour, but as an indifferent judge, that could not nor might
+  deny justice, specially being required by such personages; and
+  immediately he would despatch a commission bearing date after the time
+  that M. de Lautrec had been with him or was nigh unto him. The pope most
+  instantly beseecheth your Grace to be a mean that the King's Highness may
+  accept this in a good part, and that he will take patience for this
+  little time, which, as it is supposed, will be but short.&mdash;Knight to
+  Wolsey and the King, Jan. 1, 1527-8: BURNET <i>Collections</i>, 12,
+  13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_144"></a><a href="#NtA_144">144</a> Such at least was the
+  ultimate conclusion of a curious discussion. When the French herald
+  declared war, the English herald accompanied him into the emperor's
+  presence, and when his companion had concluded, followed up his words
+  with an intimation that unless the French demands were complied with,
+  England would unite to enforce them. The Emperor replied to Francis with
+  defiance. To the English herald he expressed a hope that peace on that
+  side would still be maintained. For the moment the two countries were
+  uncertain whether they were at war or not. The Spanish ambassador in
+  London did not know, and the court could not tell him. The English
+  ambassador in Spain did not leave his post, but he was placed under
+  surveillance. An embargo on Spanish and English property was laid
+  respectively in the ports of the two kingdoms; and the merchants and
+  residents were placed under arrest. Alarmed by the outcry in London, the
+  king hastily concluded a truce with the Regent of the Netherlands, the
+  language of which implied a state of war; but when peace was concluded
+  between France and Spain, England appeared only as a contracting party,
+  not as a principal, and in 1542 it was decided that the antecedent
+  treaties between England and the empire continued in force.&mdash;See
+  LORD HERBERT; HOLINSHED; <i>State Papers</i>, vols. vii. viii. and ix.;
+  with the treaties in RYMER, vol. vi. part 2.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_145"></a><a href="#NtA_145">145</a> Gardiner to the King:
+  BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 426.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_146"></a><a href="#NtA_146">146</a> Duke of Suffolk to
+  Henry the Eighth: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii, p. 183.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_147"></a><a href="#NtA_147">147</a> Duke of Suffolk to
+  Henry VIII.: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 183.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_148"></a><a href="#NtA_148">148</a> HALL, p. 744.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_149"></a><a href="#NtA_149">149</a> When the clothiers of
+  Essex, Kent, Wiltshire, Suffolk, and other shires which are clothmaking,
+  brought cloths to London to be sold, as they were wont, few merchants or
+  none bought any cloth at all. When the clothiers lacked sale, then they
+  put from them their spinners, carders, tuckers, and such others that
+  lived by clothworking, which caused the people greatly to murmur, and
+  specially in Suffolk, for if the Duke of Norfolk had not wisely appeased
+  them, no doubt but they had fallen to some rioting. When the king's
+  council was advertised of the inconvenience, the cardinal sent for a
+  great number of the merchants of London, and to them said, "Sirs, the
+  king is informed that you use not yourselves like merchants, but like
+  graziers and artificers; for where the clothiers do daily bring cloths to
+  the market for your ease, to their great cost, and then be ready to sell
+  them, you of your wilfulness will not buy them, as you have been
+  accustomed to do. What manner of men be you?" said the cardinal. "I tell
+  you that the king straitly commandeth you to buy their cloths as
+  beforetime you have been accustomed to do, upon pain of his high
+  displeasure."&mdash;HALL, p. 746.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_150"></a><a href="#NtA_150">150</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  157. By manners and customs he was referring clearly to his intended
+  reformation of the church. See the letter of Fox, Bishop of Winchester
+  (STRYPE'S <i>Memorials</i>, vol. ii. p. 25), in which Wolsey's intentions
+  are dwelt upon at length.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_151"></a><a href="#NtA_151">151</a> Ibid. pp. 136, 7.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_152"></a><a href="#NtA_152">152</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. pp. 96, 7.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_153"></a><a href="#NtA_153">153</a> Wolsey to Cassalis:
+  Ibid. p. 100.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_154"></a><a href="#NtA_154">154</a> State Papers, vol.
+  vii. pp. 106, 7</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_155"></a><a href="#NtA_155">155</a> Ibid. p. 113.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_156"></a><a href="#NtA_156">156</a> Ibid. vii. p. 113.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_157"></a><a href="#NtA_157">157</a> Take the veil.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_158"></a><a href="#NtA_158">158</a> Instruction to the
+  Ambassadours at Rome: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 136.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_159"></a><a href="#NtA_159">159</a> <i>Letters of the
+  Bishop of Bayanne</i>, LEGRAND, vol. iii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_160"></a><a href="#NtA_160">160</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+  231.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_161"></a><a href="#NtA_161">161</a> Instrucion para
+  Gonzalo Fernandez que se envoie a Ireland al Conde de Desmond,
+  1529.&mdash;MS. Archives at Brussels.&mdash;<i>The Pilgrim</i>, note 1,
+  p. 169.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_162"></a><a href="#NtA_162">162</a> Henrici regis octavi
+  de repudiandā dominā Catherinā oratio Idibus Novembris habita 1528.</p>
+
+  <p>Veneranda et chara nobis pręsulum procerum atque consiliariorum cohors
+  quos communis reipublicę atque regni nostri administrandi cura conjunxit.
+  Haud vos latet divinā nos Providentiā viginti jam ferme annis hanc
+  nostram patriam tantā felicitate rexisse ut in illā ab hostilibus
+  incursionibus tuta semper interea fuerit et nos in his bellis quę
+  suscepimus victores semper evasimus; et quanquam in eo gloriāri jure
+  possumus majorem tranquillitatem opes et honores prioribus huc usque
+  ductis socculis, nunquam subditis a majoribus parentibusque nostris
+  Angliā regibus quam a nobis provenisse, tamen quando cum hāc gloriā in
+  mentem una venit ac concurrit mortis cogitatio, veremur ne nobis sine
+  prole legitimā decedentibus majorem ex morte nostrā patiamini calamitatem
+  quam ex vitā fructum ac emolumentum percepistis. Recens enim in quorundam
+  vestrorum animis adhuc est illius cruenti temporis memoria quod a Ricardo
+  tertio cum avi nostri materni Edwardi Quarti statum in controversiam
+  vocasset ejusque heredes regno atque vitā privāsset illatum est. Tum ex
+  historiis notę sunt illę dirę strages quę a clarissimis Anglię gentibus
+  Eboracensi atque Lancastrensi, dum inter se de regno et imperio multis
+  ęvis contenderent, populo evenerunt. Ac illę ex justis nuptiis inter
+  Henricum Septimum et dominam Elizabetham clarissimos nostros parentes
+  contractis in nobis inde legitimā natā sobole sopitę tandem desierunt. Si
+  vero quod absit, regalis ex nostris nuptiis stirps quę jure deinceps
+  regnare possit non nascatur, hoc regnum civilibus atque intestinis se
+  versabit tumultibus aut in exterorum dominationem atque potestatem
+  veniet. Nam quanquam formā atque venustate singulari, quę magno nobis
+  solatio fuit filiam Dominam Mariam ex nobilissimā f&#339;minā Dominā
+  Catherinā procreavimus, tamen a piis atque eruditis theologis nuper
+  accepimus quia eam quę Arturi fratris nostri conjux ante fuerat uxorem
+  duximus nostras nuptias jure divino esse vetitas, partumque inde editum
+  non posse censeri legitimum. Id quod eo vehementius nos angit et
+  excruciat, quod cum superiori anno legatos ad conciliandas inter
+  Aureliensem ducem et filiam nostram Mariam nuptias ad Franciscum Gallorum
+  regem misissemus a quodam ejus consiliario responsum est, "antequam de
+  hujusmodi nuptiis agatum inquirendum esse prius an Maria fuerit filia
+  nostra legitima; constat enim 'inquit,' quod exdominā Catherinā fratris
+  sui viduā cujusmodi nuptię jure divino interdictę sunt suscepta est." Quę
+  oratio quanto metu ac horrore animum nostrum turbaverit quia res ipsa
+  ęternę tam animi quam corporis salutis periculum in se continet, et quam
+  perplexis cogitationibus conscientiam occupat, vos quibus et capitis aut
+  fortunę ac multo magis animarum jactura immineret, remedium nisi adhibere
+  velitis, ignorare non posse arbitror. Hęc una res&mdash;quod Deo teste et
+  in Regis oraculo affirmamus&mdash;nos impulit ut per legatos
+  doctissimorum per totum orbem Christianum theologorum sententias
+  exquireremus et Romani Pontificis legatum verum atque ęquum judicium de
+  tantā causā laturum ut tranquillā deinceps et intergā conscientiā in
+  conjugio licito vivere possimus accerseremus. In quo si ex sacris
+  litteris hoc quo viginti jam fere annis gavisi sumus matrimonium jure
+  divino permissum esse manifeste liquidoque constabit, non modo ob
+  conscientię tranquillitatem, verum etiam ob amabiles mores virtutesque
+  quibus regina prędita et ornata est, nihil optatius nihilque jucundius
+  accidere nobis potest. Nam pręterquam quod regali atque nobili genere
+  prognata est, tantā pręterea comitate et obsequio conjugali tum cęteris
+  animi morumque ornamentis quę nobilitatem illustrant omnes f&#339;minas
+  his viginti annis sic mihi anteire visa est ut si a conjugio liber essem
+  ac solutus, si jure divino liceret, hanc solam prę cęteris f&#339;minis
+  stabili mihi jure ac f&#339;dere matrimoniali conjungerem. Si vero in hoc
+  judicio matrimonium nostrum jure divino prohibitum, ideoque ab initio
+  nullum irritumque fuisse pronuncietur, infelix hic meus casus multis
+  lacrimis lugendus ac deplorandus erit. Non modo quod a tam illustris et
+  amabilis mulieris consuetudine et consortio divertendum sit, sed multo
+  magis quod specie ad similitudinem veri conjugii decepti in amplexibus
+  plusquam fornicariis tam multos annos trivimus nullā legitimā prognatā
+  nobis sobole quę nobis mortuis hujus inclyti regni hereditatem
+  capessat.</p>
+
+  <p>Hę nostrę curę istęque solicitudines sunt quę mentem atque
+  conscientiam nostram dies noctesque torquent et excurciant, quibus
+  auferendis et profligandis remedium ex hāc legatione et judicio
+  opportunum quęrimus. Ideoque vos quorum virtuti atque fidei multum
+  attribuimus rogamus ut certum atque genuinum nostrum de hāc re sensum
+  quem ex nostro sermone percepistis populo declaretis: eumque excitetis ut
+  nobiscum una oraret ut ad conscientię nostrę pacem atque tranquillitatem
+  in hoc judicio veritas multis jam annis tenebris involuta tandem
+  patefiat.&mdash;WILKINS'S <i>Concilia</i>, vol. iii. p. 714.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_163"></a><a href="#NtA_163">163</a> HALL, <i>Letters of
+  the Bishop of Bayonne</i>, LEGRAND, vol. iii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_164"></a><a href="#NtA_164">164</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_165"></a><a href="#NtA_165">165</a> Ibid. vol. iii. pp.
+  232, 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_166"></a><a href="#NtA_166">166</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 120; Ibid. p. 186.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_167"></a><a href="#NtA_167">167</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 41.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_168"></a><a href="#NtA_168">168</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 193.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_169"></a><a href="#NtA_169">169</a> The Emperor could as
+  little trust Clement as the English, and to the last moment could not
+  tell how he would act.</p>
+
+  <p>"Il me semble," wrote Inigo di Mendoza to Charles on the 17th of June,
+  1529,&mdash;"il me semble que Sa Sainteté differe autant qu'il peut ce
+  qu' auparavant il avoit promis, et je crains qu'il n'ait ordonné aux
+  legatz ce qui jusques ą present avoit resté en suspens qu'ils procedent
+  par la premičre commission. Ce qui faisant votre Majesté peut tenir la
+  Reine autant que condamné."&mdash;<i>MS. Archives at Brussels.</i></p>
+
+  <p>The sort of influence to which the See of Rome was amenable appears in
+  another letter to the Emperor, written from Rome itself on the 4th of
+  October. The Pope and cardinals, it is to be remembered, were claiming to
+  be considered the supreme court of appeal in Christendom.</p>
+
+  <p>"Si je ne m'abuse tous ou la pluspart du Saint College sont plus
+  affectionnez ą vostre dite Majesté que ą autre Prince Chrestien: de vous
+  escrire, Sire, particuličrement toutes leurs responses seroit chose trop
+  longue. Tant y a que elles sont telles que votre Majesté a raison doubt
+  grandement se contenter d'icelles.</p>
+
+  <p>"... Seulement diray derechief ą vostre Majesté, et me souvient l'avoir
+  dict plusieurs fois, qu'il est en vostre Majesté gaigner et entretenir
+  perpetuellement ce college en vostre devotion en distribuant seulement
+  entre les principaulx d'eulx en pensions et benefices la somme de vingt
+  mille ducas, l'ung mille, l'autre deulx ou trois mille. Et est cecy
+  chose, Sire, que plus vous touche que ą autre Prince Chrestien pour les
+  affaires que vostre Majesté a journellement ą despescher en ceste
+  court."&mdash;M. de Pręt to Charles V. August 5th, 1529. MS. Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_170"></a><a href="#NtA_170">170</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  377.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_171"></a><a href="#NtA_171">171</a> Ibid. vol. iii. p.
+  374.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_172"></a><a href="#NtA_172">172</a> Ibid. vol. iii. p.
+  355.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_173"></a><a href="#NtA_173">173</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_174"></a><a href="#NtA_174">174</a> Memorandum relating to
+  the Society of Christian Brethren. <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_175"></a><a href="#NtA_175">175</a> DALABER'S
+  <i>Narrative</i>, printed in FOXE, vol. iv. Seeley's Ed.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_176"></a><a href="#NtA_176">176</a> All authorities agree
+  in the early account of Henry, and his letters provide abundant proof
+  that it is not exaggerated. The following description of him in the
+  despatches of the Venetian ambassador shows the effect which he produced
+  on strangers in 1515:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Assuredly, most serene prince, from what we have seen of him, and in
+  conformity, moreover, with the report made to us by others, this most
+  serene king is not only very expert in arms and of great valour and most
+  excellent in his personal endowments, but is likewise so gifted and
+  adorned with mental accomplishments of every sort, that we believe him to
+  have few equals in the world. He speaks English, French, Latin,
+  understands Italian well; plays almost on every instrument; sings and
+  composes fairly; is prudent, and sage, and free from every
+  vice."&mdash;<i>Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII.</i> vol. i. p.
+  76.</p>
+
+  <p>Four years later, the same writer adds,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"The king speaks good French, Latin, and Spanish; is very religious;
+  hears three masses a day when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days;
+  he hears the office every day in the queen's chamber&mdash;that is to
+  say, vespers and complins."&mdash;Ibid. vol. ii. p. 312. William Thomas,
+  who must have seen him, says,</p>
+
+  <p>"Of personage he was one of the goodliest men that lived in his time;
+  being high of stature, in manner more than a man, and proportionable in
+  all his members unto that height; of countenance he was most amiable;
+  courteous and benign in gesture unto all persons and specially unto
+  strangers; seldom or never offended with anything; and of so constant a
+  nature in himself that I believe few can say that ever he changed his
+  cheer for any novelty how contrary or sudden so ever it were. Prudent he
+  was in council and forecasting; most liberal in rewarding his faithful
+  servants, and even unto his enemies, as it behoveth a prince to be. He
+  was learned in all sciences, and had the gift of many tongues. He was a
+  perfect theologian, a good philosopher, and a strong man at arms, a
+  jeweller, a perfect builder as well of fortresses as of pleasant palaces,
+  and from one to another there was no necessary kind of knowledge, from a
+  king's degree to a carter's, but he had an honest sight in
+  it."&mdash;<i>The Pilgrim</i> p. 78.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_177"></a><a href="#NtA_177">177</a> Exposition of the
+  Commandments, set forth by Royal authority, 1536. This treatise was drawn
+  up by the bishops, and submitted to, and revised by, the king.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_178"></a><a href="#NtA_178">178</a> SAGUDINO'S <i>Summary.
+  Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII.</i> vol. ii. P. 75.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_179"></a><a href="#NtA_179">179</a> "The truth is, when I
+  married my wife, I had but fifty pounds to live on for me and my wife so
+  long as my father lived, and yet she brought me forth every year a
+  child."&mdash;Earl of Wiltshire to Cromwell: ELLIS, third series, vol.
+  iii. pp. 22, 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_180"></a><a href="#NtA_180">180</a> BURNET, vol. i. p.
+  69.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_181"></a><a href="#NtA_181">181</a> Thomas Allen to the
+  Earl of Shrewsbury: LODGE'S <i>Illustrations</i>, vol. i. p. 20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_182"></a><a href="#NtA_182">182</a> Earl of Northumberland
+  to Cromwell: printed by LORD HERBERT and by BURNET.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_183"></a><a href="#NtA_183">183</a> 28 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  7.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_184"></a><a href="#NtA_184">184</a> Since these words were
+  written, I have discovered among the Archives of Simancas what may
+  perhaps be some clue to the mystery, in an epitome of a letter written to
+  Charles V. from London in May, 1536:&mdash;-</p>
+
+  <p>"His Majesty has letters from England of the 11th of May, with certain
+  news that the paramour of the King of England, who called herself queen,
+  has been thrown into the Tower of London for adultery. The partner of her
+  guilt was an organist of the Privy Chamber, who is in the Tower as well.
+  An officer of the King's wardrobe has been arrested also for the same
+  offence with her, and one of her brothers for having been privy to her
+  offences without revealing them. They say, too, that if the adultery had
+  not been discovered, the King was determined to put her away, having been
+  informed by competent witnesses that she was married and had consummated
+  her marriage nine years before, with the Earl of Northumberland."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_185"></a><a href="#NtA_185">185</a> ELLIS, third series,
+  vol. ii. p. 131.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_186"></a><a href="#NtA_186">186</a> Wyatt's Memorials,
+  printed in Singer's CAVENDISH, p. 420.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_187"></a><a href="#NtA_187">187</a> ELLIS, third series,
+  vol. ii. p. 132.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_188"></a><a href="#NtA_188">188</a> ELLIS, first series,
+  vol. i. p. 135. "My Lord, in my most humblest wise that my poor heart can
+  think, I do thank your Grace for your kind letter, and for your rich and
+  goodly present; the which I shall never be able to deserve without your
+  great help; of the which I have hitherto had so great plenty, that all
+  the days of my life I am most bound of all creatures, next to the King's
+  Grace, to love and serve your Grace. Of the which I beseech you never to
+  doubt that ever I shall vary from this thought as long as any breath is
+  in my body."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_189"></a><a href="#NtA_189">189</a> CAVENDISH <i>Life of
+  Wolsey,</i> p. 316. Singer's edition.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_190"></a><a href="#NtA_190">190</a> CAVENDISH, pp. 364,
+  5.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_191"></a><a href="#NtA_191">191</a> <i>Letters of the
+  Bishop of Bayonne</i>, LEGRAND, vol. iii. pp. 368, 378, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_192"></a><a href="#NtA_192">192</a> See HALE'S <i>Criminal
+  Causes from the Records of the Consistory Court of London.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_193"></a><a href="#NtA_193">193</a> Petition of the
+  Commons, infra, p. 191, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_194"></a><a href="#NtA_194">194</a> Reply of the
+  Ordinaries to the petition of the Commons, infra, p. 202, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_195"></a><a href="#NtA_195">195</a> Petition of the
+  Commons. 23 Hen. VIII. c. 9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_196"></a><a href="#NtA_196">196</a> HALE'S <i>Criminal
+  Causes,</i> p.4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_197"></a><a href="#NtA_197">197</a> An Act that no person
+  committing murder, felony, or treason should be admitted to his clergy
+  under the degree of sub-deacon.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_198"></a><a href="#NtA_198">198</a> In May, 1528, the evil
+  had become so intolerable, that Wolsey drew the pope's attention to it.
+  Priests, he said, both secular and regular, were in the habit of
+  committing atrocious crimes, for which, if not in orders, they would have
+  been promptly executed; and the laity were scandalised to see such
+  persons not only not degraded, but escaping with complete impunity.
+  Clement something altered the law of degradation in consequence of this
+  representation, but quite inadequately.&mdash;RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p.
+  96.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_199"></a><a href="#NtA_199">199</a> Thomas Cowper et ejus
+  uxor Margarita pronubę horribiles, et instigant mulieres ad fornicandum
+  cum quibuscunque laicis, religiosis, fratribus minoribus, et nisi
+  fornicant in domo suā ipsi diffamabunt nisi voluerint dare eis ad
+  voluntatem eorum; et vir est pronuba uxori, et vult relinquere eam apud
+  fratres minores pro peccatis habendis.&mdash;HALE, <i>Criminal
+  Causes,</i> p. 9.</p>
+
+  <p>Joanna Cutting communis pronuba at pręsertim inter presbyteros fratres
+  monachos et canonicos et etiam inter Thomam Peise et quandam Agnetam,
+  etc.&mdash;HALE, <i>Criminal Causes,</i> p. 28.</p>
+
+  <p>See also Ibid. pp. 15, 22, 23, 39, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>In the first instance the parties accused "made their purgation" and
+  were dismissed. The exquisite corruption of the courts, instead of
+  inviting evidence and sifting accusations, allowed accused persons to
+  support their own pleas of not guilty by producing four witnesses, not to
+  disprove the charges, but to swear that they believed the charges untrue.
+  This was called "purgation."</p>
+
+  <p>Clergy, it seems, were sometimes allowed to purge themselves simply on
+  their own word.&mdash;HALE, p. 22; and see the Preamble of the 1st of the
+  23rd of Henry VIII.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_200"></a><a href="#NtA_200">200</a> Complaints of
+  iniquities arising from confession were laid before Parliament as early
+  as 1394.</p>
+
+  <p>"Auricularis confessio quę dicitur tam necessaria ad salvationem
+  hominis, cum fictā potestate absolutionis exaltat superbiam sacerdotum,
+  et dat illis opportunitatem secretarum sermocinationum quas nos nolumus
+  dicere, quia domini et dominę attestantur quod pro timore confessorum
+  suorum non audent dicere veritatem; et in tempore confessionis est
+  opportunum tempus procationis id est of wowing et aliarum secretarum
+  conventionum ad peccata mortalia. Ipsi dicunt quod sunt commissarii Dei
+  ad judicandum de omni peccato perdonandum et mundandum quemcunque eis
+  placuerint. Dicunt quod habent claves c&#339;li et inferni et possunt
+  excommunicare et benedicere ligare et solvere in voluntatem eorum; in
+  tantum quod pro bussello vel 12 denariis volunt vendere benedictionem
+  c&#339;li per chartam et clausulam de warrantiā sigillitā sigillo
+  communi. Ista conclusio sic est in usu quod non eget probatione
+  aliquā."&mdash;Extract from a Petition presented to Parliament: WILKINS,
+  vol. iii. p. 221.</p>
+
+  <p>This remarkable paper ends with the following lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"Plangunt Anglorum gentes crimen Sodomorum</p>
+      <p>Paulus fert horum sunt idola causa malorum</p>
+      <p>Surgunt ingrati Giezitę Simone nati</p>
+      <p>Nomine pręlati hoc defensare parati</p>
+      <p>Qui reges estis populis quicunque pręstis</p>
+      <p>Qualiter his gestis gladios prohibere potestis."</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>See also HALE, p. 42, where an abominable instance is mentioned, and a
+  still worse in the <i>Suppression of the Monasteries,</i> pp. 45-50.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_201"></a><a href="#NtA_201">201</a> HALE, p. 12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_202"></a><a href="#NtA_202">202</a> Ibid. pp. 75, 83;
+  <i>Suppression of the Monasteries,</i> p. 47.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_203"></a><a href="#NtA_203">203</a> Ibid. p. 80.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_204"></a><a href="#NtA_204">204</a> Ibid. p. 83.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_205"></a><a href="#NtA_205">205</a> I have been taunted
+  with my inability to produce more evidence. For the present I will
+  mention two additional instances only, and perhaps I shall not be invited
+  to swell the list further.</p>
+
+  <p>1. In the State Paper Office is a report to Cromwell by Adam
+  Bekenshaw, one of his diocesan visitors, in which I find this
+  passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"There be knights and divers gentlemen in the diocese of Chester who
+  do keep concubines and do yearly compound with the officials for a small
+  sum without monition to leave their naughty living."</p>
+
+  <p>2. In another report I find also the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"The names of such persons as be permitted to live in adultery and
+  fornication for money:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"The Vicar of Ledbury.</p>
+      <p>The Vicar of Brasmyll.</p>
+      <p>The Vicar of Stow.</p>
+      <p>The Vicar of Cloune.</p>
+      <p>The Parson of Wentnor.</p>
+      <p>The Parson of Rusbury.</p>
+      <p>The Parson of Plowden.</p>
+      <p>The Dean of Pountsbury.</p>
+      <p>The Parson of Stratton.</p>
+      <p>Sir Matthew of Montgomery.</p>
+      <p>Sir &mdash;&mdash; of Lauvange.</p>
+      <p>Sir John Brayle.</p>
+      <p>Sir Morris of Clone.</p>
+      <p>Sir Adam of Clone.</p>
+      <p>Sir Pierce of Norbury.</p>
+      <p>Sir Gryffon ap Egmond.</p>
+      <p>Sir John Orkeley.</p>
+      <p>Sir John of Mynton.</p>
+      <p>Sir John Reynolds.</p>
+      <p>Sir Morris of Knighton, priest.</p>
+      <p>Hugh Davis.</p>
+      <p>Cadwallader ap Gern.</p>
+      <p>Edward ap Meyrick.</p>
+      <p>With many others of the diocese of Hereford."</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The originals of both these documents are in the State Paper Office.
+  There are copies in the Bodleian Library.&mdash;<i>MS. Tanner,</i>
+  105.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_206"></a><a href="#NtA_206">206</a> Skelton gives us a
+  specimen of the popular criticisms:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"Thus I, Colin Clout,</p>
+      <p>As I go about,</p>
+      <p>And wondering as I walk,</p>
+      <p>I hear the people talk:</p>
+      <p>Men say for silver and gold</p>
+      <p>Mitres are bought and sold:</p>
+      <p>A straw for Goddys curse,</p>
+      <p>What are they the worse?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"What care the clergy though Gill sweat,</p>
+      <p>Or Jack of the Noke?</p>
+      <p>The poor people they yoke</p>
+      <p>With sumners and citacions,</p>
+      <p>And excommunications.</p>
+      <p>About churches and markets</p>
+      <p>The bishop on his carpets</p>
+      <p>At home soft doth sit.</p>
+      <p>This is a fearful fit,</p>
+      <p>To hear the people jangle.</p>
+      <p>How wearily they wrangle!</p>
+      <p>But Doctor Bullatus</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"Parum litteratus,</p>
+      <p>Dominus Doctoratus</p>
+      <p>At the broad gate-house.</p>
+      <p>Doctor Daupatus</p>
+      <p>And Bachelor Bacheleratus,</p>
+      <p>Drunken as a mouse</p>
+      <p>At the ale-house,</p>
+      <p>Taketh his pillion and his cap</p>
+      <p>At the good ale-tap,</p>
+      <p>For lack of good wine.</p>
+      <p>As wise as Robin Swine,</p>
+      <p>Under a notary's sign,</p>
+      <p>Was made a divine;</p>
+      <p>As wise as Waltham's calf,</p>
+      <p>Must preach in Goddys half;</p>
+      <p>In the pulpit solemnly;</p>
+      <p>More meet in a pillory;</p>
+      <p>For by St. Hilary</p>
+      <p>He can nothing smatter</p>
+      <p>Of logic nor school matter.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"Such temporal war and bate</p>
+      <p>As now is made of late</p>
+      <p>Against holy church estate,</p>
+      <p>Or to mountain good quarrels;</p>
+      <p>The laymen call them barrels</p>
+      <p>Full of gluttony and of hypocrisy,</p>
+      <p>That counterfeits and paints</p>
+      <p>As they were very saints.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"By sweet St. Marke,</p>
+      <p>This is a wondrous warke,</p>
+      <p>That the people talk this.</p>
+      <p>Somewhat there is amiss.</p>
+      <p>The devil cannot stop their mouths,</p>
+      <p>But they will talk of such uncouths</p>
+      <p>All that ever they ken</p>
+      <p>Against spiritual men."</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I am unable to quote more than a few lines from ROY'S <i>Satire</i>.
+  At the close of a long paragraph of details an advocate of the clergy
+  ventures to say that the bad among them are a minority. His friend
+  answers:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>"Make the company great or small,</p>
+      <p>Among a thousand find thou shall</p>
+      <p>Scant one chaste of body or mind."</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_207"></a><a href="#NtA_207">207</a> Answer of the Bishops
+  to the Commons' Petition: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_208"></a><a href="#NtA_208">208</a> Joanna Leman notatur
+  officio quod non venit ad ecclesiam parochialem; et dicit se nolle
+  accipere panem benedictum a manibus rectoris; et vocavit eum "horsyn
+  preste."&mdash;HALE, p. 99.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_209"></a><a href="#NtA_209">209</a> HALE, p. 63.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_210"></a><a href="#NtA_210">210</a> Ibid. p. 98.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_211"></a><a href="#NtA_211">211</a> Ibid. p. 38.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_212"></a><a href="#NtA_212">212</a> Ibid. p. 67.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_213"></a><a href="#NtA_213">213</a> Ibid. p. 100.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_214"></a><a href="#NtA_214">214</a> CAVENDISH, <i>Life of
+  Wolsey</i>, p. 251.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_215"></a><a href="#NtA_215">215</a> HALL, p. 764.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_216"></a><a href="#NtA_216">216</a> Ibid. p. 764.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_217"></a><a href="#NtA_217">217</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 361.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_218"></a><a href="#NtA_218">218</a> 6 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  16.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_219"></a><a href="#NtA_219">219</a> The session lasted six
+  weeks only, and several of the subjects of the petition were disposed of
+  in the course of it, as we shall see.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_220"></a><a href="#NtA_220">220</a> The MS. from which I
+  have transcribed this copy is itself imperfect, as will be seen in the
+  "reply of the Bishops," which supplies several omitted articles. See p.
+  137, et seq. It is in the Rolls House.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_221"></a><a href="#NtA_221">221</a> The penny, as I have
+  shown, equalled, in terms of a poor man's necessities, a shilling. See
+  chap. i.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_222"></a><a href="#NtA_222">222</a> See instance's in
+  HALE: p, 62, <i>Omnium Sanctorum in muro</i>.&mdash;M. Gulielmus Edward
+  curatus notatur officio quod recusat ministrare sacramenta ecelesiastica
+  ęgrotantibus nisi prius habitis pecuniis pro suo labore: p. 64, <i>St.
+  Mary Magdalen</i>.&mdash;Curatus notatur officio prbpter quod recusavit
+  solemnizare matrrimonium quousque habet pro hujusmodi solemnizatione,
+  <i>3<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i></i>; and see pp. 52, 75.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_223"></a><a href="#NtA_223">223</a> I give many instances
+  of this practice in my sixth chapter. It was a direct breach of the
+  statute of Henry IV., which insists on all examinations for heresy being
+  conducted in open court. "The diocesan and his commissaries," says that
+  act, "shall openly and judicially proceed against persons
+  arrested."&mdash;2 Hen. IV. c. 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_224"></a><a href="#NtA_224">224</a> Again breaking the
+  statute of Hen. IV., which limited the period of imprisonment previous to
+  public trial to three months.&mdash;2 Hen. IV. c. 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_225"></a><a href="#NtA_225">225</a> To be disposed of at
+  Smithfield. Abjuration was allowed once. For a second offence there was
+  no forgiveness.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_226"></a><a href="#NtA_226">226</a> Petition of the
+  Commons. <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_227"></a><a href="#NtA_227">227</a> See STRYPE, <i>Eccles.
+  Memorials</i>, vol. i. p. 191-2,&mdash;who is very eloquent in his
+  outcries upon his subject.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_228"></a><a href="#NtA_228">228</a> <i>Answer of the
+  Bishops</i>, p. 204, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_229"></a><a href="#NtA_229">229</a> Explanations are not
+  easy; but the following passage may suggest the meaning of the House of
+  Commons:&mdash;"The holy Father Prior of Maiden Bradley hath but six
+  children, and but one daughter married yet of the goods of the monastery;
+  trusting shortly to marry the rest."&mdash;Dr. Leyton to Cromwell:
+  <i>Suppression of the Monasteries</i>, p. 58.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_230"></a><a href="#NtA_230">230</a> Reply of the Bishops,
+  infra.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_231"></a><a href="#NtA_231">231</a> CAVENDISH, <i>Life of
+  Wolsey</i>, p. 390. MORE'S <i>Life of More</i>, p. 109.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_232"></a><a href="#NtA_232">232</a> Populus diu oblatrans.
+  Fox to Wolsey. STRYPE, <i>Eccl. Mem.</i> vol. i. Appendix, p. 27.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_233"></a><a href="#NtA_233">233</a> RYMER, vol. vi. part
+  2, p. 119.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_234"></a><a href="#NtA_234">234</a> The answer of the
+  Ordinaries to the supplication of the worshipful the Commons of the Lower
+  House of Parliament offered to our Sovereign Lord the King's most noble
+  Grace.&mdash;<i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_235"></a><a href="#NtA_235">235</a> The terms of the
+  several articles of complaint are repeated verbally from the petition. I
+  condense them to spare recapitulation.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_236"></a><a href="#NtA_236">236</a> 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15; 2
+  Hen. V. cap. 7.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_237"></a><a href="#NtA_237">237</a> An Act that no person
+  shall be cited out of the diocese in which he dwells, except in certain
+  cases. It received the Royal assent two years later. See 23 Hen. VIII.
+  cap. 9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_238"></a><a href="#NtA_238">238</a> 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 5.
+  An Act concerning fines and sums of money to be taken by the ministers of
+  bishops and other ordinaries of holy church for the probate of
+  testaments.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_239"></a><a href="#NtA_239">239</a> HALE,
+  <i>Precedents</i>, p. 86.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_240"></a><a href="#NtA_240">240</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_241"></a><a href="#NtA_241">241</a> 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 6.
+  An Act concerning the taking of mortuaries, or demanding, receiving, or
+  claiming the same.</p>
+
+  <p>In Scotland the usual mortuary was, a cow and the uppermost cloth or
+  counterpane on the bed in which the death took place. A bishop
+  reprimanding a suspected clergyman for his leaning toward the
+  Reformation, said to him:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"My joy, Dean Thomas, I am informed that ye preach the epistle and
+  gospel every Sunday to your parishioners, and that ye take not the cow
+  nor the upmost cloth from your parishioners; which thing is very
+  prejudicial to the churchmen. And therefore, Dean Thomas, I would ye took
+  your cow and upmost cloth, or else it is too much to preach every Sunday,
+  for in so doing ye may make the people think we should preach
+  likewise."&mdash;CALDERWOOD, vol. i. p. 126.</p>
+
+  <p>The bishop had to burn Dean Thomas at last, being unable to work
+  conviction into him in these matters.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_242"></a><a href="#NtA_242">242</a> 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.
+  An Act that no spiritual person shall take farms; or buy and sell for
+  lucre and profit; or keep tan-houses or breweries. And for pluralities of
+  benefices and for residence.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_243"></a><a href="#NtA_243">243</a> HALL, p. 767.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_244"></a><a href="#NtA_244">244</a> Ibid. 766</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_245"></a><a href="#NtA_245">245</a> Ibid. 767.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_246"></a><a href="#NtA_246">246</a> Ibid. 766.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_247"></a><a href="#NtA_247">247</a> Ibid. 768.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_248"></a><a href="#NtA_248">248</a> So reluctant was he,
+  that at one time he had resolved, rather than compromise the unity of
+  Christendom, to give way. When the disposition of the court of Rome was
+  no longer doubtful, "his difficultatibus permotus, cum in hoc statu res
+  essent, dixerunt qui ejus verba exceperunt, post profundam secum de
+  universo negotio deliberationem et mentis agitationem, tandem in hęc
+  verba prorupisse, se primum tentāsse illud divortium persuasum ecclesiam
+  Romanam hoc idem probaturum&mdash;quod si ita ilia abhorreret ab illā
+  sententiā ut nullo modo permittendum censeret se nolle cum eā contendere
+  neque amplius in illo negotio progredi."</p>
+
+  <p>Pole, on whose authority we receive these words, says that they were
+  heard with almost unanimous satisfaction at the council board. The moment
+  of hesitation was, it is almost certain, at the crisis which preceded or
+  attended Wolsey's fall. It endured but for three days, and was dispelled
+  by the influence of Cromwell, who tempted both the king and parliament
+  into their fatal revolt.&mdash;POLI <i>Apologia ad Carolum
+  Quintum</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_249"></a><a href="#NtA_249">249</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  446. The censures were threatened in the first brief, but the menace was
+  withdrawn under the impression that it was not needed.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_250"></a><a href="#NtA_250">250</a> Ibid. The second brief is dated March 7, and declares that the king, if he
+  proceeds, shall incur ipso facto the greater excommunication; that the
+  kingdom will fall under an interdict.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_251"></a><a href="#NtA_251">251</a> Cranmer was born in
+  1489, and was thus forty years old when he first emerged into
+  eminence.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_252"></a><a href="#NtA_252">252</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 226.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_253"></a><a href="#NtA_253">253</a> Je croy qu'il ne feist
+  en sa vie ceremonie qui luy touchast si prés du c&#339;ur, ne dont je
+  pense qu'il luy doive advenir moins du bien. Car aucunes fois qu'il
+  pensoit qu'on ne le regardast, il faisoit de si grands soupirs que pour
+  pesante que fust sa chappe, il la faisoit bransler ą bon
+  escient.&mdash;<i>Lettre de M. de Gramont, Evźque de Tarbčs.</i> LEGRAND,
+  vol. iii. p. 386.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_254"></a><a href="#NtA_254">254</a> ELLIS, <i>Third
+  Series</i>, vol. ii. p. 98. "In the letters showed us by M. de Buclans
+  from the emperor, of the which mention was made in ciphers, it was
+  written in terms that the French king would offer unto your Grace the
+  papalite of France vel Patriarchate, for the French men would no more
+  obey the Church of Rome."&mdash;Lee to Wolsey.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_255"></a><a href="#NtA_255">255</a> A ce qu'il m'en a
+  declaré des fois plus de trois en secret, il seroit content que le dit
+  mariage fust ja faict, ou par dispense du Legat d'Angleterre ou
+  autrement; mais que ce ne fust par son autorité, in aussi diminuant sa
+  puissance, quant aux dispenses, et limitation de droict
+  divin.&mdash;<i>Dechiffrement de Lettres de M. de
+  Tarbčs.</i>&mdash;LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 408.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_256"></a><a href="#NtA_256">256</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  408.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_257"></a><a href="#NtA_257">257</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 230.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_258"></a><a href="#NtA_258">258</a> The Bishop of Tarbčs
+  to the King of France. LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 401.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_259"></a><a href="#NtA_259">259</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 234.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_260"></a><a href="#NtA_260">260</a> Ibid. p. 235.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_261"></a><a href="#NtA_261">261</a> We demand a service of
+  you which it is your duty to concede; and your first thought is lest you
+  should offend the emperor. We do not blame <i>him</i>. That in such a
+  matter he should be influenced by natural affection is intelligible and
+  laudable. But for that very reason we decline to submit to so partial a
+  judgment.&mdash;Henry VIII. to the Pope: BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p.
+  431.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_262"></a><a href="#NtA_262">262</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  394.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_263"></a><a href="#NtA_263">263</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 317.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_264"></a><a href="#NtA_264">264</a> For Croke's Mission,
+  see BURNET, vol. i. p. 144 e.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_265"></a><a href="#NtA_265">265</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 241.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_266"></a><a href="#NtA_266">266</a> Friar Pallavicino to
+  the Bishop of Bath. <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_267"></a><a href="#NtA_267">267</a> Croke and Omnibow to
+  the King. <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_268"></a><a href="#NtA_268">268</a> Generalis magister
+  nostri ordinis mandavit omnibus suę religionis professoribus, ut nullus
+  audeat de auctoritate Pontificis quicquam loqui. Denique Orator Cęsareus
+  in talia verba prorupit, quibus facile cognovi ut me a Pontifice vocari
+  studeat et tunc timendum esset saluti meę. Father Omnibow to Henry VIII.
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_269"></a><a href="#NtA_269">269</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collect.</i> p. 50. Burnet labours to prove that on Henry's side there
+  was no bribery, and that the emperor was the only offender; an
+  examination of many MS. letters from Croke and other agents in Italy
+  leads me to believe that, although the emperor only had recourse to
+  intimidation, because he alone was able to practise it, the bribery was
+  equally shared between both parties.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_270"></a><a href="#NtA_270">270</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  458. The Grand Master to the King of France:&mdash;De l'autre part,
+  adventure il n'est moins a craindre, que le Roy d'Angleterre, irrité de
+  trop longues dissimulations, trouvast moyen de parvenir a ses intentions
+  du consentement de l'Empereur, et que par l'advenement d'un tiers <i>se
+  fissent ami, Herode et Pilate</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_271"></a><a href="#NtA_271">271</a> Ibid. vol. iii. p.
+  467, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_272"></a><a href="#NtA_272">272</a> Letter from the King
+  of France to the President of the Parliament of Paris. <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_273"></a><a href="#NtA_273">273</a> Letter from Reginald
+  Pole to Henry VIII. <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_274"></a><a href="#NtA_274">274</a> Pole to Henry VIII.
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_275"></a><a href="#NtA_275">275</a> BURNET,
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 429.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_276"></a><a href="#NtA_276">276</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. i. p. 377.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_277"></a><a href="#NtA_277">277</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 436; <i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. p. 378.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_278"></a><a href="#NtA_278">278</a> It is not good to stir
+  a hornet's nest.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_279"></a><a href="#NtA_279">279</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 431.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_280"></a><a href="#NtA_280">280</a> Ibid. p. 48.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_281"></a><a href="#NtA_281">281</a> Preface to LATIMER'S
+  <i>Sermons</i>. Parker Society's edition, p. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_282"></a><a href="#NtA_282">282</a> "King Harry loved a
+  man," was an English proverb to the close of the century. See SIR ROBERT
+  NAUNTON'S <i>Fragmenta Regalia</i>, London, 1641, p. 14.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_283"></a><a href="#NtA_283">283</a> Sir George
+  Throgmorton, who distinguished himself by his opposition to the
+  Reformation in the House of Commons.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_284"></a><a href="#NtA_284">284</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collect</i>, p. 429.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_285"></a><a href="#NtA_285">285</a> <i>A Glasse of
+  Truth.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_286"></a><a href="#NtA_286">286</a> Ibid. p. 144.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_287"></a><a href="#NtA_287">287</a> 35 Ed. I.; 25 Ed. III.
+  stat. 4; stat. 5, cap. 22; 27 Ed. III. stat. 1; 13 Ric. II. stat. 2, cap.
+  2; 16 Ric. II. cap. 5; 9 Hen. IV. cap. 8.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_288"></a><a href="#NtA_288">288</a> CAVENDISH, p. 276.</p>
+
+  <p>Gardiner has left some noticeable remarks on this subject.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whether," he says, "a king may command against a common law or an act
+  of parliament, there is never a judge or other man in the realm ought to
+  know more by experience of that the laws have said than I.</p>
+
+  <p>"First, my Lord Cardinal, that obtained his legacy by our late
+  Sovereign Lord's requirements at Rome, yet, because it was against the
+  laws of the realm, the judges concluded the offence of Premunire, which
+  matter I bare away, and took it for a law of the realm, because the
+  lawyers said so, but my reason digested it not. The lawyers, for
+  confirmation of their doings, brought in the case of Lord Tiptoft. An
+  earl he was, and learned in the civil laws, who being chancellor, because
+  in execution of the king's commandment he offended the laws of the realm,
+  suffered on Tower Hill. They brought in examples of many judges that had
+  fines set on their heads in like cases for transgression of laws by the
+  king's commandment, and this I learned in that case.</p>
+
+  <p>"Since that time being of the council, when many proclamations were
+  devised against the carriers out of corn, when it came to punish the
+  offender, the judges would answer it might not be by the law, because the
+  Act of Parliament gave liberty, wheat being under a price. Whereupon at
+  last followed the Act of Proclamations, in the passing whereof were many
+  large words spoken."</p>
+
+  <p>After mentioning other cases, he goes on:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I reasoned once in the parliament house, where there was free speech
+  without danger, and the Lord Audely, to satisfy me, because I was in some
+  secret estimation, as he knew, 'Thou art a good fellow, Bishop,' quoth
+  he; 'look at the Act of Supremacy, and there the king's doings be
+  restrained to spiritual jurisdiction; and in another act no spiritual law
+  shall have place contrary to a common law, or an act of parliament. And
+  this were not,' quoth he, 'you bishops would enter in with the king, and
+  by means of his supremacy order the laws as ye listed. But we will
+  provide,' quoth he, 'that the premunire shall never go off your heads.'
+  This I bare away then, and held my peace."&mdash;Gardiner to the
+  Protector Somerset: <i>MS. Harleian</i>, 417.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_289"></a><a href="#NtA_289">289</a> 13 Ric. II. stat. 2,
+  cap. 2. Et si le Roi envoie par lettre on en autre maniere a la Courte du
+  Rome al excitacion dascune person, parount que la contrarie de cest
+  estatut soit fait touchant ascune dignité de Sainte Eglise, si celuy qui
+  fait tiel excitacion soit Prelate de Sainte Eglise, paie au Roy le value
+  de ses temporalitees dun an. The petition of parliament which occasioned
+  the statute is even more emphatic: Perveuz tout foitz que par nulle
+  traite ou composition a faire entre le Seint Pere le Pape et notre
+  Seigneur le Roy que riens soit fait a contraire en prejudice de cest
+  Estatute a faire. Et si ascune Seigneur Espirituel ou Temporel ou ascune
+  persone quiconque de qu'elle condition q'il soit, enforme, ensence ou
+  excite le Roi ou ses heirs, l'anientiser, adnuller ou repeller cest
+  Estatut a faire, et de ceo soit atteint par due proces du loy que le
+  Seigneur Espirituel eit la peyne sus dite, etc.&mdash;<i>Rolls of
+  Parliament</i>, Ric. II. 13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_290"></a><a href="#NtA_290">290</a> Even further, as
+  chancellor the particular duty had been assigned to him of watching over
+  the observance of the act.</p>
+
+  <p>Et le chancellor que pur le temps serra a quelle heure que pleint a
+  luy ou a conseill le Roy soit fait d'ascunes des articles sus ditz par
+  ascune persone que pleindre soy voudra granta briefs sur le cas ou
+  commissions a faire au covenables persones, d'oier et terminer les ditz
+  articles sur peyne de perdre son office et jamais estre mys en office le
+  Roy et perdre mille livres a lever a l'oeps le Roy si de ce soit atteint
+  par du proces.&mdash;<i>Rolls of Parliament</i>, Ric. II. 13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_291"></a><a href="#NtA_291">291</a> BURNET, vol. iii. p.
+  77. See a summary of the acts of this Convocation in a sermon of
+  Latimer's preached before the two Houses in 1536. LATIMER'S
+  <i>Sermons</i>, p. 45.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_292"></a><a href="#NtA_292">292</a> The king, considering
+  what good might come of reading of the New Testament and following the
+  same; and what evil might come of the reading of the same if it were evil
+  translated, and not followed; came into the Star Chamber the
+  five-and-twentieth day of May; and then communed with his council and the
+  prelates concerning the cause. And after long debating, it was alleged
+  that the translations of Tyndal and Joy were not truly translated, and
+  also that in them were prologues and prefaces that sounded unto heresy,
+  and railed against the bishops uncharitably. Wherefore all such books
+  were prohibited, and commandment given by the king to the bishops, that
+  they, calling to them the best learned men of the universities, should
+  cause a new translation to be made, so that the people should not be
+  ignorant of the law of God.&mdash;HALL, p. 771. And see WARHAM'S
+  <i>Register</i> for the years 1529-1531. MS. Lambeth.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_293"></a><a href="#NtA_293">293</a> 22 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_294"></a><a href="#NtA_294">294</a> BURNET, vol. iii. p.
+  78.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_295"></a><a href="#NtA_295">295</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. 457.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_296"></a><a href="#NtA_296">296</a> Memoranda relating to
+  the Clergy: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_297"></a><a href="#NtA_297">297</a> BURNET, vol. iii. p.
+  80.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_298"></a><a href="#NtA_298">298</a> The King's Highness,
+  having always tender eyes with mercy and pity and compassion towards his
+  spiritual subjects, minding of his high goodness and great benignity so
+  always to impart the same unto them, as justice being duly administered,
+  all rigour be excluded; and the great benevolent minds of his said
+  subjects [having been] largely and many times approved towards his
+  Highness, and specially in their Convocation and Synod now presently
+  being in the Chapter House of Westminster, his Highness, of his said
+  benignity and high liberality, in consideration that the said Convocation
+  has given and granted unto him a subsidy of one hundred thousand pounds,
+  is content to grant his general pardon to the clergy and the province of
+  Canterbury, for all offences against the statute and premunire.&mdash;22
+  Hen. VIII. cap. 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_299"></a><a href="#NtA_299">299</a> BURNET, vol. 1. p.
+  185.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_300"></a><a href="#NtA_300">300</a> An instance is
+  reported in the Chronicle of the Grey Friars ten years previously. The
+  punishment was the same as that which was statutably enacted in the case
+  of Rouse.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_301"></a><a href="#NtA_301">301</a> HALL, p. 781.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_302"></a><a href="#NtA_302">302</a> Most shocking when the
+  <i>wrong persons</i> were made the victims; and because clerical
+  officials were altogether incapable of detecting the <i>right
+  persons</i>, the memory of the practice has become abhorrent to all just
+  men. I suppose, however, that, if the <i>right persons</i> could have
+  been detected, even the stake itself would not have been too tremendous a
+  penalty for the destroying of human souls.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_303"></a><a href="#NtA_303">303</a> 22 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  10.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_304"></a><a href="#NtA_304">304</a> See a very curious
+  pamphlet on this subject, by SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE. It is called <i>The
+  Confessions of Richard Bishop, Robert Seymour, and Sir Edward Neville,
+  before the Privy Council, touching Prophecie, Necromancy, and
+  Treasure-trove</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_305"></a><a href="#NtA_305">305</a> Miscellaneous
+  Depositions on the State Of the Country: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_306"></a><a href="#NtA_306">306</a> See the Preamble of
+  the Bill against conjurations, witchcraft, sorceries, and
+  enchantments.&mdash;33 Hen. VIII. cap. 8.</p>
+
+  <p>Also "the Bill touching Prophecies upon Arms and Badges."&mdash;33
+  Hen. VIII. cap. 14.</p>
+
+  <p>A similar edict expelled the gipsies from Germany. At the Diet of
+  Spires, June 10, 1544.</p>
+
+  <p>Statutum est ne vagabundum hominum genus quos vulgo Saracenos vocant
+  per Germaniam oberrare sinatur <i>usu enim compertum est eos exploratores
+  et proditores esse.&mdash;State Papers</i>, vol. ix. p. 705.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_307"></a><a href="#NtA_307">307</a> ELLIS, first series,
+  vol. ii. p. 101.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_308"></a><a href="#NtA_308">308</a> Bulla pro Johanne
+  Scot, qui sine cibo et potu per centum et sex dies vixerat.-RYMER, vol.
+  vi. part 2, p. 176.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_309"></a><a href="#NtA_309">309</a> BUCHANAN, <i>History
+  of Scotland</i>, vol. ii. p. 156.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_310"></a><a href="#NtA_310">310</a> <i>Letter of
+  Archbishop Cranmer.</i>&mdash;ELLIS, second series, vol. ii. p. 314.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_311"></a><a href="#NtA_311">311</a> <i>Statutes of the
+  Realm.</i> 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_312"></a><a href="#NtA_312">312</a> Extracts from a
+  Narrative containing an Account of Elizabeth Barton: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_313"></a><a href="#NtA_313">313</a> <i>Statutes of the
+  Realm.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_314"></a><a href="#NtA_314">314</a> <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_315"></a><a href="#NtA_315">315</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_316"></a><a href="#NtA_316">316</a> <i>Suppression of the
+  Monasteries</i>, p. 19.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_317"></a><a href="#NtA_317">317</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_318"></a><a href="#NtA_318">318</a> Proceedings connected
+  with Elizabeth Barton: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_319"></a><a href="#NtA_319">319</a> 25 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_320"></a><a href="#NtA_320">320</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_321"></a><a href="#NtA_321">321</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_322"></a><a href="#NtA_322">322</a> <i>Cranmer's
+  Letter.</i> ELLIS, third series, vol. iii. p. 315.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_323"></a><a href="#NtA_323">323</a> More to Cromwell:
+  BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 350.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_324"></a><a href="#NtA_324">324</a> 25 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_325"></a><a href="#NtA_325">325</a> Confessions of
+  Elizabeth Barton: <i>Rolls House MS.</i> Sir Thomas More gave her a
+  double ducat to pray for him and his. BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p.
+  352. Moryson, in his <i>Apomaxis</i>, declares that she had a regular
+  understanding with the confessors at the Priory. When penitents came to
+  confess, they were detained while a priest conveyed what they had
+  acknowledged to the Nun; and when afterwards they were admitted to her
+  presence, she amazed them with repeating their own confessions.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_326"></a><a href="#NtA_326">326</a> The said Elizabeth
+  subtilly and craftily conceiving the opinion and mind of the said Edward
+  Bocking, willing to please him, revealed and showed unto the said Edward
+  that God was highly displeased with our said sovereign lord the king for
+  this matter; and in case he desisted not from his proceeding in the said
+  divorce and separation, but pursued the same and married again, that then
+  within one month after such marriage, he should no longer be king of this
+  realm; and in the reputation of Almighty God he should not be a king one
+  day nor one hour, and that he should die a villain's death. Saying
+  further, that there was a root with three branches, and till they were
+  plucked up it should never be merry in England: interpreting the root to
+  be the late lord cardinal, and the first branch to be the king our
+  sovereign lord, the second the Duke of Norfolk, and the third the Duke of
+  Suffolk.&mdash;25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_327"></a><a href="#NtA_327">327</a> Revelations of
+  Elizabeth Barton: <i>Rolls House MS.</i> In the epitome of the book of
+  her Revelations it is stated that there was a story in it "of an angel
+  that appeared, and bade the Nun go unto the king, that infidel prince of
+  England, and say that I command him to amend his life, and that he leave
+  three things which he loveth and pondereth upon, <i>i.e.</i>, that he
+  take none of the pope's right nor patrimony from him; the second that he
+  destroy all these new folks of opinion and the works of their new
+  learning; the third, that if he married and took Anne to wife, the
+  vengeance of God should plague him; and as she sayth she shewed this unto
+  the king."&mdash;Paper on the Nun of Kent: <i>MS. Cotton, Cleopatra</i>,
+  E 4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_328"></a><a href="#NtA_328">328</a> ELLIS, third series,
+  vol. ii. p. 137. Warham had promised to marry Henry to Anne Boleyn. The
+  Nun frightened him into a refusal by a pretended message from an
+  angel.&mdash;<i>MS.</i> ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_329"></a><a href="#NtA_329">329</a> The Nun hath practised
+  with two of the pope's ambassadors within this realm, and hath sent to
+  the pope that if he did not do his duty in reformation of kings, God
+  would destroy him at a certain day which he had appointed. By reason
+  whereof it is supposed that the pope hath showed himself so double and so
+  deceivable to the King's Grace in his great cause of marriage as he hath
+  done, contrary to all truth, justice, and equity. As likewise the late
+  cardinal of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, being very
+  well-minded to further and set at an end the marriage which the King's
+  Grace now enjoyeth, according to their spiritual duty, were prevented by
+  the false revelations of the said Nun. And that the said Bishop of
+  Canterbury was so minded may be proved by divers which knew then his
+  towardness.&mdash;Narrative of the Proceedings of Elizabeth Barton:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_330"></a><a href="#NtA_330">330</a> Note of the
+  Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_331"></a><a href="#NtA_331">331</a> HALL, p. 780.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_332"></a><a href="#NtA_332">332</a> RYMER, vol. vi. p.
+  160. We are left to collateral evidence to fix the place of this
+  petition, the official transcriber having contented himself with the
+  substance, and omitted the date. The original, as appears from the pope's
+  reply (LORD HERBERT, p. 145), bore the date of July 13; and unless a
+  mistake was made in transcribing the papal brief, this was July, 1530. I
+  have ventured to assume a mistake, and to place the petition in the
+  following year, because the judgment of the universities, to which it
+  refers, was not completed till the winter of 1530; they were not read in
+  parliament till March 30, 1531; and it seems unlikely that a petition of
+  so great moment would have been presented on an incomplete case, or
+  before the additional support of the House of Commons had been secured. I
+  am far from satisfied, however, that I am right in making the change. The
+  petition must have been drawn up (though it need not have been presented)
+  in 1530; since it bears the signature of Wolsey, who died in the November
+  of that year.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_333"></a><a href="#NtA_333">333</a> Mademoiselle de Boleyn
+  est venue; et l'a le Roy logée en fort beau logis; et qu'il a faict bien
+  accoustrer tout auprés du sien. Et luy est la cour faicte ordinairement
+  tous les jours plus grosse que de long temps elle ne fut faicte a la
+  Royne. Je crois bien qu'on veult accoutumer par les petie ce peuple ą
+  l'endurer, afin que quand ivendra ą donner les grands coups, il ne les
+  trouve si estrange. Toutefois il demeure tous jours endurcy, et croy bien
+  qu'il feroit plus qu'il ne faict si plus il avoit de puissance; mais
+  grand ordre se donne par tout.&mdash;Bishop of Bayonne to the Grand
+  Master: LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 231.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_334"></a><a href="#NtA_334">334</a> HALL, p. 781.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_335"></a><a href="#NtA_335">335</a> It seems to have been
+  his favourite place of retirement. The gardens and fishponds were
+  peculiarly elaborate and beautiful.&mdash;Sir John Russell to Cromwell:
+  <i>MS. State Paper Office.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_336"></a><a href="#NtA_336">336</a> Also it is a proverb
+  of old date&mdash;"The pride of France, the treason of England, and the
+  war of Ireland, shall never have end." <i>State Papers</i>, vol. ii. p.
+  11</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_337"></a><a href="#NtA_337">337</a> There was a secret
+  ambassador with the Scots king from the emperour, who had long
+  communicated with the king alone in his privy chamber. And after the
+  ambassador's departure the king, coming out into his outer chamber, said
+  to his chancellor and the Earl Bothwell, "My lords, how much are we
+  bounden unto the emperour that in the matter concerning our style, which
+  so long he hath set about for our honour, that shall be by him discussed
+  on Easter day, and that we may lawfully write ourself Prince of England
+  and Duke of York." To which the chancellor said, "I pray God the pope
+  confirm the same." The Scots king answered, "Let the emperour
+  alone."&mdash;Earl of Northumberland to Henry VIII.: <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. iv. p. 599.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_338"></a><a href="#NtA_338">338</a> HALL, p. 783.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_339"></a><a href="#NtA_339">339</a> "The bishop was
+  brought in desperation of his life."&mdash;<i>Rolls House MS.</i>, second
+  series, 532. This paper confirms Hall's account in every point.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_340"></a><a href="#NtA_340">340</a> HALL, p. 796.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_341"></a><a href="#NtA_341">341</a> BURNET, vol. iii. p.
+  115.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_342"></a><a href="#NtA_342">342</a> Warham was however
+  fined £300 for it.&mdash;HALL, 796. A letter of Richard Tracy, son of the
+  dead man, is in the <i>MS. State Paper Office</i>, first series, vol. iv.
+  He says the King's Majesty had committed the investigation of the matter
+  to Cromwell.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_343"></a><a href="#NtA_343">343</a> LATIMER'S
+  <i>Sermons</i>, p. 46.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_344"></a><a href="#NtA_344">344</a> <a href="#page119">Cap. iii.</a></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_345"></a><a href="#NtA_345">345</a> 23 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  1.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_346"></a><a href="#NtA_346">346</a> 23 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_347"></a><a href="#NtA_347">347</a> Be it further enacted
+  that no archbishop or bishop, official, commissary, or any other
+  minister, having spiritual jurisdiction, shall ask, demand, or receive of
+  any of the king's subjects any sum or sums of money for the seal of any
+  citizen, but only threepence sterling.&mdash;23 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_348"></a><a href="#NtA_348">348</a> 23 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  10.&mdash;By a separate clause all covenants to defraud the purposes of
+  this act were declared void, and the act itself was to be interpreted "as
+  beneficially as might be, to the destruction and utter avoiding of such
+  uses, intents, and purposes."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_349"></a><a href="#NtA_349">349</a> Annates or firstfruits
+  were first suffered to be taken within the realm for the only defence of
+  Christian people against infidels; and now they be claimed and demanded
+  as mere duty only for lucre, against all right and conscience.&mdash;23
+  Hen. VIII. cap. 20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_350"></a><a href="#NtA_350">350</a> 23 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_351"></a><a href="#NtA_351">351</a> It hath happened many
+  times by occasion of death unto archbishops or bishops newly promoted
+  within two or three years after their consecration, that their friends by
+  whom they have been holpen to make payment have been utterly undone and
+  impoverished.&mdash;23 Henry VIII. cap. 20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_352"></a><a href="#NtA_352">352</a> <i>M. de la Pomeroy to
+  Cardinal Tournon.</i></p>
+
+  <p>"London, March 23, 1531-2.</p>
+
+  <p>"My Lord,&mdash;I sent two letters to your lordship on the 20th of
+  this month. Since that day Parliament has been prorogued, and will not
+  meet again till after Easter.</p>
+
+  <p>"It has been determined that the Pope's Holiness shall receive no more
+  annates, and the collectors' office is to be abolished. Everything is
+  turning against the Holy See, but the King has shown no little skill; the
+  Lords and Commons have left the final decision of the question at his
+  personal pleasure, and the Pope is to understand that, if he will do
+  nothing for the King, the King has the means of making him suffer. The
+  clergy in convocation have consented to nothing, nor will they, till they
+  know the pleasure of their master the Holy Father; but the other estates
+  being agreed, the refusal of the clergy is treated as of no
+  consequence.</p>
+
+  <p>"Many other rights and privileges of the Church are abolished also,
+  too numerous to mention."&mdash;MS. Bibliot. Impér. Paris.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_353"></a><a href="#NtA_353">353</a> STRYPE, <i>Eccles.
+  Mem.</i>, vol. i. part 2, p. 158.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_354"></a><a href="#NtA_354">354</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_355"></a><a href="#NtA_355">355</a> Sir George
+  Throgmorton, Sir William Essex, Sir John Giffard, Sir Marmaduke
+  Constable, with many others, spoke and voted in opposition to the
+  government. They had a sort of club at the Queen's Head by Temple Bar,
+  where they held discussions in secret, "and when we did commence," said
+  Throgmorton, "we did bid the servants of the house go out, and likewise
+  our own servants, because we thought it not convenient that they should
+  hear us speak of such matters."&mdash;Throgmorton to the King: <i>MS.
+  State Paper Office.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_356"></a><a href="#NtA_356">356</a> 23 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_357"></a><a href="#NtA_357">357</a> Printed in STRYPE,
+  <i>Eccles. Mem.</i>, vol. i. p. 201. Strype, knowing nothing of the first
+  answer, and perceiving in the second an allusion to one preceding, has
+  supposed that this answer followed the third and last, and was in fact a
+  retractation of it. All obscurity is removed when the three replies are
+  arranged in their legitimate order.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_358"></a><a href="#NtA_358">358</a> STRYPE, <i>Eccles.
+  Mem.</i>, vol. i. p. 199, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_359"></a><a href="#NtA_359">359</a> 23 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_360"></a><a href="#NtA_360">360</a> STOW, p. 562.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_361"></a><a href="#NtA_361">361</a> "In connection with
+  the Annates Act, the question of appeals to Rome had been discussed in
+  the present session. Sir George Throgmorton had spoken on the papal side,
+  and in his subsequent confession he mentioned a remarkable interview
+  which he had had with More.</p>
+
+  <p>"After I had reasoned to the Bill of Appeals," he said, "Sir Thomas
+  More, then being chancellor, sent for me to come and speak with him in
+  the parliament chamber. And when I came to him he was in a little chamber
+  within the parliament chamber, where, as I remember, stood an altar, or a
+  thing like unto an altar, whereupon he did lean and, as I do think, the
+  same time the Bishop of Bath was talking with him. And then he said this
+  to me, I am very glad to hear the good report that goeth of you, and that
+  ye be so good a Catholic man as ye be. And if ye do continue in the same
+  way that ye begin, and be not afraid to say your conscience, ye shall
+  deserve great reward of God, and thanks of the King's Grace at length,
+  and much worship to yourself."&mdash;Throgmorton to the King: <i>MS.
+  State Paper Office</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_362"></a><a href="#NtA_362">362</a> In part of it he
+  speaks in his own person. Vide supra, cap. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_363"></a><a href="#NtA_363">363</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 435.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_364"></a><a href="#NtA_364">364</a> Note of the
+  Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_365"></a><a href="#NtA_365">365</a> It has been thought
+  that the Tudor princes and their ministers carried out the spy system to
+  an iniquitous extent,&mdash;that it was the great instrument of their
+  Machiavellian policy, introduced by Cromwell, and afterwards developed by
+  Cecil and Walsingham. That both Cromwell and Walsingham availed
+  themselves of secret information, is unquestionable,&mdash;as I think it
+  is also unquestionable that they would have betrayed the interests of
+  their country if they had neglected to do so. Nothing, in fact, except
+  their skill in fighting treason with its own weapons, saved England from
+  a repetition of the wars of the Roses, envenomed with the additional fury
+  of religious fanaticism. But the agents of Cromwell, at least, were all
+  volunteers;&mdash;their services were rather checked than encouraged; and
+  when I am told, by high authority, that in those times an accusation was
+  equivalent to a sentence of death, I am compelled to lay so sweeping a
+  charge of injustice by the side of a document which forces me to demur to
+  it. "In the reign of the Tudors," says a very eminent writer, "the
+  committal, arraignment, conviction, and execution of any state prisoner,
+  accused or <i>suspected, or under suspicion of being suspected</i> of
+  high treason, were only the regular terms in the series of judicial
+  proceedings." This is scarcely to be reconciled with the 10th of the 37th
+  of Hen. VIII., which shows no desire to welcome accusations, or
+  exaggerated readiness to listen to them.</p>
+
+  <p>"Whereas," says that Act, "divers malicious and evil disposed persons
+  of their perverse, cruel, and malicious intents, minding the utter
+  undoing of some persons to whom they have and do bear malice, hatred, and
+  evil will, have of late most devilishly practised and devised divers
+  writings, wherein hath been comprised that the same persons to whom they
+  bear malice should speak traitorous words against the King's Majesty, his
+  crown and dignity, or commit divers heinous and detestable treasons
+  against the King's Highness, where, in very deed, the persons so accused
+  never spake nor committed any such offence; by reason whereof divers of
+  the king's true, faithful, and loving subjects have been put in fear and
+  dread of their lives and of the loss and forfeiture of their lands and
+  chattels&mdash;for reformation hereof, be it enacted, that if any person
+  or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition he or they shall be,
+  shall at any time hereafter devise, make, or write, or cause to be made
+  any manner of writing comprising that any person has spoken, committed,
+  or done any offence or offences which now by the laws of this realm be
+  made treason, or that hereafter shall be made treason, and do not
+  subscribe, or cause to be subscribed, his true name to the said writing,
+  and within twelve days next after ensuing do not personally come before
+  the king or his council, and affirm the contents of the said writings to
+  be true, and do as much as in him shall be for the approvement of the
+  same, that then all and every person or persons offending as aforesaid,
+  shall be deemed and adjudged a felon or felons; and being lawfully
+  convicted of such offence, after the laws of the realm, shall suffer
+  pains of death and loss and forfeiture of lands, goods, and chattels,
+  without benefit of clergy or privilege of sanctuary to be admitted or
+  allowed in that behalf."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_366"></a><a href="#NtA_366">366</a> Accusation brought by
+  Robert Wodehouse, Prior of Whitby, against the Abbot, for slanderous
+  words against Anne Boleyn: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_367"></a><a href="#NtA_367">367</a> Deposition of Robert
+  Legate concerning the Language of the Monks of Furness: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_368"></a><a href="#NtA_368">368</a> ELLIS, third series,
+  vol. ii. p. 254.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_369"></a><a href="#NtA_369">369</a> Father Forest hath
+  laboured divers manner of ways to expulse Father Laurence out of the
+  convent, and his chief cause is, because he knoweth that Father Laurence
+  will preach the king's matter whensoever it shall please his Grace to
+  command him.&mdash;Ibid. p. 250.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_370"></a><a href="#NtA_370">370</a> Ibid. p. 251.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_371"></a><a href="#NtA_371">371</a> Lyst to Cromwell.
+  Ibid. p. 255. STRYPE, <i>Eccles. Memor.</i>, vol. i. Appendix, No.
+  47.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_372"></a><a href="#NtA_372">372</a> STOW'S <i>Annals</i>,
+  p. 562. This expression passed into a proverb, although the words were
+  first spoken by a poor friar; they were the last which the good Sir
+  Humfrey Gilbert was heard to utter before his ship went down.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_373"></a><a href="#NtA_373">373</a> Vaughan to Cromwell:
+  <i>State Papers,</i> vol. vii. p. 489-90. "I learn that this book was
+  first drawn by the Bishop of Rochester, and so being drawn, was by the
+  said bishop afterwards delivered in England to two Spaniards, being
+  secular and laymen. They receiving his first draught, either by
+  themselves or some other Spaniards, altered and perfinished the same into
+  the form that it now is; Peto and one Friar Elstowe of Canterbury, being
+  the only men that have and do take upon themselves to be conveyers of the
+  same books into England, and conveyers of all other things into and out
+  of England. If privy search be made, and shortly, peradventure in the
+  house of the same bishop shall be found his first copy. Master More hath
+  sent oftentimes and lately books unto Peto, in Antwerp&mdash;as his book
+  of the confutation of Tyndal, and of Frith's opinion of the sacrament,
+  with divers other books. I can no further learn of More's practices, but
+  if you consider this well, you may perchance espy his craft. Peto
+  laboureth busylier than a bee in the setting forth of this book. He never
+  ceaseth running to and from the court here. The king never had in his
+  realm traitors like his friars&mdash;[Vaughan wrote "clergy." The word in
+  the original is dashed through, and "friars" is substituted, whether by
+  Cromwell or by himself in an afterthought, I do not know]&mdash;and so I
+  have always said, and yet do. Let his Grace look well about him, for they
+  seek to devour him. They have blinded his Grace."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_374"></a><a href="#NtA_374">374</a> ELLIS, third series,
+  vol. ii. p. 262, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_375"></a><a href="#NtA_375">375</a> The wishes of the
+  French Court had been expressed emphatically to Clement in the preceding
+  January. Original copies of the two following letters are in the
+  Bibliothčque Impérial at Paris:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p><i>The Cardinal of Lorraine to Cardinal &mdash;&mdash; at
+  Rome.</i></p>
+
+  <p>"Paris, Jan. 8, 1531-2.</p>
+
+  <p>"RIGHT REVEREND FATHER AND LORD IN CHRIST.&mdash;After our most humble
+  commendations&mdash;The King of England complains loudly that his cause
+  is not remanded into his own country; he says that it cannot be equitably
+  dealt with at Rome, where he cannot be present. He himself, the Queen,
+  and the other witnesses, are not to be dragged into Italy to give their
+  evidence; and the suits of the Sovereigns of England and France have
+  always hitherto been determined in their respective countries.</p>
+
+  <p>"Nevertheless, by no entreaty can we prevail on the Pope to nominate
+  impartial judges who will decide the question in England.</p>
+
+  <p>"The King's personal indignation is not the only evil which has to be
+  feared. When these proceedings are known among the people, there will,
+  perhaps, be a revolt, and the Apostolic See may receive an injury which
+  will not afterwards be easily remedied.</p>
+
+  <p>"I have explained these things more at length to his Holiness, as my
+  duty requires. Your affection towards him, my lord, I am assured is no
+  less than mine. I beseech you, therefore, use your best endeavours with
+  his Holiness, that the King of England may no longer have occasion to
+  exclaim against him. In so doing you will gratify the Most Christian
+  King, and you will follow the course most honourable to yourself and most
+  favourable to the quiet of Christendom.</p>
+
+  <p>"From Abbeville."</p>
+
+  <p><i>Francis the First to Pope Clement the Seventh.</i></p>
+
+  <p>"Paris, Jan. 10, 1531-2.</p>
+
+  <p>"MOST HOLY FATHER,&mdash;You are not ignorant what our good brother
+  and ally the King of England demands at your hands. He requires that the
+  cognisance of his marriage be remanded to his own realm, and that he be
+  no further pressed to pursue the process at Rome. The place is
+  inconvenient from its distance, and there are other good and reasonable
+  objections which he assures us that he has urged upon your Holiness's
+  consideration.</p>
+
+  <p>"Most Holy Father, we have written several times to you, especially of
+  late from St. Cloud, and afterwards from Chantilly, in our good brother's
+  behalf; and we have further entreated you, through our ambassador
+  residing at your Court, to put an end to this business as nearly
+  according to the wishes of our said good brother as is compatible with
+  the honour of Almighty God. We have made this request of you as well for
+  the affection and close alliance which exist between ourselves and our
+  brother, as for the filial love and duty with which we both in common
+  regard your Holiness.</p>
+
+  <p>"Seeing, nevertheless, Most Holy Father, that the affair in question
+  is still far from settlement, and knowing our good brother to be
+  displeased and dissatisfied, we fear that some great scandal and
+  inconvenience may arise at last which may cause the diminution of your
+  Holiness's authority. There is no longer that ready obedience to the Holy
+  See in England which was offered to your predecessors; and yet your
+  Holiness persists in citing my good brother the King of England to plead
+  his cause before you in Rome. Surely it is not without cause that he
+  calls such treatment of him unreasonable. We have ourselves examined into
+  the law in this matter, and we are assured that your Holiness's claim is
+  unjust and contrary to the privilege of kings. For a sovereign to leave
+  his realm and plead as a suitor in Rome, is a thing wholly impossible,<a
+  name="NtA_377"></a><a href="#Nt_377"><sup>377</sup></a> and therefore,
+  Holy Father, we have thought good to address you once more in this
+  matter. Bear with us, we entreat you. Consider our words, and recall to
+  your memory what by letter and through our ministers we have urged upon
+  you. Look promptly to our brother's matter, and so act that your Holiness
+  may be seen to value and esteem our friendship. What you do for him, or
+  what you do against him, we shall take it as done to ourselves.</p>
+
+  <p>"Holy Father, we will pray the Son of God to pardon and long preserve
+  your Holiness to rule and govern our Holy Mother the
+  Church.&mdash;FRANCIS."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_376"></a><a href="#NtA_376">376</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 428. LEGRAND, vol. iii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_377"></a><a href="#NtA_377">377</a> Chose beaucoup plus
+  impossible que possible.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_378"></a><a href="#NtA_378">378</a> LORD HERBERT, p. 160.
+  RYMER, vol. vi. part ii. p. 171.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_379"></a><a href="#NtA_379">379</a> Francis seems to have
+  desired that the intention of the interview should be kept secret. Henry
+  found this impossible. "Monseigneur," wrote the Bishop of Paris to the
+  Grand Master, "quant ą tenir la chose secrette comme vous le demandez, il
+  est mal aisé; combien que ce Roy fust bien de cest advis, sinon qu'il le
+  treuve impossible; car a cause de ces provisions et choses, qu'il fault
+  faire en ce Royaulme, incontinent sera sceu a Londres, et de la par tout
+  le monde. Pourquoy ne faictes vostre compte qu'on le puisse tenir
+  secret.</p>
+
+  <p>"Monseigneur, je sēay veritablement et de bon lieu que le plus grant
+  plaisir que le Roy pourroit faire au Roy son frere et a Madame Anne,
+  c'est que le dit seigneur m'escripre que je requiere le Roy son dit frere
+  qu'il veuille mener la dicte Dame Anne avec luy a Callais pour la veoir
+  et pour la festoyer, afin qu'ils ne demeurrent ensembles sans compagnie
+  de dames, pour ce que les bonnes cheres en sont tous jours meilleures:
+  mais il fauldroit que en pareil le Roy menast la Royne de Navarre ą
+  Boulogne, pour festoyer le Roy d'Angleterre.</p>
+
+  <p>"Quant ą la Royne pour rien ce Roy ne vouldroit qu'elle vint: Il häit
+  cest habillement ą l'Espagnolle, tant qu'il luy semble veoir un diable.
+  Il desireroit qu'il pleust au Roy mener ą Boulogne, messeigneurs ses
+  enfans pour les veoir.</p>
+
+  <p>"Surtout je vous prie que vous ostez de la court deux sortes de gens,
+  ceulx qui sont imperiaulx, s'aucuns en y a, et ceux qui ont la reputation
+  d'estre mocqueurs et gaudisseurs, car c'est bien la chose en ce monde
+  autant häie de ceste nation."&mdash;Bishop of Paris to the Grand Master:
+  LEGRAND, vol. iii. pp. 555, 556.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_380"></a><a href="#NtA_380">380</a> Sir Gregory Cassalis
+  to Henry VIII.: BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 433. Valde existimabam
+  necessarium cum hoc Principe (<i>i.e.</i>, Francis) agere ut duobus
+  Cardinalibus daret in mandatis ut ante omnes Cardinalis de Monte
+  meminissent, eique pensionem annuam saltem trium millium aureorum ex
+  quadraginta millibus quę mihi dixerat velle in Cardinales distribuere,
+  assignaret. Et Rex quidem hęc etiam scribi ad duos Cardinales jussit
+  secretario Vitandri. Quicum ego postmodo super iis pensionibus sermonem
+  habui, cognovique sic in animo Regem habere ut duo Cardinales cum Romę
+  fuerint, videant, qui potissimum digni hāc Regiā sint liberalitate; in
+  eosque quum quid in Regno Gallię ecclesiasticum vacare contigerit ex
+  meritis uniuscujusque pensiones conferantur. Tunc autem nihil in promptu
+  haberi quod Cardinali de Monte dari possit&mdash;verum Regio nomine illi
+  de futuro esse promittendum quod mihi certe summopere displicuit; et
+  secretario Vitandri non reticui ostendens pollicitationes hujusmodi
+  centies jam Cardinali de Monte factas fuisse; et modo si iterum fiant
+  nihil effecturas nisi ut illius viri quasi ulcera pertractent; id quod
+  Vitandris verum esse fatebatur pollicitusque est se, quum Rex a venatu
+  rediisset velle ei suadere ut Cardinalem de Monte aliquā presenti
+  pensione prosequatur; quā quidem tibi nihil conducibilius aut opportunius
+  fieri possit.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_381"></a><a href="#NtA_381">381</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. iv. p. 612.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_382"></a><a href="#NtA_382">382</a> Ibid, p. 616.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_383"></a><a href="#NtA_383">383</a> The <i>State
+  Papers</i> contain a piteous picture of this business, the hereditary
+  feuds of centuries bursting out on the first symptoms of ill-will between
+  the two governments, with fire and devastation.&mdash;<i>State
+  Papers</i>, vol. iv. p. 620-644.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_384"></a><a href="#NtA_384">384</a> If the said Earl of
+  Angus do make unto us oath of allegiance, and recognises us as Supreme
+  Lord of Scotland, and as his prince and sovereign, we then, the said earl
+  doing the premises, by these presents bind ourself to pay yearly to the
+  said earl the sum of one thousand pounds sterling.&mdash;Henry VIII. to
+  the Earl of Angus: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. iv. p. 613.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_385"></a><a href="#NtA_385">385</a> A letter of Queen
+  Catherine to the Emperor, written on the occasion of this visit, will be
+  read with interest:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"HIGH AND MIGHTY LORD,&mdash;Although your Majesty is occupied with
+  your own affairs and with your preparations against the Turk, I cannot,
+  nevertheless, refrain from troubling you with mine, which perhaps in
+  substance and in the sight of God are of equal importance. Your Majesty
+  knows well, that God hears those who do him service, and no greater
+  service can be done than to procure an end in this business. It does not
+  concern only ourselves&mdash;it concerns equally all who fear God. None
+  can measure the woes which will fall on Christendom, if his Holiness will
+  not act in it and act promptly. The signs are all around us in new
+  printed books full of lies and dishonesty&mdash;in the resolution to
+  proceed with the cause here in England&mdash;in the interview of these
+  two princes, where the king, my lord, is covering himself with infamy
+  through the companion which he takes with him. The country is full of
+  terror and scandal; and evil may be looked for if nothing be done, and
+  inasmuch as our only hope is in God's mercy, and in the favour of your
+  Majesty, for the discharge of my conscience, I must let you know the
+  strait in which I am placed.</p>
+
+  <p>"I implore your Highness for the service of God, that you urge his
+  Holiness to be prompt in bringing the cause to a conclusion. The longer
+  the delay the harder the remedy will be.</p>
+
+  <p>"The particulars of what is passing here are so shocking, so
+  outrageous against Almighty God, they touch so nearly the honour of my
+  Lord and husband, that for the love I bear him, and for the good that I
+  desire for him, I would not have your Highness know of them from me. Your
+  ambassador will inform you of all."&mdash;Queen Catherine to Charles V.
+  September 18.&mdash;MS. Simancas.</p>
+
+  <p>The Emperor, who was at Mantua, was disturbed at the meeting at
+  Boulogne, on political grounds as well as personal. On the 24th of
+  October he wrote to his sister, at Brussels.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Charles the Fifth to the Regent Mary.</i></p>
+
+  <p>Mantua, October 16, 1532.</p>
+
+  <p>I found your packets on arriving here, with the ambassadors' letters
+  from France and England. The ambassadors will themselves have informed
+  you of the intended conference of the Kings. The results will make
+  themselves felt ere long. We must be on our guard, and I highly approve
+  of your precautions for the protection of the frontiers.</p>
+
+  <p>As to the report that the King of England means to take the
+  opportunity of the meeting to marry Anne Boleyn, I can hardly believe
+  that he will be so blind as to do so, or that the King of France will
+  lend himself to the other's sensuality. At all events, however, I have
+  written to my ministers at Rome, and I have instructed them to lay a
+  complaint before the Pope, that, while the process is yet pending, in
+  contempt of the authority of the Church, the King of England is
+  scandalously bringing over the said Anne with him, as if she were his
+  wife.</p>
+
+  <p>His Holiness and the Apostolic See will be the more inclined to do us
+  justice, and to provide as the case shall require.</p>
+
+  <p>Should the King indeed venture the marriage&mdash;as I cannot think he
+  will&mdash;I have desired his Holiness not only not to sanction such
+  conduct openly, but not to pass it by in silence. I have demanded that
+  severe and fitting sentence be passed at once on an act so wicked and so
+  derogatory to the Apostolic See.&mdash;<i>The Pilgrim</i>, p. 89.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_386"></a><a href="#NtA_386">386</a> There can be little
+  doubt of this. He was the child of the only intrigue of Henry VIII. of
+  which any credible evidence exists. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of
+  Sir John Blunt, an accomplished and most interesting person; and the
+  offspring of the connection, one boy only, was brought up with the care
+  and the state of a prince. Henry FitzRoy, as he was called, was born in
+  1519, and when six years old was created Earl of Nottingham and Duke of
+  Richmond and Somerset, the title of the king's father.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1527, before the commencement of the disturbance on the divorce,
+  Henry endeavoured to negotiate a marriage for him with a princess of the
+  imperial blood; and in the first overtures gave an intimation which could
+  not be mistaken, of his intention, if possible, to place him in the line
+  of the succession. After speaking of the desire which was felt by the
+  King of England for some connection in marriage of the Houses of England
+  and Spain, the ambassadors charged with the negotiation were to say to
+  Charles, that&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"His Highness can be content to bestow the Duke of Richmond and
+  Somerset (who is near of his blood, and of excellent qualities, and is
+  already furnished to keep the state of a great prince, <i>and yet may be
+  easily by the king's means exalted to higher things</i>) to some noble
+  princess of his near blood."&mdash;ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p.
+  121.</p>
+
+  <p>He was a gallant, high-spirited boy. A letter is extant from him to
+  Wolsey, written when he was nine years old, begging the cardinal to
+  intercede with the king, "for an harness to exercise myself in arms
+  according to my erudition in the Commentaries of Cęsar."&mdash;Ibid. p.
+  119.</p>
+
+  <p>He was brought up with Lord Surrey, who has left a beautiful account
+  of their boyhood at Windsor&mdash;their tournaments, their hunts, their
+  young loves, and passionate friendship. Richmond married Surrey's sister,
+  but died the year after, when only seventeen; and Surrey revisiting
+  Windsor, recalls his image among the scenes which they had enjoyed
+  together, in the most interesting of all his poems. He speaks of</p>
+
+  <div class="noflo">
+    <div class="nofblk">
+      <p>The secret grove, which oft we made resound</p>
+      <p>Of pleasant plaint and of our ladies' praise;</p>
+      <p>Recording oft what grace each one had found,</p>
+      <p>What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.</p>
+      <p>The wild forest; the clothed holts with green;</p>
+      <p>With reins availed, and swift y-breathed horse,</p>
+      <p>With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,</p>
+      <p>Where we did chase the fearful hart of force.</p>
+      <p>The void walls eke that harboured us each night,</p>
+      <p>Wherewith, alas! reviveth in my breast</p>
+      <p>The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight</p>
+      <p>The pleasant dream, the quiet bed of rest;</p>
+      <p>The secret thought imparted with such trust.</p>
+      <p>The wanton talk, the divers change of play,</p>
+      <p>The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,</p>
+      <p>Wherewith we past the winter nights away.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_387"></a><a href="#NtA_387">387</a> Compare LORD HERBERT
+  with A Paper of Instructions to Lord Rochfort on his Mission to Paris:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 427, etc.; and A Remonstrance of
+  Francis I. to Henry VIII.: LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 571, etc. It would be
+  curious to know whether Francis ever actually wrote to the pope a letter
+  of which Henry sent him a draft. If he did, there are expressions
+  contained in it which amount to a threat of separation. In case the pope
+  was obstinate Francis was to say, "Lors force seroit de pourvoir audict
+  affaire, par autres voyes et faēons, qui peut etre, ne vous seroint
+  gueres agreable."&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 436.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_388"></a><a href="#NtA_388">388</a> A nostre derniere
+  entrevue sur la fraternelle et familiere communication que nous eusmes
+  ensemble de noz affaires venant aux nostres, Luy declarasmes comme a tord
+  et injustment nous estions affligez, dilayez, et fort ingratemeut manniez
+  et troublez, en nostre dicte grande et pesante matiere de marriage par la
+  particuliere affection de l'empereur et du pape. Lesquelz sembloient par
+  leurs longues retardations de nostre dicte matiere ne sercher autre
+  chose, sinon par longue attente et laps de temps, nous frustrer
+  malicieusement du propoz, qui plus nous induict a poursuivir et mettre
+  avant la dicte matiere; c'est davoir masculine succession et posterite en
+  laquelle nous etablirons (Dieu voulant) le quiet repoz et tranquillite de
+  notre royaulme et dominion. Son fraternel, plain, et entier advis (et a
+  bref dire le meilleur qui pourroit estre) fut tel; il nous conseilla de
+  ne dilayer ne protractor le temps plus longuement, mais en toute celerite
+  proceder effectuellement a laccomplisment et consummation de nostre
+  marriage.&mdash;Henry VIII. to Rochfort: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii.
+  p. 428-9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_389"></a><a href="#NtA_389">389</a> The extent of
+  Francis's engagements, as Henry represents them, was this:&mdash;He had
+  promised qu'en icelle nostre dicte cause jamais ne nous abandonneroit
+  quelque chose que sen ensuyst; ainsi de tout son pouvoir l'establiroit,
+  supporteroit, aideroit et maintiendroit notre bon droict, et le droict de
+  la posterite et succession qui sen pourroit ensuyr; et a tous ceulz qui y
+  vouldroyent mettre trouble, empeschement, encombrance, ou y procurer
+  deshonneur, vitupere, ou infraction, il seroit enemy et adversaire de
+  tout son pouvoir, de quelconque estat qu'il soit, fust pape ou
+  empereur,&mdash;avecque plusieurs autres consolatives paroles. This he
+  wished Francis to commit to paper. Car autant de fois, que les verrions,
+  he says, qui seroit tous les jours, nous ne pourrions, si non les
+  liscent, imaginer et reduire a notre souvenance la bonne grace facunde et
+  geste, dont il les nous prononēait, et estimer estre comme face a face,
+  parlans avecque luy.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 437.
+  Evidently language of so wide a kind might admit of many
+  interpretations.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_390"></a><a href="#NtA_390">390</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  571, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_391"></a><a href="#NtA_391">391</a> Note of the
+  Revelations of Eliz. Barton: <i>Rolls House MS. Suppression of the
+  Monasteries</i>, p. 17.</p>
+
+  <p>The intention was really perhaps what the nun said. An agent of the
+  government at Brussels, who was watching the conference, reported on the
+  12th of November:&mdash;"The King of England did really cross with the
+  intention of marrying; but, happily for the emperor, the ceremony is
+  postponed. Of other secrets, my informant has learned thus much. They
+  have resolved to demand as the portion of the Queen of France, Artois,
+  Tournay, and part of Burgundy. They have also sent two cardinals to Rome
+  to require the Pope to relinquish the tenths, which they have begun to
+  levy for themselves. If his Holiness refuse, the King of England will
+  simply appropriate them throughout his dominions. Captain &mdash;&mdash;
+  heard this from the king's proctor at Rome, who has been with him at
+  Calais, and from an Italian named Jeronymo, whom the Lady Anne has
+  roughly handled for managing her business badly. She trusted that she
+  would have been married in September.</p>
+
+  <p>"The proctor told her the Pope delayed sentence for fear of the
+  Emperor. The two kings, when they heard this, despatched the cardinals to
+  quicken his movements; and the demand for the tenths is thought to have
+  been invented to frighten him.</p>
+
+  <p>"They are afraid that the Emperor may force his Holiness into giving
+  sentence before the cardinals arrive. Jeronymo has been therefore sent
+  forward by post to give him notice of their approach, and to require him
+  to make no decision till they have spoken with him."&mdash;<i>The
+  Pilgrim</i>, p. 89.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_392"></a><a href="#NtA_392">392</a> 25 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_393"></a><a href="#NtA_393">393</a> Revelations of Eliz.
+  Barton: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_394"></a><a href="#NtA_394">394</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. pp. 435, 468.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_395"></a><a href="#NtA_395">395</a> Letter from
+  &mdash;&mdash;, containing an account of an interview with his Holiness:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_396"></a><a href="#NtA_396">396</a> This proposal was
+  originally the king's (see chapter 2), but it had been dropped because
+  one of the conditions of it had been Catherine's "entrance into
+  religion." The pope, however, had not lost sight of the alternative, as
+  one of which, in case of extremity, he might avail himself; and, in 1530,
+  in a short interval of relaxation, he had definitely offered the king a
+  dispensation to have two wives, at the instigation, curiously, of the
+  imperialists. The following letter was written on that occasion to the
+  king by Sir Gregory Cassalis:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>Serenissime et potentissime domine rex, domine mi supreme humillimā
+  commendatione premissā, salutem et felicitatem. Superioribus diebus
+  Pontifex secreto, veluti rem quam magni faceret, mihi proposuit
+  conditionem hujusmodi; concedi posse vestrę majestati, ut duas uxores
+  habeat; cui dixi nolle me provinciam suscipere eā de re scribendi, ob eam
+  causam quod ignorarem an inde vestrę conscientię satisfieri posset quam
+  vestra majestas imprimis exonerare cupit. Cur autem sic responderem,
+  illud in causā fuit, quod ex certo loco, unde quę Cęsariani moliantur
+  aucupari soleo exploratum certumque habebam Cęsarianos illud ipsum
+  quęrere et procurare. Quem vero ad finem id quęrant pro certo exprimere
+  non ausim. Id certe totum vestrę prudentię considerandum relinquo. Et
+  quamvis dixerim Pontifici, nihil me de eo scripturum, nolui tamen
+  majestati vestrę hoc reticere; quę sciat omni me industriā laborāsse in
+  iis quę nobis mandat exequendis et cum Anconitano qui me familiariter uti
+  solet, omnia sum conatus. De omnibus autem me ad communes literas
+  rejicio. Optime valeat vestra majestas.&mdash;Romę die xviii. Septembris,
+  1530.</p>
+
+  <p>Clarissimi vestrai Majestatis, Humillimus servus,</p>
+
+  <p>GREGORIUS CASSALIS,</p>
+
+  <p>&mdash;LORD HERBERT, p. 140.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_397"></a><a href="#NtA_397">397</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 394, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_398"></a><a href="#NtA_398">398</a> The obtaining the
+  opinion in writing of the late Cardinal of Ancona, and submitting it to
+  the emperor. This minister, the most aged as well as the most influential
+  member of the conclave, had latterly been supposed to be inclined to
+  advise a conciliatory policy towards England; and his judgment was of so
+  much weight that it was thought likely that the emperor would have been
+  unable to resist the publication of it, if it was given against him. At
+  the critical moment of the Bologna interview this cardinal unfortunately
+  died: he had left his sentiments, however, in the hands of his nephew,
+  the Cardinal of Ravenna, who, knowing the value of his legacy, was
+  disposed to make a market of it. It was a knavish piece of business. The
+  English ambassadors offered 3000 ducats; Charles bid them out of the
+  field with a promise of church benefices to the extent of 6000 ducats; he
+  did not know precisely the terms of the judgment, or even on which side
+  it inclined, but in either case the purchase was of equal importance to
+  him, either to produce it or to suppress it. The French and English
+  ambassadors then combined, and bid again with church benefices in the two
+  countries, of equal value with those offered by Charles, with a promise
+  of the next English bishopric which fell vacant, and the original 3000
+  ducats as an initiatory fee. There was a difficulty in the transaction,
+  for the cardinal would not part with the paper till he had received the
+  ducats, and the ambassadors would not pay the ducats till they had
+  possession of the paper. The Italian, however, proved an overmatch for
+  his antagonists. He got his money, and the judgment was not produced
+  after all.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. pp. 397-8, 464. BURNET,
+  vol. iii. p. 108.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_399"></a><a href="#NtA_399">399</a> Bennet to Henry VIII.:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 402.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_400"></a><a href="#NtA_400">400</a> Sir Gregory Cassalis
+  to the King: <i>Rolls House M.S.</i>, endorsed by Henry, Litterę in
+  Pontificis dicta declaratorię quę maxime causam nostram probant.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_401"></a><a href="#NtA_401">401</a> There was a tradition
+  (it cannot be called more), that no Englishman could be compelled against
+  his will to plead at a foreign tribunal. "Ne Angli extra Angliam litigare
+  cogantur."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_402"></a><a href="#NtA_402">402</a> Henry VIII. to the
+  Ambassadors with the Pope: <i>Rolls House M.S.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_403"></a><a href="#NtA_403">403</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_404"></a><a href="#NtA_404">404</a> So at least the
+  English government was at last convinced, as appears in the circular to
+  the clergy, printed in BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 447, etc. I try to
+  believe, however, that the pope's conduct was rather weak than
+  treacherous.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_405"></a><a href="#NtA_405">405</a> So at least Cranmer
+  says; but he was not present, nor was he at the time informed that it was
+  to take place.&mdash;ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 32. The belief,
+  however, generally was, that the marriage took place in November; and
+  though Cranmer's evidence is very strong, his language is too vague to be
+  decisive.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_406"></a><a href="#NtA_406">406</a> Individual interests
+  have to yield necessarily and justly to the interests of a nation,
+  provided the conduct or the sacrifice which the nation requires is not
+  sinful. That there would have been any sin on Queen Catherine's part if
+  she had consented to a separation from the king, was never pretended; and
+  although it is a difficult and delicate matter to decide how far
+  unwilling persons may be compelled to do what they ought to have done
+  without compulsion, yet the will of a single man or woman cannot be
+  allowed to constitute itself an irremovable obstacle to a great national
+  good.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_407"></a><a href="#NtA_407">407</a> It is printed by LORD
+  HERBERT, and in LEGRAND, vol. iii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_408"></a><a href="#NtA_408">408</a> LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+  558, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_409"></a><a href="#NtA_409">409</a> Ye may show unto his
+  Holiness that ye have heard from a friend of yours in Flanders lately,
+  that there hath been set up certain writings from the See Apostolic, in
+  derogation both of justice and of the affection lately showed by his
+  Holiness unto us; which thing ye may say ye can hardly believe to be
+  true, but that ye reckon them rather to be counterfeited. For if it
+  should be true, it is a thing too far out of the way, specially
+  considering that you and other our ambassadors be there, and have heard
+  nothing of the matter. We send a copy of these writings unto you, which
+  copy we will in no wise that ye shall show to any person which might
+  think that ye had any knowledge from us nor any of our council,
+  marvelling greatly if the same hath proceeded indeed from the pope; [and]
+  willing you expressly not to show that ye had it of us.&mdash;<i>State
+  Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 421.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_410"></a><a href="#NtA_410">410</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 454.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_411"></a><a href="#NtA_411">411</a> Sir John Wallop to
+  Henry: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 422.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_412"></a><a href="#NtA_412">412</a> Francis represented
+  himself to Henry as having refused with a species of bravado. "He told
+  me," says Sir John Wallop, "that he had announced previously that he
+  would consent to no such interview, unless your Highness were also
+  comprised in the same; and if it were so condescended that your Highness
+  and he should be then together, yet you two should go after such a sort
+  and with such power that you would not care whether the pope and emperor
+  would have peace or else <i>coups de baston</i>."&mdash;Wallop to Henry,
+  from Paris, Feb. 22. But this was scarcely a complete account of the
+  transaction; it was an account only of so much of it as the French king
+  was pleased to communicate. The emperor was urgent for a council. The
+  pope, feeling the difficulty either of excluding or admitting the
+  Protestant representatives, was afraid of consenting to it, and equally
+  afraid of refusing. The meeting proposed to Francis was for the
+  discussion of this difficulty; and Francis, in return, proposed that the
+  great Powers, Henry included, should hold an interview, and arrange
+  beforehand the conclusions at which the council should arrive. This naļve
+  suggestion was waived by Charles, apparently on grounds of religion. LORD
+  HERBERT, Kennet's Edit. p. 167.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_413"></a><a href="#NtA_413">413</a> The emperor's answer
+  touching this interview is come, and is, in effect, that if the pope
+  shall judge the said interview to be for the wealth and quietness of
+  Christendom, he will not be seen to dissuade his Holiness from the same;
+  but he desired him to remember what he showed to his Holiness when he was
+  with the same, at what time his Holiness offered himself for the
+  commonwealth to go to any place to speak with the French
+  king.&mdash;Bennet to Henry VIII.; <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p.
+  464.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_414"></a><a href="#NtA_414">414</a> The estrapade was an
+  infernal machine introduced by Francis into Paris for the better
+  correction of heresy. The offender was slung by a chain over a fire, and
+  by means of a crane was dipped up and down into the flame, the torture
+  being thus prolonged for an indefinite time. Francis was occasionally
+  present in person at these exhibitions, the executioner waiting his
+  arrival before commencing the spectacle.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_415"></a><a href="#NtA_415">415</a> 24 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_416"></a><a href="#NtA_416">416</a> 24 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  12</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_417"></a><a href="#NtA_417">417</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 441.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_418"></a><a href="#NtA_418">418</a> D'Inteville to Francis
+  the First: MS. Bibliothčque Impérial, Paris&mdash;<i>Pilgrim</i>, p.
+  92.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_419"></a><a href="#NtA_419">419</a> 24 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_420"></a><a href="#NtA_420">420</a> He had been selected
+  as Warham's successor; and had been consecrated on the 30th of March,
+  1533. On the occasion of the ceremony when the usual oath to the Pope was
+  presented to him, he took it with a declaration that his first duty and
+  first obedience was to the crown and laws of his own country. It is idle
+  trifling, to build up, as too many writers have attempted to do, a charge
+  of insincerity upon an action which was forced upon him by the existing
+  relation between England and Rome. The Act of Appeals was the law of the
+  land. The separation from communion with the papacy was a contingency
+  which there was still a hope might be avoided. Such a protest as Cranmer
+  made was therefore the easiest solution of the difficulty. See it in
+  STRYPE'S <i>Cranmer</i>, Appendix, p. 683.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_421"></a><a href="#NtA_421">421</a> BURNET, Vol. iii. pp.
+  122-3</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_422"></a><a href="#NtA_422">422</a> Bennet to Henry VIII.:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 402. Sir Gregory Cassalis to the same:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_423"></a><a href="#NtA_423">423</a> BURNET, vol. iii. p.
+  123.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_424"></a><a href="#NtA_424">424</a> Ibid. vol. i. p.
+  210.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_425"></a><a href="#NtA_425">425</a> See <i>State
+  Papers</i>, vol. i. pp. 415, 420, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_426"></a><a href="#NtA_426">426</a> BURNET'S
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 22. It is very singular that in the original Bull
+  of Julius, the expression is "forsan consummavissetis;" while in the
+  brief, which, if it was genuine, was written the same day, and which, if
+  forged, was forged by Catherine's friends, there is no forsan. The fact
+  is stated absolutely.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_427"></a><a href="#NtA_427">427</a> LORD HERBERT, p. 163.
+  BURNET. vol. iii. p. 123.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_428"></a><a href="#NtA_428">428</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. i. pp. 390. 391.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_429"></a><a href="#NtA_429">429</a> Ye therefore duly
+  recognising that it becometh you not, being our subject, to enterprise
+  any part of your said office in so weighty and great a cause pertaining
+  to us being your prince and sovereign, without our licence obtained so to
+  do; and therefore in your most humble wise ye supplicate us to grant unto
+  you our licence to proceed.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. p.
+  392.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_430"></a><a href="#NtA_430">430</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. i. p. 392.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_431"></a><a href="#NtA_431">431</a> Cromwell to the King
+  on his Committal to the Tower: BURNET, <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 500.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_432"></a><a href="#NtA_432">432</a> So at least she called
+  him a few days later.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. p. 420. We have
+  no details of her words when she was summoned; but only a general account
+  of them.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. p. 394-5.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_433"></a><a href="#NtA_433">433</a> The words of the
+  sentence may be interesting:&mdash;"In the name of God, Amen. We, Thomas,
+  by Divine permission Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England,
+  and Legate of the Apostolic See, in a certain cause of inquiry of and
+  concerning the validity of the marriage contracted and consummated
+  between the most potent and most illustrious Prince, our Sovereign Lord,
+  Henry VIII., by the grace of God King of England and France, Defender of
+  the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, and the most serene Princess, Catherine,
+  daughter of his Most Catholic Majesty, Ferdinand, King of Spain, of
+  glorious memory, we proceeding according to law and justice in the said
+  cause which has been brought judicially before us in virtue of our
+  office, and which for some time has lain under examination, as it still
+  is, being not yet finally determined and decided; having first seen all
+  the articles and pleas which have been exhibited and set forth of her
+  part, together with the answers made thereto on the part of the most
+  illustrious and powerful Prince, Henry VIII.; having likewise seen and
+  diligently inspected the informations and depositions of many noblemen
+  and other witnesses of unsuspected veracity exhibited in the said cause;
+  having also seen and in like manner carefully considered not only the
+  censures and decrees of the most famous universities of almost the whole
+  Christian world, but likewise the opinions and determinations both of the
+  most eminent divines and civilians, as also the resolutions and
+  conclusions of the clergy of both Provinces of England in Convocation
+  assembled, and many other wholesome instructions and doctrines which have
+  been given in and laid before us concerning the said marriage; having
+  further seen and in like manner inspected all the treaties and leagues of
+  peace and amity on this account entered upon and concluded between Henry
+  VII., of immortal fame, late King of England, and the said Ferdinand, of
+  glorious memory, late King of Spain; having besides seen and most
+  carefully weighed all and every of the acts, debates, letters, processes,
+  instruments, writs, arguments, and all other things which have passed and
+  been transacted in the said cause at any time; in all which thus seen and
+  inspected, our most exact care in examining, and our most mature
+  deliberation in weighing them hath by us been used, and all other things
+  have been observed by us, which of right in this matter were to be
+  observed; furthermore, the said most illustrious Prince, Henry VIII., in
+  the forementioned cause, by his proper Proctor having appeared before us,
+  but the said most serene Lady Catherine in contempt absenting herself
+  (whose absence we pray that the divine presence may compensate) [cujus
+  absentia Divinā repleatur pręsentiā. Lord Herbert translates it, "whose
+  absence may the Divine presence attend," missing, I think, the point of
+  the Archbishop's parenthesis] by and with the advice of the most learned
+  in the law, and of persons of most eminent skill in divinity whom we have
+  consulted in the premises, we have found it our duty to proceed to give
+  our final decree and sentence in the said cause, which, accordingly, we
+  do in this manner.</p>
+
+  <p>"Because by acts, warrants, deductions, propositions, exhibitions,
+  allegations, proofs and confessions, articles drawn up, answers of
+  witnesses, depositions, informations, instruments, arguments, letters,
+  writs, censures, determinations of professors, opinions, councils,
+  assertions, affirmations, treaties, and leagues of peace, processes, and
+  other matters in the said cause, as is above mentioned, before us laid,
+  had, done, exhibited, and respectively produced, as also from the same
+  and sundry other reasons, causes, and considerations, manifold arguments,
+  and various kinds of proof of the greatest evidence, strength, and
+  validity, of which in the said cause we have fully and clearly informed
+  ourselves, we find, and with undeniable evidence and plainness see that
+  the marriage contracted and consummated, as is aforesaid, between the
+  said most illustrious Prince, Henry VIII., and the most serene Lady
+  Catherine, was and is null and invalid, and that it was contracted and
+  consummated contrary to the law of God: therefore, we, Thomas,
+  Archbishop, Primate, and Legate aforesaid, having first called upon the
+  name of Christ for direction herein, and having God altogether before our
+  eyes, do pronounce sentence, and declare for the invalidity of the said
+  marriage, decreeing that the said pretended marriage always was and still
+  is null and invalid; that it was contracted and consummated contrary to
+  the will and law of God, that it is of no force or obligation, but that
+  it always wanted, and still wants, the strength and sanction of law; and
+  therefore we sentence that it is not lawful for the said most illustrious
+  Prince, Henry VIII., and the said most serene Lady Catherine, to remain
+  in the said pretended marriage; and we do separate and divorce them one
+  from the other, inasmuch as they contracted and consummated the said
+  pretended marriage de facto, and not de jure; and that they so separated
+  and divorced are absolutely free from all marriage bond with regard to
+  the foresaid pretended marriage, we pronounce, and declare by this our
+  definitive sentence and final decree, which we now give, and by the
+  tenour of these present writings do publish. May 23rd,
+  1533."&mdash;BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 68, and LORD HERBERT.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_434"></a><a href="#NtA_434">434</a> HALL.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_435"></a><a href="#NtA_435">435</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_436"></a><a href="#NtA_436">436</a> Ibid. p. 801. Hall was
+  most likely an eye-witness, and may be thoroughly trusted in these
+  descriptions. Whenever we are able to test him, which sometimes happens,
+  by independent contemporary accounts, he proves faithful in the most
+  minute particulars.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_437"></a><a href="#NtA_437">437</a> FOXE, vol. v. p.
+  III.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_438"></a><a href="#NtA_438">438</a> Northumberland to
+  Henry VIII.: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. iv. pp. 598-9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_439"></a><a href="#NtA_439">439</a> Hawkins to Henry
+  VIII.: Ibid. vol. vii. p. 488.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_440"></a><a href="#NtA_440">440</a> BURNET. vol. iii. p.
+  115.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_441"></a><a href="#NtA_441">441</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. i. p. 398.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_442"></a><a href="#NtA_442">442</a> Papers relating to the
+  Nun of Kent: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_443"></a><a href="#NtA_443">443</a> ELLIS, first series,
+  vol. ii. p. 43.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_444"></a><a href="#NtA_444">444</a> <i>Cotton M.S.</i>
+  Otho X, p. 199. <i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. p. 397.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_445"></a><a href="#NtA_445">445</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. i. p. 403.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_446"></a><a href="#NtA_446">446</a> Cromwell had
+  endeavoured to save Frith, or at least had been interested for him. Sir
+  Edmund Walsingham, writing to him about the prisoners in the Tower,
+  says:&mdash;"Two of them wear irons, and Frith weareth none. Although he
+  lacketh irons, he lacketh not wit nor pleasant tongue. His learning
+  passeth my judgment. Sir, as ye said, it were great pity to lose him if
+  he may be reconciled."&mdash;Walsingham to Cromwell: <i>M.S. State Paper
+  Office</i>, second series, vol. xlvi.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_447"></a><a href="#NtA_447">447</a> ELLIS, first series,
+  vol. ii. p. 40.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_448"></a><a href="#NtA_448">448</a> "The natural body and
+  blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here, it being against
+  the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than
+  one." The argument and the words in which it is expressed were
+  Frith's.&mdash;See FOXE, vol. v. p. 6.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_449"></a><a href="#NtA_449">449</a> The origin of the word
+  Lollards has been always a disputed question. I conceive it to be from
+  Lolium. They were the "tares" in the corn of Catholicism.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_450"></a><a href="#NtA_450">450</a> 35 Ed. I.; Statutes of
+  Carlisle, cap. 1-4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_451"></a><a href="#NtA_451">451</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_452"></a><a href="#NtA_452">452</a> 25 Ed. III. stat. 4. A
+  clause in the preamble of this act bears a significantly Erastian
+  complexion: <i>come seinte Eglise estoit founde en estat de prelacie
+  deins le royaulme Dengleterre par le dit Roi et ses progenitours, et
+  countes, barons, et nobles de ce Royaulme et lours ancestres, pour eux et
+  le poeple enfourmer de la lei Dieu.</i> If the Church of England was held
+  to have been, founded not by the successors of the Apostles, but by the
+  king and the nobles, the claim of Henry VIII. to the supremacy was
+  precisely in the spirit of the constitution.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_453"></a><a href="#NtA_453">453</a> 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3
+  Ric. II. cap. 3; 12 Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric. II. stat. 2. The first of
+  these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the blame from the popes
+  themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The statute is said to
+  have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult sovent a estee
+  trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions, et qui y meist
+  voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces choses
+  enfournee. I had regarded this passage as a fiction of courtesy like that
+  of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The
+  suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the
+  statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an
+  interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_454"></a><a href="#NtA_454">454</a> The abbots and bishops
+  decently protested. Their protest was read in parliament, and entered on
+  the Rolls. <i>Rot. Parl.</i> iii. [264] quoted by Lingard, who has given
+  a full account of these transactions.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_455"></a><a href="#NtA_455">455</a> 13 Ric. II. stat.
+  2.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_456"></a><a href="#NtA_456">456</a> See 16 Ric. II. cap.
+  5.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_457"></a><a href="#NtA_457">457</a> This it will be
+  remembered was the course which was afterwards followed by the parliament
+  under Henry VIII. before abolishing the payment of first-fruits.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_458"></a><a href="#NtA_458">458</a> Lingard says, that
+  "there were rumours that if the prelates executed the decree of the
+  king's courts, they would be excommunicated."&mdash;Vol. iii. p. 172. The
+  language of the act of parliament, 16 Ric. II. cap. 5, is explicit that
+  the sentence was pronounced.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_459"></a><a href="#NtA_459">459</a> 16 Ric. II. cap.
+  5.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_460"></a><a href="#NtA_460">460</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_461"></a><a href="#NtA_461">461</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_462"></a><a href="#NtA_462">462</a> LEWIS, <i>Life of
+  Wycliffe</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_463"></a><a href="#NtA_463">463</a> If such <i>scientia
+  media</i> might be allowed to man, which is beneath certainty and above
+  conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he was born in
+  Durham.&mdash;FULLER'S <i>Worthies</i>, vol. i. p. 479.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_464"></a><a href="#NtA_464">464</a> <i>The Last Age of the
+  Church</i> was written in 1356. See LEWIS, p. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_465"></a><a href="#NtA_465">465</a> LELAND.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_466"></a><a href="#NtA_466">466</a> LEWIS, p. 287.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_467"></a><a href="#NtA_467">467</a> 1 Ric. II. cap.
+  13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_468"></a><a href="#NtA_468">468</a> WALSINGHAM, 206-7,
+  apud LINGARD. It is to be observed, however, that Wycliffe himself
+  limited his arguments strictly to the property of the clergy. See
+  MILMAN'S <i>History of Latin Christianity</i>, vol. v. p. 508.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_469"></a><a href="#NtA_469">469</a> WALSINGHAM, p. 275,
+  apud LINGARD.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_470"></a><a href="#NtA_470">470</a> 5 Ric. II. cap. 5.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_471"></a><a href="#NtA_471">471</a> WILKINS,
+  <i>Concilia</i>, iii. 160-167.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_472"></a><a href="#NtA_472">472</a> <i>De Heretico
+  comburendo.</i> 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_473"></a><a href="#NtA_473">473</a> STOW, 330, 338.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_474"></a><a href="#NtA_474">474</a> <i>Rot. Parl.</i> iv.
+  24, 108, apud LINGARD; RYMER, ix. 89, 119, 129, 170, 193; MILMAN, Vol. v.
+  p. 520-535.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_475"></a><a href="#NtA_475">475</a> 2 Hen. V. stat. 1,
+  cap. 7.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_476"></a><a href="#NtA_476">476</a> There is no better
+  test of the popular opinion of a man than the character assigned to him
+  on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John
+  Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in
+  life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am unable to say. The
+  popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars, served no
+  doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than they
+  deserved: but it is almost certain that Shakspeare, though not intending
+  Falstaff as a portrait of Oldcastle, thought of him as he was designing
+  the character; and it is altogether certain that by the London public
+  Falstaff was supposed to represent Oldcastle. We can hardly suppose that
+  such an expression as "my old lad of the castle," should be accidental;
+  and in the epilogue to the Second Part of <i>Henry the Fourth</i>, when
+  promising to reintroduce Falstaff once more, Shakspeare says, "where for
+  anything I know he shall die of the sweat, for Oldcastle died a martyr,
+  and this is not the man." He had, therefore, certainly been supposed to
+  <i>be the man</i>, and Falstaff represented the English conception of the
+  character of the Lollard hero. I should add, however, that Dean Milman,
+  who has examined the records which remain to throw light on the character
+  of this remarkable person with elaborate care and ability, concludes
+  emphatically in his favour.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_477"></a><a href="#NtA_477">477</a> Two curious letters of
+  Henry VI. upon the Lollards, written in 1431, are printed in the
+  <i>Archęologia</i>, vol. xxiii. p. 339, etc. "As God knoweth," he says of
+  them, "never would they be subject to his laws nor to man's, but would be
+  loose and free to rob, reve, and dispoil, slay and destroy all men of
+  thrift and worship, as they proposed to have done in our father's days;
+  and of lads and lurdains would make lords."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_478"></a><a href="#NtA_478">478</a> Proceedings of an
+  organised Society in London called the Christian Brethren, supported by
+  voluntary contributions, for the dispersion of tracts against the
+  doctrines of the Church: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_479"></a><a href="#NtA_479">479</a> HALE'S
+  <i>Precedents</i>. The London and Lincoln Registers, in FOXE, vol. iv.;
+  and the MS. Registers of Archbishops Morton and Warham, at Lambeth.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_480"></a><a href="#NtA_480">480</a> KNOX'S <i>History of
+  the Reformation in Scotland</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_481"></a><a href="#NtA_481">481</a> Also we object to you
+  that divers times, and specially in Robert Durdant's house, of Iver
+  Court, near unto Staines, you erroneously and damnably read in a great
+  book of heresy, all [one] night, certain chapters of the Evangelists, in
+  English, containing in them divers erroneous and damnable opinions and
+  conclusions of heresy, in the presence of divers suspected
+  persons.&mdash;Articles objected against Richard Butler&mdash;London
+  Register: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 178.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_482"></a><a href="#NtA_482">482</a> FOXE, vol. iv. p.
+  176.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_483"></a><a href="#NtA_483">483</a> MICHELET, <i>Life of
+  Luther</i>, p. 71.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_484"></a><a href="#NtA_484">484</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_485"></a><a href="#NtA_485">485</a> Ibid. p. 41.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_486"></a><a href="#NtA_486">486</a> WOOD'S <i>Athenę
+  Oxonienses</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_487"></a><a href="#NtA_487">487</a> FOXE, vol. iv. p.
+  618.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_488"></a><a href="#NtA_488">488</a> The suspicious eyes of
+  the Bishops discovered Tyndal's visit, and the result which was to be
+  expected from it.</p>
+
+  <p>On Dec. 2nd, 1525, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, then
+  king's almoner, and on a mission into Spain, wrote from Bordeaux to warn
+  Henry. The letter is instructive:</p>
+
+  <p>"Please your Highness to understand that I am certainly informed as I
+  passed in this country, that an Englishman, your subject, at the
+  solicitation and instance of Luther, with whom he is, hath translated the
+  New Testament into English; and within few days intendeth to return with
+  the same imprinted into England. I need not to advertise your Grace what
+  infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not withstanded. This is
+  the next way to fulfil your realm with Lutherians. For all Luther's
+  perverse opinions be grounded upon bare words of Scripture, not well
+  taken, ne understanded, which your Grace hath opened in sundry places of
+  your royal book. All our forefathers, governors of the Church of England,
+  hath with all diligence forbid and eschewed publication of English
+  Bibles, as appeareth in constitutions provincial of the Church of
+  England. Nowe, sure, as God hath endued your Grace with Christian courage
+  to sett forth the standard against these Philistines and to vanquish
+  them, so I doubt not but that he will assist your Grace to prosecute and
+  perform the same&mdash;that is, to undertread them that they shall not
+  now lift up their heads; which they endeavour by means of English Bibles.
+  They know what hurt such books hath done in your realm in times
+  past."&mdash;Edward Lee to Henry VIII.: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p.
+  71.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_489"></a><a href="#NtA_489">489</a> Answer of the Bishops:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i> See cap. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_490"></a><a href="#NtA_490">490</a> Answer of the Bishops,
+  vol. i. cap. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_491"></a><a href="#NtA_491">491</a> See, particularly,
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 302.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_492"></a><a href="#NtA_492">492</a> Proceedings of the
+  Christian Brethren: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_493"></a><a href="#NtA_493">493</a> See the letter of
+  Bishop Fox to Wolsey: STRYPE'S <i>Memorials</i>, vol. i. Appendix.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_494"></a><a href="#NtA_494">494</a> Particulars of Persons
+  who had dispersed Anabaptist and Lutheran Tracts: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_495"></a><a href="#NtA_495">495</a> Dr. Taylor to Wolsey:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i> Clark to Wolsey: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii.
+  pp. 80, 81.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_496"></a><a href="#NtA_496">496</a> ELLIS, third series,
+  vol. ii. p. 189.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_497"></a><a href="#NtA_497">497</a> Memoirs of Latimer
+  prefixed to <i>Sermons</i>, pp. 3, 4; and see STRYPE'S <i>Memorials</i>,
+  vol. i.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_498"></a><a href="#NtA_498">498</a> FOXE, vol. v. p.
+  416.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_499"></a><a href="#NtA_499">499</a> Tunstall, Bishop of
+  London, has had the credit hitherto of this ingenious folly, the effect
+  of which, as Sir Thomas More warned him, could only be to supply Tyndal
+  with money.&mdash;HALL, 762, 763. The following letter from the Bishop of
+  Norwich to Warham shows that Tunstall was only acting in canonical
+  obedience to the resolution of his metropolitan:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"In right humble manner I commend me unto your good Lordship, doing
+  the same to understand that I lately received your letters, dated at your
+  manor of Lambeth, the 26th day of the month of May, by the which I do
+  perceive that your Grace hath lately gotten into your hands all the books
+  of the New Testament, translated into English, and printed beyond the
+  sea; as well those with the glosses joined unto them as those without the
+  glosses.</p>
+
+  <p>"Surely, in myn opinion, you have done therein a gracious and a
+  blessed deed; and God, I doubt not, shall highly reward you therefore.
+  And when, in your said letters, ye write that, insomuch as this matter
+  and the danger thereof, if remedy had not been provided, should not only
+  have touched you, but all the bishops within your province; and that it
+  is no reason that the holle charge and cost thereof should rest only in
+  you; but that they and every of them, for their part, should advance and
+  contribute certain sums of money towards the same: I for my part will be
+  contented to advance in this behalf, and to make payment thereof unto
+  your servant, Master William Potkyn.</p>
+
+  <p>"Pleaseth it you to understand, I am well contented to give and
+  advance in this behalf ten marks, and shall cause the same to be
+  delivered shortly; the which sum I think sufficient for my part, if every
+  bishop within your province make like contribution, after the rate and
+  substance of their benefices. Nevertheless, if your Grace think this sum
+  not sufficient for my part in this matter, your further pleasure known, I
+  shall be as glad to conform myself thereunto in this, or any other matter
+  concerning the church, as any your subject within your province; as knows
+  Almighty God, who long preserve you. At Hoxne in Suffolk, the 14th day of
+  June, 1527. Your humble obedience and bedeman,</p>
+
+  <p>"R. NORWICEN."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_500"></a><a href="#NtA_500">500</a> FOXE, vol. iv.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_501"></a><a href="#NtA_501">501</a> The papal bull, and
+  the king's licence to proceed upon it, are printed in <i>Rymer</i>, vol.
+  vi. part ii. pp. 8 and 17. The latter is explicit on Wolsey's personal
+  liberality in establishing this foundation. Ultro et ex propriā
+  liberalitate et munificentiā, nec sine gravissimo suo sumptu et impensis,
+  collegium fundare conatur.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_502"></a><a href="#NtA_502">502</a> Would God my Lord his
+  Grace had never been motioned to call any Cambridge man to his most
+  towardly college. It were a gracious deed if they were tried and purged
+  and restored unto their mother from whence they came, if they be worthy
+  to come thither again. We were clear without blot or suspicion till they
+  came, and some of them, as Master Dean hath known a long time, hath had a
+  shrewd name.&mdash;Dr. London to Archbishop Warham: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_503"></a><a href="#NtA_503">503</a> Dr. London to Warham:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_504"></a><a href="#NtA_504">504</a> DALABER'S
+  <i>Narrative.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_505"></a><a href="#NtA_505">505</a> Clark seems to have
+  taken pupils in the long vacation.  Dalaber at least read with him all
+  one summer in the country.&mdash;Dr. London to Warham: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_506"></a><a href="#NtA_506">506</a> The Vicar of Bristol
+  to the Master of Lincoln College, Oxford: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_507"></a><a href="#NtA_507">507</a> Dr. London to Warham:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_508"></a><a href="#NtA_508">508</a> Radley himself was one
+  of the singers at Christchurch: London to Warham. <i>MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_509"></a><a href="#NtA_509">509</a> Dr. London to Warham:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_510"></a><a href="#NtA_510">510</a> On the site of the
+  present Worcester College. It lay beyond the walls of the town, and was
+  then some distance from it across the fields.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_511"></a><a href="#NtA_511">511</a> Christchurch, where
+  Dalaber occasionally sung in the quire. Vide infra.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_512"></a><a href="#NtA_512">512</a> Some part of which let
+  us read with him. "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be
+  ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men,
+  for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you
+  in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings
+  for my sake, for a testimony against them and the gentiles. But when they
+  deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall
+  be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak; for it is not ye that
+  speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And the
+  brother shall deliver up the brother to death; and the father the child;
+  and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to
+  be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but
+  he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Whosoever shall confess me
+  before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
+  Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father
+  which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I
+  came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at
+  variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the
+  daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they
+  of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
+  worthy of me. He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy
+  of me. He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy
+  of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his
+  life for my sake shall find it."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_513"></a><a href="#NtA_513">513</a> Rector of Lincoln.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_514"></a><a href="#NtA_514">514</a> Warden of New
+  College.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_515"></a><a href="#NtA_515">515</a> The last prayer.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_516"></a><a href="#NtA_516">516</a> Dr. Maitland, who has
+  an indifferent opinion of the early Protestants, especially on the point
+  of veracity, brings forward this assertion of Dalaber as an illustration
+  of what he considers their recklessness. It seems obvious, however, that
+  a falsehood of this kind is something different in kind from what we
+  commonly mean by unveracity, and has no affinity with it. I do not see my
+  way to a conclusion; but I am satisfied that Dr. Maitland's strictures
+  are unjust. If Garret was taken, he was in danger of a cruel death, and
+  his escape could only be made possible by throwing the bloodhounds off
+  the scent. A refusal to answer would not have been sufficient; and the
+  general laws by which our conduct is ordinarily to be directed, cannot be
+  made so universal in their application as to meet all contingencies. It
+  is a law that we may not strike or kill other men, but occasions rise in
+  which we may innocently do both. I may kill a man in defence of my own
+  life or my friend's life, or even of my friend's property; and surely the
+  circumstances which dispense with obedience to one law may dispense
+  equally with obedience to another. <i>If</i> I may kill a man to prevent
+  him from robbing my friend, why may I not deceive a man to save my friend
+  from being barbarously murdered? It is possible that the highest morality
+  would forbid me to do either. I am unable to see why, if the first be
+  permissible, the second should be a crime. Rahab of Jericho did the same
+  thing which Dalaber did, and on that very ground was placed in the
+  catalogue of saints.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_517"></a><a href="#NtA_517">517</a> A cell in the Tower,
+  the nature of which we need not inquire into.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_518"></a><a href="#NtA_518">518</a> FOXE, vol. v. p.
+  421.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_519"></a><a href="#NtA_519">519</a> Dr. London to the
+  Bishop of Lincoln: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_520"></a><a href="#NtA_520">520</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_521"></a><a href="#NtA_521">521</a> Dr. Forman, rector of
+  All Hallows, who had himself been in trouble for heterodoxy.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_522"></a><a href="#NtA_522">522</a> Dr. London to the
+  Bishop of Lincoln, Feb. 20, 1528: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_523"></a><a href="#NtA_523">523</a> Now Cokethorpe Park,
+  three miles from Stanton Harcourt, and about twelve from Oxford. The
+  village has disappeared.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_524"></a><a href="#NtA_524">524</a> Vicar of All Saints,
+  Bristol, to the Rector of Lincoln: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_525"></a><a href="#NtA_525">525</a> The Vicar of All
+  Saints to the Rector of Lincoln: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_526"></a><a href="#NtA_526">526</a> Dr. London to the
+  Bishop of Lincoln: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_527"></a><a href="#NtA_527">527</a> Long extracts from it
+  are printed in FOXE, vol. iv.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_528"></a><a href="#NtA_528">528</a> Another of the
+  brethren, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, and one of the Marian
+  victims.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_529"></a><a href="#NtA_529">529</a> Bishop of Lincoln to
+  Wolsey, March 5, 1527-8: <i>Rolls House MS.</i>: and see ELLIS, third
+  series, vol. ii. p. 77.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_530"></a><a href="#NtA_530">530</a> ELLIS, third series,
+  vol. ii. p. 77.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_531"></a><a href="#NtA_531">531</a> With some others he
+  "was cast into a prison where the saltfish lay, through the stink whereof
+  the most part of them were infected; and the said Clark, being a tender
+  young man, died in the same prison."&mdash;FOXE, vol. iv. p. 615.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_532"></a><a href="#NtA_532">532</a> London to Warham:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_533"></a><a href="#NtA_533">533</a> Petition of the
+  Commons, vol. i. cap. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_534"></a><a href="#NtA_534">534</a> Ibid. And, as we saw
+  in the bishops' reply, they considered their practice in these respects
+  wholly defensible.&mdash;See <i>Reply of the Bishops</i>, cap. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_535"></a><a href="#NtA_535">535</a> Petition of the
+  Commons, cap. 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_536"></a><a href="#NtA_536">536</a> Hen. V. stat. 1.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_537"></a><a href="#NtA_537">537</a> He had been
+  "troublesome to heretics," he said, and he had "done it with a little
+  ambition;" for "he so hated this kind of men, that he would fie the
+  sorest enemy that they could have, if they would not
+  repent."&mdash;MORE'S <i>Life of More</i>, p. 211.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_538"></a><a href="#NtA_538">538</a> See FOXE:, vol. iv.
+  pp. 689, 698, 705.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_539"></a><a href="#NtA_539">539</a> 2 Hen. V. stat.
+  1.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_540"></a><a href="#NtA_540">540</a> John Stokesley.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_541"></a><a href="#NtA_541">541</a> Petition of Thomas
+  Philips to the House of Commons: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_542"></a><a href="#NtA_542">542</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_543"></a><a href="#NtA_543">543</a> FOXE, vol. v. pp. 29,
+  30.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_544"></a><a href="#NtA_544">544</a> The circumstances are
+  curious. Philips begged that he might have the benefit of the king's writ
+  of corpus cum causā, and be brought to the bar of the House of Commons,
+  where the Bishop of London should be subp&#339;naed to meet him.
+  [Petition of Thomas Philips: <i>Rolls House MS.</i>] The Commons did not
+  venture on so strong a measure; but a digest of the petition was sent to
+  the Upper House, that the bishop might have an opportunity of reply. The
+  Lords refused to receive or consider the case: they replied that it was
+  too "frivolous an affair" for so grave an assembly, and that they could
+  not discuss it. [<i>Lords' Journals</i>, vol. i. p. 66.] A deputation of
+  the Commons then waited privately upon the bishop, and being of course
+  anxious to ascertain whether Philips had given a true version of what had
+  passed, they begged him to give some written explanation of his conduct,
+  which might be read in the Commons' House. [<i>Lords' Journals</i>, vol.
+  i. p. 71.] The request was reasonable, and we cannot doubt that, if
+  explanation had been possible, the bishop would not have failed to offer
+  it; but he preferred to shield himself behind the judgment of the Lords.
+  The Lords, he said, had decided that the matter was too frivolous for
+  their own consideration; and without their permission, he might not set a
+  precedent of responsibility to the Commons by answering their
+  questions.</p>
+
+  <p>This conduct met with the unanimous approval of the Peers. [<i>Lords'
+  Journals</i>, vol. i. p. 71. Omnes proceres tam spirituales quam
+  temporales unā, voce dicebant, quod non consentaneum fuit aliquem
+  procerum prędictorum alicui in eo loco responsurum.] The demand for
+  explanation was treated as a breach of privilege, and the bishop was
+  allowed to remain silent. But the time was passed for conduct of this
+  kind to be allowed to triumph. If the bishop could not or would not
+  justify himself, his victim might at least be released from unjust
+  imprisonment. The case was referred to the king: and by the king and the
+  House of Commons Philips was set at liberty.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_545"></a><a href="#NtA_545">545</a> Petition of John
+  Field: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_546"></a><a href="#NtA_546">546</a> Jan. 1529-30.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_547"></a><a href="#NtA_547">547</a> Illegal. See 2 Hen.
+  V. stat. 1.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_548"></a><a href="#NtA_548">548</a> Seventh Sermon before
+  King Edward. First Sermon before the Duchess of Suffolk.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_549"></a><a href="#NtA_549">549</a> FOXE, vol. iv. p.
+  649.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_550"></a><a href="#NtA_550">550</a> Articles against James
+  Bainham: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 703.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_551"></a><a href="#NtA_551">551</a> FOXE, vol. iv. p.
+  702.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_552"></a><a href="#NtA_552">552</a> Ibid. vol. iv. p.
+  705.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_553"></a><a href="#NtA_553">553</a> Ibid. vol. iv. p.
+  694.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_554"></a><a href="#NtA_554">554</a> HALL, p. 806; and see
+  FOXE, vol iv. p. 705.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_555"></a><a href="#NtA_555">555</a> Instructions given by
+  the Bishop of Salisbury: BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 493.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_556"></a><a href="#NtA_556">556</a> From a Letter of
+  Robert Gardiner: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 706.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_557"></a><a href="#NtA_557">557</a> LATIMER'S
+  <i>Sermons</i>, p. 101.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_558"></a><a href="#NtA_558">558</a> Latimer speaks of sons
+  and daughters.&mdash;Ibid. p. 101.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_559"></a><a href="#NtA_559">559</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_560"></a><a href="#NtA_560">560</a> Where the Cornish
+  rebels came to an end in 1497.&mdash;BACON'S <i>History of Henry the
+  Seventh</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_561"></a><a href="#NtA_561">561</a> LATIMER'S
+  <i>Sermons</i>, p. 197.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_562"></a><a href="#NtA_562">562</a> On which occasion, old
+  relations perhaps shook their heads, and made objection to the expense.
+  Some such feeling is indicated in the following glimpse behind the veil
+  of Latimer's private history:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I was once called to one of my kinsfolk," he says ("it was at that
+  time when I had taken my degree at Cambridge); I was called, I say, to
+  one of my kinsfolk which was very sick, and died immediately after my
+  coming. Now, there was an old cousin of mine, which, after the man was
+  dead, gave me a wax candle in my hand, and commanded me to make certain
+  crosses over him that was dead; for she thought the devil should run away
+  by and bye. Now, I took the candle, but I could not cross him as she
+  would have me to do; for I had never seen it before. She, perceiving I
+  could not do it, with great anger took the candle out of my hand, saying,
+  'It is pity that thy father spendeth so much money upon thee;' and so she
+  took the candle, and crossed and blessed him; so that he was sure
+  enough."&mdash;LATIMER'S <i>Sermons</i>, p. 499.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_563"></a><a href="#NtA_563">563</a> "I was as obstinate a
+  papist as any was in England, insomuch that, when I should be made
+  Bachelor of Divinity, my whole oration went against Philip Melancthon and
+  his opinions."&mdash;LATIMER'S <i>Sermons</i>, p. 334.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_564"></a><a href="#NtA_564">564</a> <i>Jewel of Joy</i>,
+  p. 224, et seq.: Parker Society's edition. LATIMER'S <i>Sermons</i>, p.
+  3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_565"></a><a href="#NtA_565">565</a> LATIMER'S
+  <i>Remains</i>, pp. 27-31.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_566"></a><a href="#NtA_566">566</a> Ibid. pp. 308-9.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_567"></a><a href="#NtA_567">567</a> LATIMER to Sir Edward
+  Baynton: <i>Letters</i>, p. 329.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_568"></a><a href="#NtA_568">568</a> <i>Letters</i>, p.
+  323.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_569"></a><a href="#NtA_569">569</a> He thought of going
+  abroad. "I have trust that God will help me," he wrote to a friend; "if I
+  had not, I think the ocean sea should have divided my Lord of London and
+  me by this day."&mdash;<i>Remains</i>, p. 334.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_570"></a><a href="#NtA_570">570</a> Latimer to Sir Edward
+  Baynton.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_571"></a><a href="#NtA_571">571</a> See Latimer's two
+  letters to Sir Edward Baynton: <i>Remains</i>, pp. 322-351.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_572"></a><a href="#NtA_572">572</a> "As ye say, the matter
+  is weighty, and ought substantially to be looked upon, even as weighty as
+  my life is worth; but how to look substantially upon it otherwise know
+  not I, than to pray my Lord God, day and night, that, as he hath
+  emboldened me to preach his truth, so he will strengthen me to suffer for
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>"I pray you pardon me that I write no more distinctly, for my head is
+  [so] out of frame, that it would be too painful for me to write it again.
+  If I be not prevented shortly, I intend to make merry with my
+  parishioners, this Christmas, for all the sorrow, <i>lest perchance I
+  never return to them again</i>; and I have heard say that a doe is as
+  good in winter as a buck in summer."&mdash;Latimer to Sir Edward Baynton,
+  p. 334.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_573"></a><a href="#NtA_573">573</a> LATIMER'S
+  <i>Remains</i>, p. 334.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_574"></a><a href="#NtA_574">574</a> Ibid. p. 350.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_575"></a><a href="#NtA_575">575</a> "I pray you, in God's
+  name, what did you, so great fathers, so many, so long season, so oft
+  assembled together? What went you about? What would ye have brought to
+  pass? Two things taken away&mdash;the one that ye (which I heard) burned
+  a dead man,&mdash;the other, that ye (which I felt) went about to burn
+  one being alive. Take away these two noble acts, and there is nothing
+  else left that ye went about that I know," etc., etc.&mdash;Sermon
+  preached before the Convocation: LATIMER'S <i>Sermons</i>, p. 46.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_576"></a><a href="#NtA_576">576</a> "My affair had some
+  bounds assigned to it by him who sent for me up, but is now protracted by
+  intricate and wily examinations, as if it would never find a period;
+  while sometimes one person, sometimes another, ask me questions, without
+  limit and without end."&mdash;Latimer to the Archbishop of Canterbury:
+  <i>Remains</i>, p. 352.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_577"></a><a href="#NtA_577">577</a> <i>Remains</i>, p.
+  222.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_578"></a><a href="#NtA_578">578</a> <i>Sermons</i>, p.
+  294.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_579"></a><a href="#NtA_579">579</a> The process lasted
+  through January, February, and March.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_580"></a><a href="#NtA_580">580</a> <i>Sermons</i>, p.
+  294.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_581"></a><a href="#NtA_581">581</a> He subscribed all
+  except two&mdash;one apparently on the power of the pope, the other I am
+  unable to conjecture. Compare the Articles themselves&mdash;printed in
+  LATIMER'S <i>Remains</i>, p. 466&mdash;with the Sermon before the
+  Convocation.&mdash;<i>Sermons</i>, p. 46; and BURNET, vol. iii. p.
+  116.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_582"></a><a href="#NtA_582">582</a> Nicholas Glossop to
+  Cromwell: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 237.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_583"></a><a href="#NtA_583">583</a> Where he was known
+  among the English of the day as Master Frisky-all.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_584"></a><a href="#NtA_584">584</a> See FOXE. vol. v. p.
+  392.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_585"></a><a href="#NtA_585">585</a> Eustace Chappuys to
+  Chancellor Granvelle: <i>MS. Archiv. Brussels: Pilgrim</i>, p. 106.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_586"></a><a href="#NtA_586">586</a> See Cromwell's will in
+  an appendix to this chapter. This document, lately found in the Rolls
+  House, furnishes a clue at last to the connections of the Cromwell
+  family.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_587"></a><a href="#NtA_587">587</a> Are we to believe
+  Foxe's story that Cromwell was with the Duke of Bourbon at the storming
+  of Rome in May, 1527? See FOXE, vol. v. p. 365. He was with Wolsey in
+  January, 1527. See ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 117. And he was again
+  with him early in 1528. Is it likely that he was in Italy on such an
+  occasion in the interval? Foxe speaks of it as one of the random exploits
+  of Cromwell's youth, which is obviously untrue; and the natural
+  impression which we gather is, that he was confusing the expedition of
+  the Duke of Bourbon with some earlier campaign. On the other hand Foxe's
+  authority was Cranmer, who was likely to know the truth; and it is not
+  impossible that, in the critical state of Italian politics, the English
+  government might have desired to have some confidential agent in the Duke
+  of Bourbon's camp. Cromwell, with his knowledge of Italy and Italian, and
+  his adventurous ability, was a likely man to have been sent on such an
+  employment; and the story gains additional probability from another
+  legend about him, that he once saved the life of Sir John Russell, in
+  some secret affair at Bologna. See FOXE, vol. v. p. 367. Now, although
+  Sir John Russell had been in Italy several times before (he was at the
+  Battle of Pavia, and had been employed in various diplomatic missions),
+  and Cromwell might thus have rendered him the service in question on an
+  earlier occasion, yet he certainly was in the Papal States, on a most
+  secret and dangerous mission, in the months preceding the capture of
+  Rome. <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vi. p. 560, etc. The probabilities may
+  pass for what they are worth till further discovery.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_588"></a><a href="#NtA_588">588</a> A damp, unfurnished
+  house belonging to Wolsey, where he was ordered to remain till the
+  government had determined upon their course towards him. See
+  CAVENDISH.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_589"></a><a href="#NtA_589">589</a> CAVENDISH, pp.
+  269-70.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_590"></a><a href="#NtA_590">590</a> Ibid. p. 276.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_591"></a><a href="#NtA_591">591</a> Chappuys says, that a
+  quarrel with Sir John Wallop first introduced Cromwell to Henry.
+  Cromwell, "not knowing how else to defend himself, contrived with
+  presents and entreaties to obtain an audience of the king, whom he
+  promised to make the richest sovereign that ever reigned in
+  England."&mdash;Chappuys to Granvelle: <i>The Pilgrim</i>, p. 107.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_592"></a><a href="#NtA_592">592</a> Or Willyams. The words
+  are used indifferently.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_593"></a><a href="#NtA_593">593</a> The clause enclosed
+  between brackets is struck through.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_594"></a><a href="#NtA_594">594</a> Struck through.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_595"></a><a href="#NtA_595">595</a> Mary, widow of Louis
+  of Hungary, sister of the emperor, and Regent of the Netherlands.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_596"></a><a href="#NtA_596">596</a> She was much affected
+  when the first intimation of the marriage reached her. "I am informed of
+  a secret friend of mine," wrote Sir John Hacket, "that when the queen
+  here had read the letters which she received of late out of England, the
+  tears came to her eyes with very sad countenance. But indeed this day
+  when I spake to her she showed me not such countenance, but told me that
+  she was not well pleased.</p>
+
+  <p>"At her setting forward to ride at hunting, her Grace asked me if I
+  had heard of late any tidings out of England. I told her Grace, as it is
+  true, that I had none. She gave me a look as that she should marvel
+  thereof, and said to me, 'Jay des nouvelles qui ne me semblent point trop
+  bonnes,' and told me touching the King's Highness's marriage. To the
+  which I answered her Grace and said, 'Madame, je ne me doute point syl
+  est faict, et quand le veult prendre et entendre de bonne part et au sain
+  chemyn, sans porter faveur parentelle que ung le trouvera tout lente et
+  bien raysonnable par layde de Dieu et de bonne conscience.' Her Grace
+  said to me again, 'Monsieur l'ambassadeur, c'est Dieu qui le scait que je
+  vouldroye que le tout allysse bien, mais ne scaye comment l'empereur et
+  le roy mon frere entendront l'affaire car il touche a eulx tant que a
+  moy.' I answered and said, 'Madame, il me semble estre assuree que
+  l'empereur et le roy vostre frere qui sont deux Prinssys tres prudens et
+  sayges, quant ilz auront considere indifferentement tout l'affaire qu ilz
+  ne le deveroyent prendre que de bonne part.' And hereunto her Grace made
+  me answer, saying, 'Da quant de le prendre de bonne part ce la, ne sayge
+  M. l'ambassadeur.'"&mdash;Hacket to the Duke of Norfolk: <i>State
+  Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 452.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_597"></a><a href="#NtA_597">597</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 457.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_598"></a><a href="#NtA_598">598</a> Sir Gregory Cassalis
+  to the Duke of Norfolk. Ad pontificem accessi et mei sermonis illa summa
+  fuit, vellet id pręstare ut serenissimum regem nostrum certiorem facere
+  possemus, in suā causā nihil innovatum iri. Hic ille, sicut solet,
+  respondit, nescire se quo pacto possit Cęsarianis
+  obsistere,&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 461.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_599"></a><a href="#NtA_599">599</a> Bennet to Henry:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 462.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_600"></a><a href="#NtA_600">600</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_601"></a><a href="#NtA_601">601</a> Letter undated, but
+  written about the middle of June: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p.
+  474</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_602"></a><a href="#NtA_602">602</a> Of the Archbishop of
+  York, not of Canterbury: which provokes a question. Conjectures are of
+  little value in history, but inasmuch as there must have been some grave
+  reason for the substitution, a suggestion of a possible reason may not be
+  wholly out of place. The appeal in itself was strictly legal; and it was
+  of the highest importance to avoid any illegality of form. Cranmer, by
+  transgressing the inhibition which Clement had issued in the winter,
+  might be construed by the papal party to have virtually incurred the
+  censures threatened, and an escape might thus have been furnished from
+  the difficulty in which the appeal placed them.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_603"></a><a href="#NtA_603">603</a> Publico ecclesię
+  judicio.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_604"></a><a href="#NtA_604">604</a> RYMER, vol. vi. part
+  2, p. 188.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_605"></a><a href="#NtA_605">605</a> The French king did
+  write unto Cardinal Tournon (not, however, of his own will, but under
+  pressure from the Duke of Norfolk), very instantly, that he should desire
+  the pope, in the said French king's name, that his Holyness would not
+  innovate anything against your Highness any wise till the congress:
+  adding, withal, that if his Holyness, notwithstanding his said desire,
+  would proceed, he could not less do, considering the great and
+  indissoluble amity betwixt your Highnesses, notorious to all the world,
+  but take and recognise such proceeding for a fresh injury.&mdash;Bennet
+  to Henry VIII.: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 468.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_606"></a><a href="#NtA_606">606</a> Ibid. p. 469.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_607"></a><a href="#NtA_607">607</a> Ibid. p. 469.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_608"></a><a href="#NtA_608">608</a> Ibid. p. 470.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_609"></a><a href="#NtA_609">609</a> Ibid.
+  p. 467, note, and p. 470.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_610"></a><a href="#NtA_610">610</a> BURNET, vol. i. p.
+  221.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_611"></a><a href="#NtA_611">611</a> We only desire and
+  pray you to endeavour yourselves in the execution of that your
+  charge&mdash;easting utterly away and banishing from you such fear and
+  timorousness, or rather despair, as by your said letters we perceive ye
+  have conceived&mdash;reducing to your memories in the lieu and stead
+  thereof, as a thing continually lying before your eyes and incessantly
+  sounded in your ears, the justice of our cause, which cannot at length be
+  shadowed, but shall shine and shew itself to the confusion of our
+  adversaries. And we having, as is said, truth for us, with the help and
+  assistance of God, author of the same, shall at all times be able to
+  maintain you.&mdash;Henry VIII. to Bonner: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii.
+  p. 485.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_612"></a><a href="#NtA_612">612</a> Bonner to Cromwell:
+  Ibid. vol. vii. p. 481.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_613"></a><a href="#NtA_613">613</a> The proclamation
+  ordering that Catherine should be called not queen, but Princess
+  Dowager.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_614"></a><a href="#NtA_614">614</a> Catherine de
+  Medici.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_615"></a><a href="#NtA_615">615</a> Henry VIII. to the
+  Duke of Norfolk: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 493.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_616"></a><a href="#NtA_616">616</a> Sir John Racket,
+  writing from Ghent on the 6th of September, describes as the general
+  impression that the Pope's "trust was to assure his alliance on both
+  sides." "He trusts to bring about that his Majesty the French king and he
+  shall become and remain in good, fast, and sure alliance together; and so
+  ensuring that they three (the Pope, Francis, and Charles V.) shall be
+  able to reform and set good order in the rest of Christendom. But whether
+  his Unhappiness's&mdash;I mean his Holiness's&mdash;intention, is set for
+  the welfare and utility of Christendom, or for his own insincerity and
+  singular purpose, I remit that to God and to them that know more of the
+  world than I do."&mdash;Hacket to Cromwell: <i>State Papers</i>, vol.
+  vii. p. 506.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_617"></a><a href="#NtA_617">617</a> John the Magnanimous,
+  son of John the Steadfast, and nephew of the Elector Frederick, Luther's
+  first protector.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_618"></a><a href="#NtA_618">618</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. pp. 499-501.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_619"></a><a href="#NtA_619">619</a> Princeps Elector ducit
+  se imparem ut Regię Celsitudinis vel aliorum regum oratores eā lege in
+  aulā suā degerent; vereturque ne ob id apud Cęsaream majestatem unicum
+  ejus Dominum et alios male audiret, possetque sinistre tale institutum
+  interpretari.&mdash;Reply of the Elector: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii.
+  p. 503.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_620"></a><a href="#NtA_620">620</a> Vaughan to Cromwell:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol vii. p. 509.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_621"></a><a href="#NtA_621">621</a> I consider the man,
+  with other two&mdash;that is to say, the Landgrave von Hesse and the Duke
+  of Lunenberg&mdash;to be the chief and principal defenders and
+  maintainers of the Lutheran sect: who considering the same with no small
+  difficulty to be defended, as well against the emperor and the bishops of
+  Germany, his nigh and shrewd neighbours, as against the most opinion of
+  all Christian men, feareth to raise any other new matter whereby they
+  should take a larger and peradventure a better occasion to revenge the
+  same. The King's Highness seeketh to have intelligence with them, as they
+  conjecture to have them confederate with him; yea, and that against the
+  emperor, if he would anything pretend against the king.&mdash;Here is the
+  thing which I think feareth the duke.&mdash;Vaughan to Cromwell: <i>State
+  Papers</i>, vol. vii. pp. 509-10.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_622"></a><a href="#NtA_622">622</a> HALL, p. 805.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_623"></a><a href="#NtA_623">623</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 512.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_624"></a><a href="#NtA_624">624</a> The Duke of Albany,
+  during the minority of James V., had headed the party in Scotland most
+  opposed to the English. He expelled the queen-mother, Margaret, sister of
+  Henry; he seized the persons of the two young princes, whom he shut up in
+  Stirling, where the younger brother died under suspicion of foul play
+  (<i>Despatches of</i> GIUSTINIANI, vol. i. p. 157); and subsequently, in
+  his genius for intrigue, he gained over the queen dowager herself in a
+  manner which touched her honour.&mdash;Lord Thomas Dacre to Queen
+  Margaret: ELLIS, second series, vol. i. p. 279.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_625"></a><a href="#NtA_625">625</a> Ex his tamen, qui hęc
+  a Pontifice, audierunt, intelligo regem vehementissime instare, ut vestrę
+  majestatis expectatione satisfiat Pontifex.&mdash;Peter Vannes to Henry
+  VIII.: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 518.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_626"></a><a href="#NtA_626">626</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. vii. p. 520.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_627"></a><a href="#NtA_627">627</a> Hoc dico quod video
+  inter regem et pontificem conjunctissime et amicissime hic
+  agi.&mdash;Vannes to Cromwell: Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_628"></a><a href="#NtA_628">628</a> Vannes to Cromwell:
+  Ibid. pp. 522-3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_629"></a><a href="#NtA_629">629</a> BURNET,
+  <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 436.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_630"></a><a href="#NtA_630">630</a> Letter of the King of
+  France: LEGRAND, vol. iii. Reply of Henry: FOXE, vol. v. p. 110.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_631"></a><a href="#NtA_631">631</a> Commission of the
+  Bishop of Paris: LEGRAND, vol. iii; BURNET, vol. iii. p. 128; FOXE, vol.
+  v. p. 106-111. The commission of the Bishop of Bayonne is not explicit on
+  the extent to which the pope had bound himself with respect to the
+  sentence. Yet either in some other despatch, or verbally through the
+  Bishop, Francis certainly informed Henry that the Pope had promised that
+  sentence should be given in his favour. We shall find Henry assuming this
+  in his reply; and the Archbishop of York declared to Catherine that the
+  pope "said at Marseilles, that if his Grace would send a proxy thither he
+  would give sentence for his Highness against her, because that he knew
+  his cause to be good and just."&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. p.
+  421.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_632"></a><a href="#NtA_632">632</a> MS. Bibl. Impér.
+  Paris.&mdash;<i>The Pilgrim</i>, pp. 97, 98. Cf. FOXE, vol. v. p.
+  110.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_633"></a><a href="#NtA_633">633</a> I hear of a number of
+  Gelders which be lately reared; and the opinion of the people here is
+  that they shall go into England. All men there speak evil of England, and
+  threaten it in their foolish manner.&mdash;Vaughan to Cromwell: <i>State
+  Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 511.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_634"></a><a href="#NtA_634">634</a> RYMER, vol. vi. part
+  2, p. 189.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_635"></a><a href="#NtA_635">635</a> Parties were so
+  divided in England that lookers-on who reported any one sentiment as
+  general there, reported in fact by their own wishes and sympathies.
+  D'Inteville, the French ambassador, a strong Catholic, declares the
+  feeling to have been against the revolt. Chastillon, on the other hand,
+  writing at the same time from the same place (for he had returned from
+  France, and was present with d'Inteville at the last interview), says,
+  "The King has made up his mind to a complete separation from Rome; and
+  the lords and the majority of the people go along with
+  him."&mdash;Chastillon to the Bishop of Paris: <i>The Pilgrim</i>, p.
+  99.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_636"></a><a href="#NtA_636">636</a> STRYPE, <i>Eccles.
+  Memor.</i>, vol. i. p. 224.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_637"></a><a href="#NtA_637">637</a> Instructions to the
+  Earls of Oxford, Essex, and Sussex, to remonstrate with the Lady Mary:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_638"></a><a href="#NtA_638">638</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_639"></a><a href="#NtA_639">639</a> On the 15th of
+  November, Queen Catherine wrote to the Emperor, and after congratulating
+  him on his successes against the Turks, she continued,</p>
+
+  <p>"And as our Lord in his mercy has worked so great a good for
+  Christendom by your Highness's hands, so has he enlightened also his
+  Holiness; and I and all this realm have now a sure hope that, with the
+  grace of God, his Holiness will slay this second Turk, this affair
+  between the King my Lord and me. Second Turk, I call it, from the
+  misfortunes which, through his Holiness's long delay, have grown out of
+  it, and are now so vast and of so ill example that I know not whether
+  this or the Turk be the worst. Sorry am I to have been compelled to
+  importune your Majesty so often in this matter, for sure I am you do not
+  need my pressing. But I see delay to be so calamitous, my own life is so
+  unquiet and so painful, and the opportunity to make an end now so
+  convenient, that it seems as if God of his goodness had brought his
+  Holiness and your Majesty together to bring about so great a good. I am
+  forced to be importunate, and I implore your Highness for the passion of
+  our Lord Jesus Christ, that in return for the signal benefits which God
+  each day is heaping on you, you will accomplish for me this great
+  blessing, and bring his Holiness to a decision. Let him remember what he
+  promised you at Bologna. The truth here is known, and he will thus
+  destroy the hopes of those who persuade the King my Lord that he will
+  never pass judgment."&mdash;Queen Catherine to Charles V.: <i>MS.
+  Simancas</i>, November 15, 1533.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_640"></a><a href="#NtA_640">640</a> Letter to the King,
+  giving an account of certain Friars Observants who had been about the
+  Princess Dowager: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_641"></a><a href="#NtA_641">641</a> We remember the
+  northern prophecy, "In England shall be slain the decorate Rose in his
+  mother's belly," which the monks of Furness interpreted as meaning that
+  "the King's Grace should die by the hands of priests."&mdash;Vol. i. cap.
+  4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_642"></a><a href="#NtA_642">642</a> Statutes of the Realm,
+  25 Henry VIII. cap. 12. State Papers relating to Elizabeth Barton:
+  <i>Rolls House MS.</i> Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, to Cromwell:
+  <i>Suppression of the Monasteries</i>, p. 20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_643"></a><a href="#NtA_643">643</a> Thus Cromwell writes
+  to Fisher: "My Lord, [the outward evidences that she was speaking truth]
+  moved you not to give credence to her, but only the very matter whereupon
+  she made her false prophecies, to which matter ye were so
+  affected&mdash;as ye be noted to be on all matters which ye once enter
+  into&mdash;that nothing could come amiss that made for that
+  purpose."&mdash;<i>Suppression of the Monasteries</i>, p. 30.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_644"></a><a href="#NtA_644">644</a> Papers relating to the
+  Nun of Kent: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_645"></a><a href="#NtA_645">645</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_646"></a><a href="#NtA_646">646</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_647"></a><a href="#NtA_647">647</a> 25 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_648"></a><a href="#NtA_648">648</a> Papers relating to the
+  Nun of Kent: <i>Rolls House MS.</i> 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12. The "many"
+  nobles are not more particularly designated in the official papers. It
+  was not desirable to mention names when the offence was to be passed
+  over.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_649"></a><a href="#NtA_649">649</a> Report of the
+  Commissioners&mdash;Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_650"></a><a href="#NtA_650">650</a> Goold, says the Act of
+  the Nun's attainder, travelled to Bugden, "to animate the said Lady
+  Princess to make commotion in the realm against our sovereign lord;
+  surmitting that the said Nun should hear by revelation of God that the
+  said Lady Catherine should prosper and do well, and that her issue, the
+  Lady Mary, should prosper and reign in the realm."&mdash;25 Henry VIII.
+  cap. 13.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_651"></a><a href="#NtA_651">651</a> Report of the
+  Proceedings of the Nun of Kent: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_652"></a><a href="#NtA_652">652</a> MS. Bibliot. Impér.,
+  Paris. The letter is undated. It was apparently written in the autumn of
+  1533.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_653"></a><a href="#NtA_653">653</a> Il a des nouvelles
+  amours. In a paper at Simancas, containing Nuevas de Inglaterra, written
+  about this time, is a similar account of the dislike of Anne and her
+  family, as well as of the king's altered feelings towards her. Dicano
+  anchora che la Anna č mal voluta degli Si. di Inghilterra si per la sua
+  superbia, si anche per l'insolentia e mali portamenti che fanno nel regno
+  li fratelli e parenti di Anna; e che per questo il Re non la porta la
+  affezione que soleva per che il Re festeggia una altra Donna della quale
+  se mostra esser inamorato, e molti Si. di Inghilterra lo ajutano nel
+  seguir el predito amor per deviar questo Re dalla pratica di Anna.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_654"></a><a href="#NtA_654">654</a> HALL.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_655"></a><a href="#NtA_655">655</a> "I, dame Elizabeth
+  Barton," she said, "do confess that I, most miserable and wretched
+  person, have been the original of all this mischief, and by my falsehood
+  I have deceived all these persons (the monks who were her accomplices),
+  and many more; whereby I have most grievously offended Almighty God, and
+  my most noble sovereign the King's Grace. Wherefore I humbly, and with
+  heart most sorrowful, desire you to pray to Almighty God for my miserable
+  sins, and make supplication for me to my sovereign for his gracious mercy
+  and pardon."&mdash;Confession of Elizabeth Barton: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_656"></a><a href="#NtA_656">656</a> Papers relating to
+  Elizabeth Barton: Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_657"></a><a href="#NtA_657">657</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. i. p. 415.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_658"></a><a href="#NtA_658">658</a> A curious trait in
+  Mary's character may be mentioned in connection with this transfer. She
+  had a voracious appetite; and in Elizabeth's household expenses an extra
+  charge was made necessary of £26 a year for the meat breakfasts and meat
+  suppers "served into the Lady Mary's chamber."&mdash;Statement of the
+  expenses of the Household of the Princess Elizabeth: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_659"></a><a href="#NtA_659">659</a> He is called <i>frater
+  consobrinus</i>. See FULLER'S <i>Worthies</i>, vol. iii. p. 128.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_660"></a><a href="#NtA_660">660</a> He was killed at the
+  battle of Pavia.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_661"></a><a href="#NtA_661">661</a> Courtenay, Earl of
+  Devonshire, married Catherine, daughter of Edward.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_662"></a><a href="#NtA_662">662</a> Believe me, my lord,
+  there are some here, and those of the greatest in the land, who will be
+  indignant if the Pope confirm the sentence against the late
+  Queen.&mdash;D'Inteville to Montmorency: <i>The Pilgrim</i>, p. 97.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_663"></a><a href="#NtA_663">663</a> She once rode to
+  Canterbury, disguised as a servant, with only a young girl for a
+  companion.&mdash;Depositions of Sir Geoffrey Pole: <i>Rolls House
+  MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_664"></a><a href="#NtA_664">664</a> Confession of Sir
+  William Neville: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_665"></a><a href="#NtA_665">665</a> Confession of Sir
+  George Neville: Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_666"></a><a href="#NtA_666">666</a> Confession of the
+  Oxford Wizard: Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_667"></a><a href="#NtA_667">667</a> Queen Anne Boleyn to
+  Gardiner: BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 355. Office for the
+  Consecration of Cramp Rings: Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_668"></a><a href="#NtA_668">668</a> So at least the Oxford
+  Wizard said that Sir William Neville had told him.&mdash;Confession of
+  the Wizard: <i>Rolls House MS.</i> But the authority is not good.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_669"></a><a href="#NtA_669">669</a> Henry alone never
+  listened seriously to the Nun of Kent.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_670"></a><a href="#NtA_670">670</a> John of Transylvania,
+  the rival of Ferdinand. His designation by the title of king in an
+  English state paper was a menace that, if driven to extremities, Henry
+  would support him against the empire.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_671"></a><a href="#NtA_671">671</a> Acts of Council:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. i. pp. 414-15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_672"></a><a href="#NtA_672">672</a> Henry VIII. to Sir
+  John Wallop: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 524.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_673"></a><a href="#NtA_673">673</a> Stephen Vaughan to
+  Cromwell: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 517. Vaughan describes Peto
+  with Shakespearian raciness. "Peto is an ipocrite knave, as the most part
+  of his brethren be; a wolf; a tiger clad in a sheep's skin. It is a
+  perilous knave&mdash;a raiser of sedition&mdash;an evil reporter of the
+  King's Highness&mdash;a prophecyer of mischief&mdash;a fellow I would
+  wish to be in the king's hands, and to be shamefully punished. Would God
+  I could get him by any policy&mdash;I will work what I can. Be sure he
+  shall do nothing, nor pretend to do nothing, in these parts, that I will
+  not find means to cause the King's Highness to know. I have laid a bait
+  for him. He is not able to wear the clokys and cucullys that be sent him
+  out of England, they be so many."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_674"></a><a href="#NtA_674">674</a> Hacket to Henry VIII.:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 528.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_675"></a><a href="#NtA_675">675</a> Ibid. p. 530.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_676"></a><a href="#NtA_676">676</a> Hacket to Cromwell:
+  <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 531.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_677"></a><a href="#NtA_677">677</a> So at least Henry
+  supposed, if we may judge by the resolutions of the Council "for the
+  fortification of all the frontiers of the realm, as well upon the coasts
+  of the sea as the frontiers foreanenst Scotland." The fortresses and
+  havens were to be "fortefyed and munited;" and money to be sent to York
+  to be in readiness "if any business should happen."&mdash;Ibid. vol. i.
+  p. 411.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_678"></a><a href="#NtA_678">678</a> 25 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  19.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_679"></a><a href="#NtA_679">679</a> A design which
+  unfortunately was not put in effect. In the hurry of the time it was
+  allowed to drop.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_680"></a><a href="#NtA_680">680</a> 25 Henry VIII. cap.
+  14.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_681"></a><a href="#NtA_681">681</a> 23 Henry VIII. cap.
+  20.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_682"></a><a href="#NtA_682">682</a> At this very time
+  Campeggio was Bishop of Salisbury, and Ghinucci, who had been acting for
+  Henry at Rome, was Bishop of Worcester. The Act by which they were
+  deprived speaks of these two appointments as <i>nominations</i> by the
+  king.&mdash;25 Henry VIII. cap. 27.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_683"></a><a href="#NtA_683">683</a> Wolsey held three
+  bishoprics and one archbishopric, besides the abbey of St. Albans.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_684"></a><a href="#NtA_684">684</a> Thus when Wolsey was
+  presented, in 1514, to the See of Lincoln, Leo X. writes to his beloved
+  son Thomas Wolsey how that in his great care for the interests of the
+  Church, "Nos hodie Ecclesię Lincolniensi, te in episcopum et pastorem
+  pręficere intendimus." He then informs the Chapter of Lincoln of the
+  appointment; and the king, in granting the temporalities, continues the
+  fiction without seeming to recognise it:&mdash;"Cum dominus summus
+  Pontifex nuper vacante Ecclesiā cathedrali personam fidelis clerici
+  nostri Thomę Wolsey, in ipsius Ecclesię episcopum pręfecerit, nos,"
+  etc.&mdash;See the Acts in RYMER, vol. vi. part 1, pp. 55-7.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_685"></a><a href="#NtA_685">685</a> 25 Henry VIII. cap.
+  20. The pre-existing, unrealities with respect to the election of bishops
+  explain the unreality of the new arrangement, and divest it of the
+  character of wanton tyranny with which it appeared <i>primā facie</i> to
+  press upon the Chapters. The history of this statute is curious, and
+  perhaps explains the intentions with which it was originally passed. It
+  was repealed by the 2nd of the 1st of Edward VI. on the ground that the
+  liberty of election was merely nominal, and that the Chapters ought to be
+  relieved of responsibility when they had no power of choice. Direct
+  nomination by the crown was substituted for the <i>congé d'élire</i>, and
+  remained the practice till the reaction under Mary, when the indefinite
+  system was resumed which had existed before the Reformation. On the
+  accession of Elizabeth, the statute of 25 Henry VIII. was again enacted.
+  The more complicated process of Henry was preferred to the more simple
+  one of Edward, and we are naturally led to ask the reason of so singular
+  a preference. I cannot but think that it was this. The Council of Regency
+  under Edward VI. treated the Church as an institution of the State, while
+  Henry and Elizabeth endeavoured (under difficulties) to regard it under
+  its more Catholic aspect of an organic body. So long as the Reformation
+  was in progress, it was necessary to prevent the intrusion upon the bench
+  of bishops of Romanising tendencies, and the deans and chapters were
+  therefore protected by a strong hand from their own possible mistakes.
+  But the form of liberty was conceded to them, not, I hope, to place
+  deliberately a body of clergymen in a degrading position, but in the
+  belief that at no distant time the Church might be allowed without danger
+  to resume some degree of self-government.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_686"></a><a href="#NtA_686">686</a> 25 Henry VIII. cap.
+  21.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_687"></a><a href="#NtA_687">687</a> I sent you no heavy
+  words, but words of great comfort; willing your brother to shew you how
+  benign and merciful the prince was; and that I thought it expedient for
+  you to write unto his Highness, and to recognise your offence and to
+  desire his pardon, which his Grace would not deny you how in your age and
+  sickness.&mdash;Cromwell to Fisher: <i>Suppression of the
+  Monasteries</i>, p. 27.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_688"></a><a href="#NtA_688">688</a> Sir Thomas More to
+  Cromwell: BURNET'S <i>Collectanea</i>, p. 350.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_689"></a><a href="#NtA_689">689</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_690"></a><a href="#NtA_690">690</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_691"></a><a href="#NtA_691">691</a> More to Cromwell:
+  STRYPE'S <i>Memorials</i>, vol. i. Appendix, p. 195.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_692"></a><a href="#NtA_692">692</a> More to the King:
+  ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 47.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_693"></a><a href="#NtA_693">693</a> Cromwell to Fisher:
+  <i>Suppression of the Monasteries</i>, p. 27, et seq.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_694"></a><a href="#NtA_694">694</a> <i>Suppression of the
+  Monasteries</i>, p. 27, et seq.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_695"></a><a href="#NtA_695">695</a> John Fisher to the
+  Lords in Parliament: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 289.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_696"></a><a href="#NtA_696">696</a> <i>Lords'
+  Journals</i>, p. 72.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_697"></a><a href="#NtA_697">697</a> 25 Hen. VIII. cap.
+  12.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_698"></a><a href="#NtA_698">698</a> In a tract written by
+  a Dr. Moryson in defence of the government, three years later, I find
+  evidence that a distinction was made among the prisoners, and that Dr.
+  Bocking was executed with peculiar cruelty. "Solus in crucem actus est
+  Bockingus," are Moryson's words, though I feel uncertain of the nature of
+  the punishment which he meant to designate. "Crucifixion" was unknown to
+  the English law; and an event so peculiar as the "crucifixion" of a monk
+  would hardly have escaped the notice of the contemporary chroniclers. In
+  a careful diary kept by a London merchant during these years, which is in
+  MS. in the Library of Balliol College, Oxford, the whole party are said
+  to have been hanged.&mdash;See, however, <i>Morysini Apomaxis</i>,
+  printed by Berthelet, 1537.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_699"></a><a href="#NtA_699">699</a> HALL, p. 814.] The
+  inferior confederates were committed to their prisons with the exception
+  only of Fisher, who, though sentenced, found mercy thrust upon him, till
+  by fresh provocation the miserable old man forced himself upon his
+  fate.<a name="NtA_700"></a><a href="#Nt_700"><sup>700</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_700"></a><a href="#NtA_700">700</a> LORD HERBERT says he
+  was pardoned; I do not find, however, on what authority: but he was
+  certainly not imprisoned, nor was the sentence of forfeiture enforced
+  against him.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_701"></a><a href="#NtA_701">701</a> This is the substance
+  of the provisions, which are, of course, much abridged.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_702"></a><a href="#NtA_702">702</a> <i>Lords'
+  Journals</i>, vol. i. p. 82. An act was also passed in this session
+  "against the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome." We trace it in its
+  progress through the House of Lords. (<i>Lords' Journals</i>, Parliament
+  of 1533-4.) It received the royal assent (ibid.), and is subsequently
+  alluded to in the both of the 28th of Henry VIII., as well as in a Royal
+  Proclamation dated June, 1534; and yet it is not on the Roll, nor do I
+  anywhere find traces of it. It is not to be confounded with the act
+  against payment of Peter's Pence, for in the <i>Lords' Journals</i> the
+  two acts are separately mentioned. It received the royal assent on the
+  30th of March, while that against Peter's Pence was suspended till the
+  7th of April. It contained, also, an indirect assertion that the king was
+  Head of the English Church, according to the title which had been given
+  him by Convocation. (King's Proclamation: FOXE, vol. v. p. 69.) For some
+  cause or other, the act at the last moment must have been withdrawn.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_703"></a><a href="#NtA_703">703</a> See BURNET, vol. i.
+  pp. 220-1: vol. iii p. 135; and LORD HERBERT. Du Bellay's brother, the
+  author of the memoirs, says that the king, at the bishop's entreaty,
+  promised that if the pope would delay sentence, and send "judges to hear
+  the matter, he would himself forbear to do what he proposed to
+  do"&mdash;that is, separate wholly from the See of Rome. If this is true,
+  the sending "judges" must allude to the "sending them to Cambray," which
+  had been proposed at Marseilles.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_704"></a><a href="#NtA_704">704</a> See the letter of the
+  Bishop of Bayonne, dated March 23, in LEGRAND. A paraphrase is given by
+  BURNET, vol. iii. p. 132.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_705"></a><a href="#NtA_705">705</a> Promisistis
+  predecessori meo quod si sententiam contra regem Anglię tulisset, Cęsar
+  illum infra quatuor menses erat invasurus, et regno
+  expulsurus.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 579.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_706"></a><a href="#NtA_706">706</a> Letter of Du Bellay in
+  LEGRAND.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_707"></a><a href="#NtA_707">707</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_708"></a><a href="#NtA_708">708</a> Sir Edward Karne and
+  Dr. Revett to Henry VIII.: <i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. pp. 553-4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_709"></a><a href="#NtA_709">709</a> State Papers, vol.
+  vii. p. 560, et seq.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_710"></a><a href="#NtA_710">710</a> His Highness,
+  considering the time and the malice of the emperour, cannot conveniently
+  pass out of the realm&mdash;since he leaveth behind him another daughter
+  and a mother, with their friends, maligning his enterprises in this
+  behalf&mdash;who bearing no small grudge against his most entirely
+  beloved Queen Anne, and his young daughter the princess, might perchance
+  in his absence take occasion to excogitate and practise with their said
+  friends matters of no small peril to his royal person, realm, and
+  subjects.&mdash;<i>State Papers</i>, vol. vii. p. 559.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_711"></a><a href="#NtA_711">711</a> LORD HERBERT.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_712"></a><a href="#NtA_712">712</a> I mentioned their
+  execution in connection with their sentence; but it did not take place
+  till the 20th of April, a month after their attainder: and delay of this
+  kind was very unusual in cases of high treason. I have little doubt that
+  their final sentence was in fact pronounced by the pope.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_713"></a><a href="#NtA_713">713</a> The oaths of a great
+  many are in RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 195, et seq.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_714"></a><a href="#NtA_714">714</a> His great-grandson's
+  history of him (<i>Life of Sir Thomas More,</i>, by CRESACRE MORE,
+  written about 1620, published 1627, with a dedication to Henrietta Maria)
+  is incorrect in so many instances that I follow it with hesitation; but
+  the account of the present matter is derived from Mr. Roper, More's
+  son-in-law, who accompanied him to Lambeth, and it is incidentally
+  confirmed in various details by More himself.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_715"></a><a href="#NtA_715">715</a> MORE'S <i>Life of
+  More</i>, p. 232.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_716"></a><a href="#NtA_716">716</a> More held extreme
+  republican opinions on the tenure of kings, holding that they might be
+  deposed by act of parliament.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_717"></a><a href="#NtA_717">717</a> MORE'S <i>Life of
+  More</i>, p. 237.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_718"></a><a href="#NtA_718">718</a> BURNET, vol. i. p.
+  255.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_719"></a><a href="#NtA_719">719</a> MORE'S <i>Life of
+  More</i>, p. 237.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_720"></a><a href="#NtA_720">720</a> Cromwell to the
+  Archbishop of Canterbury: <i>Rolls House MS.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_721"></a><a href="#NtA_721">721</a> <i>State Papers</i>,
+  vol. i. p. 411, et seq.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_722"></a><a href="#NtA_722">722</a> Royal Proclamation,
+  June, 1534.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_723"></a><a href="#NtA_723">723</a> Ibid.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Nt_724"></a><a href="#NtA_724">724</a> FOXE, vol. v. p.
+  70.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of
+3), by James Anthony Froude, et al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3)
+
+
+Author: James Anthony Froude
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2005  [eBook #15537]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH,
+VOLUME 1 (OF 3)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Deirdre Menchaca, Keith Edkins, and
+the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
+
+Henry VIII . Introduction by
+W. Llewelyn Williams M.P. B.C.L.
+
+Volume One
+
+First Published 1909
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illuminated Frontispiece]
+
+CONSIDER HISTORY WITH THE BEGINNINGS OF
+IT STRETCHING DIMLY INTO THE REMOTE TIME;
+EMERGING DARKLY OVT OF THE MYSTERIOVS
+             ETERNITY:
+THE TRVE EPIC POEM AND VNIVERSAL DIVINE
+       SCRIPTVRE...--CARLYLE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illuminated Title]
+
+THE REIGN of HENRY the EIGHTH
+
+by
+
+JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+London & Toronto J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
+New York E.P. Dutton & Co
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+James Anthony Froude was born at Dartington Rectory, the youngest son of
+the Archdeacon of Totnes, on April 23, 1818. His father was a clergyman of
+the old school, as much squire as parson. In the concluding chapter to his
+_History of England_, Froude wrote that "for a hundred and forty years
+after the Revolution of 1688, the Church of England was able to fulfil with
+moderate success the wholesome functions of a religious establishment.
+Theological doctrinalism passed out of fashion; and the clergy, merged as
+they were in the body of the nation, and no longer endeavouring to elevate
+themselves into a separate order, were occupied healthily in impressing on
+their congregations the meaning of duty and moral responsibility to God."
+Of this sane and orthodox, but not over-spiritual, clergy, Archdeacon
+Froude was an excellent and altogether wholesome type. He was a stiff Tory;
+his hatred of Dissent was so uncompromising that he would not have a copy
+of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ in the rectory. A stern, self-contained,
+reticent man, he never, in word of deed, confessed his affection for his
+youngest son. He was a good horseman, and was passionately fond of open-air
+exercises and especially of hunting. His one accomplishment was drawing,
+and his sketches in after years earned the praise of Ruskin.
+
+Cast in the same mould, but fashioned by different circumstances, the
+archdeacon's eldest son, Richard Hurrell Froude, was a man of greater
+intellectual brilliance and even more masterful character. He was one of
+the pioneers of the Oxford Movement, and it was only his early death that
+deposed him from his place of equality with Newman and Keble and Pusey.
+Anthony was a sickly child, and from his earliest years lacked the loving
+care of a mother. He was brought up with Spartan severity by his father and
+his aunt. The most venial self-indulgence was regarded as criminal. From
+the age of three he was inured to hardship by being ducked every morning in
+a trough of ice-cold water. Hurrell Froude felt no tenderness for the
+ailing lad. Once, in order to rouse a manly spirit in his little brother,
+he took him by the heels, plunged him like another Achilles into a stream,
+and stirred with his head the mud at the bottom. Froude has been accused,
+and not without justice, of not feeling a proper aversion to acts of
+cruelty. The horrible Boiling Act of Henry VIII. excites neither disgust
+nor hatred in him; and he makes smooth excuses for the illegal tortures of
+the rack and the screw which were inflicted on prisoners by Elizabeth and
+her ministers. He had himself been reared in a hardy school; he had been
+trained to be indifferent to pain. It may well be that his callousness in
+speaking of Tudor cruelties is to be traced to the influences that
+surrounded his loveless childhood and youth.
+
+Hurrell Froude was the idol of his younger brothers. He was a man of
+brilliant parts, and a born leader of men. His hatred of Radicals and
+Dissenters transcended even his father's dislike of them. His conception of
+the Church differed widely from that in which the archdeacon had been
+reared. To him a clergyman was a priest who belonged to a sacerdotal caste,
+and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the
+Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the
+Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas a Becket. He wrote a sketch
+of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His friends
+ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal ecclesiastical
+statesman of modern times was Archbishop Laud. Charles I. was a martyr, and
+the Revolution of 1688 an inglorious blunder. To the day of his death--in
+spite of the harsh discipline which he received at his hands in boyhood, in
+spite of wide divergence of opinion in later years in all matters secular
+and religious--Froude never ceased to worship at his brother's shrine. Out
+of regard for his memory, more than from any passionate personal
+conviction, he associated himself while at Oxford with the Anglican
+movement. His affectionate admiration for Newman, neither time nor change
+served to impair. If Carlyle was his prophet in later years, his influence
+happily did not affect his style. That was based on the chaste model of
+Newman. He owed his early friendship with Newman to that great man's
+association with Hurrell Froude. Many years after, when Freeman had
+venomously accused him of "dealing stabs in the dark at a brother's almost
+forgotten fame"--poor Froude's offence was that he dared to write an essay
+on Thomas a Becket--he defended himself with rare emotion against the
+charge. "I look back upon my brother," he said, "as on the whole the most
+remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I have never seen any
+person--not one--in whom, as I now think him, the excellences of intellect
+and character were combined in fuller measure."
+
+As Froude's powers developed and matured, and as his experience of the
+world broadened, he cast away his brother's yoke, and reverted more to his
+father's school of thought. As his father was to him the ideal clergyman of
+the Church of England, so the Church before 1828 remained to him the model
+of what an established religion should be. He was a thorough Erastian, who
+believed in the subordination of the Church to the state. He detested
+theological doctrinalism of all kinds; he revolted against the idea that
+the clergy should form a separate order. The pretensions of Whitgift and
+Laud, the High Anglican school of Keble and Pusey, the whole conception of
+the Church and the priesthood which underlay the Oxford Movement, were
+things obnoxious to him. In a characteristic passage in the chapter on the
+Massacre of St. Bartholomew he reveals his hatred and distrust of
+dogmatism. "Whenever the doctrinal aspect of Christianity has been
+prominent above the practical," he wrote, "whenever the first duty of the
+believer has been held to consist in holding particular opinions on the
+functions and nature of his Master, and only the second in obeying his
+Master's commands, then always, with a uniformity more remarkable than is
+obtained in any other historical phenomena, there have followed dissension,
+animosity, and in later ages bloodshed. Christianity, as a principle of
+life, has been the most powerful check upon the passions of mankind.
+Christianity as a speculative system of opinion has converted them into
+monsters of cruelty."
+
+Holding such decided views on doctrinalism, it might have been thought that
+Froude would have visited all the warring sects of the sixteenth century
+with equal judgment. No Church was more doctrinal than that of Geneva; no
+Calvinist ever was more dogmatic than John Knox. But the men who fought the
+battle of the Reformation in England and Scotland were, in the main, the
+Calvinists; and to Froude the Reformation was the beginning of a new and
+better era, when the yoke of the priest had been finally cast away.
+"Calvinism," he said in one of his addresses at St. Andrews, "was the
+spirit which rises in revolt against untruth." John Knox was too heroic a
+figure not to rouse the artistic sense in Froude. "There lies one," said
+the Regent Morton over his coffin, "who never feared the face of mortal
+man." Froude has made this epitaph the text of the noblest eulogy ever
+delivered on Knox. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire history
+of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox." He surpassed
+Cromwell and Burghley in integrity of purpose and in purity of methods. He
+towered above the Regent Murray in intellect, and he worked on a larger
+scale than Latimer. "His was the voice that taught the peasant of the
+Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the
+proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. He was the
+one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive. He
+it was who had raised the poor commons of his country into a stern and
+rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious, and fanatical, but
+who nevertheless were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could force
+again to submit to tyranny." Yet even here, Froude could not refrain from
+quoting the sardonic comment of the English ambassador at Edinburgh: Knox
+behaved, said Randolph, "as though he were of God's privy council."
+
+It is certain, at least, that other reformers, who were not greatly
+inferior to Knox in capacity, and not at all in piety and honesty, have not
+met the same generous treatment at his hands. He sneers at Hooper because
+he had scruples about wearing episcopal robes at his consecration as Bishop
+of Worcester, though he himself in a famous passage asserts the anomalous
+position of bishops in the Church of England. Hooper, as a Calvinist, was
+in the right in objecting, and though the point upon which he took his
+stand was nominally one of form, there lay behind it a protest against the
+Anglican conception of a bishop. He speaks slightingly of Ridley and
+Ferrars, though he makes ample amends to them and to Hooper, when he comes
+to describe the manner of their death. To the reformers who fled from the
+Marian persecution, including men like Jewel and Grindal, he refers with
+scornful contempt, though he has no word of criticism to apply to Knox for
+retiring to England and to the continent when the flame of persecution was
+certainly not more fierce. Latimer is one of his favourites,--a plain,
+practical man, not given to abstract speculation or theological subtleties,
+but one who was content to do his duty day by day without the fear of man
+before his eyes. Latimer, though he was looked upon as a Protestant in the
+earliest years of the English Reformation, believed in the Real Presence up
+to a short time before his death. But of all English ecclesiastics Thomas
+Cranmer was perhaps most to Froude's liking. Cranmer was, like Froude
+himself, an artist in words. The English liturgy owes its charm and beauty
+to his sense of style, his grace of expression, and his cultured piety.
+That he was a great man few will be found in these days to maintain; fewer
+still will believe that he deserved the scathing invective of Macaulay. But
+no one can read the account given by Froude of his last years without
+feeling that the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury was neither
+saint nor martyr. If ever there was one, he was a timeserver. He pronounced
+the divorce of Catherine of Arragon, though he had sworn fealty to the
+Pope. He never raised a protest against any of the political murders of
+Henry VIII.--with the notable exception of his courageous attempt to save
+his friend, Thomas Cromwell. Even in that case, however, he lies under the
+suspicion of having interfered through fear that his own fate was involved
+in that of the _malleus monachorum_. In the days of Edward VI. he aimed at
+the liberty, if not at the life, of Bonner and Gardiner, without semblance
+of legal right: He recanted in the reign of Mary when he thought he could
+purchase his miserable life. It was only when all hope of pardon was past
+that he re-affirmed his belief in the reformed faith. Indeed, he waited
+until the day of his execution before withdrawing his recantation, and
+confounded his enemies on the way to the stake. To a master of dramatic
+narrative the last scene of Cranmer's life came as a relief and an
+inspiration. "So perished Cranmer," wrote Froude, in a memorable passage:
+"he was brought out, with the eyes of his soul blinded, to make sport for
+his enemies, and in his death he brought upon them a wider destruction than
+he had effected by his teaching while alive. Pole was appointed the next
+day to the See of Canterbury; but in other respects the court had
+over-reached themselves by their cruelty. Had they been contented to accept
+the recantation, they would have left the archbishop to die broken-hearted,
+pointed at by the finger of pitying scorn; and the Reformation would have
+been disgraced in its champion. They were tempted, by an evil spirit of
+revenge, into an act unsanctioned even by their own bloody laws; and they
+gave him an opportunity of writing his name in the roll of martyrs. The
+worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a
+single and peculiar peril. The Apostle, though forewarned, denied his
+Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his nature
+in its strength and its infirmity, chose him for the rock on which he would
+build his Church."
+
+With this conscious and avowed bias in favour of undogmatic Christianity,
+Froude came to write the story of the transition of England from a Catholic
+to a Protestant country. He was not without sympathy with the old order of
+things. We cannot but feel a thrill as we read his incomparable description
+of the change which was effected in men's thoughts and ideas by the
+translation of the mediaeval into the modern world? "For, indeed, a change
+was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is
+hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths trodden by the
+footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the
+faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry
+was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into
+ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions, of the old world
+were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the
+western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an
+infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed
+from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness
+of the universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built
+for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all
+gone--like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old
+English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will
+never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagination can
+but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the cathedral, only
+as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some faint
+conceptions float before us of what these men were when they were alive;
+and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation of
+mediaeval age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world."
+Froude was once asked what was the greatest and most essential quality of
+an historian. He replied that it was imagination. It was a true and a just
+saying, and Froude himself possessed the faculty in abundance.
+
+It was not only with the old order that Froude showed his sympathy. He is
+seldom ungenerous in his references to individual Catholics, however
+mistaken in his sight their opinions may have been. With Wolsey and Warham,
+Fisher and More, even with Gardiner and Bonner he deals fairly and with
+some amount of real sympathy. The heroic death of Campian moves him to pity
+just as much as the death of Latimer; the strenuous labours of Father
+Parsons to overthrow Elizabeth and Protestantism failed to remove him
+beyond the pale of Froude's charitable judgment. One English Catholic alone
+was reserved for the historian's harsh and sometimes petulant criticism.
+For Cardinal Pole Froude felt the angriest contempt. He was descended from
+the blood royal, both of England and of Wales. On his father's side he was
+descended in direct line from the ancient princes of Powis; on his mother's
+from the Plantagenets and the Nevilles. He was the most learned and
+illustrious Englishman of his age. He had stood high in King Henry's
+favour; he was destined for the greatest offices in the state. He was not
+without natural ambition. Yet he forfeited all that he had--the favour of
+his prince, the society of his mother whom he loved, and the kindred who
+were proud of him, the hope of promotion and of power, his friends, his
+home, and his country, for conscience' sake. He remained true to the
+ancient faith in which he was reared. With unerring instinct he foresaw
+that, once England was severed from the Papacy, it would be impossible for
+king or parliament to stem the flood of the Reformation. For twenty years
+he remained an exile on the continent. He returned an old and broken man,
+to witness the overthrow of his cherished plans. He was repudiated by the
+Pope whose authority he had sacrificed everything to maintain, and in his
+old age he suffered the humiliation of being accused of heresy in the court
+of Rome. He died the same day as Mary died, with the knowledge that all his
+life's labours and sacrifices were come to naught, and that the dominion of
+the Roman Church in England was gone for ever. Froude saw none of the
+pathos or tragedy of Pole's life. To him the cardinal was a renegade, a
+traitor to his country, a mercenary of the Pope, a foreign potentate, a
+"hysterical dreamer," who vainly imagined that he was "the champion of
+heaven, and the destroyer of heresy."
+
+Froude was, above all, an Englishman. His strongest sympathies went out to
+the "God's Englishmen" of Elizabeth's reign, who broke the power of Rome
+and Spain, and who made England supreme in Europe. In his first chapter he
+describes the qualities of Englishmen with a zest and gusto that drew the
+comment from Carlyle that "this seems to me exaggerated: what we call John
+Bullish." He described them as "a sturdy, high-hearted race, sound in body
+and fierce in spirit which, under the stimulus of those great shins of
+beef, their common diet, were the wonder of the age." Carlyle's advice when
+he read this passage in proof was characteristic:--"Modify a little:
+Frederick the Great was brought up on beer-sops; Robert Burns on oatmeal
+porridge; and Mahomet and the Caliphs conquered the world on barley meal."
+But the passage stood unmodified, in spite of Froude's regard for his
+master.
+
+How this fierce and turbulent people fought their way to world-wide empire
+was a problem which Froude thought he was able to solve. It was, in the
+main, because they broke down the power of the priests, and insisted on the
+supremacy of state over Church. Therefore all his filial affection, his
+patriotism, and his ecclesiastical prejudices were arrayed on the same
+side. If history be an exact science, then Froude can lay no claim to the
+title of historian. He was a brilliant advocate, a man of letters endowed
+with a matchless style, writing of matters which interested him deeply, and
+in the investigation of which he spent twenty years of his life. Froude
+himself would have been the first to repudiate the idea that history is
+philosophy teaching by examples, or that an historian has necessarily a
+greater insight into the problems of the present than any other observant
+student of affairs. "Gibbon," he once wrote, "believed that the era of
+conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of man, he would
+have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed
+the world had grown too civilised for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde
+Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles, bloody as
+Napoleon's, are now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have
+made the greatest progress are the arts of destruction."
+
+It is absurd to attack Froude on the ground that he was biassed. No man has
+ever yet written a living history without being biassed. Thucydides
+detested the radicalism of Cleon as heartily as Gibbon hated the
+Christianity of Rome. It was once the fashion of the Oxford school to decry
+Froude as being unworthy of the name of historian. Stubbs, indeed, did pay
+public tribute to Froude's "great work," but he stood almost alone of his
+school. Freeman for many years pursued and persecuted Froude with a
+persistent malevolence which happily has no parallel in the story of
+English scholarship. It is not necessary in this place to do more than
+refer to that unpleasant episode. Since the publication of the brilliant
+vindication of Froude in Mr. Herbert Paul's _Life_, it would be superfluous
+to go into the details of that unhappy controversy. The only difference
+between Froude and other historians is that Froude's partisanship is always
+obvious. He was not more favourable to Henry VIII. than Stubbs was to
+Thomas a Becket. But Froude openly avowed his preferences and his dislikes.
+Catholicism was to him "a dying superstition," Protestantism "a living
+truth." Freeman went further, and charged Froude with having written a
+history which was not "_un livre de bonne joy._" It is only necessary to
+recall the circumstances under which the _History_ was written to dispose
+of that odious charge. In order to obtain material for his _History_,
+Froude spent years of his life in the little Spanish village of Simancas.
+"I have worked in all," he said in his Apologia, "through nine hundred
+volumes of letters, notes, and other papers, private and official, in five
+languages and in different handwritings. I am not rash enough to say that I
+have never misread a word, or overlooked a passage of importance. I profess
+only to have dealt with my materials honestly to the best of my ability."
+Few, indeed, have had to encounter such difficulties as met Froude in his
+exploration of the archives at Simancas. "Often at the end of a page," he
+wrote many years after, "I have felt as after descending a precipice, and
+have wondered how I got down. I had to cut my way through a jungle, for no
+one had opened the road for me. I have been turned into rooms piled to the
+window-sill with bundles of dust-coloured despatches, and told to make the
+best of it. Often have I found the sand glistening on the ink where it had
+been sprinkled when a page was turned. There the letter had lain, never
+looked at again since it was read and put away." Of these difficulties not
+a trace is discoverable in Froude's easy and effortless narrative. When he
+was approaching the completion of his _History_, he vowed that his account
+of the Armada should be as interesting as a novel. He succeeded not only
+with that portion of his task, but with all the stirring story that he set
+out to narrate. But the ease of his style only concealed the real pains
+which he had taken. Of Freeman's charge Froude has long been honourably
+acquitted. The Simancas MSS. have since been published in the Rolls Series,
+and Mr. Martin Hume, in his Introduction, has paid his tribute to the care,
+accuracy, and good faith of their first transcriber. Long before this
+testimony could be given, Scottish historians who disagreed with Froude's
+conclusions on many points,--men such as Skelton and Burton--had been
+profoundly impressed with the care, skill, and conscientiousness with which
+Froude handled the mass of tangled materials relating to the history of
+Scotland.
+
+This does not mean that Froude is free from minor inaccuracies, or that he
+is innocent of graver faults which flowed from his abundant quality of
+imagination. He constantly quotes a sentence inaccurately in his text,
+while it is accurately transcribed in a footnote. He is careless in matters
+which are important to students of Debrett, as for instance, he
+indiscriminately describes Lord Howard as Lord William Howard and Lord
+Howard. But Froude was sometimes guilty of something worse than these
+trivial "howlers." Lecky exposed, with calm ruthlessness, some of Froude's
+exaggerations--to call them by no worse name--in his _Story of the English
+in Ireland_. When his _Erasmus_ was translated into Dutch, the countrymen
+of Erasmus accused him of constant, if not deliberate, inaccuracy. Lord
+Carnarvon once sent Froude to South Africa as an informal special
+commissioner. When he returned to this country he wrote an article on the
+South African problem in the _Quarterly Review_. Sir Bartle Frere, who knew
+South Africa as few men did, said of it that it was an "essay in which for
+whole pages a truth expressed in brilliant epigrams alternates with
+mistakes or misstatements which would scarcely be pardoned in a special war
+correspondent hurriedly writing against time." So dangerous is the quality
+of imagination in a writer!
+
+Truth to tell, Froude was a literary man with a fondness for historical
+investigation, and an artist's passion for the dramatic in life and story.
+He wrote with a purpose--that purpose being to defend the English
+Reformation against the attacks of the neo-Catholic-Anglicans, under whose
+influence he had himself been for a time in his youth. To him, therefore,
+Henry VIII. was "the majestic lord who broke the bonds of Rome." This is
+not the occasion, nor is the present writer the man, to analyse that
+complex and masterful personality. Froude started to defend the English
+Reformation against the vile charge that it was the outcome of kingly lust.
+That charge he has finally dispelled. Henry VIII. was not the monster that
+Lingard painted. He beheaded two queens, but few will be found to assert
+to-day that either Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard were innocent martyrs.
+People must agree to differ to the crack of doom as to the justice of
+Catherine's divorce. It is one of those questions which different men will
+continue to answer in different ways. But one thing is abundantly clear. If
+Henry was actuated merely by passion for Anne Boleyn, he would scarcely
+have waited for years before putting Queen Catherine away. Henry divorced
+Anne of Cleves, but Anne, who survived the dissolution of her marriage and
+remained in England for twenty years, made no complaint of her treatment,
+and she has had no champions either among Catholic or Protestant writers.
+Her divorce is only remembered as the occasion of the downfall of the
+greatest statesman of his age, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. But in his
+eagerness to proclaim the truth, Froude went on to defend a paradox. Once
+free from the charge of lust,--and compared with Francis of France or
+Charles V., Henry was a continent man--Henry became to Froude the ideal
+monarch.
+
+Some one has said that Henry VIII. was the greatest king that ever lived,
+because he always got his own way. If that be the test, then Henry was
+indeed "every inch a king." He broke with Rome; he deposed the Pope from
+his supremacy over England; he dissolved the monasteries; he sent the
+noblest and wisest in England to the scaffold; he reduced Wales to law and
+order and gave her a constitution; he married and unmarried as he liked; he
+disposed of the succession to the throne of England by his will; and his
+people never murmured. Only once, when the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out,
+was his throne in any danger, and that insurrection he easily suppressed.
+He made war with France; he invaded Scotland more than once, and every time
+with striking success. He played his vigorous part in European politics,
+and at his death he left his realm inviolate. It is an amazing record,
+which might well dazzle a writer of Froude's temperament and training. But
+there are dark shades in the picture, which Froude was content to make
+little of, if not to ignore. He is fond of contrasting Henry's way with
+conspirators with that of his daughter Elizabeth. He sneers at her
+"tenderness" towards high-born traitors, and never ceases to reproach her
+with her one act of repression after the Yorkshire rising. But he had not a
+word to say against the tyrannical murders of Henry VIII. Elizabeth truly
+boasted that she never punished opinion: Henry sent to the scaffold better
+men than himself for holding academical opinions contrary to his own.
+Cardinal Fisher may have been--after the publication of Chappuys's letters
+it is not possible to deny that he was--technically guilty of treason. But
+he was a saint and an old man past eighty, and "the earth on the edge of
+the grave was already crumbling under his feet." The king spared neither
+age nor worth nor innocence. He had been the familiar friend of More; he
+had walked through his gardens at Chelsea leaning on his arm; More had been
+his chancellor; he was still the greatest of his subjects; while frankly
+admitting that he differed in opinion from the king on the question of the
+royal supremacy, he promised that he would not try to influence others.
+Henry was inexorable. He not only condemned him to die a traitor's
+death,--he added a callous message, which still rouses the indignation of
+every generous soul, that he should "not use many words on the scaffold."
+Thomas Cromwell had served him as few ministers have served a king; to him
+was due--or, at least, he was the capable instrument of--the policy which
+has given distinction to Henry's reign; but he was delivered over to his
+enemies when the king's caprice had shifted to another quarter. Even Froude
+finds it difficult to excuse the execution of More and Cromwell. But,
+having once made up his mind to make a hero of Henry, he goes on with it
+bravely to the end. He hides nothing, he excuses nothing, he extenuates
+nothing. Neither the death of the aged Countess of Salisbury or of the
+gallant Earl of Surrey, nor the illegal imprisonment of the aged Norfolk,
+the hero of Flodden, shakes his faith in his hero-king. He even relates,
+with minute detail, how a few days before the king's death, four poor
+persons, one of whom was a tailor, were burnt at the stake for denying the
+Real Presence. But his final comment on it all was: "His personal faults
+were great, and he shared, besides them, in the errors of his age; but far
+deeper blemishes would be but scars upon the features of a sovereign who in
+trying times sustained nobly the honour of the English name, and carried
+the commonwealth securely through the hardest crisis in its history."
+
+When a young man Froude had been elected Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
+This entailed his taking holy orders, though he does not seem to have
+regularly performed the duties of a clergyman. In 1849 he published his
+first book, _The Nemesis of Faith_, now happily forgotten. It raised an
+immediate commotion. It was denounced as heretical, and the senior tutor of
+Exeter burnt it during a lecture in the College Hall. Froude resigned his
+Fellowship, and his connection with the university was severed for
+thirty-three years. He was one of the first to take advantage of the
+alteration of the law which enabled a clergyman to resign his orders. In
+1892 he went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of Modern History. "The
+temptation of going back to Oxford in a respectable way," he said, "was too
+much for me." He died on October 20, 1894, and on his tombstone he is
+simply described, by his own wish, as Professor of Modern History in the
+University of Oxford.
+
+The writer is indebted for information with regard to Froude's life to Mr.
+Pollard's article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and to Mr.
+Herbert Paul's admirable _Life of Froude_ (Pitman).
+
+W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS.
+
+_November_ 16, 1908.
+
+The following is a list of the published works of J.A. Froude:
+
+    Life of St. Neot (Lives of the English Saints, edited by J.H. Newman),
+    1844; Shadows of the Clouds (Tales), by Zeta (_pseud._), 1847; A Sermon
+    (on 2 Cor. vii. 10) preached at St. Mary's Church on the Death of the
+    Rev. George May Coleridge, 1847; Article on Spinoza (_Oxford and
+    Cambridge Review_), 1847; The Nemesis of Faith (Tale), 1849; England's
+    Forgotten Worthies (_Westminster Review_), 1852; Book of Job
+    (_Westminster Review)_, 1853; Poems of Matthew Arnold (_Westminster
+    Review_), 1854; Suggestions on the Best Means of Teaching English
+    History (Oxford Essays, etc.), 1855; History of England, 12 vols.,
+    1856-70; The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character,
+    1865; Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrews,
+    March 19, 1869, 1869; Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1867, 2 vols.,
+    series 2-4, 1871-83 (articles from _Fraser's Magazine, Westminster
+    Review_, etc.); The Cat's Pilgrimage, 1870; Calvinism: Address at St.
+    Andrews, 1871; The English in Ireland, 3 vols., 1872-74; Bunyan
+    (English Men of Letters), 1878; Caesar: a Sketch, 1879; Two Lectures on
+    South Africa, 1880; Thomas Carlyle (a history of the first forty years
+    of his life, etc.), 2 vols., 1882; Luther: a Short Biography, 1883;
+    Thomas Carlyle (a history of his life in London, 1834-81), 2 vols.,
+    1884; Oceana, 1886; The English in the West Indies, 1888; Liberty and
+    Property: an Address [1888]; The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, 1889; Lord
+    Beaconsfield (a Biography), 1890; The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon,
+    1891; The Spanish Story of the Armada, 1892; Life and Letters of
+    Erasmus, 1894; English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, 1895; Lectures
+    on the Council of Trent, 1896; My Relations with Carlyle, 1903.
+
+    EDITED:--Carlyle's Reminiscences, 1881; Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   CHAPTER
+
+      I. SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+     II. THE LAST YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSEY.
+
+    III. THE PARLIAMENT OF 1529.
+
+     IV. CHURCH AND STATE.
+
+      V. MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN.
+
+     VI. THE PROTESTANTS.
+
+    VII. THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY.
+
+         NOTES.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY VIII
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+In periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending, and the
+habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the influence
+of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back into a
+time in which for centuries the European world grew upon a single type, in
+which the forms of the father's thoughts were the forms of the son's, and
+the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the footprints of
+his distant ancestors. So absolutely has change become the law of our
+present condition, that it is identified with energy and moral health; to
+cease to change is to lose place in the great race; and to pass away from
+off the earth with the same convictions which we found when we entered it,
+is to have missed the best object for which we now seem to exist.
+
+It has been, however, with the race of men as it has been with the planet
+which they inhabit. As we look back over history, we see times of change
+and progress alternating with other times when life and thought have
+settled into permanent forms; when mankind, as if by common consent, have
+ceased to seek for increase of knowledge, and, contented with what they
+possess, have endeavoured to make use of it for purposes of moral
+cultivation. Such was the condition of the Greeks through many ages before
+the Persian war; such was that of the Romans till the world revenged itself
+upon its conquerors by the introduction among them of the habits of the
+conquered; and such again became the condition of Europe when the Northern
+nations grafted the religion and the laws of the Western empire on their
+own hardy natures, and shaped out that wonderful spiritual and political
+organisation which remained unshaken for a thousand years.
+
+The aspirant after sanctity in the fifteenth century of the Christian era
+found a model which he could imitate in detail in the saint of the fifth.
+The gentleman at the court of Edward IV. or Charles of Burgundy could
+imagine no nobler type of heroism than he found in the stories of King
+Arthur's knights. The forms of life had become more elaborate--the surface
+of it more polished--but the life itself remained essentially the same; it
+was the development of the same conception of human excellence; just as the
+last orders of Gothic architecture were the development of the first, from
+which the idea had worked its way till the force of it was exhausted.
+
+A condition of things differing alike both outwardly and inwardly from that
+into which a happier fortune has introduced ourselves, is necessarily
+obscure to us. In the alteration of our own character, we have lost the key
+which would interpret the characters of our fathers, and the great men even
+of our own English history before the Reformation seem to us almost like
+the fossil skeletons of another order of beings. Some broad conclusions as
+to what they were are at least possible to us, however; and we are able to
+determine, with tolerable certainty, the social condition of the people of
+this country, such as it was before the movements of the sixteenth century,
+and during the process of those movements.
+
+The extent of the population can only be rudely conjectured. A rough census
+was taken at the time of the Armada, when it was found to be something
+under five millions; but anterior to this I can find no authority on which
+I can rely with any sort of confidence. It is my impression, however, from
+a number of reasons--each in itself insignificant, but which taken together
+leave little doubt upon my mind--that it had attained that number by a
+growth so slow as to be scarcely perceptible, and had nearly approached to
+it many generations before. Simon Fish, in _The Supplication of
+Beggars_,[1] says that the number of households in England in 1531 was
+520,000. His calculation is of the most random kind; for he rates the
+number of parishes at 52,000, with ten households on an average in each
+parish. A mistake so preposterous respecting the number of parishes shows
+the great ignorance of educated men upon the subject. The ten households in
+each parish may, probably (in some parts of the country), have been a
+correct computation; but this tells us little with respect to the aggregate
+numbers, for the households were very large--the farmers, and the gentlemen
+also, usually having all the persons whom they employed residing under
+their own roof. Neither from this, therefore, nor from any other positive
+statement which I have seen, can I gather any conclusion that may be
+depended upon. But when we remember the exceeding slowness with which the
+population multiplied in a time in which we can accurately measure it--that
+is to say, from 1588 to the opening of the last century--under
+circumstances in every way more favourable to an increase, I think we may
+assume that the increase was not so great between 1500 and 1588, and that,
+previous to 1500, it did not more than keep pace with the waste from civil
+and foreign war. The causes, indeed, were wholly wanting which lead to a
+rapid growth of numbers. Numbers now increase with the increase of
+employment and with the facilities which are provided by the modern system
+of labour for the establishment of independent households. At present, any
+able-bodied unskilled labourer earns, as soon as he has arrived at man's
+estate, as large an amount of wages as he will earn at any subsequent time;
+and having no connection with his employer beyond the receiving the due
+amount of weekly money from him, and thinking himself as well able to marry
+as he is likely to be, he takes a wife, and is usually the father of a
+family before he is thirty. Before the Reformation, not only were early
+marriages determinately discouraged, but the opportunity for them did not
+exist. A labourer living in a cottage by himself was a rare exception to
+the rule; and the work of the field was performed generally, as it now is
+in the large farms in America and Australia, by servants who lived in the
+families of the squire or the farmer, and who, while in that position,
+commonly remained single, and married only when by prudence they had saved
+a sufficient sum to enable them to enter some other position.
+
+Checked by circumstances of this kind, population would necessarily remain
+almost stationary, and a tendency to an increase was not of itself regarded
+by the statesmen of the day as any matter for congratulation or as any
+evidence of national prosperity. Not an increase of population, which would
+facilitate production and beat down wages by competition, but the increase
+of the commonwealth, the sound and healthy maintenance of the population
+already existing, were the chief objects which the government proposed to
+itself; and although Henry VIII. carefully nursed his manufactures, there
+is sufficient proof in the grounds alleged for the measures to which he
+resorted, that there was little redundancy of occupation.
+
+In a statute, for instance, for the encouragement of the linen
+manufactures, it is said[2] that--"The King's Highness, calling to his most
+blessed remembrance the great number of idle people daily increasing
+throughout this his Realm, supposeth that one great cause thereof is by the
+continued bringing into the same the great number of wares and merchandise
+made, and brought out and from, the parts beyond the sea into this his
+Realm, ready wrought by manual occupation; amongst the which wares one kind
+of merchandise in great quantity, which is linen cloth of divers sorts made
+in divers countries beyond the sea, is daily conveyed into this Realm;
+which great quantity of linen cloth so brought is consumed and spent within
+the same; by reason whereof not only the said strange countries where the
+said linen cloth is made, by the policy and industry of making and vending
+the same are greatly enriched; and a marvellous great number of their
+people, men, women, and children, are set on work and occupation, and kept
+from idleness, to the great furtherance and advancement of their
+commonwealth; but also contrariwise the inhabitants and subjects of this
+Realm, for lack of like policy and industry, are compelled to buy all or
+most part of the linen cloth consumed in the same, amounting to inestimable
+sums of money. And also the people of this Realm, as well men as women,
+which should and might be set on work, by exercise of like policy and craft
+of spinning, weaving, and making of cloth, lies now in idleness and
+otiosity, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, great diminution of the
+King's people, and extreme ruin, decay, and impoverishment of this Realm.
+Therefore, for reformation of these things, the King's most Royal Majesty
+intending, like a most virtuous Prince, to provide remedy in the premises;
+nothing so much coveting as the increase of the Commonwealth of this his
+Realm, with also the virtuous exercise of his most loving subjects and
+people, and to avoid that most abominable sin of idleness out of the Realm,
+hath, by the advice and consent of his Lords and Commons in Parliament
+assembled, ordained and enacted that every person occupying land for
+tillage, shall for every sixty acres which he hath under the plough, sow
+one quarter of an acre in flax or hemp."
+
+This Act was designed immediately to keep the wives and children of the
+poor in work in their own houses;[3] but it leaves no doubt that
+manufactures in England had not of themselves that tendency to
+self-development which would encourage an enlarging population. The woollen
+manufactures similarly appear, from the many statutes upon them, to have
+been vigorous at a fixed level, but to have shown no tendency to rise
+beyond that level. With a fixed market and a fixed demand, production
+continued uniform.
+
+A few years subsequent, indeed, to the passing of the Act which I have
+quoted, a very curious complaint is entered in the statute book, from the
+surface of which we should gather, that so far from increasing,
+manufactures had alarmingly declined. The fact mentioned may bear another
+meaning, and a meaning far more favourable to the state of the country;
+although, if such a phenomenon were to occur at the present time, it could
+admit of but one interpretation. In the 18th and 19th of the 32nd of Henry
+VIII., all the important towns in England, from the Tweed to the Land's
+End, are stated, one by one, to have fallen into serious decay. Usually
+when we meet with language of this kind, we suppose it to mean nothing more
+than an awakening to the consciousness of evils which had long existed, and
+which had escaped notice only because no one was alive to them. In the
+present instance, however, the language was too strong and too detailed to
+allow of this explanation; and the great body of the English towns
+undoubtedly were declining in wealth and in the number of their
+inhabitants. "Divers and many beautiful houses of habitation," these
+statutes say, "built in tyme past within their walls and liberties, now are
+fallen down and decayed, and at this day remain unre-edified, and do lie as
+desolate and vacant grounds, many of them nigh adjoining to the
+High-streets, replenished with much uncleanness and filth, with pits,
+sellers, and vaults lying open and uncovered, to the great perill and
+danger of the inhabitants and other the King's subjects passing by the
+same; and some houses be very weak and feeble, ready to fall down, and
+therefore dangerous to pass by, to the great decay and hinderance of the
+said boroughs and towns."[4]
+
+At present, the decay of a town implies the decay of the trade of the town;
+and the decay of all towns simultaneously would imply a general collapse of
+the trade of the whole country. Walled towns, however, before the
+Reformation, existed for other purposes than as the centre points of
+industry: they existed for the protection of property and life: and
+although it is not unlikely that the agitation of the Reformation itself
+did to some degree interrupt the occupation of the people, yet I believe
+that the true account of the phenomenon which then so much disturbed the
+parliament, is, that one of their purposes was no longer required; the
+towns flagged for a time because the country had become secure. The woollen
+manufacture in Worcestershire was spreading into the open country,[5] and,
+doubtless, in other counties as well; and the "beautiful houses" which had
+fallen into decay, were those which, in the old times of insecurity, had
+been occupied by wealthy merchants and tradesmen, who were now enabled, by
+a strong and settled government, to dispense with the shelter of locked
+gates and fortified walls, and remove their residences to more convenient
+situations. It was, in fact, the first symptom of the impending social
+revolution. Two years before the passing of this Act, the magnificent
+Hengrave Hall, in Suffolk, had been completed by Sir Thomas Kitson, "mercer
+of London,"[6] and Sir Thomas Kitson was but one of many of the rising
+merchants who were now able to root themselves on the land by the side of
+the Norman nobility, first to rival, and then slowly to displace them.
+
+This mighty change, however, was long in silent progress before it began to
+tell on the institutions of the country. When city burghers bought estates,
+the law insisted jealously on their accepting with them all the feudal
+obligations. Attempts to use the land as "a commodity" were, as we shall
+presently see, angrily repressed; while, again, in the majority of
+instances, such persons endeavoured, as they do at present, to cover the
+recent origin of their families by adopting the manners of the nobles,
+instead of transferring the habits of the towns to the parks and chases of
+the English counties. The old English organisation maintained its full
+activity; and the duties of property continued to be for another century
+more considered than its rights.
+
+Turning, then, to the tenure of land--for if we would understand the
+condition of the people, it is to this point that our first attention must
+be directed--we find that through the many complicated varieties of it
+there was one broad principle which bore equally upon every class, that the
+land of England must provide for the defence of England. The feudal system,
+though practically modified, was still the organising principle of the
+nation, and the owner of land was bound to military service for his country
+whenever occasion required. Further, the land was to be so administered,
+that the accustomed number of families supported by it should not be
+diminished, and that the State should suffer no injury from the
+carelessness or selfishness of the owners.[7] Land never was private
+property in that personal sense of property in which we speak of a thing as
+our own, with which we may do as we please; and in the administration of
+estates, as indeed in the administration of all property whatsoever, duty
+to the State was at all times supposed to override private interest or
+inclination. Even tradesmen, who took advantage of the fluctuations of the
+market, were rebuked by parliament for "their greedy and covetous minds,"
+"as more regarding their own singular lucre and profit than the commonweal
+of the Realm;"[8] and although in an altered world, neither industry nor
+enterprise will thrive except under the stimulus of self-interest, we may
+admire the confidence which in another age expected every man to prefer the
+advantage of the community to his own. All land was held upon a strictly
+military principle. It was the representative of authority, and the holder
+or the owner took rank in the army of the State according to the nature of
+his connection with it. It was first broadly divided among the great
+nobility holding immediately under the crown, who, above and beyond the
+ownership of their private estates, were the Lords of the Fee throughout
+their presidency, and possessed in right of it the services of knights and
+gentlemen who held their manors under them, and who followed their standard
+in war. Under the lords of manors, again, small freeholds and copyholds
+were held of various extent, often forty shilling and twenty shilling
+value, tenanted by peasant occupiers, who thus, on their own land, lived as
+free Englishmen, maintaining by their own free labour themselves and their
+families. There was thus a descending scale of owners, each of whom
+possessed his separate right, which the law guarded and none might violate;
+yet no one of whom, again, was independent of an authority higher than
+himself; and the entire body of the English free possessors of the soil was
+interpenetrated by a coherent organisation which converted them into a
+perpetually subsisting army of soldiers. The extent of land which was held
+by the petty freeholders was very large, and the possession of it was
+jealously treasured; the private estates of the nobles and gentlemen were
+either cultivated by their own servants, or let out, as at present, to free
+tenants; or (in earlier times) were occupied by villains, a class who,
+without being bondmen, were expected to furnish further services than those
+of the field, services which were limited by the law, and recognised by an
+outward ceremony, a solemn oath and promise from the villain to his lord.
+Villanage, in the reign of Henry VIII., had practically ceased. The name of
+it last appears upon the statute book in the early years of the reign of
+Richard II., when the disputes between villains and their liege lords on
+their relative rights had furnished matter for cumbrous lawsuits, and by
+general consent the relation had merged of itself into a more liberal form.
+Thus serfdom had merged or was rapidly merging into free servitude; but it
+did not so merge that labouring men, if they pleased, were allowed to live
+in idleness. Every man was regimented somewhere; and although the
+peasantry, when at full age, were allowed, under restrictions, their own
+choice of masters, yet the restrictions both on masters and servants were
+so severe as to prevent either from taking advantage of the necessities of
+the other, or from terminating through caprice or levity, or for any
+insufficient reason, a connection presumed to be permanent.[9]
+
+Through all these arrangements a single aim is visible, that every man in
+England should have his definite place and definite duty assigned to him,
+and that no human being should be at liberty to lead at his own pleasure an
+unaccountable existence. The discipline of an army was transferred to the
+details of social life, and it issued in a chivalrous perception of the
+meaning of the word duty, and in the old characteristic spirit of English
+loyalty.
+
+From the regulations with respect to land, a coarser advantage was also
+derived, of a kind which at the present time will be effectively
+appreciated. It is a common matter of dispute whether landed estates should
+be large or small; whether it is better that the land should be divided
+among small proprietors, cultivating their own ground, or that it should
+follow its present tendency, and be shared by a limited and constantly
+diminishing number of wealthy landlords. The advocates for a peasant
+proprietary tell us truly, that a landed monopoly is dangerous; that the
+possession of a spot of ground, though it be but a few acres, is the best
+security for loyalty, giving the state a pledge for its owner, and creating
+in the body of the nation a free, vigorous, and manly spirit. The advocates
+for the large estates tell us, that the masses are too ill-educated to be
+trusted with independence; that without authority over them, these small
+proprietors become wasteful, careless, improvident; that the free spirit
+becomes a democratic and dangerous spirit; and finally, that the resources
+of the land cannot properly be brought out by men without capital to
+cultivate it. Either theory is plausible. The advocates of both can support
+their arguments with an appeal to experience; and the verdict of fact has
+not as yet been pronounced emphatically.
+
+The problem will be resolved in the future history of this country. It was
+also nobly and skilfully resolved in the past. The knights and nobles
+retained the authority and power which was attached to the lordships of the
+fees. They retained extensive estates in their own hands or in the
+occupation of their immediate tenants; but the large proportion of the
+lands was granted out by them to smaller owners, and the expenditure of
+their own incomes in the wages and maintenance of their vast retinues left
+but a small margin for indulgence in luxuries. The necessities of their
+position obliged them to regard their property rather as a revenue to be
+administered in trust, than as "a fortune" to be expended in indulgence.
+Before the Reformation, while the differences of social degree were
+enormous, the differences in habits of life were comparatively slight, and
+the practice of men in these things was curiously the reverse of our own.
+Dress, which now scarcely suffices to distinguish the master from his
+servant, was then the symbol of rank, prescribed by statute to the various
+orders of society as strictly as the regimental uniform to officers and
+privates; diet also was prescribed, and with equal strictness; but the diet
+of the nobleman was ordered down to a level which was then within the reach
+of the poorest labourer. In 1336, the following law was enacted by the
+Parliament of Edward III.:[10] "Whereas, heretofore through the excessive
+and over-many sorts of costly meats which the people of this Realm have
+used more than elsewhere, many mischiefs have happened to the people of
+this Realm--for the great men by these excesses have been sore grieved; and
+the lesser people, who only endeavour to imitate the great ones in such
+sort of meats, are much impoverished, whereby they are not able to aid
+themselves, nor their liege lord, in time of need, as they ought; and many
+other evils have happened, as well to their souls as their bodies--our Lord
+the King, desiring the common profit as well of the great men as the common
+people of his Realm, and considering the evils, grievances, and mischiefs
+aforesaid, by the common assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and other
+nobles of his said Realm, and of the commons of the same Realm, hath
+ordained and established that no man, of what estate or condition soever he
+be, shall cause himself to be served, in his house or elsewhere, at dinner,
+meal, or supper, or at any other time, with more than two courses, and each
+mess of two sorts of victuals at the utmost, be it of flesh or fish, with
+the common sorts of pottage, without sauce or any other sorts of victuals.
+And if any man choose to have sauce for his mess, he may, provided it be
+not made at great cost; and if fish or flesh be to be mixed therein, it
+shall be of two sorts only at the utmost, either fish or flesh, and shall
+stand instead of a mess, except only on the principal feasts of the year,
+on which days every man may be served with three courses at the utmost,
+after the manner aforesaid."
+
+Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies which we have outgrown, and
+we smile at the unwisdom which could expect to regulate private habits and
+manners by statute. Yet some statutes may be of moral authority when they
+cannot be actually enforced, and may have been regarded, even at the time
+at which they were issued, rather as an authoritative declaration of what
+wise and good men considered to be right, than as laws to which obedience
+could be compelled. This act, at any rate, witnesses to what was then
+thought to be right by "the great persons" of the English realm; and when
+great persons will submit themselves of their free will to regulations
+which restrict their private indulgence, they are in little danger of
+disloyalty from those whom fortune has placed below them.
+
+Such is one aspect of these old arrangements; it is unnecessary to say that
+with these, as with all other institutions created and worked by human
+beings, the picture admits of being reversed. When by the accident of birth
+men are placed in a position of authority, no care in their training will
+prevent it from falling often to singularly unfit persons. The command of a
+permanent military force was a temptation to ambition, to avarice, or
+hatred, to the indulgence of private piques and jealousies, to political
+discontent on private and personal grounds. A combination of three or four
+of the leading nobles was sufficient, when an incapable prince sate on the
+throne, to effect a revolution; and the rival claims of the houses of York
+and Lancaster to the crown, took the form of a war unequalled in history
+for its fierce and determined malignancy, the whole nation tearing itself
+in pieces in a quarrel in which no principle was at stake, and no national
+object was to be gained. A more terrible misfortune never befel either this
+or any other country, and it was made possible only in virtue of that
+loyalty with which the people followed the standard, through good and evil,
+of their feudal superiors. It is still a question, however, whether the
+good or the evil of the system predominated; and the answer to such
+question is the more difficult because we have no criterion by which, in
+these matters, degrees of good and evil admit of being measured. Arising
+out of the character of the nation, it reflected this character in all its
+peculiarities; and there is something truly noble in the coherence of
+society upon principles of fidelity. Fidelity of man to man is among the
+rarest excellences of humanity, and we can tolerate large evils which arise
+out of such a cause. Under the feudal system men were held together by
+oaths, free acknowledgments, and reciprocal obligations, entered into by
+all ranks, high and low, binding servants to their masters, as well as
+nobles to their kings; and in the frequent forms of the language in which
+the oaths were sworn we cannot choose but see that we have lost something
+in exchanging these ties for the harsher connecting links of mutual
+self-interest.
+
+"When a freeman shall do fealty to his lord," the statute says, "he shall
+hold his right hand upon the book, and shall say thus:--Hear you, my lord,
+that I shall be to you both faithful and true, and shall owe my faith to
+you for the land that I hold, and lawfully shall do such customs and
+services as my duty is to you, at the times assigned, so help me God and
+all his saints."
+
+"The villain," also, "when he shall do fealty to his lord, shall hold his
+right hand over the book, and shall say:--Hear you, my lord, that I from
+this day forth unto you shall be true and faithful, and shall owe you
+fealty for the land which I hold of you in villanage; and that no evil or
+damage will I see concerning you, but I will defend and warn you to my
+power. So help me God and all his saints."[11]
+
+Again, in the distribution of the produce of land, men dealt fairly and
+justly with each other; and in the material condition of the bulk of the
+people there is a fair evidence that the system worked efficiently and
+well. It worked well for the support of a sturdy high-hearted race, sound
+in body and fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews and sinews which,
+under the stimulus of those "great shins of beef,"[12] their common diet,
+were the wonder of the age. "What comyn folke in all this world," says a
+state paper in 1515[13] "may compare with the comyns of England in riches,
+freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn folke is so
+mighty, so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?" The relative
+numbers of the French and English armies which fought at Cressy and
+Agincourt may have been exaggerated, but no allowance for exaggeration will
+effect the greatness of those exploits; and in stories of authentic actions
+under Henry VIII., where the accuracy of the account is undeniable, no
+disparity of force made Englishmen shrink from enemies wherever they could
+meet them. Again and again a few thousands of them carried dismay into the
+heart of France. Four hundred adventurers, vagabond apprentices, from
+London,[14] who formed a volunteer corps in the Calais garrison, were for
+years the terror of Normandy. In the very frolic of conscious power they
+fought and plundered, without pay, without reward, except what they could
+win for themselves; and when they fell at last they fell only when
+surrounded by six times their number, and were cut to pieces in careless
+desperation. Invariably, by friend and enemy alike, the English are
+described as the fiercest people in all Europe (the English wild beasts,
+Benvenuto Cellini calls them); and this great physical power they owed to
+the profuse abundance in which they lived, and to the soldier's training in
+which every man of them was bred from childhood. The state of the working
+classes can, however, be more certainly determined by a comparison of their
+wages with the prices of food. Both were regulated, so far as regulation
+was possible, by act of parliament, and we have therefore data of the
+clearest kind by which to judge. The majority of agricultural labourers
+lived, as I have said, in the houses of their employers; this, however, was
+not the case with all, and if we can satisfy ourselves as to the rate at
+which those among the poor were able to live who had cottages of their own,
+we may be assured that the rest did not live worse at their masters'
+tables.
+
+Wheat, the price of which necessarily varied, averaged in the middle of the
+fourteenth century tenpence the bushel;[15] barley averaging at the same
+time three shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuation was excessive;
+a table of its possible variations describes it as ranging from
+eighteenpence the quarter to twenty shillings; the average, however, being
+six and eightpence.[16] When the price was above this sum, the merchants
+might import to bring it down;[17] when it was below this price the farmers
+were allowed to export to the foreign markets.[18] The same scale, with a
+scarcely appreciable tendency to rise, continued to hold until the
+disturbance in the value of the currency. In the twelve years from 1551 to
+1562, although once before harvest wheat rose to the extraordinary price of
+forty-five shillings a quarter, it fell immediately after to five shillings
+and four.[19] Six and eightpence continued to be considered in parliament
+as the average; [20] and on the whole it seems to have been maintained for
+that time with little variation.[21]
+
+Beef and pork were a halfpenny a pound--mutton was three farthings. They
+were fixed at these prices by the 3rd of the 24th of Hen. VIII. But the act
+was unpopular both with buyers and with sellers. The old practice had been
+to sell in the gross, and under that arrangement the rates had been
+generally lower. Stow says,[22] "It was this year enacted that butchers
+should sell their beef and mutton by weight--beef for a halfpenny the
+pound, and mutton for three farthings; which being devised for the great
+commodity of the realm (as it was thought), hath proved far otherwise: for
+at that time fat oxen were sold for six and twenty shillings and eightpence
+the piece; fat wethers for three shillings and fourpence the piece; fat
+calves at a like price; and fat lambs for twelvepence. The butchers of
+London sold penny pieces of beef for the relief of the poor--every piece
+two pound and a half, sometimes three pound for a penny; and thirteen and
+sometimes fourteen of these pieces for twelvepence; mutton eightpence the
+quarter, and an hundred weight of beef for four shillings and eightpence."
+The act was repealed in consequence of the complaints against it,[23] but
+the prices never fell again to what they had been, although beef sold in
+the gross could still be had for a halfpenny a pound in 1570.[24] Other
+articles of food were in the same proportion. The best pig or goose in a
+country market could be bought for fourpence; a good capon for threepence
+or fourpence; a chicken for a penny; a hen for twopence.[25]
+
+Strong beer, such as we now buy for eighteenpence a gallon, was then a
+penny a gallon;[26] and table-beer less than a halfpenny. French and German
+wines were eightpence the gallon. Spanish and Portuguese wines a shilling.
+This was the highest price at which the best wines might be sold; and if
+there was any fault in quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four
+times the amount.[27] Rent, another important consideration, cannot be
+fixed so accurately, for parliament did not interfere with it. Here,
+however, we are not without very tolerable information. "My father," says
+Latimer,[28] "was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own; only he had a
+_farm of three or four pounds by the year_ at the uttermost, and hereupon
+he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred
+sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king
+a harness with himself and his horse. I remember that I buckled on his
+harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I
+had not been able to have preached before the King's Majesty now. He
+married my sisters with five pounds, or twenty nobles, each, having brought
+them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor
+neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor; and all this he did of the
+said farm." If "three or four pounds at the uttermost" was the rent of a
+farm yielding such results, the rent of labourers' cottages is not likely
+to have been considerable.[29]
+
+Some uncertainty is unavoidable in all calculations of the present nature;
+yet, after making the utmost allowances for errors, we may conclude from
+such a table of prices that a penny, in terms of the labourer's
+necessities, must have been nearly equal in the reign of Henry VIII. to the
+present shilling. For a penny, at the time of which I write, the labourer
+could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine--he could do as much towards
+finding lodging for himself and his family--as the labourer of the
+nineteenth century can for a shilling. I do not see that this admits of
+question. Turning, then, to the table of wages, it will be easy to
+ascertain his position. By the 3rd of the 6th of Henry VIII. it was enacted
+that master carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers, plumbers, glaziers,
+joiners, and other employers of such skilled workmen, should give to each
+of their journeymen, if no meat or drink was allowed, sixpence a day for
+the half year, fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence-halfpenny
+for the yearly average. The common labourers were to receive fourpence a
+day for half the year, for the remaining half, threepence.[30] In the
+harvest months they were allowed to work by the piece, and might earn
+considerably more;[31] so that, in fact (and this was the rate at which
+their wages were usually estimated), the day labourer, if in full
+employment, received on an average fourpence a day for the whole year.
+Allowing a deduction of one day in a fortnight for a saint's day or a
+holiday, he received, therefore, steadily and regularly, if well conducted,
+an equivalent of something near to twenty shillings a week, the wages at
+present paid in English colonies: and this is far from being a full account
+of his advantages. Except in rare instances, the agricultural labourer held
+land in connection with his house, while in most parishes, if not in all,
+there were large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land, which
+furnished his fuel to him gratis, where pigs might range, and ducks and
+geese; where, if he could afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable
+to feed it; and so important was this privilege considered, that when the
+commons began to be largely enclosed, parliament insisted that the working
+man should not be without some piece of ground on which he could employ his
+own and his family's industry.[32] By the 7th of the 31st of Elizabeth, it
+was ordered that no cottage should be built for residence without four
+acres of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the
+occupants of such cottage.
+
+It will, perhaps, be supposed that such comparative prosperity of labour
+was the result of the condition of the market in which it was sold, that
+the demand for labour was large and the supply limited, and that the state
+of England in the sixteenth century was analogous to that of Australia or
+Canada at the present time. And so long as we confine our view to the
+question of wages alone, it is undoubted that legislation was in favour of
+the employer. The Wages Act of Henry VIII. was unpopular with the
+labourers, and was held to deprive them of an opportunity of making better
+terms for themselves.[33] But we shall fall into extreme error if we
+translate into the language of modern political economy the social features
+of a state of things which in no way correspond to our own. There was this
+essential difference, that labour was not looked upon as a market
+commodity; the government (whether wisely or not, I do not presume to
+determine) attempting to portion out the rights of the various classes of
+society by the rule, not of economy, but of equity. Statesmen did not care
+for the accumulation of capital; they desired to see the physical
+well-being of all classes of the commonwealth maintained at the highest
+degree which the producing power of the country admitted; and population
+and production remaining stationary, they were able to do it. This was
+their object, and they were supported in it by a powerful and efficient
+majority of the nation. On the one side parliament interfered to protect
+employers against their labourers; but it was equally determined that
+employers should not be allowed to abuse their opportunities; and this
+directly appears from the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth, by which, on the
+most trifling appearance of a depreciation in the currency, it was declared
+that the labouring man could no longer live on the wages assigned to him by
+the act of Henry; and a sliding scale was instituted by which, for the
+future, wages should be adjusted to the price of food.[34]
+
+The same conclusion may be gathered also, indirectly, from other acts,
+interfering imperiously with the rights of property where a disposition
+showed itself to exercise them selfishly. The city merchants, as I have
+said, were becoming landowners; and some of them attempted to apply the
+rules of trade to the management of landed estates. While wages were ruled
+so high, it answered better as a speculation to convert arable land into
+pasture; but the law immediately stepped in to prevent a proceeding which
+it regarded as petty treason to the commonwealth. Self-protection is the
+first law of life; and the country relying for its defence on an
+able-bodied population, evenly distributed, ready at any moment to be
+called into action, either against foreign invasion or civil disturbance,
+it could not permit the owners of land to pursue for their own benefit a
+course of action which threatened to weaken its garrisons. It is not often
+that we are able to test the wisdom of legislation by specific results so
+clearly as in the present instance. The first attempts of the kind which I
+have described were made in the Isle of Wight, early in the reign of Henry
+VII. Lying so directly exposed to attacks from France, the Isle of Wight
+was a place which it was peculiarly important to keep in a state of
+defence, and the following act was therefore the consequence:--
+
+"Forasmuch as it is to the surety of the Realm of England that the Isle of
+Wight, in the county of Southampton, be well inhabited with English people,
+for the defence as well of our antient enemies of the Realm of France as of
+other parties; the which Isle is late decayed of people by reason that many
+towns and villages have been let down, and the fields dyked and made
+pasture for beasts and cattle, and also many dwelling-places, farms, and
+farmholds have of late time been used to be taken into one man's hold and
+hands, that of old time were wont to be in many several persons' holds and
+hands, and many several households kept in them; and thereby much people
+multiplied, and the same Isle thereby well inhabited, which now, by the
+occasion aforesaid, is desolate and not inhabited, but occupied with beasts
+and cattle, so that if hasty remedy be not provided, that Isle cannot long
+be kept and defended, but open and ready to the hands of the king's
+enemies, which God forbid. For remedy hereof, it is ordained and enacted
+that no manner of person, of what estate, degree, or condition soever,
+shall take any several farms more than one, whereof the yearly value shall
+not exceed the sum of ten marks; and if any several leases afore this time
+have been made to any person or persons of divers and sundry farmholds,
+whereof the yearly value shall exceed that sum, then the said person or
+persons shall choose one farmhold at his pleasure, and the remnant of his
+leases shall be utterly void."[35]
+
+An act, tyrannical in form, was singularly justified by its consequences.
+The farms were rebuilt, the lands reploughed, the island repeopled; and in
+1546, when a French army of sixty thousand men attempted to effect a
+landing at St. Helen's, they were defeated and driven off by the militia of
+the island and a few levies transported from Hampshire and the adjoining
+counties.[36] The money-making spirit, however, lay too deep to be checked
+so readily. The trading classes were growing rich under the strong rule of
+the Tudors. Increasing numbers of them were buying or renting land; and the
+symptoms complained of broke out in the following reign in many parts of
+England. They could not choose but break out indeed; for they were the
+outward marks of a vital change, which was undermining the feudal
+constitution, and would by and bye revolutionise and destroy it. Such
+symptoms it was impossible to extinguish; but the government wrestled long
+and powerfully to hold down the new spirit; and they fought against it
+successfully, till the old order of things had finished its work, and the
+time was come for it to depart. By the 1st of the 7th of Henry VIII., the
+laws of feudal tenure were put in force against the landed traders.
+Wherever lands were converted from tillage to pasture, the lords of the fee
+had authority to seize half of all profits until the farm-buildings were
+reconstructed. If the immediate lord did not do his duty, the lord next
+above him was to do it; and the evil still increasing, the act, twenty
+years later, was extended further, and the king had power to seize.[37] Nor
+was this all. Sheep-farming had become an integral branch of business; and
+falling into the hands of men who understood each other, it had been made a
+monopoly, affecting seriously the prices of wool and mutton.[38] Stronger
+measures were therefore now taken, and the class to which the offenders
+belonged was especially pointed out by parliament.
+
+"Whereas," says the 13th of the 25th of Henry VIII., "divers and sundry
+persons of the king's subjects of this Realm, to whom God of his goodness
+hath disposed great plenty and abundance of moveable substance, now of
+late, within few years, have daily studied, practised, and invented ways
+and means how they might accumulate and gather together into few hands, as
+well great multitude of farms as great plenty of cattle, and in especial,
+sheep, putting such lands as they can get to pasture and not to tillage;
+whereby they have not only pulled down churches and towns and enhanced the
+old rates of the rents of the possessions of this Realm, or else brought it
+to such excessive fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it, but
+also have raised and enhanced the prices of all manner of corn, cattle,
+wool, pigs, geese, hens, chickens, eggs, and such other commodities, almost
+double above the prices which hath been accustomed, by reason whereof a
+marvellous multitude of the poor people of this realm be not able to
+provide meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, and
+children, but be so discouraged with misery and poverty, that they fall
+daily to theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for
+hunger and cold; and it is thought by the king's humble and loving
+subjects, that one of the greatest occasions that moveth those greedy and
+covetous people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great
+portions and parts of the lands of this Realm from the occupying of the
+poor husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is the
+great profit that cometh of sheep which be now come into a few persons'
+hands, in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects; it is hereby
+enacted, that no person shall have or keep on lands not their own
+inheritance more than 2000 sheep; that no person shall occupy more than two
+farms; and that the 19th of the 4th of Henry VII., and those other acts
+obliging the lords of the fees to do their duty, shall be re-enacted and
+enforced."[39]
+
+By these measures the money-making spirit was for a time driven back, and
+the country resumed its natural course. I am not concerned to defend the
+economic wisdom of such proceedings; but they prove, I think, conclusively,
+that the labouring classes owed their advantages not to the condition of
+the labour market, but to the care of the state; and that when the state
+relaxed its supervision, or failed to enforce its regulations, the
+labourers being left to the market chances, sank instantly in the unequal
+struggle with capital.
+
+The government, however, remained strong enough to hold its ground (except
+during the discreditable interlude of the reign of Edward VI.) for the
+first three quarters of the century; and until that time the working
+classes of this country remained in a condition more than prosperous. They
+enjoyed an abundance far beyond what in general falls to the lot of that
+order in long-settled countries; incomparably beyond what the same class
+were enjoying at that very time in Germany or France. The laws secured
+them; and that the laws were put in force we have the direct evidence of
+successive acts of the legislature justifying the general policy by its
+success: and we have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of
+the great body of the people at a time when, if they had been discontented,
+they held in their own hands the means of asserting what the law
+acknowledged to be their right. The government had no power to compel
+submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a
+"benevolence" by force, in 1525. The people resisted with a determination
+against which the crown commissioners were unable to contend, and the
+scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a
+good grace from an impossible position. If the peasantry had been suffering
+under any real grievances we should not have failed to have heard of them
+when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to press
+those grievances forward. Complaint was loud enough when complaint was
+just, under the Somerset protectorate. [40]
+
+The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, for they varied
+probably as much as they vary now. Under Henry IV. the average income of an
+earl was estimated at L2000 a year.[41] Under Henry VIII. the great Duke of
+Buckingham, the wealthiest English peer, had L6000.[42] And the income of
+the Archbishop of Canterbury was rated at the same amount.[43] But the
+establishments of such men were enormous; their ordinary retinues in time
+of peace consisting of many hundred persons; and in war, when the duties of
+a nobleman called him to the field, although in theory his followers were
+paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament were on so small a scale
+that the theory was seldom converted into fact, and a large share of the
+expenses was paid often out of private purses. The Duke of Norfolk, in the
+Scotch war of 1523, declared (not complaining of it, but merely as a reason
+why he should receive support) that he had spent all his private means upon
+the army; and in the sequel of this history we shall find repeated
+instances of knights and gentlemen voluntarily ruining themselves in the
+service of their country. The people, not universally, but generally, were
+animated by a true spirit of sacrifice; by a true conviction that they were
+bound to think first of England, and only next of themselves; and unless we
+can bring ourselves to understand this, we shall never understand what
+England was under the reigns of the Plantagenets and Tudors. The expenses
+of the court under Henry VII. were a little over L14,000 a year, out of
+which were defrayed the whole cost of the king's establishment, the
+expenses of entertaining foreign ambassadors, the wages and maintenance of
+the yeomen of the guard, the retinues of servants, and all necessary outlay
+not incurred for public business. Under Henry VIII., of whose extravagance
+we have heard so much, and whose court was the most magnificent in the
+world, these expenses were L19,894 16s. 8d.,[44] a small sum when compared
+with the present cost of the royal establishment, even if we adopt the
+relative estimate of twelve to one, and suppose it equal to L240,000 a year
+of our money. But indeed it was not equal to L240,000; for, although the
+proportion held in articles of common consumption, articles of luxury were
+very dear indeed.[45]
+
+Passing down from the king and his nobles, to the body of the people, we
+find that the income qualifying a country gentleman to be justice of the
+peace was L20 a year, [46] and if he did his duty, his office was no
+sinecure. We remember Justice Shallow and his clerk Davy, with his novel
+theory of magisterial law; and Shallow's broad features have so English a
+cast about them, that we may believe there were many such, and that the
+duty was not always very excellently done. But the Justice Shallows were
+not allowed to repose upon their dignity. The justice of the peace was
+required not only to take cognisance of open offences, but to keep
+surveillance over all persons within his district, and over himself in his
+own turn there was a surveillance no less sharp, and penalties for neglect
+prompt and peremptory.[47] Four times a year he was to make proclamation of
+his duty, and exhort all persons to complain against him who had occasion.
+
+Twenty pounds a year, and heavy duties to do for it, represented the
+condition of the squire of the parish.[48] By the 2nd of the 2nd of Henry
+V., "the wages" of a parish priest were limited to L5 6s. 8d., except in
+cases where there was special licence from the bishop, when they might be
+raised as high as L6. Priests were probably something better off under
+Henry VIII., but the statute remained in force, and marks an approach at
+least to their ordinary salary.[49] The priest had enough, being unmarried,
+to supply him in comfort with the necessaries of life. The squire had
+enough to provide moderate abundance for himself and his family. Neither
+priest nor squire was able to establish any steep difference in outward
+advantages between himself and the commons among whom he lived.
+
+The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are two
+expressions corresponding one to the other, which we frequently meet with
+in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether the
+condition of things was or was not what it ought to be. We read of "merry
+England;"--when England was not merry, things were not going well with it.
+We hear of "the glory of hospitality," England's pre-eminent boast,-by the
+rules of which all tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder
+to the table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the
+dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked:[50]
+to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it there was
+free fee and free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for his dinner; for his
+lodging, perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall, with
+a billet of wood for a pillow,[51] but freely offered and freely taken, the
+guest probably faring much as his host fared, neither worse nor better.
+There was little fear of an abuse of such licence, for suspicious
+characters had no leave to wander at pleasure; and for any man found at
+large and unable to give a sufficient account of himself, there were the
+ever-ready parish stocks or town gaol. The "glory of hospitality" lasted
+far down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, "came in great
+bravery of building, to the marvellous beautifying of the realm, but to the
+decay" of what he valued more.
+
+In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all their
+hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest carrying their
+hearts high, and having their hands full. The[52] hour of rising, winter
+and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the
+labourers went to work and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no
+little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and examined--if
+the account given was insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if
+the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made
+"unhonest" shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be looked
+to by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with him.
+At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his farm or to what
+he pleased.[53] It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but coloured with a
+broad, rosy, English health.
+
+Of the education of noblemen and gentlemen we have contradictory accounts,
+as might be expected. The universities were well filled, by the sons of
+yeomen chiefly. The cost of supporting them at the colleges was little, and
+wealthy men took a pride in helping forward any boys of promise.[54] It
+seems clear also, as the Reformation drew nearer, while the clergy were
+sinking lower and lower, a marked change for the better became perceptible
+in a portion at least of the laity. The more old-fashioned of the higher
+ranks were slow in moving; for as late as the reign of Edward VI.[55] there
+were peers of parliament unable to read; but on the whole, the invention of
+printing, and the general ferment which was commencing all over the world,
+had produced marked effects in all classes. Henry VIII. himself spoke four
+languages, and was well read in theology and history; and the high
+accomplishments of More and Sir T. Elliott, of Wyatt and Cromwell, were but
+the extreme expression of a temper which was rapidly spreading, and which
+gave occasion, among other things to the following reflection in Erasmus.
+"Oh, strange vicissitudes of human things," exclaims he. "Heretofore the
+heart of learning was among such as professed religion. Now, while they for
+the most part give themselves up, _ventri luxui pecuniaeque_, the love of
+learning is gone from them to secular princes, the court and the nobility.
+May we not justly be ashamed of ourselves? The feasts of priests and
+divines are drowned in wine, are filled with scurrilous jests, sound with
+intemperate noise and tumult, flow with spiteful slanders and defamation of
+others; while at princes' tables modest disputations are held concerning
+things which make for learning and piety."
+
+A letter to Thomas Cromwell from his son's tutor will not be without
+interest on this subject; Cromwell was likely to have been unusually
+careful in his children's training, and we need not suppose that all boys
+were brought up as prudently. Sir Peter Carew, for instance, being a boy at
+about the same time, and giving trouble at the High School at Exeter, was
+led home to his father's house at Ottery, coupled between two
+foxhounds.[56] Yet the education of Gregory Cromwell is probably not far
+above what many young men of the middle and higher ranks were beginning to
+receive. Henry Dowes was the tutor's name, beyond which fact I know nothing
+of him. His letter is as follows:--
+
+"After that it pleased your mastership to give me in charge, not only to
+give diligent attendance upon Master Gregory, but also to instruct him with
+good letters, honest manners, pastyme of instruments, and such other
+qualities as should be for him meet and convenient, pleaseth it you to
+understand that for the accomplishment thereof I have endeavoured myself by
+all ways possible to excogitate how I might most profit him. In which
+behalf, through his diligence, the success is such as I trust shall be to
+your good contentation and pleasure, and to his no small profit. But for
+cause the summer was spent in the service of the wild gods, [and] it is so
+much to be regarded after what fashion youth is brought up, in which time
+that that is learned for the most part will not be wholly forgotten in the
+older years, I think it my duty to acertain your mastership how he spendeth
+his time. And first after he hath heard mass he taketh a lecture of a
+dialogue of Erasmus' _Colloquies_, called _Pietas Puerilis_, wherein is
+described a very picture of one that should be virtuously brought up; and
+for cause it is so necessary for him, I do not only cause him to read it
+over, but also to practise the precepts of the same. After this he
+exerciseth his hand in writing one or two hours, and readeth upon Fabyan's
+_Chronicle_ as long. The residue of the day he doth spend upon the lute and
+virginals. When he rideth, as he doth very oft, I tell him by the way some
+history of the Romans or the Greeks, which I cause him to rehearse again in
+a tale. For his recreation he useth to hawk and hunt and shoot in his long
+bow, which frameth and succeedeth so well with him that he seemeth to be
+thereunto given by nature."[57]
+
+I have spoken of the organisation of the country population, I have now to
+speak of that of the towns, of the trading classes and manufacturing
+classes, the regulations respecting which are no less remarkable and no
+less illustrative of the national character. If the tendency of trade to
+assume at last a form of mere self-interest be irresistible, if political
+economy represent the laws to which in the end it is forced to submit
+itself, the nation spared no efforts, either of art or policy, to defer to
+the last moment the unwelcome conclusion.
+
+The names and shadows linger about London of certain ancient societies, the
+members of which may still occasionally be seen in quaint gilt barges
+pursuing their own difficult way among the swarming steamers; when on
+certain days, the traditions concerning which are fast dying out of memory,
+the Fishmongers' Company, the Goldsmiths' Company, the Mercers' Company,
+make procession down the river for civic feastings at Greenwich or
+Blackwall. The stately tokens of ancient honour still belong to them, and
+the remnants of ancient wealth and patronage and power. Their charters may
+be read by curious antiquaries, and the bills of fare of their ancient
+entertainments. But for what purpose they were called into being, what
+there was in these associations of common trades to surround with gilded
+insignia, and how they came to be possessed of broad lands and church
+preferments, few people now care to think or to inquire. Trade and traders
+have no dignity any more in the eyes of any one, except what money lends to
+them; and these outward symbols scarcely rouse even a passing feeling of
+curiosity. And yet these companies were once something more than names.
+They are all which now remain of a vast organisation which once penetrated
+the entire trading life of England--an organisation set on foot to realise
+that most necessary, if most difficult, condition of commercial excellence
+under which man should deal faithfully with his brother, and all wares
+offered for sale, of whatever kind, should honestly be what they pretend to
+be.[58] I spoke of the military principle which directed the distribution
+and the arrangements of land. The analogy will best explain a state of
+things in which every occupation was treated as the division of an army;
+regiments being quartered in every town, each with its own self-elected
+officers, whose duty was to exercise authority over all persons professing
+the business to which they belonged; who were to see that no person
+undertook to supply articles which he had not been educated to manufacture;
+who were to determine the prices at which such articles ought justly to be
+sold; above all, who were to take care that the common people really bought
+at shops and stalls what they supposed themselves to be buying; that cloth
+put up for sale was true cloth, of true texture and full weight: that
+leather was sound and well tanned; wine pure, measures honest; flour
+unmixed with devil's dust;--who were generally to look to it that in all
+contracts between man and man for the supply of man's necessities, what we
+call honesty of dealing should be truly and faithfully observed.[59] An
+organisation for this purpose did once really exist in England,[60] really
+trying to do the work which it was intended to do, as half the pages of our
+early statutes witness. In London, as the metropolis, a central council
+sate for every branch of trade, and this council was in communication with
+the Chancellor and the Crown. It was composed of the highest and most
+respectable members of the profession, and its office was to determine
+prices, fix wages, arrange the rules of apprenticeship, and discuss all
+details connected with the business on which legislation might be required.
+Further, this council received the reports of the searchers--high officers
+taken from their own body, whose business was to inspect, in company with
+the lord mayor or some other city dignitary, the shops of the respective
+traders; to receive complaints, and to examine into them. In each
+provincial town local councils sate in connection with the municipal
+authorities, who fulfilled in these places the same duties; and their
+reports being forwarded to the central body, and considered by them,
+representations on all necessary matters were then made to the privy
+council; and by the privy council, if requisite, were submitted to
+parliament. If these representations were judged to require legislative
+interference, the statutes which were passed in consequence were returned
+through the Chancellor to the mayors of the various towns and cities, by
+whom they were proclaimed as law. No person was allowed to open a trade or
+to commence a manufacture, either in London or the provinces, unless he had
+first served his apprenticeship; unless he could prove to the satisfaction
+of the authorities that he was competent in his craft; and unless he
+submitted as a matter of course to their supervision. The legislature had
+undertaken not to let that indispensable task go wholly unattempted, of
+distributing the various functions of society by the rule of capacity; of
+compelling every man to do his duty in an honest following of his proper
+calling, securing to him that he in his turn should not be injured by his
+neighbour's misdoings.
+
+The state further promising for itself that all able-bodied men should be
+found in work,[61] and not allowing any man to work at a business for which
+he was unfit, insisted as its natural right that children should not be
+allowed to grow up in idleness, to be returned at mature age upon its
+hands. Every child, so far as possible, was to be trained up in some
+business or calling,[62] idleness "being the mother of all sin," and the
+essential duty of every man being to provide honestly for himself and his
+family. The educative theory, for such it was, was simple but effective: it
+was based on the single principle that, next to the knowledge of a man's
+duty to God, and as a means towards doing that duty, the first condition of
+a worthy life was the ability to maintain it in independence. Varieties of
+inapplicable knowledge might be good, but they were not essential; such
+knowledge might be left to the leisure of after years, or it might be
+dispensed with without vital injury. Ability to labour could not be
+dispensed with, and this, therefore, the state felt it to be its own duty
+to see provided; so reaching, I cannot but think, the heart of the whole
+matter. The children of those who could afford the small entrance fees were
+apprenticed to trades, the rest were apprenticed to agriculture; and if
+children were found growing up idle, and their fathers or their friends
+failed to prove that they were able to secure them an ultimate maintenance,
+the mayors in towns and the magistrates in the country had authority to
+take possession of such children, and apprentice them as they saw fit, that
+when they grew up "they might not be driven" by want or incapacity "to
+dishonest courses."[63]
+
+Such is an outline of the organisation of English society under the
+Plantagenets and Tudors. A detail of the working of the trade laws would be
+beyond my present purpose. It is obvious that such laws could be enforced
+only under circumstances when production and population remained (as I said
+before) nearly stationary; and it would be madness to attempt to apply them
+to the changed condition of the present. It would be well if some competent
+person would make these laws the subject of a special treatise. I will run
+the risk, however, of wearying the reader with two or three illustrative
+statutes, which I have chosen, not as being more significant than many
+others, but as specimens merely of the discipline under which, for
+centuries, the trade and manufactures of England contrived to move; showing
+on one side the good which the system effected, on the other the inevitable
+evils under which it finally sank.
+
+The first which I shall quote concerns simply the sale of specific goods
+and the means by which tradesmen were prevented from enhancing prices. The
+Act is the 6th of the 24th of Henry VIII., and concerns the sale of wines,
+the statute prices of which I have already mentioned.
+
+"Because," says this Act, "that divers merchants inhabiting within the city
+of London have of late not only presumed to bargain and sell in gross to
+divers of the king's subjects great quantities of wines of Gascony,
+Guienne, and French wines, some for five pounds per tonne, some for more
+and some for less, and so after the rate of excessive prices contrary to
+the effect of a good and laudable statute lately made in this present
+parliament; that is to say, contrary to and above the prices thereof set by
+the Right Honourable Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Lord President of the
+King's most honourable Council, Lord Privy Seal, and the two Chief Justices
+of either bench, whereby they be fallen into the penalties limited by the
+said statute; as by due proof made by examination taken is well known--but
+also having in their hands great abundance of wine, by them acquired and
+bought to be sold, obstinately and maliciously, since their said attemptate
+and defaults proved, have refused to bargain and sell to many of the king's
+subjects any of their said wines remaining and being in their hands;
+purposing and intending thereby their own singular and unreasonable lucres
+and profits, to have larger and higher prices of their said wines, to be
+set according to their insatiable appetites and minds; it is therefore
+ordained and enacted, by authority of this present parliament, that every
+merchant now having, or which shall hereafter have, wines to be sold, and
+refusing to sell or deliver, or not selling and delivering any of the said
+wines for ready money therefore to be paid, according to the price or
+prices thereof being set, shall forfeit and lose the value of the wine so
+required to be bought.... For due execution of which provision, and for the
+relief of the king's subjects, it shall be lawful to all and singular
+justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head officers in shires,
+cities, boroughs, towns, etc., at the request of any person to whom the
+said merchant or merchants have refused to sell, to enter into the cellars
+and other places where such wines shall lie or be, and to sell and deliver
+the same wine or wines desired to be bought to the person or persons
+requiring to buy the same; taking of the buyer of the wine so sold to the
+use and satisfaction of the proprietor aforesaid, according to the prices
+determined by the law."
+
+The next which I select is the eleventh of the second and third of Philip
+and Mary; and falling in the midst of the smoke of the Smithfield fires,
+and the cruelties of that melancholy time, it shines like a fair gleam of
+humanity, which will not lose anything of its lustre because the evils
+against which it contends have in our times, also, furnished matter for
+sorrow and calamity--calamity which we unhappily have been unable even to
+attempt to remedy. It is termed "An Act touching Weavers," and runs:
+
+"Forasmuch as the weavers of this realm have, as well at this present
+parliament as at divers other times, complained that the rich and wealthy
+clothiers do in many ways oppress them--some by setting up and keeping in
+their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining them by journeymen
+and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which
+were brought up in the said science of weaving, with their families and
+their households--some by engrossing of looms into their hands and
+possession, and letting them out at such unreasonable rents, as the poor
+artificers are not able to maintain themselves, much less maintain their
+wives, families, and children--some also by giving much less wages and hire
+for weaving and workmanship than in times past they did, whereby they are
+enforced utterly to forsake their art and occupation wherein they have been
+brought up; It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the
+avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it
+be not foreseen, ordained and enacted by authority of this present
+parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making, and
+dwelling out of a city, borough, market-town, or corporate town, shall
+keep, or retain, or have in his or their houses or possession, any more
+than one woollen loom at a time; nor shall by any means, directly or
+indirectly, receive or take any manner of profit, gain, or commodity, by
+letting or setting any loom, or any house wherein any loom is or shall be
+used or occupied, which shall be together by him set or let, upon pain of
+forfeiture for every week that any person shall do the contrary to the
+tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings."
+
+A provision then follows, limiting weavers living in towns to two
+looms--the plain intention being to prevent the cloth manufacture from
+falling into the power of large capitalists employing "hands;" and to
+enable as many persons as possible to earn all in their own homes their own
+separate independent living. I suppose that the parliament was aware that
+by pursuing this policy the cost of production was something increased;
+that cloth was thus made dearer than it would have been if trade had been
+left to follow its own course. It considered, however, that the loss was
+compensated to the nation by retaining its people in the condition not of
+"hands," but of men; by rendering them independent of masters, who only
+sought to make their own advantage at the expense of labour; and enabling
+them to continue to maintain themselves in manly freedom. The weak point of
+all such provisions did not lie, I think, in the economic aspect of them,
+but in a far deeper difficulty. The details of trade legislation, it is
+obvious, could only be determined by persons professionally conversant with
+those details; and the indispensable condition of success with such
+legislation is, that it be conducted under the highest sense of the
+obligations of honesty. No laws are of any service which are above the
+working level of public morality; and the deeper they are carried down into
+life, the larger become the opportunities of evasion. That the system
+succeeded for centuries is evident from the organisation of the companies
+remaining so long in its vitality; but the efficiency of this organisation
+for the maintenance of fair dealing could exist only so long as the
+companies themselves--their wardens and their other officials, who alone,
+_quisque in sua arte_, were competent to judge what was right and what was
+wrong--could be trusted, at the same time being interested parties, to give
+a disinterested judgment. The largeness of the power inevitably committed
+to the councils was at once a temptation and an opportunity to abuse those
+powers; and slowly through the statute book we find the traces of the
+poison as it crept in and in. Already in the 24th of Henry VIII., we meet
+with complaints in the leather trade of the fraudulent conduct of the
+searchers, whose duty was to affix their seal upon leather ascertained to
+be sound, before it was exposed for sale, "which mark or print, for
+corruption and lucre, is commonly set and put by such as take upon them the
+search and sealing, as well upon leather insufficiently tanned, as upon
+leather well tanned, to the great deceit of the buyers thereof." About the
+same time, the "craft wardens" of the various fellowships, "out of sinister
+mind and purpose," were levying excessive fees on the admission of
+apprentices; and when parliament interfered to bring them to order, they
+"compassed and practised by cautill and subtle means to delude the good and
+wholesome statutes passed for remedy."[64] The old proverb, _Quis custodiat
+custodes_, had begun to verify itself, and the symptom was a fatal one.
+These evils, for the first half of the century, remained within compass;
+but as we pass on we find them increasing steadily. In the 7th and the 8th
+of Elizabeth, there are indications of the truck system; and towards her
+later years, the multiplying statutes and growing complaints and
+difficulties show plainly that the companies had lost their healthy
+vitality, and, with other relics of feudalism, were fast taking themselves
+away. There were no longer tradesmen to be found in sufficient numbers who
+were possessed of the necessary probity; and it is impossible not to
+connect such a phenomenon with the deep melancholy which in those years
+settled down on Elizabeth herself.
+
+For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction
+of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths
+trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing
+away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a
+dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to
+crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the
+old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up
+beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk
+back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth
+itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in
+the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit in which they
+had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer.
+
+And now it is all gone--like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us
+and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the
+historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our
+imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the
+cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their
+tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of what these men were when
+they were alive; and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that peculiar
+creation of mediaeval age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a
+vanished world.
+
+The transition out of this old state is what in this book I have undertaken
+to relate. As yet there were uneasy workings below the surface; but the
+crust was unbroken, and the nation remained outwardly unchanged as it had
+been for centuries. I have still some few features to add to my
+description.
+
+Nothing, I think, proves more surely the mutual confidence which held
+together the government and the people, than the fact that all classes were
+armed. Every man, as I have already said, was a soldier; and every man was
+ready equipped at all times with the arms which corresponded to his rank.
+By the great statute of Winchester,[65] which was repeated and expanded on
+many occasions in the after reigns, it was enacted, "That every man have
+harness in his house to keep the peace after the antient assise--that is to
+say, every man between fifteen years of age and sixty years shall be
+assessed and sworn to armour according to the quantity of his lands and
+goods--that is, to wit, for fifteen pounds lands and forty marks goods, a
+hauberke, a helmet of iron, a sword, a dagger, and a horse. For ten pounds
+of lands and twenty marks goods, a hauberke, a helmet, a sword, and a
+dagger. For five pounds lands, a doublet, a helmet of iron, a sword, and a
+dagger. For forty shillings lands, a sword, a bow and arrows, and a dagger.
+And all others that may shall have bows and arrows. Review of armour shall
+be made every year two times, by two constables for every hundred and
+franchise thereunto appointed; and the constables shall present, to
+justices assigned for that purpose, such defaults as they do find."
+
+As the archery was more developed, and the bow became the peculiar weapon
+of the English, regular practice was ordered, and shooting became at once
+the drill and the amusement of the people. Every hamlet had its pair of
+butts; and on Sundays and holidays[66] all able-bodied men were required to
+appear in the field, to employ their leisure hours "as valyant Englishmen
+ought to do," "utterly leaving the play at the bowls, quoits, dice, kails,
+and other unthrifty games;" magistrates, mayors, and bailiffs being
+responsible for their obedience, under penalty, if these officers neglected
+their duty, of a fine of twenty shillings for each offence. On the same
+days, the tilt-yard at the Hall or Castle was thrown open, and the young
+men of rank amused themselves with similar exercises. Fighting, or mock
+fighting--and the imitation was not unlike the reality--was at once the
+highest enjoyment and the noblest accomplishment of all ranks in the state;
+and over that most terrible of human occupations they had flung the
+enchanted halo of chivalry, decorating it with all the fairest graces, and
+consecrating it with the most heroic aspirations.
+
+The chivalry, with much else, was often perhaps something ideal. In the
+wars of the Roses it had turned into mere savage ferocity; and in forty
+years of carnage the fighting propensities had glutted themselves. A
+reaction followed, and in the early years of Henry VIII. the statutes were
+growing obsolete, and the "unlawful games" rising again into favour. The
+younger nobles, or some among them, were shrinking from the tilt-yard, and
+were backward on occasions even when required for war. Lord Surrey, when
+waiting on the Border, expecting the Duke of Albany to invade the northern
+counties, in 1523, complained of the growing "slowness" of the young lords
+"to be at such journeys,"[67] and of their "inclination to dancing,
+carding, and dicing." The people had followed the example, and were falling
+out of archery practice, exchanging it for similar amusements. Henry VIII.,
+in his earlier days an Englishman after the old type, set himself
+resolutely to oppose these downward tendencies, and to brace again the
+slackened sinews of the nation. In his own person he was the best rider,
+the best lance, and the best archer in England; and while a boy he was
+dreaming of fresh Agincourts, and even of fresh crusades. In 1511, when he
+had been king only three years, parliament re-enacted the Winchester
+statute, with new and remarkable provisions; and twice subsequently in the
+course of his reign he returned back upon the subject, insisting upon it
+with increasing stringency. The language of the Act of 1511 is not a little
+striking. "The King's Highness," so the words run, "calling to his gracious
+remembrance that by the feats and exercise of the subjects of his realm in
+shooting in long bows, there had continually grown and been within the same
+great numbers and multitudes of good archers, which hath not only defended
+the realm and the subjects thereof against the cruel malice and dangers of
+their enemies in times heretofore past, but also, with little numbers and
+puissance in regard of their opposites, have done many notable acts and
+discomfitures of war against the infidels and others; and furthermore
+reduced divers regions and countries to their due obeysance, to the great
+honour, fame, and surety of this realm and subjects, and to the terrible
+dread and fear of all strange nations, anything to attempt or do to the
+hurt or damage of them: Yet nevertheless that archery and shooting in long
+bows is but little used, but daily does minish and decay, and abate more
+and more; for that much part of the commonalty and poor people of this
+realm, whereby of old time the great number and substance of archers had
+grown and multiplied, be not of power nor ability to buy them long bows of
+yew to exercise shooting in the same, and to sustain the continual charge
+thereof; and also because, by means and occasions of customable usage of
+tennis play, bowles, claish and other unlawful games, prohibited by many
+good and beneficent statutes, much impoverishment hath ensued: Wherefore,
+the King's Highness, of his great wisdom and providence, and also for zeal
+to the public weal, surety, and defence of this his realm, and the antient
+fame in this behalf to be revived, by the assent of his Lords Spiritual and
+Temporal, and his Commons in this present parliament assembled, hath
+enacted and established that the statute of Winchester for archers be put
+in due execution; and over that, that every man being the king's subject,
+not lame, decrepit, or maimed, being within the age of sixty years, except
+spiritual men, justices of the one bench and of the other, justices of the
+assize, and barons of the exchequer, do use and exercise shooting in long
+bows, and also do have a bow and arrows ready continually in his house, to
+use himself in shooting. And that every man having a man child or men
+children in his house, shall provide for all such, being of the age of
+seven years and above, and till they shall come to the age of seventeen
+years, a bow and two shafts, to learn them and bring them up in shooting;
+and after such young men shall come to the age of seventeen years, every of
+them shall provide and have a bow and four arrows continually for himself,
+at his proper costs and charges, or else of the gift and provision of his
+friends, and shall use the same as afore is rehearsed." Other provisions
+are added, designed to suppress the games complained of, and to place the
+bows more within the reach of the poor, by cheapening the prices of them.
+
+The same statute[68] (and if this be a proof that it had imperfectly
+succeeded, it is a proof also of Henry's confidence in the general
+attachment of his subjects) was re-enacted thirty years later, at the
+crisis of the Reformation, when the northern counties were fermenting in a
+half-suppressed rebellion, and the catholics at home and abroad were
+intriguing to bring about a revolution. In this subsequent edition of
+it[69] some particulars are added which demand notice. In the directions to
+the villages for the maintaining each "a pair of buttes," it is ordered
+that no person above the age of twenty-four shall shoot with the light
+flight arrow at a distance under two hundred and twenty yards. Up to two
+hundred and twenty yards, therefore, the heavy war arrow was used, and this
+is to be taken as the effective range for fighting purposes of the old
+archery.[70] No measures could have been invented more effective than this
+vigorous arming to repress the self-seeking tendencies in the mercantile
+classes which I have mentioned as beginning to show themselves. Capital
+supported by force may make its own terms with labour; but capital lying
+between a king on one side resolved to prevent oppression, and a people on
+the other side in full condition to resist, felt even prudence dictate
+moderation, and reserved itself for a more convenient season.
+
+Looking, therefore, at the state of England as a whole, I cannot doubt that
+under Henry the body of the people were prosperous, well-fed, loyal, and
+contented. In all points of material comfort they were as well off as they
+had ever been before; better off than they have ever been in later times.
+
+Their amusements, as prescribed by statute, consisted in training
+themselves as soldiers. In the prohibitions of the statutes we see also
+what their amusements were inclined to be. But besides "the bowles and the
+claish," field sports, fishing, shooting, hunting, were the delight of
+every one, and although the forest laws were terrible, they served only to
+enhance the excitement by danger. Then, as now, no English peasant could be
+convinced that there was any moral crime in appropriating the wild game. It
+was an offence against statute law, but no offence against natural law; and
+it was rather a trial of skill between the noble who sought to monopolise a
+right which seemed to be common to all, and those who would succeed, if
+they could, in securing their own share of it. The Robin Hood ballads
+reflect the popular feeling and breathe the warm genial spirit of the old
+greenwood adventurers. If deer-stealing was a sin, it was more than
+compensated by the risk of the penalty to which those who failed submitted,
+when no other choice was left. They did not always submit, as the old
+northern poem shows of _Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of
+Cloudislee_, with its most immoral moral; yet I suppose there was never
+pedant who could resist the spell of those ringing lines, or refuse with
+all his heart to wish the rogues success, and confusion to the honest men.
+
+But the English peasantry had pleasures of less ambiguous propriety, and
+less likely to mislead our sympathies. The chroniclers have given us many
+accounts of the masques and plays which were acted in the court, or in the
+castles of the noblemen. Such pageants were but the most splendid
+expression of a taste which was national and universal. As in ancient
+Greece, generations before the rise of the great dramas of Athens,
+itinerant companies wandered from village to village, carrying their stage
+furniture in their little carts, and acted in their booths and tents the
+grand stories of the mythology; so in England the mystery players haunted
+the wakes and fairs, and in barns or taverns, taprooms, or in the farmhouse
+kitchen, played at saints and angels, and transacted on their petty stage
+the drama of the Christian faith. To us, who can measure the effect of such
+scenes only by the impression which they would now produce upon ourselves,
+these exhibitions can seem but unspeakably profane; they were not profane
+when tendered in simplicity, and received as they were given. They were no
+more profane than those quaint monastic illuminations which formed the germ
+of Italian art; and as out of the illuminations arose those paintings which
+remain unapproached and unapproachable in their excellence, so out of the
+mystery plays arose the English drama, represented in its final
+completeness by the creations of a poet who, it now begins to be supposed,
+stands alone among mankind. We allow ourselves to think of Shakspeare or of
+Raphael or of Phidias, as having accomplished their work by the power of
+their own individual genius; but greatness like theirs is never more than
+the highest degree of an excellence which prevails widely round it, and
+forms the environment in which it grows. No single mind in single contact
+with the facts of nature could have created out of itself a Pallas, a
+Madonna, or a Lear; such vast conceptions are the growth of ages, the
+creations of a nation's spirit; and artist and poet, filled full with the
+power of that spirit, have but given them form, and nothing more than form.
+Nor would the form itself have been attainable by any isolated talent. No
+genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power, unguided or
+ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and life is not long
+enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble conceptions already
+existing, and a noble school of execution which will launch mind and hand
+at once upon their true courses, are indispensable to transcendent
+excellence; and Shakspeare's plays were as much the offspring of the long
+generations who had pioneered his road for him, as the discoveries of
+Newton were the offspring of those of Copernicus.
+
+No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman
+or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out of a nation of
+materialists; no great dramatist except when the drama was the passion of
+the people. Acting was the especial amusement of the English, from the
+palace to the village green. It was the result and expression of their
+power over themselves, and power over circumstances. They were troubled
+with no subjective speculations; no social problems vexed them with which
+they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance of vigour and spirits they
+were able, in the strict and literal sense of the word, to play with the
+materials of life. The mystery plays came first; next the popular legends;
+and then the great figures of English history came out upon the stage, or
+stories from Greek and Roman writers; or sometimes it was an extemporised
+allegory. Shakspeare himself has left us many pictures of the village
+drama. Doubtless he had seen many a Bottom in the old Warwickshire hamlets;
+many a Sir Nathaniel playing "Alissander," and finding himself "a little
+o'erparted." He had been with Snug the joiner, Quince the carpenter, and
+Flute the bellows-mender, when a boy we will not question, and acted with
+them, and written their parts for them; had gone up with them in the
+winter's evenings to the Lucy's Hall before the sad trouble with the
+deer-stealing; and afterwards, when he came to London and found his way
+into great society, he had not failed to see Polonius burlesquing Caesar on
+the stage, as in his proper person Polonius burlesqued Sir William Cecil.
+The strolling players in _Hamlet_ might be met at every country wake or
+festival; it was the direction in which the especial genius of the people
+delighted to revel. As I desire in this chapter not only to relate what
+were the habits of the people, but to illustrate them also, within such
+compass as I can allow myself, I shall transcribe out of Hall[71] a
+description of a play which was acted by the boys of St. Paul's School, in
+1527, at Greenwich, adding some particulars, not mentioned by Hall, from
+another source.[72] It is a good instance of the fantastic splendour with
+which exhibitions of this kind were got up, and it possesses also a
+melancholy interest of another kind, as showing how little the wisest among
+us can foresee our own actions, or assure ourselves that the convictions of
+to-day will alike be the convictions of to-morrow. The occasion was the
+despatch of a French embassy to England, when Europe was outraged by the
+Duke of Bourbon's capture of Rome, when the children of Francis I. were
+prisoners in Spain, and Henry, with the full energy of his fiery nature,
+was flinging himself into a quarrel with Charles V. as the champion of the
+Holy See.
+
+At the conclusion of a magnificent supper "the king led the ambassadors
+into the great chamber of disguisings; and in the end of the same chamber
+was a fountain, and on one side was a hawthorne tree, all of silk, with
+white flowers, and on the other side was a mulberry tree full of fair
+berries, all of silk. On the top of the hawthorne were the arms of England,
+compassed with the collar of the order[73] of St. Michael, and in the top
+of the mulberry tree stood the arms of France within a garter. The fountain
+was all of white marble, graven and chased; the bases of the same were
+balls of gold, supported by ramping beasts wound in leaves of gold. In the
+first work were gargoylles of gold, fiercely faced with spouts running. The
+second receit of this fountain was environed with winged serpents, all of
+gold, which griped it; and on the summit of the same was a fair lady, out
+of whose breasts ran abundantly water of marvellous delicious savour. About
+this fountain were benches of rosemary, fretted in braydes laid on gold,
+all the sides set with roses, on branches as they were growing about this
+fountain. On the benches sate eight fair ladies in strange attire, and so
+richly apparelled in cloth of gold, embroidered and cut over silver, that I
+cannot express the cunning workmanship thereof. Then when the king and
+queen were set, there was played before them, by children, in the Latin
+tongue, a manner of tragedy, the effect whereof was that the pope was in
+captivity and the church brought under foot. Whereupon St. Peter appeared
+and put the cardinal (Wolsey) in authority to bring the pope to his
+liberty, and to set up the church again. And so the cardinal made
+intercession with the kings of England and France that they took part
+together, and by their means the pope was delivered. Then in came the
+French king's children, and complained to the cardinal how the emperour
+kept them as hostages, and would not come to reasonable point with their
+father, whereupon they desired the cardinal to help for their deliverance;
+which wrought so with the king his master and the French king that he
+brought the emperour to a peace, and caused the two young princes to be
+delivered." So far Hall relates the scene, but there was more in the play
+than he remembered or cared to notice, and I am able to complete this
+curious picture of a pageant once really and truly a living spectacle in
+the old palace at Greenwich, by an inventory of the dresses worn by the
+boys and a list of the _dramatis personae_.
+
+The school-boys of St. Paul's were taken down the river with the master in
+six boats, at the cost of a shilling a boat--the cost of the dresses and
+the other expenses amounting in all to sixty-one shillings.
+
+The characters were--
+
+An orator in apparel of cloth of gold.
+
+Religio, Ecclesia, Veritas, like three widows, in garments of silk, and
+suits of lawn and Cyprus.
+
+Heresy and False Interpretation, like sisters of Bohemia, apparelled in
+silk of divers colours.
+
+The heretic Luther, like a party friar, in russet damask and black taffety.
+
+Luther's wife, like a frow of Spiers in Almayn, in red silk.
+
+Peter, Paul, and James, in habits of white sarsnet, and three red mantles,
+and lace of silver and damask, and pelisses of scarlet.
+
+A Cardinal in his apparel.
+
+Two Sergeants in rich apparel.
+
+The Dolphin and his brother in coats of velvet embroidered with gold, and
+capes of satin bound with velvet.
+
+A Messenger in tinsel satin.
+
+Six men in gowns of grey sarsnet.
+
+Six women in gowns of crimson velvet.
+
+War, in rich cloth of gold and feathers, armed.
+
+Three Almeyns, in apparel all cut and holed in silk.
+
+Lady Peace in lady's apparel white and rich.
+
+Lady Quietness and Dame Tranquillity richly beseen in lady's apparel.
+
+It is a strange world. This was in November, 1527. In November, 1530, but
+three brief years after, Wolsey lay dying in misery, a disgraced man, at
+Leicester Abbey; "the Pope's Holiness" was fast becoming in English eyes
+plain Bishop of Rome, held guilty towards this realm of unnumbered
+enormities, and all England was sweeping with immeasurable velocity towards
+the heretic Luther. So history repeats the lesson to us, not to boast
+ourselves of the morrow, for we know not what a day may bring forth.
+
+Before I conclude this survey, it remains for me to say something of the
+position of the poor, and of the measures which were taken for the solution
+of that most difficult of all problems, the distinguishing the truly
+deserving from the worthless and the vagabond. The subject is one to which
+in the progress of this work I shall have more than one occasion to return;
+but inasmuch as a sentimental opinion prevails that an increase of poverty
+and the consequent enactment of poor-laws was the result of the suppression
+of the religious houses, and that adequate relief had been previously
+furnished by these establishments, it is necessary to say a few words for
+the removal of an impression which is as near as possible the reverse of
+the truth. I do not doubt that for many centuries these houses fulfilled
+honestly the intentions with which they were established; but as early as
+the reign of Richard II. it was found necessary to provide some other means
+for the support of the aged and impotent; the monasteries not only having
+then begun to neglect their duty; but by the appropriation of benefices
+having actually deprived the parishes of their local and independent means
+of charity.[74] Licences to beg were at that time granted to deserving
+persons; and it is noticeable that this measure was in a few years followed
+by the petition to Henry IV. for the secularisation of ecclesiastical
+property.[75] Thus early in our history had the regular clergy forgotten
+the nature of their mission, and the object for which the administration of
+the nation's charities had been committed to them. Thus early, while their
+houses were the nurseries of dishonest mendicancy,[76] they had surrendered
+to lay compassion, those who ought to have been their especial care. I
+shall unhappily have occasion hereafter to illustrate these matters in
+detail. I mention them in this place only in order to dissipate at once a
+foolish dream. At the opening of the sixteenth century, before the
+suppression of the monasteries had suggested itself in a practical form,
+pauperism was a state question of great difficulty, and as such I have at
+present to consider it.
+
+For the able-bodied vagrant, it is well known that the old English laws had
+no mercy. When wages are low, and population has outgrown the work which
+can be provided for it, idleness may be involuntary and innocent; at a time
+when all industrious men could maintain themselves in comfort and
+prosperity, "when a fair day's wages for a fair day's work" was really and
+truly the law of the land, it was presumed that if strong capable men
+preferred to wander about the country, and live upon the labour of others,
+mendicancy was not the only crime of which they were likely to be guilty;
+while idleness itself was justly looked upon as a high offence, and
+misdemeanour. The penalty of God's laws against idleness, as expressed in
+the system of nature, was starvation; and it was held intolerable that any
+man should be allowed to escape a divine judgment by begging under false
+pretences, and robbing others of their honest earnings.
+
+In a country also the boast of which was its open-handed hospitality, it
+was necessary to take care that hospitality was not brought to discredit by
+abuse; and when every door was freely opened to a request for a meal or a
+night's lodging, there was an imperative duty to keep a strict eye on
+whatever persons were on the move. We shall therefore be prepared to find
+"sturdy and valiant beggars" treated with summary justice as criminals of a
+high order; the right of a government so to treat them being proportioned
+to the facilities with which the honestly disposed can maintain themselves.
+
+It might have been expected, on the other hand, that when wages were so
+high, and work so constant, labourers would have been left to themselves to
+make provision against sickness and old age. To modern ways of thinking on
+these subjects, there would have seemed no hardship in so leaving them; and
+their sufferings, if they had suffered, would have appeared but as a
+deserved retribution. This, however, was not the temper of earlier times.
+Charity has ever been the especial virtue of Catholic States, and the aged
+and the impotent were always held to be the legitimate objects of it. Men
+who had worked hard while they were able to work were treated like decayed
+soldiers, as the discharged pensionaries of society; they were held
+entitled to wear out their age (under restrictions) at the expense of
+others; and so readily did society acquiesce in this aspect of its
+obligations, that on the failure of the monasteries to do their duty, it
+was still sufficient to leave such persons to voluntary liberality, and
+legislation had to interfere only to direct such liberality into its
+legitimate channels. In the 23rd of Edw. III. cap. 7, a prohibition was
+issued against giving alms to "valiant beggars," and this proving
+inadequate, and charity being still given indiscriminately, in the twelfth
+year of Richard II. the system of licences was introduced, and a pair of
+stocks was erected by order in every town or village, to "justify" persons
+begging unpermitted. The monasteries growing more and more careless, the
+number of paupers continued to multiply, and this method received
+successive expansions, till at length, when the Reformation was concluded,
+it terminated, after many changes of form, in the famous Act of Elizabeth.
+We can thus trace our poor law in the whole course of its growth, and into
+two stages through which it passed I must enter with some minuteness. The
+12th of the 22nd of Henry VIII., and the 25th of the 27th, are so
+remarkable in their tone, and so rich in their detail, as to furnish a
+complete exposition of English thought at that time upon the subject; while
+the second of these two acts, and probably the first also, has a further
+interest for us, as being the composition of Henry himself, and the most
+finished which he has left to us.[77]
+
+"Whereas," says the former of these two Acts, "in all places throughout
+this realm of England, vagabonds and beggars have of long time increased,
+and daily do increase in great and excessive numbers, by the occasion of
+idleness, mother and root of all vices; whereby hath insurged and sprung,
+and daily insurgeth and springeth, continual thefts, murders, and other
+heinous offences and great enormities, to the high displeasure of God, the
+inquietation and damage of the king's people, and to the marvellous
+disturbance of the common weal of this realm; and whereas, strait statutes
+and ordinances have been before this time devised and made, as well by the
+king our sovereign lord, as also by divers his most noble progenitors,
+kings of England, for the most necessary and due reformation of the
+premises; yet that notwithstanding, the said number of vagabonds and
+beggars be not seen in any part to be diminished, but rather daily
+augmented and increased into great routs or companies, as evidently and
+manifestly it doth and may appear: Be it therefore enacted by the king our
+sovereign lord, and by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons,
+in this present parliament assembled, that the justices of the peace of all
+and singular the shires of England within the limits of their commission,
+and all other justices of the peace, mayors, sheriffs, bailiffs, and other
+officers of every city, borough, or franchise, shall from time to time, as
+often as need shall require, make diligent search and inquiry of all aged,
+poor, and impotent persons, which live, or of necessity be compelled to
+live by alms of the charity of the people; and such search made, the said
+officers, every of them within the limits of their authorities, shall have
+power, at their discretions, to enable to beg within such limits as they
+shall appoint, such of the said impotent persons as they shall think
+convenient; and to give in commandment to every such impotent beggar (by
+them enabled) that none of them shall beg without the limits so appointed
+to them. And further, they shall deliver to every such person so enabled a
+letter containing the name of that person, witnessing that he is authorised
+to beg, and the limits within which he is appointed to beg, the same letter
+to be sealed with the seal of the hundred, rape, wapentake, city, or
+borough, and subscribed with the name of one of the said justices or
+officers aforesaid. And if any such impotent person do beg in any other
+place than within such limits, then the justices of the peace, and all
+other the king's officers and ministers, shall by their discretions punish
+all such persons by imprisonment in the stocks, by the space of two days
+and two nights, giving them only bread and water."
+
+Further, "If any such impotent person be found begging without a licence,
+at the discretion of the justices of the peace, he shall be stripped naked
+from the middle upwards, and whipped within the town in which he be found,
+or within some other town, as it shall seem good. Or if it be not
+convenient so to punish him, he shall be set in the stocks by the space of
+three days and three nights."
+
+Such were the restrictions under which impotency was allowed support.
+Though not in itself treated as an offence, and though its right to
+maintenance by society was not denied, it was not indulged, as we may see,
+with unnecessary encouragement. The Act then proceeds to deal with the
+genuine vagrant.
+
+"And be it further enacted, that if any person or persons, being whole and
+mighty in body and able to labour, be taken in begging in any part of this
+realm; and if any man or woman, being whole and mighty in body, having no
+land, nor master, nor using any lawful merchandry, craft, or mystery
+whereby he might get his living, be vagrant, and can give none account how
+he doth lawfully get his living, then it shall, be lawful to the constables
+and all other king's officers, ministers, and subjects of every town,
+parish, and hamlet, to arrest the said vagabonds and idle persons, and
+bring them to any justice of the peace of the same shire or liberty, or
+else to the high constable of the hundred; and the justice of the peace,
+high constable, or other officer, shall cause such idle person so to him
+brought, to be had to the next market town or other place, and there to be
+tied to the end of a cart, naked, and be beaten with whips throughout the
+same town till his body be bloody by reason of such whipping; and after
+such punishment of whipping had, the person so punished shall be enjoined
+upon his oath to return forthwith without delay, in the next and straight
+way, to the place where he was born, or where he last dwelled before the
+same punishment, by the space of three years; and then put himself to
+labour like a true man ought to do; and after that done, every such person
+so punished and ordered shall have a letter, sealed with the seal of the
+hundred, rape, or wapentake, witnessing that he hath been punished
+according to this estatute, and containing the day and place of his
+punishment, and the place where unto he is limited to go, and by what time
+he is limited to come thither: for that within that time, showing the said
+letter, he may lawfully beg by the way, and otherwise not; and if he do not
+accomplish the order to him appointed by the said letter, then to be
+eftsoons taken and whipped; and so often as there be fault found in him, to
+be whipped till he has his body put to labour for his living, or otherwise
+truly get his living, so long as he is able to do so."
+
+Then follow the penalties against the justices of the peace, constables,
+and all officers who neglect to arrest such persons; and a singularly
+curious catalogue is added of certain forms of "sturdy mendicancy," which,
+if unspecified, might have been passed over as exempt, but to which Henry
+had no intention of conceding further licence. It seems as if, in framing
+the Act, he had Simon Fish's petition before him, and was commencing at
+last the rough remedy of the cart's-tail, which Fish had dared to recommend
+for a very obdurate evil.[78] The friars of the mendicant orders were
+tolerated for a few years longer; but many other spiritual persons may have
+suffered seriously under the provisions of the present statute.
+
+"Be it further enacted," the Act continues, "that scholars of the
+Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, that go about begging, not being
+authorised under the seal of the said universities, by the commissary,
+chancellor, or vice-chancellor of the same; and that all and singular
+shipmen pretending losses of their ships and goods, going about the country
+begging without sufficient authority, shall be punished and ordered in
+manner and form as is above rehearsed of strong beggars; and that all
+proctors and pardoners, and all other idle persons going about in counties
+or abiding in any town, city, or borough, some of them using divers subtle,
+crafty, and unlawful games and plays, and some of them feigning themselves
+to have knowledge in physick, physnamye, and palmistry, or other crafty
+science, whereby they bear the people in hand that they can tell their
+destinies, dreams, and fortunes, and such other like fantastical
+imaginations, to the great deceit of the king's subjects, shall, upon
+examination had before two justices of the peace, if by provable witness
+they be found guilty of such deceits, be punished by whipping at two days
+together, after the manner before rehearsed. And if they eftsoons offend in
+the same or any like offence, to be scourged two days, and the third day to
+be put upon the pillory, from nine o'clock till eleven the forenoon of the
+same day, and to have the right ear cut off; and if they offend the third
+time, to have like punishment with whipping and the pillory, and to have
+the other ear cut off."
+
+It would scarcely have been expected that this Act would have failed for
+want of severity in its penalties; yet five years later, for this and for
+some other reasons, it was thought desirable to expand the provisions of
+it, enhancing the penalties at the same time to a degree which has given a
+bloody name in the history of English law to the statutes of Henry VIII. Of
+this expanded statute[79] we have positive evidence, as I said, that Henry
+was himself the author. The merit of it, or the guilt of it--if guilt there
+be--originated with him alone. The early clauses contain practical
+amendments of an undoubtedly salutary kind. The Act of 1531 had been
+defective in that no specified means had been assigned for finding vagrants
+in labour, which, with men of broken character, was not immediately easy.
+The smaller monasteries having been suppressed in the interval, and
+sufficient funds being thus placed at the disposal of the government,
+public works[80] were set on foot throughout the kingdom, and this
+difficulty was obviated.
+
+Another important alteration was a restriction upon private charity.
+Private persons were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to give money to
+beggars, whether deserving or undeserving. The poor of each parish might
+call at houses within the boundaries for broken meats; but this was the
+limit of personal almsgiving; and the money which men might be disposed to
+offer was to be collected by the churchwardens on Sundays and holidays in
+the churches. The parish priest was to keep an account of receipts and of
+expenditure, and relief was administered with some approach to modern
+formalities. A further excellent but severe enactment empowered the parish
+officers to take up all idle children above the age of five years, "and
+appoint them to masters of husbandry or other craft or labour to be
+taught;" and if any child should refuse the service to which he was
+appointed, or run away "without cause reasonable being shown for it," he
+might be publicly whipped with rods, at the discretion of the justice of
+the peace before whom he was brought.
+
+So far, no complaint can be urged against these provisions: they display
+only that severe but true humanity, which, in offering fair and liberal
+maintenance for all who will consent to be honest, insists, not unjustly,
+that its offer shall be accepted, and that the resources of charity shall
+not be trifled away. On the clause, however, which gave to the Act its
+especial and distinguishing character, there will be large difference of
+opinion. "The sturdy vagabond," who by the earlier statute was condemned on
+his second offence to lose the whole or a part of his right ear, was
+condemned by the amended Act, if found a third time offending, with the
+mark upon him of his mutilation, "to suffer pains and execution of death,
+as a felon and as an enemy of the commonwealth." So the letter stands. For
+an able-bodied man to be caught a third time begging was held a crime
+deserving death, and the sentence was intended, on fit occasions, to be
+executed. The poor man's advantages, which I have estimated at so high a
+rate, were not purchased without drawbacks. He might not change his master
+at his will, or wander from place to place. He might not keep his children
+at his home unless he could answer for their time. If out of employment,
+preferring to be idle, he might be demanded for work by any master of the
+"craft" to which he belonged, and compelled to work whether he would or no.
+If caught begging once, being neither aged nor infirm, he was whipped at
+the cart's tail. If caught a second time, his ear was slit, or bored
+through with a hot iron. If caught a third time, being thereby proved to be
+of no use upon this earth, but to live upon it only to his own hurt and to
+that of others, he suffered death as a felon. So the law of England
+remained for sixty years. First drawn by Henry, it continued unrepealed
+through the reigns of Edward and of Mary, subsisting, therefore, with the
+deliberate approval of both the great parties between whom the country was
+divided. Reconsidered under Elizabeth, the same law was again formally
+passed; and it was, therefore, the expressed conviction of the English
+nation, that it was better for a man not to live at all than to live a
+profitless and worthless life. The vagabond was a sore spot upon the
+commonwealth, to be healed by wholesome discipline if the gangrene was not
+incurable; to be cut away with the knife if the milder treatment of the
+cart-whip failed to be of profit.[81]
+
+A measure so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy. The
+state of the country was critical; and the danger from questionable persons
+traversing it unexamined and uncontrolled was greater than at ordinary
+times. But in point of justice, as well as of prudence, it harmonised with
+the iron temper of the age, and it answered well for the government of a
+fierce and powerful people, in whose hearts lay an intense hatred of
+rascality, and among whom no one need have lapsed into evil courses except
+by deliberate preference for them. The moral substance of the English must
+have been strong indeed when it admitted of such hardy treatment; but on
+the whole, the people were ruled as they preferred to be ruled; and if
+wisdom may be tested by success, the manner in which they passed the great
+crisis of the Reformation is the best justification of their princes.
+
+The era was great throughout Europe. The Italians of the age of Michael
+Angelo; the Spaniards who were the contemporaries of Cortez; the Germans
+who shook off the pope at the call of Luther; and the splendid chivalry of
+Francis I. of France, were no common men. But they were all brought face to
+face with the same trials, and none met them as the English met them. The
+English alone never lost their self-possession; and if they owed something
+to fortune in their escape from anarchy, they owed more to the strong hand
+and steady purpose of their rulers.
+
+To conclude this chapter then.
+
+In the brief review of the system under which England was governed, we have
+seen a state of things in which the principles of political economy were,
+consciously or unconsciously, contradicted; where an attempt, more or less
+successful, was made to bring the production and distribution of wealth
+under the moral rule of right and wrong; and where those laws of supply and
+demand, which we are now taught to regard as immutable ordinances of
+nature, were absorbed or superseded by a higher code. It is necessary for
+me to repeat that I am not holding up the sixteenth century as a model
+which the nineteenth might safely follow. The population has become too
+large, employment has become too complicated and fluctuating, to admit of
+external control; while, in default of control, the relapse upon
+self-interest as the one motive principle is certain to ensue, and when it
+ensues is absolute in its operations. But as, even with us, these so-called
+ordinances of nature in time of war consent to be suspended, and duty to
+his country becomes with every good citizen a higher motive of action than
+the advantages which he may gain in an enemy's market; so it is not
+uncheering to look back upon a time when the nation was in a normal
+condition of militancy against social injustice; when the government was
+enabled by happy circumstances to pursue into detail a single and serious
+aim at the well-being--well-being in its widest sense--of all members of
+the commonwealth. The world, indeed, was not made particularly pleasant. Of
+liberty, in the modern sense of the word, of the supposed right of every
+man "to do what he will with his own" or with himself, there was no idea.
+To the question, if ever it was asked, May I not do what I will with my
+own? there was the brief answer, No man may do what is wrong, either with
+that which is his own or with that which is another's. Workmen were not
+allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labour market to exact
+extravagant wages. Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from
+their holdings, and destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of
+interests was absorbed into a relation of which equity was something more
+than the theoretic principle, and employers and employed were alike
+amenable to a law which both were compelled to obey. The working man of
+modern times has bought the extension of his liberty at the price of his
+material comfort. The higher classes have gained in luxury what they have
+lost in power. It is not for the historian to balance advantages. His duty
+is with the facts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE LAST YEARS OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSEY
+
+Times were changed in England since the second Henry walked barefoot
+through the streets of Canterbury, and knelt while the monks flogged him on
+the pavement in the Chapter-house, doing penance for Becket's murder. The
+clergy had won the battle in the twelfth century because they deserved to
+win it. They were not free from fault and weakness, but they felt the
+meaning of their profession. Their hearts were in their vows, their
+authority was exercised more justly, more nobly, than the authority of the
+crown; and therefore, with inevitable justice, the crown was compelled to
+stoop before them. The victory was great; but, like many victories, it was
+fatal to the conquerors. It filled them full with the vanity of power; they
+forgot their duties in their privileges; and when, a century later, the
+conflict recommenced, the altering issue proved the altering nature of the
+conditions under which it was fought. The laity were sustained in vigour by
+the practical obligations of life; the clergy sunk under the influence of a
+waning religion, the administration of the forms of which had become their
+sole occupation; and as character forsook them, the Mortmain Act,[82] the
+Acts of Premunire, and the repeatedly recurring Statutes of Provisors mark
+the successive defeats that drove them back from the high post of command
+which character alone had earned for them. If the Black Prince had lived,
+or if Richard II. had inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the
+ecclesiastical system would have been spared the misfortune of a longer
+reprieve. Its worst abuses would have then terminated, and the reformation
+of _doctrine_ in the sixteenth century would have been left to fight its
+independent way unsupported by the moral corruption of the church from
+which it received its most powerful impetus. The nation was ready for
+sweeping remedies. The people felt little loyalty to the pope, as the
+language of the Statutes of Provisors[83] conclusively proves, and they
+were prepared to risk the sacrilege of confiscating the estates of the
+religious houses--a complete measure of secularisation being then, as I
+have already said,[84] the expressed desire of the House of Commons.[85]
+With an Edward III. on the throne such a measure would very likely have
+been executed, and the course of English history would have been changed.
+It was ordered otherwise, and doubtless wisely. The church was allowed a
+hundred and fifty more years to fill full the measure of her offences, that
+she might fall only when time had laid bare the root of her degeneracy, and
+that faith and manners might be changed together.
+
+The history of the time is too imperfect to justify a positive conclusion.
+It is possible, however, that the success of the revolution effected by
+Henry IV. was due in part to a reaction in the church's favour; and it is
+certain that this prince, if he did not owe his crown to the support of the
+church, determined to conciliate it. He confirmed the Statutes of
+Provisors,[86] but he allowed them to sink into disuse. He forbade the
+further mooting of the confiscation project; and to him is due the first
+permission of the bishops to send heretics to the stake.[87] If English
+tradition is to be trusted, the clergy still felt insecure; and the French
+wars of Henry V. are said to have been undertaken, as we all know from
+Shakspeare, at the persuasion of Archbishop Chichele, who desired to
+distract his attention from reverting to dangerous subjects. Whether this
+be true or not, no prince of the house of Lancaster betrayed a wish to
+renew the quarrel with the church. The battle of Agincourt, the conquest
+and re-conquest of France, called off the attention of the people; while
+the rise of the Lollards, and the intrusion of speculative questions, the
+agitation of which has ever been the chief aversion of English statesmen,
+contributed to change the current; and the reforming spirit must have
+lulled before the outbreak of the wars of the Roses, or one of the two
+parties in so desperate a struggle would have scarcely failed to have
+availed themselves of it. Edward IV. is said to have been lenient towards
+heresy; but his toleration, if it was more than imaginary, was tacit only;
+he never ventured to avow it. It is more likely that in the inveterate
+frenzy of those years men had no leisure to remember that heresy existed.
+
+The clergy were thus left undisturbed to go their own course to its natural
+end. The storm had passed over them without breaking; and they did not
+dream that it would again gather. The immunity which they enjoyed from the
+general sufferings of the civil war contributed to deceive them; and
+without anxiety for the consequences, and forgetting the significant
+warning which they had received, they sank steadily into that condition
+which is inevitable from the constitution of human nature, among men
+without faith, wealthy, powerful, and luxuriously fed, yet condemned to
+celibacy, and cut off from the common duties and common pleasures of
+ordinary life. On the return of a settled government, they were startled
+for a moment in their security; the conduct of some among them had become
+so unbearable, that even Henry VII., who inherited the Lancastrian
+sympathies, was compelled to notice it; and the following brief act was
+passed by his first parliament, proving by the very terms in which it is
+couched the existing nature of church discipline. "For the more sure and
+likely reformation," it runs, "of priests, clerks, and religious men,
+culpable, or by their demerits openly noised of incontinent living in their
+bodies, contrary to their order, be it enacted, ordained, and established,
+that it be lawful to all archbishops and bishops, and other ordinaries
+having episcopal jurisdiction, to punish and chastise such religious men,
+being within the bounds of their jurisdiction, as shall be convict before
+them, by lawful proof, of adultery, fornication, incest, or other fleshly
+incontinency, by committing them to ward and prison, there to remain for
+such time as shall be thought convenient for the quality of their
+trespasses."[88]
+
+Previous to the passing of this act, therefore, the bishops, who had power
+to arrest laymen on suspicion of heresy, and detain them in prison
+untried,[89] had no power to imprison priests, even though convicted of
+adultery or incest. The legislature were supported by the Archbishop of
+Canterbury. Cardinal Morton procured authority from the pope to visit the
+religious houses, the abominations of which had become notorious;[90] and
+in a provincial synod held on the 24th of February, 1486, he laid the
+condition of the secular clergy before the assembled prelates. Many
+priests, it was stated, spent their time in hawking or hunting, in lounging
+at taverns, in the dissolute enjoyment of the world. They wore their hair
+long like laymen; they were to be seen lounging in the streets with cloak
+and doublet, sword and dagger. By the scandal of their lives they
+imperilled the stability of their order.[91] A number of the worst
+offenders, in London especially, were summoned before the synod and
+admonished;[92] certain of the more zealous among the learned (_complures
+docti_) who had preached against clerical abuses were advised to be more
+cautious, for the avoiding of scandal;[93] but the archbishop, taking the
+duty upon himself, sent round a circular among the clergy of his province,
+exhorting them to general amendment.[94]
+
+Yet this little cloud again disappeared. Henry VII. sat too insecurely on
+his throne to venture on a resolute reform, even if his feelings had
+inclined him towards it, which they did not. Morton durst not resolutely
+grapple with the evil. He rebuked and remonstrated; but punishment would
+have caused a public scandal. He would not invite the inspection of the
+laity into a disease which, without their assistance, he had not the
+strength to encounter; and his incipient reformation died away
+ineffectually in words. The church, to outward appearance, stood more
+securely than ever. The obnoxious statutes of the Plantagenets were in
+abeyance, their very existence, as it seemed, was forgotten; and Thomas a
+Becket never desired more absolute independence for the ecclesiastical
+order than Archbishop Warham found established when he succeeded to the
+primacy. He, too, ventured to repeat the experiment of his predecessor. In
+1511 he attempted a second visitation of the monasteries, and again
+exhorted a reform; but his efforts were even slighter than Morton's, and in
+their results equally without fruit. The maintenance of his order in its
+political supremacy was of greater moment to him than its moral purity: a
+decent veil was cast over the clerical infirmities, and their vices were
+forgotten as soon as they ceased to be proclaimed.[95] Henry VIII., a mere
+boy on his accession, was borne away with the prevailing stream; and
+trained from his childhood by theologians, he entered upon his reign
+saturated with theological prepossessions. The intensity of his nature
+recognising no half measures, he was prepared to make them the law of his
+life; and so zealous was he, that it seemed as if the church had found in
+him a new Alfred or a Charlemagne. Unfortunately for the church,
+institutions may be restored in theory; but theory, be it never so perfect,
+will not give them back their life; and Henry discovered, at length, that
+the church of the sixteenth century as little resembled the church of the
+eleventh, as Leo X. resembled Hildebrand, or Warham resembled St. Anselm.
+
+If, however, there were no longer saints among the clergy, there could
+still arise among them a remarkable man; and in Cardinal Wolsey the king
+found an adviser who was able to retain him longer than would otherwise
+have been possible in the course which he had entered upon; who, holding a
+middle place between an English statesman and a catholic of the old order,
+was essentially a transition minister; and who was qualified, above all men
+then living, by a combination of talent, honesty, and arrogance, to open
+questions which could not again be closed when they had escaped the grasp
+of their originator. Under Wolsey's influence Henry made war with Louis of
+France, in the pope's quarrel, entered the polemic lists with Luther, and
+persecuted the English protestants. But Wolsey could not blind himself to
+the true condition of the church. He was too wise to be deceived with
+outward prosperity; he knew well that there lay before it, in Europe and at
+home, the alternative of ruin or amendment; and therefore he familiarised
+Henry with the sense that a reformation was inevitable, and dreaming that
+it could be effected from within, by the church itself inspired with a
+wiser spirit, he himself fell first victim of a convulsion which he had
+assisted to create, and which he attempted too late to stay.
+
+His intended measures were approaching maturity, when all Europe was
+startled by the news that Rome had been stormed by the Imperial army, that
+the pope was imprisoned, the churches pillaged, the cardinals insulted, and
+all holiest things polluted and profaned. A spectator, judging only by
+outward symptoms, would have seen at that strange crisis in Charles V. the
+worst patron of heresy, and the most dangerous enemy of the Holy See; while
+the indignation with which the news of these outrages was received at the
+English court, would have taught him to look on Henry as the one sovereign
+in Europe on whom that See might calculate most surely for support in its
+hour of danger. If he could have pierced below the surface, he would have
+found that the pope's best friend was the prince who held him prisoner;
+that Henry was but doubtfully acquiescing in the policy of an unpopular
+minister; and that the English nation would have looked on with stoical
+resignation if pope and papacy had been wrecked together. They were not
+inclined to heresy; but the ecclesiastical system was not the catholic
+faith; and this system, ruined by prosperity, was fast pressing its
+excesses to the extreme limit, beyond which it could not be endured. Wolsey
+talked of reformation, but delayed its coming; and in the mean time, the
+persons to be reformed showed no fear that it would come at all. The
+monasteries grew worse and worse. The people were taught only what they
+could teach themselves. The consistory courts became more oppressive.
+Pluralities multiplied, and non-residence and profligacy. Favoured parish
+clergy held as many as eight benefices.[96] Bishops accumulated sees, and,
+unable to attend to all, attended to none. Wolsey himself, the church
+reformer (so little did he really know what a reformation meant), was at
+once Archbishop of York, Bishop of Winchester, of Bath, and of Durham, and
+Abbot of St. Alban's. In Latimer's opinion, even twenty years later, and
+after no little reform in such matters, there was but one bishop in all
+England who was ever at his work and ever in his diocese. "I would ask a
+strange question," he said, in an audacious sermon at Paul's Cross, "Who is
+the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the
+rest in doing of his office?[97] I can tell, for I know him who it is; I
+know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I
+should name him. There is one that passeth all the others, and is the most
+diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I
+will tell you. It is the devil. Among all the pack of them that have cure,
+the devil shall go for my money, for he applieth his business. Therefore,
+ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil to be diligent in your office.
+If ye will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil."[98]
+
+Under such circumstances, we need not be surprised to find the clergy sunk
+low in the respect of the English people. Sternly intolerant of each
+other's faults, the laity were not likely to be indulgent to the vices of
+men who ought to have set an example of purity; and from time to time,
+during the first quarter of the century, there were explosions of temper
+which might have served as a warning if any sense or judgment had been left
+to profit by it.
+
+In 1514 a London merchant was committed to the Lollards' Tower for refusing
+to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary;[99] and a few days after was
+found dead in his cell. An inquest was held upon the body, when a verdict
+of wilful murder was returned against the chancellor of the Bishop of
+London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the bishop applied
+to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial. "For assured I am,"
+he said, "that if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they
+be so maliciously set _in favorem haereticae pravitatis_, that they will
+cast and condemn any clerk, though he were as innocent as Abel."[100]
+Fish's famous pamphlet also shows the spirit which was seething; and though
+we may make some allowance for angry rhetoric, his words have the clear
+ring of honesty in them; and he spoke of what he had seen and knew. The
+monks, he tells the king, "be they that have made a hundred thousand idle
+dissolute women in your realm, who would have gotten their living honestly
+in the sweat of their faces had not their superfluous riches allured them
+to lust and idleness. These be they that when they have drawn men's wives
+to such incontinency, spend away their husbands' goods, make the women to
+run away from their husbands, bringing both man, wife, and children to
+idleness, theft, and beggary. Yea, who is able to number the great broad
+bottomless ocean sea full of evils that this mischievous generation may
+bring upon us if unpunished?"[101]
+
+Copies of this book were strewed about the London streets; Wolsey issued a
+prohibition against it, with the effect which such prohibitions usually
+have. Means were found to bring it under the eyes of Henry himself; and the
+manner in which it was received by him is full of significance, and betrays
+that the facts of the age were already telling on his understanding. He was
+always easy of access and easy of manner; and the story, although it rests
+on Foxe's authority, has internal marks of authenticity.
+
+"One Master Edmund Moddis, being with the king in talk of religion, and of
+the new books that were come from beyond the seas, said that if it might
+please his Highness to pardon him, and such as he would bring to his Grace,
+he should see such a book as it was a marvel to hear of. The king demanded
+who they were? He said 'Two of your merchants--George Elliot and George
+Robinson.' The king appointed a time to speak with them. When they came
+before his presence in a privy closet, he demanded what they had to say or
+to shew him. One of them said that there was a book come to their hands
+which they had there to shew his Grace. When he saw it he demanded if any
+of them could read it. 'Yea,' said George Elliot, 'if it please your Grace
+to hear it.' 'I thought so,' said the king; 'if need were, thou couldst say
+it without book.'
+
+"The whole book being read out, the king made a long pause, and then said,
+'If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and should begin at the lower
+part, the upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his head.' Then he
+took the book, and put it in his desk, and commanded them, on their
+allegiance, that they should not tell any man that he had seen it."[102]
+
+Symptoms such as these boded ill for a self-reform of the church, and it
+was further imperilled by the difficulty which it is not easy to believe
+that Wolsey had forgotten. No measures would be of efficacy which spared
+the religious houses, and they would be equally useless unless the bishops,
+as well as the inferior clergy, were comprehended in the scheme of
+amendment. But neither with monks nor bishops could Wolsey interfere except
+by a commission from the pope, and the laws were unrepealed which forbade
+English subjects, under the severest penalties, to accept or exercise
+within the realm an authority which they had received from the Holy See.
+Morton had gone beyond the limits of the statute of provisors in receiving
+powers from Pope Innocent to visit the monasteries. But Morton had stopped
+short with inquiry and admonition. Wolsey, who was in earnest with the
+work, had desired and obtained a full commission as legate, but he could
+only make use of it at his peril. The statute slumbered, but it still
+existed.[103] He was exposing not himself only, but all persons, lay and
+clerical, who might recognise his legacy to a Premunire; and he knew well
+that Henry's connivance, or even expressed permission, could not avail him
+if his conduct was challenged. He could not venture to appeal to
+parliament. Parliament was the last authority whose jurisdiction a
+churchman would acknowledge in the concerns of the clergy; and his project
+must sooner or later have sunk, like those of his two predecessors, under
+its own internal difficulties, even if the accident had not arisen which
+brought the dispute to a special issue in its most vital point, and which,
+fostered by Wolsey for his own purposes, precipitated his ruin.
+
+It is never more difficult to judge equitably the actions of public men
+than when private as well as general motives have been allowed to influence
+them, or when their actions may admit of being represented as resulting
+from personal inclination, as well as from national policy. In life, as we
+actually experience it, motives slide one into the other, and the most
+careful analysis will fail adequately to sift them. In history, from the
+effort to make our conceptions distinct, we pronounce upon these intricate
+matters with unhesitating certainty, and we lose sight of truth in the
+desire to make it truer than itself. The difficulty is further complicated
+by the different points of view which are chosen by contemporaries and by
+posterity. Where motives are mixed, men all naturally dwell most on those
+which approach nearest to themselves: contemporaries whose interests are at
+stake overlook what is personal in consideration of what is to them of
+broader moment; posterity, unable to realise political embarrassments which
+have ceased to concern them, concentrate their attention on such features
+of the story as touch their own sympathies, and attend exclusively to the
+private and personal passions of the men and women whose character they are
+considering.
+
+These natural, and to some extent inevitable tendencies, explain the
+difference with which the divorce between Henry VIII. and Catherine of
+Arragon has been regarded by the English nation in the sixteenth and in the
+nineteenth centuries. In the former, not only did the parliament profess to
+desire it, urge it, and further it, but we are told by a contemporary[104]
+that "all indifferent and discreet persons" judged that it was right and
+necessary. In the latter, perhaps, there is not one of ourselves who has
+not been taught to look upon it as an act of enormous wickedness. In the
+sixteenth century, Queen Catherine was an obstacle to the establishment of
+the kingdom, an incentive to treasonable hopes. In the nineteenth, she is
+an outraged and injured wife, the victim of a false husband's fickle
+appetite. The story is a long and painful one, and on its personal side
+need not concern us here further than as it illustrates the private
+character of Henry. Into the public bearing of it I must enter at some
+length, in order to explain the interest with which the nation threw itself
+into the question, and to remove the scandal with which, had nothing been
+at stake beyond the inclinations of a profligate monarch, weary of his
+queen, the complaisance on such a subject of the lords and commons of
+England would have coloured the entire complexion of the Reformation.
+
+The succession to the throne, although determined in theory by the ordinary
+law of primogeniture, was nevertheless, subject to repeated arbitrary
+changes. The uncertainty of the rule was acknowledged and deplored by the
+parliament,[105] and there was no order of which the nation, with any unity
+of sentiment, compelled the observance. An opinion prevailed--not, I
+believe, traceable to statute, but admitted by custom, and having the force
+of statute in the prejudices of the nation--that no stranger born out of
+the realm could inherit.[106] Although the descent in the female line was
+not formally denied, no female sovereign had ever, in fact, sat upon the
+throne.[107] Even Henry VII. refused to strengthen his title by advancing
+the claims of his wife: and the uncertainty of the laws of marriage, and
+the innumerable refinements of the Romish canon law, which affected the
+legitimacy of children,[108] furnished, in connection with the further
+ambiguities of clerical dispensations, perpetual pretexts, whenever
+pretexts were needed, for a breach of allegiance. So long, indeed, as the
+character of the nation remained essentially military, it could as little
+tolerate an incapable king as an army in a dangerous campaign can bear with
+an inefficient commander; and whatever might be the theory of the title,
+when the sceptre was held by the infirm hand of an Edward II., a Richard
+II., or a Henry VI., the difficulty resolved itself by force, and it was
+wrenched by a stronger arm from a grasp too feeble to retain it. The
+consent of the nation was avowed, even in the authoritative language of a
+statute,[109] as essential to the legitimacy of a sovereign's title; and
+Sir Thomas More, on examination by the Solicitor-General, declared as his
+opinion that parliament had power to depose kings if it so pleased.[110] So
+many uncertainties on a point so vital had occasioned fearful episodes in
+English history; the most fearful of them, which had traced its character
+in blood in the private records of every English family, having been the
+long struggle of the preceding century, from which the nation was still
+suffering, and had but recovered sufficiently to be conscious of what it
+had endured. It had decimated itself for a question which involved no
+principle and led to no result, and perhaps the history of the world may be
+searched in vain for any parallel to a quarrel at once so desperate and so
+unmeaning.
+
+This very unmeaning character of the dispute increased the difficulty of
+ending it. In wars of conquest or of principle, when something definite is
+at stake, the victory is either won, or it is lost; the conduct of
+individual men, at all events, is overruled by considerations external to
+themselves which admit of being weighed and calculated. In a war of
+succession, where the great families were divided in their allegiance, and
+supported the rival claimants in evenly balanced numbers, the inveteracy of
+the conflict increased with its duration, and propagated itself from
+generation to generation. Every family was in blood feud with its
+neighbour; and children, as they grew to manhood, inherited the duty of
+revenging their fathers' deaths.
+
+No effort of imagination can reproduce to us the state of this country in
+the fatal years which intervened between the first rising of the Duke of
+York and the battle of Bosworth; and experience too truly convinced Henry
+VII. that the war had ceased only from general exhaustion, and not because
+there was no will to continue it. The first Tudor breathed an atmosphere of
+suspended insurrection, and only when we remember the probable effect upon
+his mind of the constant dread of an explosion, can we excuse or
+understand, in a prince not generally cruel, the execution of the Earl of
+Warwick. The danger of a bloody revolution may present an act of arbitrary
+or cowardly tyranny in the light of a public duty.
+
+Fifty years of settled government, however, had not been without their
+effects. The country had collected itself; the feuds of the families had
+been chastened, if they had not been subdued; while the increase of wealth
+and material prosperity had brought out into obvious prominence those
+advantages of peace which a hot-spirited people, antecedent to experience,
+had not anticipated, and had not been able to appreciate. They were better
+fed, better cared for, more justly governed than they had ever been before;
+and though abundance of unruly tempers remained, yet the wiser portion of
+the nation, looking back from their new vantage-ground, were able to
+recognise the past in its true hatefulness. Thenceforward a war of
+succession was the predominating terror with English statesmen, and the
+safe establishment of the reigning family bore a degree of importance which
+it is possible that their fears exaggerated, yet which in fact was the
+determining principle of their action.
+
+It was therefore with no little anxiety that the council of Henry VIII.
+perceived his male children, on whom their hopes were centred, either born
+dead, or dying one after another within a few days of their birth, as if
+his family were under a blight. When the queen had advanced to an age which
+precluded hope of further offspring, and the heir presumptive was an infirm
+girl, the unpromising prospect became yet more alarming. The life of the
+Princess Mary was precarious, for her health was weak from her childhood.
+If she lived, her accession would be a temptation to insurrection; if she
+did not live, and the king had no other children, a civil war was
+inevitable. At present such a difficulty would be disposed of by an
+immediate and simple reference to the collateral branches of the royal
+family; the crown would descend with even more facility than the property
+of an intestate to the next of kin. At that time, if the rule had been
+recognised, it would only have increased the difficulty, for the next heir
+in blood was James of Scotland; and, gravely as statesmen desired the union
+of the two countries, in the existing mood of the people, the very stones
+in London streets, it was said,[111] would rise up against a king of
+Scotland who claimed to enter England as sovereign. Even the parliament
+itself declared in formal language that they would resist any attempt on
+the part of the Scottish king "to the uttermost of their power."[112]
+
+As little, however, as the English would have admitted James's claims,
+would James himself have acknowledged their right to reject them. He would
+have pleaded the sacred right of inheritance, refusing utterly the
+imaginary law which disentitled him: he would have pressed his title with
+all Scotland to back him, and probably with the open support of France.
+Centuries of humiliation remained unrevenged, which both France and
+Scotland had endured at English hands. It was not likely that they would
+waste an opportunity thrust upon them by Providence. The country might, it
+is true, have encountered this danger, serious as it would have been, if
+there had been hope that it would itself have agreed to any other choice.
+England had many times fought successfully against the same odds, and would
+have cared little for a renewal of the struggle, if united in itself: but
+the prospect on this side, also, was fatally discouraging. The elements of
+the old factions were dormant, but still smouldering. Throughout Henry's
+reign a White Rose agitation had been secretly fermenting; without open
+success, and without chance of success so long as Henry lived, but
+formidable in a high degree if opportunity to strike should offer itself.
+Richard de la Pole, the representative of this party, had been killed at
+Pavia, but his loss had rather strengthened their cause than weakened it,
+for by his long exile he was unknown in England; his personal character was
+without energy; while he made place for the leadership of a far more
+powerful spirit in the sister of the murdered Earl of Warwick, the Countess
+of Salisbury, mother of Reginald Pole. This lady had inherited, in no
+common degree, the fierce nature of the Plantagenets; born to command, she
+had rallied round her the Courtenays, the Nevilles, and all the powerful
+kindred of Richard the King Maker, her grandfather. Her Plantagenet descent
+was purer than the king's; and if Mary died and Henry left no other issue,
+half England was likely to declare either for one of her sons, or for the
+Marquis of Exeter, the grandson of Edward IV.
+
+In 1515, when Giustiniani,[113] the Venetian ambassador, was at the court,
+the Dukes of Buckingham, of Suffolk, and of Norfolk, were also mentioned to
+him as having each of them hopes of the crown. Buckingham, meddling
+prematurely in the dangerous game, had lost his life for it; but in his
+death he had strengthened the chance of Norfolk, who had married his
+daughter. Suffolk was Henry's brother-in-law;[114] chivalrous, popular, and
+the ablest soldier of his day; and Lady Margaret Lennox, also, daughter of
+the Queen of Scotland by her second marriage, would not have wanted
+supporters, and early became an object of intrigue. Indeed, as she had been
+born in England, it was held in parliament that she stood next in order to
+the Princess Mary.[115]
+
+Many of these claims were likely to be advanced if Henry died leaving a
+daughter to succeed him. They would all inevitably be advanced if he died
+childless; and no great political sagacity was required to foresee the
+probable fate of the country if such a moment was chosen for a French and
+Scottish invasion. The very worst disasters might be too surely looked for,
+and the hope of escape, precarious at the best, hung upon the frail thread
+of a single life. We may therefore imagine the dismay with which the nation
+saw this last hope failing them--and failing them even in a manner more
+dangerous than if it had failed by death; for it did but add another doubt,
+when already there were too many. In order to detach France from Scotland,
+and secure, if possible, its support for the claims of the princess, it had
+been proposed to marry the Princess Mary to a son of the French king. The
+negotiations were conducted through the Bishop of Tarbes,[116] and at the
+first conference the Bishop raised a question in the name of his
+government, on the validity of the papal dispensation granted by Julius the
+Second, to legalise the marriage from which she was sprung. The abortive
+marriage Scheme perished in its birth, but the doubt which had been raised
+could not perish with it. Doubt on such a subject once mooted might not be
+left unresolved, even if the raising it thus publicly had not itself
+destroyed the frail chance of an undisputed succession. If the relations of
+Henry with Queen Catherine had been of a cordial kind, it is possible that
+he would have been contented with resentment; that he would have refused to
+reconsider a question which touched his honour and his conscience; and,
+united with parliament, would have endeavoured to bear down all
+difficulties with a high hand. This at least he might have himself
+attempted. Whether the parliament, with so precarious a future before them,
+would have consented, is less easy to say. Fortunately or unfortunately,
+the interests of the nation pointed out another road, which Henry had no
+unwillingness to enter.
+
+On the death of Prince Arthur, five months after his marriage, Henry VII.
+and the father of the Princess alike desired that the bond between their
+families thus broken should be re-united; and, as soon as it became clear
+that Catherine had not been left pregnant (a point which, tacitly at least,
+she allowed to be considered uncertain at the time of her husband's
+decease), it was proposed that she should be transferred, with the
+inheritance of the crown, to the new heir. A dispensation was reluctantly
+granted by the pope,[117] and reluctantly accepted by the English ministry.
+The Prince of Wales, who was no more than twelve years old at the time, was
+under the age at which he could legally sue for such an object; and a
+portion of the English council, the Archbishop of Canterbury among them,
+were unsatisfied,[118] both with the marriage itself, and with the adequacy
+of the forms observed in a matter of so dubious an import. The betrothal
+took place at the urgency of Ferdinand. In the year following Henry VII.
+became suddenly ill; Queen Elizabeth died; and superstition working on the
+previous hesitation, misfortune was construed into an indication of the
+displeasure of Heaven. The intention was renounced, and the prince, as soon
+as he had completed his fourteenth year, was invited and required to
+disown, by a formal act, the obligations contracted in his name.[119] Again
+there was a change. The king lived on, the alarm yielded to the temptations
+of covetousness. Had he restored Catherine to her father he must have
+restored with her the portion of her dowry which had been already received;
+he must have relinquished the prospect of the moiety which had yet to be
+received. The negotiation was renewed. Henry VII. lived to sign the
+receipts for the first instalment of the second payment;[120] and on his
+death, notwithstanding much general murmuring,[121] the young Henry, then a
+boy of eighteen, proceeded to carry out his father's ultimate intentions.
+The princess-dowager, notwithstanding what had passed, was still on her
+side willing;--and the difference of age (she was six years older than
+Henry) seeming of little moment when both were comparatively young, they
+were married. For many years all went well; opposition was silenced by the
+success which seemed to have followed, and the original scruples were
+forgotten. Though the marriage was dictated by political convenience, Henry
+was faithful, with but one exception, to his wife's bed--no slight honour
+to him, if he is measured by the average royal standard in such matters;
+and, if his sons had lived to grow up around his throne, there is no reason
+to believe that the peace of his married life would have been interrupted,
+or that, whatever might have been his private feelings, he would have
+appeared in the world's eye other than acquiescent in his condition.
+
+But his sons had not lived; years passed on, bringing with them premature
+births, children born dead, or dying after a few days or hours,[122] and
+the disappointment was intense in proportion to the interests which were at
+issue. The especial penalty denounced against the marriage with a brother's
+wife[123] had been all but literally enforced; and the king found himself
+growing to middle life and his queen passing beyond it with his prayers
+unheard, and no hope any longer that they might be heard. The disparity of
+age also was more perceptible as time went by, while Catherine's
+constitution was affected by her misfortunes, and differences arose on
+which there is no occasion to dwell in these pages--differences which in
+themselves reflected no discredit either on the husband or the wife, but
+which were sufficient to extinguish between two infirm human beings an
+affection that had rested only upon mutual esteem, but had not assumed the
+character of love.
+
+The circumstances in which Catherine was placed were of a kind which no
+sensitive woman could have endured without impatience and mortification;
+but her conduct, however natural, only widened the breach which personal
+repugnance and radical opposition of character had already made too wide.
+So far Henry and she were alike that both had imperious tempers, and both
+were indomitably obstinate; but Henry was hot and impetuous, Catherine was
+cold and self-contained--Henry saw his duty through his wishes; Catherine,
+in her strong Castilian austerity, measured her steps by the letter of the
+law; the more her husband withdrew from her, the more she insisted upon her
+relation to him as his wife; and continued with fixed purpose and immovable
+countenance[124] to share his table and his bed long after she was aware of
+his dislike for her.
+
+If the validity of so unfortunate a connection had never been questioned,
+or if no national interests had been dependent on the continuance or the
+abolition of it, these discomforts were not too great to have been endured
+in silence. They were not originally occasioned by any latent inclination
+on the part of the king for another woman. They had arisen to their worst
+dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn, and were produced by causes
+of a wholly independent kind; and even if it had not been so, when we
+remember the tenor of his early life we need not think that he would have
+been unequal to the restraint which ordinary persons in similar
+circumstances are able to impose on their caprices. The legates spoke no
+more than the truth when they wrote to the pope, saying that "it was mere
+madness to suppose that the king would act as he was doing merely out of
+dislike of the queen, or out of inclination, for another person; he was not
+a man whom harsh manners and an unpleasant disposition (_duri mores et
+injucunda consuetudo_) could so far provoke; nor could any sane man believe
+him to be so infirm of character that sensual allurements would have led
+him to dissolve a connexion in which he had passed the flower of youth
+without stain or blemish, and in which he had borne himself in his trial so
+reverently and honourably."[125] I consider this entirely true in a sense
+which no great knowledge of human nature is required to understand. The
+king's personal dissatisfaction was great: if this had been all, however,
+it would have been extinguished or endured; but the interests of the
+nation, imperilled as they were by the maintenance of the marriage,
+entitled him to regard his position under another aspect. Even if the
+marriage in itself had never been questioned, he might justly have desired
+the dissolution of it; and when he recalled the circumstances under which
+it was contracted, the hesitation of the council, the reluctance of the
+pope, the alarms and vacillation of his father, we may readily perceive how
+scruples of conscience must have arisen in a soil well prepared to receive
+them--how the loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial
+sentence on a violation of the Divine law. The divorce presented itself to
+him as a moral obligation, when national advantage combined with
+superstition to encourage what he secretly desired; and if he persuaded
+himself that those public reasons, without which, in truth and fact, he
+would not have stirred, were those that alone were influencing him, the
+self-deceit was of a kind with which the experience of most men will
+probably have made them too familiar. In those rare cases where inclination
+coincides with right, we cannot be surprised if mankind should mislead
+themselves with the belief that the disinterested motives weigh more with
+them than the personal.
+
+A remarkable and very candid account of Henry's feelings is furnished by
+himself in one of the many papers of instructions[126] which he forwarded
+to his secretary at Rome. Hypocrisy was not among his faults, and in
+detailing the arguments which were to be laid before the pope he has
+exhibited a more complete revelation of what was passing in himself--and
+indirectly of his own nature in its strength and weakness--than he perhaps
+imagined while he wrote. The despatch is long and perplexed; the style that
+of a man who saw his end clearly, and was vexed with the intricate and
+dishonest trifling with which his way was impeded, and which nevertheless
+he was struggling to tolerate. The secretary was to say, "that the King's
+Highness having above all other things his intent and mind ever founded
+upon such respect unto Almighty God as to a Christian and catholic prince
+doth appertain, knowing the fragility and uncertainty of all earthly
+things, and how displeasant unto God, how much dangerous to the soul, how
+dishonourable and damageable to the world it were to prefer vain and
+transitory things unto those that be perfect and certain, hath in this
+cause, doubt, and matter of matrimony, whereupon depend so high and
+manifold consequences of greatest importance, always cast from his conceit
+the darkness and blundering confusion of falsity, and specially hath had
+and put before his eyes the light and shining brightness of truth; upon
+which foundation as a most sure base for perpetual tranquillity of his
+conscience his Highness hath expressly resolved and determined with himself
+to build and establish all his acts, deeds, and cogitations touching this
+matter; without God did build the house, in vain they laboured that went
+about to build it; and all actions grounded upon that immovable fundament
+of truth, must needs therein be firm, sound, whole, perfect, and worthy of
+a Christian man; which if truth were put apart, they could not for the same
+reason be but evil, vain, slipper, uncertain, and in nowise permanent or
+endurable." He then laboured to urge on the pope the duty of
+straightforward dealing; and dwelt in words which have a sad interest for
+us (when we consider the manner in which the subject of them has been dealt
+with) on the judgment bar, not of God only, but of human posterity, at
+which his conduct would be ultimately tried.
+
+"The causes of private persons dark and doubtful be sometimes," the king
+said, "pretermitted and passed over as things more meet at some seasons to
+be dissimuled than by continual strife and plea to nourish controversies.
+Yet since all people have their eyes conject upon princes, whose acts and
+doings not only be observed in the mouths of them that now do live, but
+also remain in such perpetual memory to our posterity [so that] the evil,
+if any there be, cannot but appear and come to light, there is no reason
+for toleration, no place for dissimulation; but [there is reason] more
+deeply, highly, and profoundly to penetrate and search for the truth, so
+that the same may vanquish and overcome, and all guilt, craft, and
+falsehood clearly be extirpate and reject."
+
+I am anticipating the progress of the story in making these quotations; for
+the main burden of the despatch concerns a forged document which had been
+introduced by the Roman lawyers to embarrass the process, and of which I
+shall by-and-bye have to speak directly; but I have desired to illustrate
+the spirit in which Henry entered upon the general question--assuredly a
+more calm and rational one than historians have usually represented it to
+be. In dealing with the obstacle which had been raised, he displayed a most
+efficient mastery over himself, although he did not conclude without
+touching the pith of the matter with telling clearness. The secretary was
+to take some opportunity of speaking to the pope privately; and of warning
+him, "as of himself," that there was no hope that the king would give way:
+he was to "say plainly to his Holiness that the king's desire and intent
+_convolare ad secundas nuptias non patitur negativum_; and whatsoever
+should be found of bull, brief, or otherwise, his Highness found his
+conscience so inquieted, his succession in such danger, and his most royal
+person in such perplexity for things unknown and not to be spoken, that
+other remedy there was not but his Grace to come by one way or other, and
+specially at his hands, if it might be, to the desired end; and that all
+concertation to the contrary should be vain and frustrate."
+
+So peremptory a conviction and so determined a purpose were of no sudden
+growth, and had been probably maturing in his mind for years, when the
+gangrene was torn open by the Bishop of Tarbes, and accident precipitated
+his resolution. The momentous consequences involved, and the reluctance to
+encounter a probable quarrel with the emperor, might have long kept him
+silent, except for some extraneous casualty; but the tree being thus rudely
+shaken, the ripe fruit fell. The capture of Rome occurring almost at the
+same moment, Wolsey caught the opportunity to break the Spanish alliance;
+and the prospect of a divorce was grasped at by him as a lever by which to
+throw the weight of English power and influence into the papal scale, to
+commit Henry definitely to the catholic cause. Like his acceptance of
+legatine authority, the expedient was a desperate one, and if it failed it
+was ruinous. The nation at that time was sincerely attached to Spain. The
+alliance with the house of Burgundy was of old date; the commercial
+intercourse with Flanders was enormous, Flanders, in fact, absorbing all
+the English exports; and as many as 15,000 Flemings were settled in London.
+Charles himself was personally popular; he had been the ally of England in
+the late French war; and when in his supposed character of leader of the
+anti-papal party in Europe he allowed a Lutheran army to desecrate Rome, he
+had won the sympathy of all the latent discontent which was fermenting in
+the population. France, on the other hand, was as cordially hated as Spain
+was beloved. A state of war with France was the normal condition of
+England; and the reconquest of it the universal dream from the cottage to
+the castle. Henry himself, early in his reign, had shared in this delusive
+ambition; and but three years before the sack of Rome, when the Duke of
+Suffolk led an army into Normandy, Wolsey's purposed tardiness in sending
+reinforcements had alone saved Paris.[127]
+
+There could be no doubt, therefore, that a breach with the emperor would in
+a high degree be unwelcome to the country. The king, and probably such
+members of the council as were aware of his feelings, shrank from offering
+an open affront to the Spanish people., and anxious as they were for a
+settlement of the succession, perhaps trusted that advantage might be taken
+of some political contingency for a private arrangement; that Catherine
+might be induced by Charles himself to retire privately, and sacrifice
+herself, of her free will, to the interests of the two countries. This,
+however, is no more than conjecture; I think it probable, because so many
+English statesmen were in favour at once of the divorce and of the Spanish
+alliance--two objects which, only on some such hypothesis, were compatible.
+The fact cannot be ascertained, however, because the divorce itself was not
+discussed at the council table until Wolsey had induced the king to change
+his policy by the hope of immediate relief.
+
+Wolsey has revealed to us fully his own objects in a letter to Sir Gregory
+Cassalis, his agent at Rome. He shared with half Europe in an impression
+that the emperor's Italian campaigns were designed to further the
+Reformation; and of this central delusion he formed the keystone of his
+conduct. "First condoling with his Holiness," he wrote, "on the unhappy
+position in which, with the college of the most reverend cardinals, he is
+placed,[128] you shall tell him how, day and night, I am revolving by what
+means or contrivance I may bring comfort to the church of Christ, and raise
+the fallen state of our most Holy Lord. I care not whit it may cost me,
+whether of expense or trouble; nay, though I have to shed my blood, or give
+my life for it, assuredly so long as life remains to me for this I will
+labour. And how let me mention the great and marvellous effects which have
+been wrought by my instrumentality on the mind of my most excellent master
+the king, whom I have persuaded to unite himself with his Holiness in heart
+and soul. I urged innumerable reasons to induce him to part him from the
+emperor, to whom he clung with much tenacity. The most effective of them
+all was the constancy with which I assured him of the good-will and
+affection which were felt for him by his Holiness, and the certainty that
+his Holiness would furnish proof of his friendship in conceding his said
+Majesty's requests, in such form as the church's treasure and the authority
+of the Vicar of Christ shall permit, or so far as that authority extends or
+may extend. I have undertaken, moreover, for all these things in their
+utmost latitude, pledging my salvation, my faith, my honour and soul upon
+them. I have said that his demands shall be granted amply and fully,
+without scruple, without room or occasion being left for
+after-retractation; and the King's Majesty, in consequence, believing on
+these my solemn asseverations that the Pope's Holiness is really and indeed
+well inclined towards him, accepting what is spoken by me as spoken by the
+legate of the Apostolic See, and therefore, as in the name of his Holiness,
+has determined to run the risk which I have pressed upon him; he will spare
+no labour or expense, he will disregard the wishes of his subjects, and the
+private interest of his Realm, to attach himself cordially and constantly
+to the Holy See."[129]
+
+These were the words of a man who loved England well, but who loved Rome
+better; and Wolsey has received but scanty justice from catholic writers,
+since he sacrificed himself for the catholic cause. His scheme was bold and
+well laid, being weak only in that it was confessedly in contradiction to
+the instincts and genius of the nation, by which, and by which alone, in
+the long run, either this or any other country has been successfully
+governed. And yet he might well be forgiven if he ventured on an unpopular
+course in the belief that the event would justify him; and that, in uniting
+with France to support the pope, he was not only consulting the true
+interest of England, but was doing what England actually desired, although
+blindly aiming at her object by other means. The French wars, however
+traditionally popular, were fertile only in glory. The rivalry of the two
+countries was a splendid folly, wasting the best blood of both countries
+for an impracticable chimera; and though there was impatience of
+ecclesiastical misrule, though there was jealousy of foreign interference,
+and general irritation with the state of the church, yet the mass of the
+people hated protestantism even worse than they hated the pope, the clergy,
+and the consistory courts. They believed--and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only
+leading member of the privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not
+under the same delusion--that it was possible for a national church to
+separate itself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to
+crush or prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental
+system could still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those
+mysteries were dispensed should minister in gilded chains. This was the
+English historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the second Henry,
+and the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a thing of words and
+paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew well that an
+ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation of doctrine; that
+plain men could not and would not continue to reverence the office of the
+priesthood, when the priests were treated as the paid officials of an
+earthly authority higher than their own. He was not to be blamed if he took
+the people at their word; if he believed that, in their doctrinal
+conservatism, they knew and meant what they were saying: and the reaction
+which took place under Queen Mary, when the Anglican system had been tried
+and failed, and the alternative was seen to be absolute between a union
+with Rome or a forfeiture of catholic orthodoxy, prove after all that he
+was wiser than in the immediate event he seemed to be; that if his policy
+had succeeded, and if, strengthened by success, he had introduced into the
+church those reforms which he had promised and desired,[130] he would have
+satisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the nation.
+
+Like other men of genius, Wolsey also combined practical sagacity with an
+unmeasured power of hoping. As difficulties gathered round him, he
+encountered them with the increasing magnificence of his schemes; and after
+thirty years' experience of public life, he was as sanguine as a boy. Armed
+with this little lever of the divorce, he saw himself, in imagination, the
+rebuilder of the catholic faith and the deliverer of Europe. The king being
+remarried, and the succession settled, he would purge the Church of
+England, and convert the monasteries into intellectual garrisons of pious
+and learned men, occupying the land from end to end. The feuds with France
+should cease for ever, and, united in a holy cause, the two countries
+should restore the papacy, put down the German heresies, depose the
+emperor, and establish in his place some faithful servant of the church.
+Then Europe once more at peace, the hordes of the Crescent, which were
+threatening to settle the quarrels of Christians in the West as they had
+settled them in the East--by the extinction of Christianity itself,--were
+to be hurled back into their proper barbarism.[131] These magnificent
+visions fell from him in conversations with the Bishop of Bayonne, and may
+be gathered from hints and fragments of his correspondence. Extravagant as
+they seem, the prospect of realising them was, humanly speaking, neither
+chimerical nor even improbable. He had but made the common mistake of men
+of the world who are the representatives of an old order of things at the
+time when that order is doomed and dying. He could not read the signs of
+the times; and confounded the barrenness of death with the barrenness of a
+winter which might be followed by a new spring and summer; he believed that
+the old life-tree of Catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering the
+ground, might bloom again in its old beauty. The thing which he called
+heresy was the fire of Almighty God, which no politic congregation of
+princes, no state machinery, though it were never so active, could trample
+out; and as in the early years of Christianity the meanest slave who was
+thrown to the wild beasts for his presence at the forbidden mysteries of
+the gospel, saw deeper, in the divine power of his faith, into the future
+even of this earthly world than the sagest of his imperial persecutors, so
+a truer political prophet than Wolsey would have been found in the most
+ignorant of those poor men, for whom his myrmidons were searching in the
+purlieus of London, who were risking death and torture in disseminating the
+pernicious volumes of the English Testament.
+
+If we look at the matter, however, from a more earthly point of view, the
+causes which immediately defeated Wolsey's policy were not such as human
+foresight could have anticipated. We ourselves, surveying the various
+parties in Europe with the light of our knowledge of the actual sequel, are
+perhaps able to understand their real relations; but if in 1527 a political
+astrologer had foretold that within two years of that time the pope and the
+emperor who had imprisoned him would be cordial allies, that the positions
+of England and Spain toward the papacy would be diametrically reversed, and
+that the two countries were on the point of taking their posts, which they
+would ever afterwards maintain, as the champions respectively of the
+opposite principles to those which at that time they seemed to represent,
+the prophecy would have been held scarcely less insane than a prophecy six
+or even three years before the event, that in the year 1854 England would
+be united with an Emperor Napoleon for the preservation of European order.
+
+Henry, then, in the spring of the year 1527, definitively breaking the
+Spanish alliance, formed a league with Francis I., the avowed object of
+which was the expulsion of the Imperialists from Italy; with a further
+intention--if it could be carried into effect--of avenging the outrage
+offered to Europe in the pope's imprisonment, by declaring vacant the
+imperial throne. Simultaneously with the congress at Amiens where the terms
+of the alliance were arranged, confidential persons were despatched into
+Italy to obtain an interview--if possible--with the pope, and formally
+laying before him the circumstances of the king's position, to request him
+to make use of his powers to provide a remedy. It is noticeable that at the
+outset of the negotiation the king did not fully trust Wolsey. The latter
+had suggested, as the simplest method of proceeding, that the pope should
+extend his authority as legate, granting him plenary power to act as
+English vicegerent so long as Rome was occupied by the Emperor's troops.
+Henry, not wholly satisfied that he was acquainted with his minister's full
+intentions in desiring so large a capacity, sent his own secretary, unknown
+to Wolsey, with his own private propositions--requesting simply a
+dispensation to take a second wife, his former marriage being allowed to
+stand with no definite sentence passed upon it; or, if that were
+impossible, leaving the pope to choose his own method, and settle the
+question in the manner least difficult and least offensive.[132]
+
+Wolsey, however, soon satisfied the king that he had no sinister
+intentions. By the middle of the winter we find the private messenger
+associated openly with Sir Gregory Cassalis, the agent of the minister's
+communications;[133] and a series of formal demands were presented jointly
+by these two persons in the names of Henry and the legate; which, though
+taking many forms, resolved themselves substantially into one. The pope was
+required to make use of his dispensing power to enable the King of England
+to marry a wife who could bear him children, and thus provide some better
+security than already existed for the succession to the throne. This demand
+could not be considered as in itself unreasonable; and if personal feeling
+was combined with other motives to induce Henry to press it, personal
+feeling did not affect the general bearing of the question. The king's
+desire was publicly urged on public grounds, and thus, and thus only, the
+pope was at liberty to consider it. The marriages of princes have ever been
+affected by other considerations than those which influence such relations
+between private persons. Princes may not, as "unvalued persons" may, "carve
+for themselves;" they pay the penalty of their high place, in submitting
+their affections to the welfare of the state; and the same causes which
+regulate the formation of these ties must be allowed to influence the
+continuance of them. The case which was submitted to the pope was one of
+those for which his very power of dispensing had been vested in him; and
+being, as he called himself, the Father of Christendom, the nation thought
+themselves entitled to call upon him to make use of that power. A resource
+of the kind must exist somewhere--the relation between princes and subjects
+indispensably requiring it. It had been vested in the Bishop of Rome,
+because it had been presumed that the sanctity of his office would secure
+an impartial exercise of his authority. And unless he could have shown
+(which he never attempted to show) that the circumstances of the succession
+were not so precarious as to call for his interference, it would seem that
+the express contingency had arisen which was contemplated in the
+constitution of the canon law;[134] and that where a provision had been
+made by the church of which he was the earthly head, for difficulties of
+this precise description, the pope was under an obligation either to make
+the required concessions in virtue of his faculty, or, if he found himself
+unable to make those concessions, to offer some distinct explanation of his
+refusal. I speak of the question as nakedly political. I am not considering
+the private injuries of which Catherine had so deep a right to complain,
+nor the complications subsequently raised on the original validity of the
+first marriage. A political difficulty, on which alone he was bound to give
+sentence, was laid before the pope in his judicial capacity, in the name of
+the nation; and the painful features which the process afterwards assumed
+are due wholly to his original weakness and vacillation.
+
+Deeply, however, as we must all deplore the scandal and suffering which
+were occasioned by the dispute, it was in a high degree fortunate, that at
+the crisis of public dissatisfaction in England with the condition of the
+church, especially in the conduct of its courts of justice, a cause should
+have arisen which tested the whole question of church authority in its
+highest form; where the dispute between the laity and the ecclesiastics was
+represented in a process in which the pope sat as judge; in which the king
+was the appellant, and the most vital interests of the nation were at stake
+upon the issue. It was no accident which connected a suit for divorce with
+the reformation of religion. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction was upon its
+trial, and the future relations of church and state depended upon the
+pope's conduct in a matter which no technical skill was required to decide,
+but only the moral virtues of probity and courage. The time had been when
+the clergy feared only to be unjust, and when the functions of judges might
+safely be entrusted to them. The small iniquities of the consistory courts
+had shaken the popular faith in the continued operation of such a fear; and
+the experience of an Alexander VI., a Julius II., and a Leo X. had induced
+a suspicion that even in the highest quarters justice had ceased to be much
+considered. It remained for Clement VII. to disabuse men of their alarms,
+or by confirming them to forfeit for ever the supremacy of his order in
+England. Nor can it be said for him that the case was one in which it was
+unusually difficult to be virtuous. Justice, wounded dignity, and the
+interests of the See pointed alike to the same course. Queen Catherine's
+relationship to the emperor could not have recommended her to the
+tenderness of the pope, and the policy of assenting to an act which would
+infallibly alienate Henry from Charles, and therefore attach him to the
+Roman interests, did not require the eloquence of Wolsey to make it
+intelligible. If, because he was in the emperor's power, he therefore
+feared the personal consequences to himself, his cowardice of itself
+disqualified him to sit as a judge.
+
+It does not fall within my present purpose to detail the first stages of
+the proceedings which followed. In substance they are well known to all
+readers of English history, and may be understood without difficulty as
+soon as we possess the clue to the conduct of Wolsey. I shall, however, in
+a few pages briefly epitomise what passed.
+
+At the outset of the negotiation, the pope, although he would take no
+positive steps, was all, in words, which he was expected to be. Neither he
+nor the cardinals refused to acknowledge the dangers which threatened the
+country. He discussed freely the position of the different parties, the
+probabilities of a disputed succession, and the various claimants who would
+present themselves, if the king died without an heir of undisputed
+legitimacy.[135] Gardiner writes to Wolsey,[136] "We did even more
+inculcate what speed and celerity the thing required, and what danger it
+was to the realm to have this matter hang in suspense. His Holiness
+confessed the same, and thereupon began to reckon what divers titles might
+be pretended by the King of Scots and others, and granted that, without an
+heir male, with provision to be made by consent of the state for his
+succession, and unless that what shall be done herein be established in
+such fashion as nothing may hereafter be objected thereto, the realm was
+like to come to dissolution."
+
+In stronger language the Cardinal-Governor of Bologna declared that "he
+knew the gyze of England as well as few men did, and if the king should die
+without heirs male, he was sure it would cost two hundred thousand men's
+lives. Wherefore he thought, supposing his Grace should have no more
+children by the queen, and that by taking of another wife he might have
+heirs male, the bringing to pass that matter, and by that to avoid the
+mischiefs afore written, he thought would deserve Heaven."[137] Whatever
+doubt their might be, therefore, whether the original marriage with
+Catherine was legal, it was universally admitted that there was none about
+the national desirableness of the dissolution of it; and if the pope had
+been free to judge only by the merits of the case, it is impossible to
+doubt that he would have cut the knot, either by granting a dispensation to
+Henry to marry a second wife--his first being formally, though not
+judicially, separated from him--or in some other way.[138] But the emperor
+was "a lion in his path;" the question of strength between the French and
+the Spaniards remained undecided, and Clement would come to no decision
+until he was assured of the power of the allies to protect him from the
+consequences. Accordingly he said and unsaid, sighed, sobbed, beat his
+breast, shuffled, implored, threatened;[139] in all ways he endeavoured to
+escape from his dilemma, to say yes and to say no, to do nothing, to offend
+no one, and above all to gain time, with the weak man's hope that
+"something might happen" to extricate him. Embassy followed embassy from
+England, each using language more threatening than its predecessor. The
+thing, it was said, must be done, and should be done. If it was not done by
+the pope it would be done at home in some other way, and the pope must take
+the consequences.[140] Wolsey warned him passionately of the rising
+storm,[141] a storm which would be so terrible when it burst "that it would
+be better to die than to live." The pope was strangely unable to believe
+that the danger could be real, being misled perhaps by other information
+from the friends of Queen Catherine, and by an over-confidence in the
+attachment of the people to the emperor. He acted throughout in a manner
+natural to a timid amiable man, who found himself in circumstances to which
+he was unequal; and as long as we look at him merely as a man we can pity
+his embarrassment. He forgot, however, that only because he was supposed to
+be more than a man had kings and emperors consented to plead at his
+judgment seat--a fact of which Stephen Gardiner, then Wolsey's secretary,
+thought it well to remind him in the following striking language:--
+
+"Unless," said the future Bishop of Winchester in the council, at the close
+of a weary day of unprofitable debating, "unless some other resolution be
+taken than I perceive you intend to make, hereupon shall be gathered a
+marvellous opinion of your Holiness, of the college of cardinals, and of
+the authority of this See. The King's Highness, and the nobles of the realm
+who shall be made privy to this, shall needs think that your Holiness and
+these most reverend and learned councillors either will not answer in this
+cause, or cannot answer. If you will not, if you do not choose to point out
+the way to an erring man, the care of whom is by God committed to you, they
+will say, 'Oh race of men most ungrateful, and of your proper office most
+oblivious! You who should be simple as doves are full of all deceit, and
+craft, and dissembling. If the king's cause be good, we require that you
+pronounce it good. If it be bad, why will you not say that it is bad, so to
+hinder a prince to whom you are so much bounden from longer continuing with
+it? We ask nothing of you but justice, which the king so loves and values,
+that whatever sinister things others may say or think of him, he will
+follow that with all his heart; that, and nothing else, whether it be for
+the marriage or against the marriage.'
+
+"But if the King's Majesty," continued Gardiner, hitting the very point of
+the difficulty, "if the King's Majesty and the nobility of England, being
+persuaded of your good will to answer if you can do so, shall be brought to
+doubt of your ability, they will be forced to a harder conclusion
+respecting this See--namely, that God has taken from it the key of
+knowledge; and they will begin to give better ear to that opinion of some
+persons to which they have as yet refused to listen, that those papal laws
+which neither the pope himself nor his council can interpret, deserve only
+to be committed to the flames." "I desired his Holiness," he adds, "to
+ponder well this matter."[142]
+
+Clement was no hero, but in his worst embarrassments his wit never failed
+him. He answered that he was not learned, and "to speak truth, albeit there
+was a saying in the canon law, that _Pontifex habet omnia jura in scrinio
+pectoris_ (the pope has all laws locked within his breast), yet God had
+never given him the key to open that lock." He was but "seeking pretexts"
+for delay, as Gardiner saw, till the issue of the Italian campaign of the
+French in the summer of 1528 was decided. He had been liberated, or had
+been allowed to escape from Rome, in the fear that if detained longer he
+might nominate a vicegerent; and was residing at an old ruined castle at
+Orvieto, waiting upon events, leaving the Holy City still occupied by the
+Prince of Orange. In the preceding autumn, immediately after the congress
+at Amiens, M. de Lautrec, accompanied by several English noblemen, had led
+an army across the Alps. He had defeated the Imperialists in the north of
+Italy in several minor engagements; and in January his success appeared so
+probable, that the pope took better heart, and told Sir Gregory Cassalis,
+that if the French would only approach near enough to enable him to plead
+compulsion, he would grant a commission to Wolsey, with plenary power to
+conclude the cause.[143] De Lautrec, however, foiled in his desire to bring
+the Imperialists to a decisive engagement, wasted his time and strength in
+ineffectual petty sieges; and finally, in the summer, on the unhealthy
+plains of Naples, a disaster more fatal in its consequences than the battle
+of Pavia, closed the prospects of the French to the south of the Alps; and
+with them all Wolsey's hopes of realising his dream. Struck down, not by a
+visible enemy, but by the silent hand of fever, the French general himself,
+his English friends, and all his army melted away from off the earth. The
+pope had been wise in time. He had committed himself in words and
+intentions; but he had done nothing which he could not recall. He obtained
+his pardon from the emperor by promising to offend no more; and from that
+moment never again entertained any real thought of concession. Acting under
+explicit directions, he made it his object thenceforward to delay and to
+procrastinate. Charles had no desire to press matters to extremities. War
+had not yet been declared[144] against him by Henry; nor was he anxious
+himself to precipitate a quarrel from which, if possible, he would gladly
+escape. He had a powerful party in England, which it was unwise to alienate
+by hasty, injudicious measures; and he could gain all which he himself
+desired by a simple policy of obstruction. His object was merely to
+protract the negotiation and prevent a decision, in the hope either that
+Henry would be wearied into acquiescence, or that Catherine herself would
+retire of her own accord, or, finally, that some happy accident might occur
+to terminate the difficulty. It is, indeed, much to the honour of Charles
+V. that he resolved to support the queen. She had thrown herself on his
+protection; but princes in such matters consider prudence more than
+feeling, and he could gain nothing by defending her: while, both for
+himself and for the church he risked the loss of much. He over-rated the
+strength of his English connection, and mistook the English character; but
+he was not blind to the hazard which he was incurring, and would have
+welcomed an escape from the dilemma perhaps as warmly as Henry would have
+welcomed it himself. The pope, who well knew his feelings, told Gardiner,
+"It would be for the wealth of Christendom if the queen were in her
+grave; and he thought the emperor would be thereof most glad of all;"
+saying, also, "that he thought like as the emperor had destroyed the
+temporalities of the church, so should she be the destruction of the
+spiritualities."[145]
+
+In the summer of 1528, before the disaster at Naples, Cardinal Campeggio
+had left Rome on his way to England, where he was to hear the cause in
+conjunction with Wolsey. An initial measure of this obvious kind it had
+been impossible to refuse; and the pretexts under which it was for many
+months delayed, were exhausted before the pope's ultimate course had been
+made clear to him. But Campeggio was instructed to protract his journey to
+its utmost length, giving time for the campaign to decide itself. He
+loitered into the autumn, under the excuse of gout and other convenient
+accidents, until the news reached him of De Lautrec's death, which took
+place on the 21st of August; and then at length proceeding, he betrayed to
+Francis I., on passing through Paris, that he had no intention of allowing
+judgment to be passed upon the cause.[146] Even Wolsey was beginning to
+tremble at what he had attempted, and was doubtful of success.[147] The
+seeming relief came in time, for Henry's patience was fast running out. He
+had been over-persuaded into a course which he had never cordially
+approved. The majority of the council, especially the Duke of Norfolk and
+the Duke of Suffolk, were traditionally imperial, and he himself might well
+doubt whether he might not have found a nearer road out of his difficulties
+by adhering to Charles. Charles, after all, was not ruining the papacy, and
+had no intention of ruining it; and his lightest word weighed more at the
+court of Rome than the dubious threats and prayers of France. The Bishop of
+Bayonne, resident French ambassador in London, whose remarkable letters
+transport us back into the very midst of that unquiet and stormy scene,
+tells us plainly that the French alliance was hated by the country, that
+the nobility were all for the emperor, and that among the commons the
+loudest discontent was openly expressed against Wolsey from the danger of
+the interruption of the trade with Flanders. Flemish ships had been
+detained in London, and English ships in retaliation had been arrested in
+the Zealand ports; corn was unusually dear, and the expected supplies from
+Spain and Germany were cut off;[148] while the derangement of the woollen
+trade, from the reluctance of the merchants to venture purchases, was
+causing distress all over the country, and Wolsey had been driven to the
+most arbitrary measures to prevent open disturbance.[149] He had set his
+hopes upon the chance of a single cast which he would not believe could
+fail him, but on each fresh delay he was compelled to feel his declining
+credit, and the Bishop of Bayonne wrote, on the 20th of August, 1528, that
+the cardinal was in bad spirits, and had told him in confidence, that "if
+he could only see the divorce arranged, the king remarried, the succession
+settled, and the laws and the manners and customs of the country reformed,
+he would retire from the world and would serve God the remainder of his
+days."[150] To these few trifles he would be contented to confine
+himself--only to these; he was past sixty, he was weary of the world, and
+his health was breaking, and he would limit his hopes to the execution of a
+work for which centuries imperfectly sufficed. It seemed as if he measured
+his stature by the lengthening shadow, as his sun made haste to its
+setting. Symptoms of misgiving may be observed in the many anxious letters
+which he wrote while Campeggio was so long upon his road; and the Bishop of
+Bayonne, whose less interested eyes could see more deeply into the game,
+warned him throughout that the pope was playing him false.[151] Only in a
+revulsion from violent despondency could such a man as Wolsey have allowed
+himself, on the mere arrival of the legate, and after a few soft words from
+him, to write in the following strain to Sir Gregory Cassalis:--
+
+"You cannot believe the exultation with which at length I find myself
+successful in the object for which these many years, with all my industry,
+I have laboured. At length I have found means to bind my most excellent
+sovereign and this glorious realm to the holy Roman see in faith and
+obedience for ever. Henceforth will this people become the most sure pillar
+of support to bear up the sacred fabric of the church. Henceforth, in
+recompense for that enduring felicity which he has secured to it, our most
+Holy Lord has all England at his devotion. In brief time will this noble
+land make its grateful acknowledgments to his clemency at once for the
+preservation of the most just, most wise, most excellent of princes, and
+for the secure establishment of the realm and the protection of the royal
+succession."[152]
+
+This letter was dated on the fourth of October, and was written in the hope
+that the pope had collected his courage, and that the legate had brought
+powers to proceed to judgment. In a few days the prospect was again
+clouded, and Wolsey was once more in despair.[153] Campeggio had brought
+with him instructions if possible to arrange a compromise,--if a compromise
+was impossible, to make the best use of his ingenuity, and do nothing and
+allow nothing to be done. In one of two ways, however, it was hoped that he
+might effect a peaceful solution. He urged the king to give way and to
+proceed no further; and this failing, as he was prepared to find, he urged
+the same thing upon the queen.[154] He invited Catherine, or he was
+directed to invite her, in the pope's name,[155] for the sake of the
+general interests of Christendom, to take the vows and enter what was
+called _religio laxa_, a state in which she might live unincumbered by
+obligations except the easy one of chastity, and free from all other
+restrictions either of habit, diet, or order. The proposal was Wolsey's,
+and was formed when he found the limited nature of Campeggio's
+instructions;[156] but it was adopted by the latter; and I cannot but think
+(though I have no proof of it) that it was not adopted without the
+knowledge of the emperor. Whatever were his own interests, Charles V. gave
+Catherine his unwavering support: he made it his duty to maintain her in
+the ignominious position in which she was placed, and submitted his own
+conduct to be guided by her wishes. It cannot be doubted, however, from the
+pope's words, and also from the circumstances of the case, that if she
+could have prevailed upon herself to yield, it would have relieved him from
+a painful embarrassment. As a prince, he must have felt the substantial
+justice of Henry's demand, and in refusing to allow the pope to pass a
+judicial sentence of divorce, he could not but have known that he was
+compromising the position of the Holy See: while Catherine herself, on the
+other hand, if she had yielded, would have retired without a stain; no
+opinion would have been pronounced upon her marriage; the legitimacy of the
+Princess Mary would have been left without impeachment; and her right to
+the succession, in the event of no male heir following from any new
+connection which the king might form, would have been readily secured to
+her by act of parliament. It may be asked why she did not yield, and it is
+difficult to answer the question. She was not a person who would have been
+disturbed by the loss of a few court vanities. Her situation as Henry's
+wife could not have had many charms for her, nor can it be thought that she
+retained a personal affection for him. If she had loved him, she would have
+suffered too deeply in the struggle to have continued to resist, and the
+cloister would have seemed a paradise. Or if the cloister had appeared too
+sad a shelter for her, she might have gone back to the gardens of the
+Alhambra, where she had played as a child, carrying with her the
+affectionate remembrance of every English heart, and welcomed by her own
+people as an injured saint. Nor again can we suppose that the possible
+injury of her daughter's prospects from the birth of a prince by another
+marriage could have seemed of so vast moment to her. Those prospects were
+already more than endangered, and would have been rather improved than
+brought into further peril.
+
+It is not for us to dictate the conduct which a woman smarting under
+injuries so cruel ought to have pursued. She had a right to choose the
+course which seemed the best to herself, and England especially could not
+claim of a stranger that readiness to sacrifice herself which it might have
+demanded and exacted of one of its own children. We may regret, however,
+what we are unable to censure; and the most refined ingenuity could
+scarcely have invented a more unfortunate answer than that which the Queen
+returned to the legate's request. She seems to have said that she was ready
+to take vows of chastity if the king would do the same. It does not appear
+whether the request was _formally_ made, or whether it was merely suggested
+to her in private conversation. That she told the legates, however, what
+her answer would be, appears certain from the following passage, sadly
+indicating the "devices of policy" to which in this unhappy business
+honourable men allowed themselves to be driven:--
+
+"Forasmuch as it is like that the queen shall make marvellous difficulty,
+and in nowise be conformable to enter religion[157] or take vows of
+chastity, but that to induce her thereunto, there must be ways and means of
+high policy used, and all things possible devised to encourage her to the
+same; wherein percase she shall resolve that she in no wise will condescend
+so to do, unless that the King's Highness also do the semblable for his
+part; the king's said orators shall therefore in like wise ripe and
+instruct themselves by their secret learned council in the court of Rome,
+if, for so great a benefit to ensue unto the king's succession, realm, and
+subjects, with the quiet of his conscience, his Grace should promise so to
+enter religion on vows of chastity for his part, only thereby to conduce
+the queen thereunto, whether in that case the Pope's Holiness may dispense
+with the King's Highness for the same promise, oath, or vow, discharging
+his Grace clearly of the same."[158]
+
+The explanation of the queen's conduct lies probably in regions into which
+it is neither easy nor well to penetrate; in regions of outraged delicacy
+and wounded pride, in a vast drama of passion which had been enacted behind
+the scenes. From the significant hints which are let fall of the original
+cause of the estrangement, it was of a kind more difficult to endure than
+the ordinary trial of married women, the transfer of a husband's affection
+to some fairer face; and a wife whom so painful a misfortune had failed to
+crush would be likely to have been moved by it to a deeper and more bitter
+indignation even, because while she could not blame herself, she knew not
+whom she might rightly allow herself to blame. And if this were so, the
+king is not likely to have allayed the storm when at length, putting faith
+in Wolsey's promises, he allowed himself openly to regard another person as
+his future wife, establishing her in the palace at Greenwich under the same
+roof with the queen, with reception rooms, and royal state, and a position
+openly acknowledged,[159] the gay court and courtiers forsaking the gloomy
+dignity of the actual wife for the gaudy splendour of her brilliant rival.
+Tamer blood than that which flowed in the veins of a princess of Castile
+would have boiled under these indignities; and we have little reason to be
+surprised if policy and prudence were alike forgotten by Catherine in the
+bitterness of the draught which was forced upon her, and if her own
+personal wrongs outweighed the interests of the world. Henry had proceeded
+to the last unjustifiable extremity as soon as the character of Campeggio's
+mission had been made clear to him, as if to demonstrate to all the world
+that he was determined to persevere at all costs and hazards.[160] Taking
+the management of the negotiation into his own keeping, he sent Sir Francis
+Bryan, the cousin of Anne Boleyn, to the pope, to announce that what he
+required must be done, and to declare peremptorily, no more with covert
+hints, but with open menace, that in default of help from Rome, he would
+lay the matter before parliament, to be settled at home by the laws of his
+own country.
+
+Meanwhile, the emperor, who had hitherto conducted himself with the
+greatest address, had fallen into his first error. He had retreated
+skilfully out of the embarrassment in which the pope's imprisonment
+involved him, and mingling authority and dictation with kindness and
+deference, he had won over the Holy See to his devotion, and neutralised
+the danger to which the alliance of France and England threatened to expose
+him. His correspondence with the latter country assured him of the
+unpopularity of the course which had been pursued by the cardinal; he was
+aware of the obstruction of trade which it had caused, and of the general
+displeasure felt by the people at the breach of an old friendship; while
+the league with France in behalf of the Roman church had been barren of
+results, and was made ridiculous by the obvious preference of the pope for
+the enemy from whom it was formed to deliver him. If Charles had understood
+the English temper, therefore, and had known how to avail himself of the
+opportunity, events might have run in a very different channel. But he was
+not aware of the earnestness with which the people were bent upon securing
+the succession, nor of their loyal attachment to Henry. He supposed that
+disapproval of the course followed by Wolsey to obtain the divorce implied
+an aversion to it altogether; and trusting to his interest in the privy
+council, and to his commercial connection with the city, he had attempted
+to meet menace with menace; he had replied to the language addressed by
+Henry to the pope with an attempt to feel the pulse of English
+disaffection, and he opened a correspondence with the Earl of Desmond for
+an Irish revolt.[161]
+
+The opportunity for a movement of this kind had not yet arrived. There was,
+in England at least, as yet no wide disaffection; but there was a chance of
+serious outbreaks; and Henry instantly threw himself upon the nation. He
+summoned the peers by circular to London, and calling a general meeting,
+composed of the nobility, the privy council, the lord mayor, and the great
+merchants of the city, he laid before them a specific detail of his objects
+in desiring the divorce;[162] and informed them of the nature of the
+measures which had been taken.[163] This, the French ambassador informs us,
+gave wide satisfaction and served much to allay the disquiet; but so great
+was the indignation against Wolsey, that disturbances in London were every
+day anticipated; and at one time the danger appeared so threatening, that
+an order of council was issued, commanding all strangers to leave the city,
+and a general search was instituted for arms.[164] The strangers aimed at
+were the Flemings, whose numbers made them formidable, and who were,
+perhaps, supposed to be ready to act under instruction from abroad. The
+cloud, however, cleared away; the order was not enforced; and the
+propitious moment for treason had not yet arrived. The emperor had felt so
+confident that, in the autumn of 1528, he had boasted that, "before the
+winter was over, he would fling Henry from his throne by the hands of his
+own Subjects." The words had been repeated to Wolsey, who mentioned them
+openly at his table before more than a hundred gentlemen. A person present
+exclaimed, "That speech has lost the emperor more than a hundred thousand
+hearts among us;"[165] an expression which reveals at once the strength and
+the weakness of the imperial party. England might have its own opinions of
+the policy of the government, but it was in no humour to tolerate treason,
+and the first hint of revolt was followed by an instant recoil. The
+discovery of more successful intrigues in Scotland and Ireland completed
+the destruction of Charles's influence;[166] and the result of these
+ill-judged and premature efforts was merely to unite the nation in their
+determination to prosecute the divorce.
+
+Thus were the various parties in the vast struggle which was about to
+commence gravitating into their places; and mistake combined with policy to
+place them in their true positions. Wolsey, in submitting "the king's
+matter" to the pope, had brought to issue the question whether the papal
+authority should be any longer recognised in England; and he had secured
+the ruin of that authority by the steps through which he hoped to establish
+it; while Charles, by his unwise endeavours to foment a rebellion, severed
+with his own hand the links of a friendship which would have been seriously
+embarrassing if it had continued. By him, also, was dealt the concluding
+stroke in this first act of the drama; and though we may grant him credit
+for the ingenuity of his contrivance, he can claim it only at the expense
+of his probity. The pope, when the commission was appointed for the trial
+of the cause in England, had given a promise in writing that the commission
+should not be revoked. It seemed, therefore, that the legates would be
+compelled, in spite of themselves, to pronounce sentence; and that the
+settlement of the question, in one form or other, could not long be
+delayed. At the pressure of the crisis in the winter of 1528-9, a document
+was produced alleged to have been found in Spain, which furnished a pretext
+for a recall of the engagement, and opening now questions, indefinite and
+inexhaustible, rendered the passing of a sentence in England impossible.
+Unhappily, the weight of the king's claim (however it had been rested on
+its true merits in conversation and in letters) had, by the perverse
+ingenuity of the lawyers, been laid on certain informalities and defects in
+the original bull of dispensation, which had been granted by Julius II. for
+the marriage of Henry and Catherine. At the moment when the legates' court
+was about to be opened, a copy of a brief was brought forward, bearing the
+same date as the bull, exactly meeting the objection. The authenticity of
+this brief was open, on its own merits, to grave doubt; and suspicion
+becomes certainty when we find it was dropped out of the controversy so
+soon as the immediate object was gained for which it was produced. But the
+legates' hands were instantly tied by it. The "previous question" of
+authenticity had necessarily to be tried before they could take another
+step; and the "original" of the brief being in the hands of the emperor,
+who refused to send it into England, but offered to send it to Rome, the
+cause was virtually transferred to Rome, where Henry, as he knew, was
+unlikely to consent to plead, or where he could himself rule the decision.
+He had made a stroke of political finesse, which answered not only the
+purpose that he immediately intended, but answered, also, the purpose that
+he did not intend--of dealing the hardest blow which it had yet received to
+the supremacy of the Holy See.
+
+The spring of 1529 was wasted in fruitless efforts to obtain the brief. At
+length, in May, the proceedings were commenced; but they were commenced
+only in form, and were never more than an illusion. Catherine had been
+instructed in the course which she was to pursue. She appealed from the
+judgment of the legates to that of the pope; and the pope, with the plea of
+the new feature which had arisen in the case, declared that he could not
+refuse to revoke his promise. Having consented to the production of the
+brief, he had in fact no alternative; nor does it appear what he could have
+urged in excuse of himself. He may have suspected the forgery; nay, it is
+certain that in England he was believed to be privy to it; but he could not
+ignore an important feature of necessary evidence, especially when pressed
+upon him by the emperor; and it was in fact no more than an absurdity to
+admit the authority of a papal commission, and to refuse to permit an
+appeal from it to the pope in person. We may thank Clement for dispelling a
+chimera by a simple act of consistency. The power of the See of Rome in
+England was a constitutional fiction, acknowledged only on condition that
+it would consent to be inert. So long as a legate's court sat in London,
+men were able to conceal from themselves the fact of a foreign
+jurisdiction, and to feel that, substantially, their national independence
+was respected; when the fiction aspired to become a reality, but one
+consequence was possible. If Henry himself would have stooped to plead at a
+foreign tribunal, the spirit of the nation would not have permitted him to
+inflict so great a dishonour on the free majesty of England.
+
+So fell Wolsey's great scheme, and with it fell the last real chance of
+maintaining the pope's authority in England under any form. The people were
+smarting under the long humiliation of the delay, and ill-endured to see
+the interests of England submitted, as they virtually were, to the
+arbitration of a foreign prince. The emperor, not the pope, was the true
+judge who sat to decide the quarrel; and their angry jealousy refused to
+tolerate longer a national dishonour.
+
+"The great men of the realm," wrote the legates, "are storming in bitter
+wrath at our procrastination. Lords and commons alike complain that they
+are made to expect at the hands of strangers things of vital moment to
+themselves and their fortunes. And many persons here who would desire to
+see the pope's authority in this country diminished or annulled, are
+speaking in language which we cannot repeat without horror."[167]
+
+And when, being in such a mood, they were mocked, after two weary years of
+negotiation, by the opening of a fresh vista of difficulties, when they
+were informed that the further hearing of the cause was transferred to
+Italy, even Wolsey, with certain ruin before him, rose in protest before
+such a dream of shame. He was no more the Roman legate, but the English
+minister.
+
+"If the advocation be passed," he wrote to Cassalis,[168] "or shall now at
+any time hereafter pass, with citation of the king in person, or by
+proctor, to the court of Rome, or with any clause of interdiction or
+excommunication, _vel cum invocatione brachii saecularis_, whereby the king
+should be precluded from taking his advantage otherwise, the dignity and
+prerogative royal of the king's crown, whereunto all the nobles and
+subjects of this realm will adhere and stick unto the death, may not
+tolerate nor suffer that the same be obeyed. And to say the truth, in so
+doing the pope should not only show himself the king's enemy, but also as
+much as in him is, provoke all other princes and people to be the
+semblable. Nor shall it ever be seen that the king's cause shall be
+ventilated or decided in any place out of his own realm; _but that if his
+Grace should come at any time to the Court of Rome, he would do the same
+with such a main and army royal as should be formidable to the pope and all
+Italy_."[169]
+
+Wolsey, however, failed in his protest; the advocation was passed,
+Campeggio left England, and he was lost. A crisis had arrived, and a
+revolution of policy was inevitable. From the accession of Henry VII., the
+country had been governed by a succession of ecclesiastical ministers, who
+being priests as well as statesmen, were essentially conservative; and
+whose efforts in a position of constantly increasing difficulty had been
+directed towards resisting the changing tendencies of the age, and either
+evading a reformation of the church while they admitted its necessity, or
+retaining the conduct of it in their own hands, while they were giving
+evidence of their inability to accomplish the work. It was now over; the
+ablest representative of this party, in a last desperate effort to retain
+power, had decisively failed. Writs were issued for a parliament when the
+legate's departure was determined, and the consequences were inevitable.
+Wolsey had known too well the unpopularity of his foreign policy, to
+venture on calling a parliament himself. He relied on success as an
+ultimate justification; and inasmuch as success had not followed, he was
+obliged to bear the necessary fate of a minister who, in a free country,
+had thwarted the popular will and whom fortune deserted in the struggle.
+The barriers which his single hand had upheld suddenly gave way, the
+torrent had free course, and he himself was the first to be swept away. In
+modern language, we should describe what took place as a change of
+ministry, the government being transferred to an opposition, who had been
+irritated by long depression under the hands of men whom they despised, and
+who were borne into power by an irresistible force in a moment of
+excitement and danger. The king, who had been persuaded against his better
+judgment to accept Wolsey's schemes, admitted the rising spirit without
+reluctance, contented to moderate its action, but no longer obstructing or
+permitting it to be obstructed. Like all great English statesmen, he was
+constitutionally conservative, but he had the tact to perceive the
+conditions under which, in critical times, conservatism is possible; and
+although he continued to endure for himself the trifling of the papacy, he
+would not, for the sake of the pope's interest, delay further the
+investigation of the complaints of the people against the church; while in
+the future prosecution of his own cause, he resolved to take no steps
+except with the consent of the legislature, and in a question of national
+moment, to consult only the nation's wishes.
+
+The new ministry held a middle place between the moving party in the
+commons and the expelled ecclesiastics, the principal members of it being
+the chief representatives of the old aristocracy, who had been Wolsey's
+fiercest opponents, but who were disinclined by constitution and sympathy
+from sweeping measures. An attempt was made, indeed, to conciliate the more
+old-fashioned of the churchmen, by an offer of the seals to Warham,
+Archbishop of Canterbury, probably because he originally opposed the
+marriage between the king and his sister-in-law, and because it was hoped
+that his objections remained unaltered. Warham, however, as we shall see,
+had changed his mind: he declined, on the plea of age, and the office of
+chancellor was given to Sir Thomas More, perhaps the person least
+disaffected to the clergy who could have been found among the leading
+laymen. The substance of power was vested in the Dukes of Norfolk and
+Suffolk, the great soldier-nobles of the age, and Sir William Fitz-William,
+lord admiral; to all of whom the ecclesiastical domination had been most
+intolerable, while they had each of them brilliantly distinguished
+themselves in the wars with France and Scotland. According to the French
+ambassador, we must add one more minister, supreme, if we may trust him,
+above them all. "The Duke of Norfolk," he writes, "is made president of the
+council, the Duke of Suffolk vice-president, and above them both is
+Mistress Anne;"[170] this last addition to the council being one which
+boded little good to the interests of the See that had so long detained her
+in expectation. So confident were the destructive party of the temper of
+the approaching parliament, and of the irresistible pressure of the times,
+that the general burden of conversation of the dinner-tables in the great
+houses in London was an exulting expectation of a dissolution of the church
+establishment, and a confiscation of ecclesiastical property; the king
+himself being the only obstacle which was feared by them. "These noble
+lords imagine," continues the same writer, "that the cardinal once dead of
+ruined, they will incontinently plunder the church, and strip it of all its
+wealth," adding that there was no occasion for him to write this in cipher,
+for it was everywhere openly spoken of.[171]
+
+Movements, nevertheless, which are pregnant with vital change, are slow in
+assuming their essential direction, even after the stir has commenced.
+Circumstances do not immediately open themselves; the point of vision
+alters gradually; and fragments of old opinions, and prepossessions, and
+prejudices remain interfused with the new, even in the clearest minds, and
+cannot at a moment be shaken off. Only the unwise change suddenly; and we
+can never too often remind ourselves, when we see men stepping forward with
+uncertainty and hesitation over a road, where to us, we know the actual
+future, all seems so plain, that the road looked different to the actors
+themselves, who were beset with imaginations of the past, and to whom the
+gloom of the future appeared thronged with phantoms of possible
+contingencies. The hasty expectations of the noble lords were checked by
+Henry's prudence; and though parties were rapidly arranging themselves,
+there was still confusion. The city, though disinclined to the pope and the
+church, continued to retain an inclination for the emperor; and the pope
+had friends among Wolsey's enemies, who, by his overthrow, were pressed
+forward into prominence, and divided the victory with the reformers. The
+presence of Sir Thomas More in the council was a guarantee that no
+exaggerated measures against the church would be permitted so long as he
+held the seals; and Henry, perhaps, was anxious to leave room for
+conciliation, which he hoped that the pope would desire as much as himself,
+so soon as the meeting of parliament had convinced him that the mutinous
+disposition of the nation had not been overstated by his own and Wolsey's
+letters.
+
+The impression conceived two years before of the hostile relations between
+the pope and Charles had not yet been wholly effaced; and even as late as
+September, 1529, after the closing of the legates' court, in the very heat
+of the public irritation, there were persons who believed that when Clement
+met his imperial captor face to face, and the interview had taken place
+which had been arranged for the ensuing January, his eyes would be opened,
+and that he would fall back upon England.[172] At the same time, the
+incongruities in the constitution of the council became so early apparent,
+that their agreement was thought impossible, and Wolsey's return to power
+was discussed openly as a probability[173]--a result which Anne Boleyn,
+who, better than any other person, knew the king's feelings, never ceased
+to fear, till, a year after his disgrace, the welcome news were brought to
+her that he had sunk into his long rest, where the sick load of office and
+of obloquy would gall his back no more.
+
+There was a third party in the country, unconsidered as yet, who had a part
+to play in the historical drama: a party which, indeed, if any one had
+known it, was the most important of all; the only one which, in a true,
+high sense, was of importance at all; and for the sake of which, little as
+it then appeared to be so, the whole work was to be done--composed at that
+time merely of poor men, poor cobblers, weavers, carpenters, trade
+apprentices, and humble artisans, men of low birth and low estate, who
+might be seen at night stealing along the lanes and alleys of London,
+carrying with them some precious load of books which it was death to
+possess; and giving their lives gladly, if it must be so, for the brief
+tenure of so dear a treasure. These men, for the present, were likely to
+fare ill from the new ministry. They were the disturbers of order, the
+anarchists, the men disfigured _pravitate heretica_, by monstrous
+doctrines, and consequently by monstrous lives--who railed at authorities,
+and dared to read New Testaments with their own eyes--who, consequently, by
+their excesses and extravagances, brought discredit upon liberal opinions,
+and whom moderate liberals (as they always have done, and always will do
+while human nature remains itself) held it necessary for their credit's
+sake to persecute, that a censorious world might learn to make no confusion
+between true wisdom and the folly which seemed to resemble it. The
+Protestants had not loved Wolsey, and they had no reason to love him; but
+it was better to bear a fagot of dry sticks in a procession when the
+punishment was symbolic, than, lashed fast to a stake in Smithfield, amidst
+piles of the same fagots kindled into actual flames, to sink into a heap of
+blackened dust and ashes; and before a year had passed, they would gladly
+have accepted again the hated cardinal, to escape from the philosophic
+mercies of Sir Thomas More. The number of English Protestants at this time
+it is difficult to conjecture. The importance of such men is not to be
+measured by counting heads. In 1526, they were organised into a society,
+calling themselves "the Christian brotherhood,"[174] with a central
+committee sitting in London; with subscribed funds, regularly audited, for
+the purchase of Testaments and tracts; and with paid agents, who travelled
+up and down the country to distribute them. Some of the poorer clergy
+belonged to the society;[175] and among the city merchants there were many
+well inclined to it, and who, perhaps, attended its meetings "by night,
+secretly, for fear of the Jews." But, as a rule, "property and influence"
+continued to hold aloof in the usual haughty style, and the pioneers of the
+new opinions had yet to win their way along a scorched and blackened path
+of suffering, before the State would consent to acknowledge them. We think
+bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is
+inevitable from the constitution of the world. New doctrines ever gain
+readiest hearing among the common people; not only because the interests of
+the higher classes are usually in some degree connected with the
+maintenance of existing institutions; but because ignorance is itself a
+protection against the many considerations which embarrass the judgment of
+the educated. The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own
+apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms;
+while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories
+which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and one there
+which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality,
+where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage
+and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which,
+by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who entertain
+them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not any more
+believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is necessarily
+fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were supposed to be
+attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to rise among us,
+making murder a religious service; if they gained proselytes, and the
+proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again
+to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to ourselves,
+the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas More, only being as
+much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul is more terrible than
+the single and momentary separation of it from the body. There is, I think,
+no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of
+persecution, except only this: that as we are now convinced of the
+injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be
+just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human
+feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of
+harder nature and more narrow sympathies enforced them without reluctance,
+and even with exultation. The heart, when it is rightly constituted,
+corrects the folly of the head; and wise good men, even though they
+entertain no conscious misgiving as to the soundness of their theories, may
+be delivered from the worst consequences of those theories, by trusting
+their more genial instincts. And thus, and thus only, are we justified in
+censuring those whose names figure largely in the persecuting lists. Their
+defence is impregnable to logic. We blame them for the absence of that
+humanity which is deeper than logic, and which should have taught them to
+refuse the conclusions of their speculative creed.
+
+Such, then, was the state of parties in the autumn of 1529. The old
+conservatives, the political ecclesiastics, had ceased to exist, and the
+clergy as a body were paralysed by corruption. There remained--
+
+The English party who had succeeded to power, and who were bent upon a
+secular revolt.
+
+The papal party, composed of theoretic theologians, like Fisher, Bishop of
+Rochester, and represented on the council by Sir Thomas More.
+
+And both of these were united in their aversion to the third party, that of
+the doctrinal Protestants, who were still called heretics.
+
+These three substantially divided what was sound in England; the first
+composed of the mass of the people, representing the principles of
+prudence, justice, good sense, and the working faculties of social life:
+the two last sharing between them the higher qualities of nobleness,
+enthusiasm, self-devotion; but in their faith being without discretion, and
+in their piety without understanding. The problem of the Reformation was to
+reunite virtues which could be separated only to their mutual confusion;
+and to work out among them such inadequate reconciliation as the wilfulness
+of human nature would allow.
+
+Before I close this chapter, which is intended as a general introduction, I
+have to say something of two prominent persons whose character antecedent
+to the actions in which we are to find them engaged it is desirable that we
+should understand; I mean Henry VIII. himself, and the lady whom he had
+selected to fill the place from which Catherine of Arragon was to be
+deposed.
+
+If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his
+loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had
+ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have
+taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black Prince or of
+the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character
+unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination,
+and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his
+senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore
+through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had
+been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have
+resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in
+Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of
+his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match
+him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk: he drew with ease as
+strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were
+sustained in unfailing vigour by a temperate habit and by constant
+exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not left to judge from the
+suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His state papers and letters
+may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they lose
+nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the
+perception is equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they
+breathe throughout an irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this
+he had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in
+four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of other subjects, with
+which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the
+reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of his
+age; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and new
+constructions in ship-building; and this not with the condescending
+incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding.
+His reading was vast, especially in theology, which has been ridiculously
+ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father's intention of educating him for the
+Archbishopric of Canterbury; as if the scientific mastery of such a subject
+could have been acquired by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no
+more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have studied theology with the
+full maturity of his intellect; and he had a fixed and perhaps unfortunate
+interest in the subject itself.[176]
+
+In all directions of human activity Henry displayed natural powers of the
+highest order, at the highest stretch of industrious culture. He was
+"attentive," as it is called, "to his religious duties," being present at
+the services in chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity,
+and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in
+the energy and purity of his life. In private he was good-humoured and
+good-natured. His letters to his secretaries, though never undignified, are
+simple, easy, and unrestrained; and the letters written by them to him are
+similarly plain and businesslike, as if the writers knew that the person
+whom they were addressing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as
+a man. Again, from their correspondence with one another, when they
+describe interviews with him, we gather the same pleasant impression. He
+seems to have been always kind, always considerate; inquiring into their
+private concerns with genuine interest, and winning, as a consequence,
+their warm and unaffected attachment.
+
+As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been successful.
+He had the splendid tastes in which the English people most delighted, and
+he had substantially acted out his own theory of his duty which was
+expressed in the following words:--
+
+"Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and nurses to their
+subjects, and by Scripture it appeareth that it appertaineth unto the
+office of princes to see that right religion and true doctrine be
+maintained and taught, and that their subjects may be well ruled and
+governed by good and just laws; and to provide and care for them that all
+things necessary for them may be plenteous; and that the people and
+commonweal may increase; and to defend them from oppression and invasion,
+as well within the realm as without; and to see that justice be
+administered unto them indifferently; and to hear benignly all their
+complaints; and to show towards them, although they offend, fatherly pity.
+And, finally, so to correct them that be evil, that they had yet rather
+save them than lose them if it were not for respect of justice, and
+maintenance of peace and good order in the commonweal."[177]
+
+These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct in his
+earlier years. His social administration we have partially seen in the
+previous chapter. He had more than once been tried with insurrection, which
+he had soothed down without bloodshed, and extinguished in forgiveness; and
+London long recollected the great scene which followed "evil May-day,"
+1517, when the apprentices were brought down to Westminster Hall to receive
+their pardons. There had been a dangerous riot in the streets, which might
+have provoked a mild government to severity; but the king contented himself
+with punishing the five ringleaders, and four hundred other prisoners,
+after being paraded down the streets in white shirts with halters round
+their necks, were dismissed with an admonition, Wolsey weeping as he
+pronounced it.[178]
+
+It is certain that if, as I said, he had died before the divorce was
+mooted, Henry VIII., like that Roman Emperor said by Tacitus to have been
+_consensu omnium dignus imperii nisi imperasset_, would have been
+considered by posterity as formed by Providence for the conduct of the
+Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a perpetual calamity.
+We must allow him, therefore, the benefit of his past career, and be
+careful to remember it, when interpreting his later actions. Not many men
+would have borne themselves through the same trials with the same
+integrity; but the circumstances of those trials had not tested the true
+defects in his moral constitution. Like all princes of the Plantagenet
+blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses,
+in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life,
+when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with
+difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to
+contend. Education had done much for him, but his nature required more
+correction than his position had permitted, whilst unbroken prosperity and
+early independence of control had been his most serious misfortune. He had
+capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest
+of men. With all his faults about him, he was still perhaps the greatest of
+his contemporaries; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to
+govern England, had been set to do it by the conditions of his birth.
+
+The other person whose previous history we have to ascertain is one, the
+tragedy of whose fate has blotted the remembrance of her sins--if her sins
+were, indeed, and in reality, more than imaginary. Forgetting all else in
+shame and sorrow, posterity has made piteous reparation for her death in
+the tenderness with which it has touched her reputation; and with the
+general instincts of justice, we have refused to qualify our indignation at
+the wrong which she experienced, by admitting either stain or shadow on her
+fame. It has been with Anne Boleyn as it has been with Catherine of
+Arragon--both are regarded as the victims of a tyranny which catholics and
+protestants unite to remember with horror; and each has taken the place of
+a martyred saint in the hagiology of the respective creeds. Catholic
+writers have, indeed, ill repaid, in their treatment of Anne, the
+admiration with which the mother of Queen Mary has been remembered in the
+Church of England; but the invectives which they have heaped upon her have
+defeated their object by their extravagance. It has been believed that
+matter failed them to sustain a just accusation, when they condescended to
+outrageous slander. Inasmuch, however, as some natural explanation can
+usually be given of the actions of human beings in this world without
+supposing them to have been possessed by extraordinary wickedness, and if
+we are to hold Anne Boleyn entirely free from fault, we place not the king
+only, but the privy council, the judges, the Lords and Commons, and the two
+Houses of Convocation, in a position fatal to their honour and degrading to
+ordinary humanity; we cannot without inquiry acquiesce in so painful a
+conclusion. The English nation also, as well as she, deserves justice at
+our hands; and it must not be thought uncharitable if we look with some
+scrutiny at the career of a person who, except for the catastrophe with
+which it was closed, would not so readily have obtained forgiveness for
+having admitted the addresses of the king, or for having received the
+homage of the court as its future sovereign, while the king's wife, her
+mistress, as yet resided under the same roof, with the title and the
+position of queen, and while the question was still undecided of the
+validity of the first marriage. If in that alone she was to blame, her
+fault was, indeed, revenged a thousandfold,--and yet no lady of true
+delicacy would have accepted such a position; and feeling for Queen
+Catherine should have restrained her, if she was careless of respect for
+herself. It must, therefore, be permitted me, out of such few hints and
+scattered notices as remain, to collect such information as may be trusted
+respecting her early life before her appearance upon the great stage. These
+hints are but slight, since I shall not even mention the scandals of
+Sanders, any more than I shall mention the panegyrics of Foxe; stories
+which, as far as I can learn, have no support in evidence, and rest on no
+stronger foundation than the credulity of passion.
+
+Anne Boleyn was the second daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a gentleman of
+noble family, though moderate fortune;[179] who, by a marriage with the
+daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, was brought into connection with the
+highest blood in the realm. The year of her birth has not been certainly
+ascertained, but she is supposed to have been seven years old[180] in 1514,
+when she accompanied the Princess Mary into France, on the marriage of that
+lady with Louis XII. Louis dying a few months subsequently, the princess
+married Sir Charles Brandon, afterwards created Duke of Suffolk, and
+returned to England. Anne Boleyn did not return with her; she remained in
+Paris to become accomplished with the graces and elegancies, if she was not
+contaminated by the vices, of that court, which, even in those days of
+loyal licentiousness, enjoyed an undesirable pre-eminence in profligacy. In
+the French capital she could not have failed to see, to hear, and to become
+familiar with occurrences with which no young girl can be brought in
+contact with impunity, and this poisonous atmosphere she continued to
+breathe for nine years. She came back to England in 1525, to be maid of
+honour to Queen Catherine, and to be distinguished at the court, by general
+consent, for her talents, her accomplishments, and her beauty. Her
+portraits, though all professedly by Holbein, or copied from pictures by
+him, are singularly unlike each other. The profile in the picture which is
+best known is pretty, innocent, and piquant, though rather insignificant:
+there are other pictures, however, in which we see a face more powerful,
+though less prepossessing. In these the features are full and languid. The
+eyes are large; but the expression, though remarkable, is not pleasing, and
+indicates cunning more than thought, passion more than feeling; while the
+heavy lips and massive chin wear a look of sensuality which is not to be
+mistaken. Possibly all are like the original, but represented her under
+different circumstances, or at different periods of her life. Previous to
+her engagement with the king, she was the object of fleeting attentions
+from the young noblemen about the court. Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord
+Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He
+was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him
+there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be
+true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself. The story
+is not without its difficulties, since Lord Percy had been contracted,
+several years previously, to a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury,[181]
+whom he afterwards married, and by the law he could not have formed a
+second engagement so long as the first was undissolved. And again, he
+himself, when subsequently examined before the privy council, denied
+solemnly on his oath that any contract of the kind had existed.[182] At the
+same time, we cannot suppose Cavendish to have invented so circumstantial a
+narrative, and Percy would not have been examined if there had been no
+reason for suspicion. Something, therefore, probably had passed between him
+and the young maid of honour, though we cannot now conjecture of what
+nature; and we can infer only that it was not openly to her discredit, or
+she would not have obtained the position which cost her so dear. She
+herself confessed subsequently, before Archbishop Cranmer, to a connection
+of some kind into which she had entered before her acquaintance with Henry.
+No evidence survives which will explain to what she referred, for the act
+of parliament which mentions the fact furnishes no details.[183] But it was
+of a kind which made her marriage with the king illegal, and
+illegitimatised the offspring of it; and it has been supposed, therefore,
+that, in spite of Lord Percy's denial, he had really engaged himself to
+her, and was afraid to acknowledge it.[184] This supposition, however, is
+not easy to reconcile with the language of the act, which speaks of the
+circumstance, whatever it was, as only "recently known;" nor could a
+contract with Percy have invalidated her marriage with the king, when Percy
+having been pre-contracted to another person, it would have been itself
+invalid. A light is thrown upon the subject by a letter found among
+Cromwell's papers, addressed by some unknown person to a Mr. Melton, also
+unknown, but written obviously when "Mistress Anne" was a young lady about
+the court, and before she had been the object of any open attention from
+Henry.
+
+"MR. MELTON.--This shall be to advertise you that Mistress Anne is changed
+from that she was at when we three were last together. Wherefore I pray you
+that ye be no devil's sakke, but according to the truth ever justify, as ye
+shall make answer before God; and do not suffer her in my absence to be
+married to any other man. I must go to my master, wheresoever he be, for
+the Lord Privy Seal desireth much to speak with me, whom if I should speak
+with in my master's absence, it would cause me to lose my head; and yet I
+know myself as true a man to my prince as liveth, whom (as my friend
+informeth me) I have offended grievously in my words. No more to you, but
+to have me commended unto Mistress Anne, and bid her remember her promise,
+which none can loose, but God only, to whom I shall daily during my life
+commend her."[185]
+
+The letter must furnish its own interpretation; for it receives little from
+any other quarter. Being in the possession of Cromwell, however, it had
+perhaps been forwarded to him at the time of Queen Anne's trial, and may
+have thus occasioned the investigation which led to the annulling of her
+marriage.
+
+From the account which was written of her by the grandson of Sir Thomas
+Wyatt the poet, we still gather the impression (in spite of the admiring
+sympathy with which Wyatt writes) of a person with whom young men took
+liberties,[186] however she might seem to forbid them. In her diet she was
+an epicure, fond of dainty and delicate eating, and not always contented if
+she did not obtain what she desired. When the king's attentions towards her
+became first marked, Thomas Heneage, afterwards lord chamberlain, wrote to
+Wolsey, that he had one night been "commanded down with a dish for Mistress
+Anne for supper"; adding that she caused him "to sup with her, and she
+wished she had some of Wolsey's good meat, as carps, shrimps, and
+others."[187] And this was not said in jest, since Heneage related it as a
+hint to Wolsey, that he might know what to do, if he wished to please her.
+In the same letter he suggested to the cardinal that she was a little
+displeased at not having received a token or present from him; she was
+afraid she was forgotten, he said, and "the lady, her mother, desired him
+to send unto his Grace, and desire his Grace to bestow a morsel of tunny
+upon her." Wolsey made her presents also at times of a more valuable
+character, as we find her acknowledging in language of exaggerated
+gratitude;[188] and, perhaps the most painful feature in all her earlier
+history lies in the contrast between the servility with which she addressed
+the cardinal so long as he was in power, and the bitterness with which the
+Bishop of Bayonne (and, in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that
+she pressed upon his decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title
+of "the night-crow,"[189] as the person to whom he owed all which was most
+cruel in his treatment; as "the enemy that never slept, but studied and
+continually imagined, both sleeping and waking, his utter
+destruction."[190]
+
+Taking these things together, and there is nothing to be placed beside them
+of a definitely pleasing kind, except beauty and accomplishments, we form,
+with the assistance of her pictures, a tolerable conception of this lady; a
+conception of her as a woman not indeed questionable, but as one whose
+antecedents might lead consistently to a future either of evil or of good;
+and whose character removes the surprise which we might be inclined to feel
+at the position with respect to Queen Catherine in which she consented to
+be placed. A harsh critic would describe her, on this evidence, as a
+self-indulgent coquette, indifferent to the obligations of gratitude, and
+something careless of the truth. From the letter referring to her,
+preserved by Cromwell, it appears that she had broken a definite promise at
+a time when such promises were legally binding, and that she had really
+done so was confirmed by her subsequent confession. The breach of such
+promises by a woman who could not be expected to understand the grounds on
+which the law held them to be sacred, implies no more than levity, and
+levity of this kind has been found compatible with many high qualities.
+Levity, however, it does undoubtedly imply, and the symptom, if a light
+one, must be allowed the weight which is due to it.
+
+It is a miserable duty to be compelled to search for these indications of
+human infirmities; above all when they are the infirmities of a lady whose
+faults, let them have been what they would, were so fearfully and terribly
+expiated; and, if there were nothing else at issue but poor questions of
+petty scandal, it were better far that they perished in forgetfulness, and
+passed away out of mind and memory for ever. The fortunes of Anne Boleyn
+were unhappily linked with those of men to whom the greatest work ever yet
+accomplished in this country was committed; and the characters of a king of
+England, and of the three estates of the realm, are compromised in the
+treatment which she received from them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE PARLIAMENT OF 1529
+
+No Englishman can look back uninterested on the meeting of the parliament
+of 1529. The era at which it assembled is the most memorable in the history
+of this country, and the work which it accomplished before its dissolution
+was of larger moment politically and spiritually than the achievements of
+the Long Parliament itself. For nearly seven years it continued surrounded
+by intrigue, confusion, and at length conspiracy, presiding over a people
+from whom the forms and habits by which they had moved for centuries were
+falling like the shell of a chrysalis. While beset with enemies within the
+realm and without, it effected a revolution which severed England from the
+papacy, yet it preserved peace unbroken and prevented anarchy from breaking
+bounds; and although its hands are not pure from spot, and red stains rest
+on them which posterity have bitterly and long remembered; yet if we
+consider the changes which it carried through, and if we think of the price
+which was paid by other nations for victory in the same struggle, we shall
+acknowledge that the records of the world contain no instance of such a
+triumph, bought at a cost so slight and tarnished by blemishes so trifling.
+
+The letters of the French Ambassador[191] describe to us the gathering of
+the members into London, and the hum of expectation sounding louder and
+louder as the day of the opening approached. In order that we may see
+distinctly what London felt on this occasion, that we may understand in
+detail the nature of those questions with which parliament was immediately
+to deal, we will glance at some of the proceedings which had taken place in
+the Bishops' Consistory Courts during the few preceding years. The duties
+of the officials of these courts resembled in theory the duties of the
+censors under the Roman Republic. In the middle ages, a lofty effort had
+been made to overpass the common limitations of government, to introduce
+punishment for sins as well as crimes, and to visit with temporal penalties
+the breach of the moral law. The punishment best adapted for such offences
+was some outward expression of the disapproval with which good men regard
+acts of sin; some open disgrace; some spiritual censure; some suspension of
+communion with the church, accompanied by other consequences practically
+inconvenient, to be continued until the offender had made reparation, or
+had openly repented, or had given confirmed proof of amendment. The
+administration of such a discipline fell, as a matter of course, to the
+clergy. The clergy were the guardians of morality; their characters were a
+claim to confidence, their duties gave them opportunities of observation
+which no other men could possess; while their priestly office gave solemn
+weight to their sentences. Thus arose throughout Europe a system of
+spiritual surveillance over the habits and conduct of every man, extending
+from the cottage to the castle, taking note of all wrong dealing, of all
+oppression of man by man, of all licentiousness and profligacy, and
+representing upon earth, in the principles by which it was guided, the laws
+of the great tribunal of Almighty God.
+
+Such was the origin of the church courts, perhaps the greatest institutions
+ever yet devised by man. But to aim at these high ideals is as perilous as
+it is noble; and weapons which may be safely trusted in the hands of saints
+become fatal implements of mischief when saints have ceased to wield them.
+For a time, we need not doubt, the practice corresponded to the intention.
+Had it not been so, the conception would have taken no root, and would have
+been extinguished at its birth. But a system which has once established
+itself in the respect of mankind will be tolerated long after it has
+forfeited its claim to endurance, as the name of a great man remains
+honoured though borne by worthless descendants; and the Consistory courts
+had continued into the sixteenth century with unrestricted jurisdiction,
+although they had been for generations merely perennially flowing
+fountains, feeding the ecclesiastical exchequer. The moral conduct of every
+English man and woman remained subject to them. Each private person was
+liable to be called in question for every action of his life; and an
+elaborate network of canon law perpetually growing, enveloped the whole
+surface of society. But between the original design and the degenerate
+counterfeit there was this vital difference,--that the censures were no
+longer spiritual. They were commuted in various gradations for pecuniary
+fines, and each offence against morality was rated at its specific money
+value in the episcopal tables. Suspension and excommunication remained as
+ultimate penalties; but they were resorted to only to compel unwilling
+culprits to accept the alternative.
+
+The misdemeanours of which the courts took cognisance[192] were "offences
+against chastity," "heresy," or "matter sounding thereunto," "witchcraft,"
+"drunkenness," "scandal," "defamation," "impatient words," "broken
+promises," "untruth," "absence from church," "speaking evil of saints,"
+"non-payment of offerings," and other delinquencies incapable of legal
+definition; matters, all of them, on which it was well, if possible, to
+keep men from going wrong; but offering wide opportunities for injustice;
+while all charges, whether well founded or ill, met with ready acceptance
+in courts where innocence and guilt alike contributed to the revenue.[193]
+"Mortuary claims" were another fertile matter for prosecution; and probate
+duties and legacy duties; and a further lucrative occupation was the
+punishment of persons who complained against the constitutions of the
+courts themselves; to complain against the justice of the courts being to
+complain against the church, and to complain against the church being
+heresy. To answer accusations on such subjects as these, men were liable to
+be summoned, at the will of the officials, to the metropolitan courts of
+the archbishops, hundreds of miles from their homes.[194] No expenses were
+allowed; and if the charges were without foundation, it was rare that costs
+could be recovered. Innocent or guilty, the accused parties were equally
+bound to appear.[195] If they failed, they were suspended for contempt. If
+after receiving notice of their suspension, they did not appear, they were
+excommunicated; and no proof of the groundlessness of the original charge
+availed to relieve them from their sentence, till they had paid for their
+deliverance.
+
+Well did the church lawyers understand how to make their work productive.
+Excommunication seems but a light thing when there are many communions. It
+was no light thing when it was equivalent to outlawry; when the person
+excommunicated might be seized and imprisoned at the will of the ordinary;
+when he was cut off from all holy offices; when no one might speak to him,
+trade with him, or show him the most trivial courtesy; and when his
+friends, if they dared to assist him, were subject to the same penalties.
+In the _Register_ of the Bishop of London[196] there is more than one
+instance to be found of suspension and excommunication for the simple crime
+of offering shelter to an excommunicated neighbour; and thus offence begot
+offence, guilt spread like a contagion through the influence of natural
+humanity, and a single refusal of obedience to a frivolous citation might
+involve entire families in misery and ruin.
+
+The people might have endured better to submit to so enormous a tyranny, if
+the conduct of the clergy themselves had given them a title to respect, or
+if equal justice had been distributed to lay and spiritual offenders.
+"Benefit of clergy," unhappily, as at this time interpreted, was little
+else than a privilege to commit sins with impunity. The grossest moral
+profligacy in a priest was passed over with indifference; and so far from
+exacting obedience in her ministers to a higher standard than she required
+of ordinary persons, the church extended her limits under fictitious
+pretexts as a sanctuary for lettered villany. Every person who could read
+was claimed by prescriptive usage as a clerk, and shielded under her
+protecting mantle; nor was any clerk amenable for the worst crimes to the
+secular jurisdiction, until he had been first tried and degraded by the
+ecclesiastical judges. So far was this preposterous exemption carried, that
+previous to the passing of the first of the 23rd of Henry the Eighth,[197]
+those who were within the degrees might commit murder with impunity, the
+forms which it was necessary to observe in degrading a priest or deacon
+being so complicated as to amount to absolute protection.[198]
+
+Among the clergy, properly so called, however, the prevailing offence was
+not crime, but licentiousness. A doubt has recently crept in among our
+historians as to the credibility of the extreme language in which the
+contemporary writers spoke upon this painful topic. It will scarcely be
+supposed that the picture has been overdrawn in the act books of the
+Consistory courts; and as we see it there it is almost too deplorable for
+belief, as well in its own intrinsic hideousness as in the unconscious
+connivance of the authorities. Brothels were kept in London for the
+especial use of priests;[199] the "confessional" was abused in the most
+open and abominable manner.[200] Cases occurred of the same frightful
+profanity in the service of the mass, which at Rome startled Luther into
+Protestantism;[201] and acts of incest between nuns and monks were too
+frequently exposed to allow us to regard the detected instances as
+exceptions.[202] It may be said that the proceedings upon these charges
+prove at least that efforts were made to repress them. The bishops must
+have the benefit of the plea, and the two following instances will show how
+far it will avail their cause. In the Records of the London Court I find a
+certain Thomas Wyseman, priest, summoned for fornication and incontinency.
+He was enjoined for penance, that on the succeeding Sunday, while high mass
+was singing, he should offer at each of the altars in the Church of St.
+Bartholomew a candle of wax, value one penny, saying therewith five
+_Paternosters_, five _Ave Marys_, and five _Credos_. On the following
+Friday he was to offer a candle of the same price before the crucifix,
+standing barefooted, and one before the image of cur Lady of Grace. This
+penance accomplished he appeared again at the court and compounded for
+absolution, paying six shillings and eightpence.[203]
+
+An exposure too common to attract notice, and a fine of six and eightpence
+was held sufficient penalty for a mortal sin.
+
+Even this, however, was a severe sentence compared with the sentence passed
+upon another priest who confessed to incest with the prioress of Kilbourn.
+The offender was condemned to bear a cross in a procession in his parish
+church, and was excused his remaining guilt for three shillings and
+fourpence.[204]
+
+I might multiply such instances indefinitely; but there is no occasion for
+me to stain my pages with them.[205]
+
+An inactive imagination may readily picture to itself the indignation
+likely to have been felt by a high-minded people, when they were forced to
+submit their lives, their habits, their most intimate conversations and
+opinions to a censorship conducted by clergy of such a character; when the
+offences of these clergy themselves were passed over with such indifferent
+carelessness. Men began to ask themselves who and what these persons were
+who retained the privileges of saints,[206] and were incapable of the most
+ordinary duties; and for many years before the burst of the Reformation the
+coming storm was gathering. Priests were hooted, or "knocked down into the
+kennel,"[207] as they walked along the streets--women refused to receive
+the holy bread from hands which they thought polluted,[208] and the
+appearance of an apparitor of the courts to serve a process or a citation
+in a private house was a signal for instant explosion. Violent words were
+the least which these officials had to fear, and they were fortunate if
+they escaped so lightly. A stranger had died in a house in St. Dunstan's
+belonging to a certain John Fleming, and an apparitor had been sent "to
+seal his chamber and his goods" that the church might not lose her dues.
+John Fleming drove him out, saying loudly unto him, "Thou shalt seale no
+door here; go thy way, thou stynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and brybours
+everych one of you."[209] Thomas Banister, of St. Mary Wolechurch, when a
+process was served upon him, "did threaten to slay the apparitor." "Thou
+horson knave," he said to him, "without thou tell me who set thee awork to
+summon me to the court, by Goddis woundes, and by this gold, I shall brake
+thy head."[210] A "waiter, at the sign of the Cock," fell in trouble for
+saying that "the sight of a priest did make him sick," also, "that he would
+go sixty miles to indict a priest," saying also in the presence of
+many--"horsyn priests, they shall be indicted as many as come to my
+handling."[211] Often the officers found threats convert themselves into
+acts. The apparitor of the Bishop of London went with a citation into the
+shop of a mercer of St. Bride's, Henry Clitheroe by name. "Who does cite
+me?" asked the mercer. "Marry, that do I," answered the apparitor, "if thou
+wilt anything with it;" whereupon, as the apparitor deposeth, the said
+Henry Clitheroe did hurl at him from off his finger that instrument of his
+art called the "thymmelle," and he, the apparitor, drawing his sword, "the
+said Henry did snatch up his virga, Anglice, his yard, and did pursue the
+apparitor into the public streets, and after multiplying of many blows did
+break the head of the said apparitor."[212] These are light matters, but
+they were straws upon the stream; and such a scene as this which follows
+reveals the principles on which the courts awarded their judgment. One
+Richard Hunt was summoned for certain articles implying contempt, and for
+vilipending his lordship's jurisdiction. Being examined, he confessed to
+the words following: "That all false matters were bolstered and clokyd in
+this court of Paul's Cheyne; moreover he called the apparitor, William
+Middleton, false knave in the full court, and his father's dettes, said he,
+by means of his mother-in-law and master commissary, were not payd; and
+this he would abide by, that he had now in this place said no more but
+truth." Being called on to answer further, he said he would not, and his
+lordship did therefore excommunicate him.[213] From so brief an entry we
+cannot tell on which side the justice lay; but at least we can measure the
+equity of a tribunal which punished complaints against itself with
+excommunication, and dismissed the confessed incest of a priest with a fine
+of a few shillings.
+
+Such then were the English consistory courts. I have selected but a few
+instances from the proceedings of a single one of them. If we are to
+understand the weight with which the system pressed upon the people, we
+must multiply the proceedings at St. Paul's by the number of the English
+dioceses; the number of dioceses by the number of archdeaconries; we must
+remember that in proportion to the distance from London the abuse must have
+increased indefinitely from the absence of even partial surveillance; we
+must remember that appeals were permitted only from one ecclesiastical
+court to another; from the archdeacon's court to that of the bishop of the
+diocese, from that of the bishop to the Court of Arches; that any language
+of impatience or resistance furnished suspicion of heresy, and that the
+only security therefore was submission. We can then imagine what England
+must have been with an archdeacon's commissary sitting constantly in every
+town; exercising an undefined jurisdiction over general morality; and every
+court swarming with petty lawyers who lived upon the fees which they could
+extract. Such a system for the administration of justice was perhaps never
+tolerated before in any country.
+
+But the time of reckoning at length was arrived; slowly the hand had
+crawled along the dial plate; slowly as if the event would never come: and
+wrong was heaped on wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if no ear
+had heard its voice; till the measure of the circle was at length
+fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great
+hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of
+iniquity was shivered into ruins. Wolsey had dreamed that it might still
+stand, self-reformed as he hoped to see it; but in his dread lest any hands
+but those of friends should touch the work, he had "prolonged its sickly
+days," waiting for the convenient season which was not to be; he had put
+off the meeting of parliament, knowing that if parliament were once
+assembled, he would be unable to resist the pressure which would be brought
+to bear upon him; and in the impatient minds of the people he had
+identified himself with the evils which he alone for the few last years had
+hindered from falling. At length he had fallen himself, and his disgrace
+was celebrated in London with enthusiastic rejoicing as the inauguration of
+the new era. On the eighteenth of October, 1529, Wolsey delivered up the
+seals. He was ordered to retire to Esher; and, "at the taking of his
+barge," Cavendish saw no less than a thousand boats full of men and women
+of the city of London, "waffeting up and down in Thames," to see him sent,
+as they expected, to the Tower.[214] A fortnight later the same crowd was
+perhaps again assembled on a wiser occasion, and with truer reason for
+exultation, to see the king coming up in his barge from Greenwich to open
+parliament.
+
+"According to the summons," says Hall, "the King of England began his high
+court of parliament the third day of November, on which day he came by
+water to his palace of Bridewell, and there he and his nobles put on their
+robes of Parliament, and so came to the Black Friars Church, where a mass
+of the Holy Ghost was solemnly sung by the king's chaplain; and after the
+mass, the king, with all his Lords and Commons which were summoned to
+appear on that day, came into the Parliament. The king sate on his throne
+or seat royal, and Sir Thomas More, his chancellor, standing on the right
+hand of the king, made an eloquent oration, setting forth the causes why at
+that time the king so had summoned them."[215]
+
+"Like as a good shepherd," More said, "which not only keepeth and attendeth
+well his sheep, but also foreseeth and provideth for all things which
+either may be hurtful or noysome to his flock; so the king, which is the
+shepherd, ruler, and governor of his realm, vigilantly foreseeing things to
+come, considers how that divers laws, before this time made, are now, by
+long continuance of time and mutation of things, become very insufficient
+and imperfect; and also, by the frail condition of man, divers new
+enormities are sprung amongst the people, for the which no law is yet made
+to reform the same. For this cause the king at this time has summoned his
+high court of parliament; and I liken the king to a shepherd or herdsman,
+because if a prince be compared to his riches, he is but a rich man; if a
+prince be compared to his honour, he is but an honourable man; but compare
+him to the multitude of his people, and the number of his flock, then he is
+a ruler, a governor of might and puissance; so that his people maketh him a
+prince, as of the multitude of sheep cometh the name of a shepherd.
+
+"And as you see that amongst a great flock of sheep some be rotten and
+faulty, which the good shepherd sendeth from the good sheep; so the great
+wether which is of late fallen, as you all know, so craftily, so scabedly,
+yea, so untruly juggled with the king, that all men must needs guess that
+he thought in himself, either the king had no wit to perceive his crafty
+doings, or else that he would not see nor know them.
+
+"But he was deceived, for his Grace's sight was so quick and penetrable
+that he saw him; yea, and saw through him, both within and without; and
+according to his desert he hath had a gentle correction, which small
+punishment the king will not to be an example to other offenders; but
+clearly declareth that whosoever hereafter shall make like attempt, or
+shall commit like offence, shall not escape with like punishment.
+
+"And because you of the Commons House be a gross multitude, and cannot all
+speak at one time, the king's pleasure is, that you resort to the Nether
+House, and then amongst yourselves, according to the old and antient
+custom, choose an able person to be your common mouth and speaker."[216]
+
+The invective against "the great wether" was not perhaps the portion of the
+speech to which the audience listened with least interest. In the minds of
+contemporaries, principles are identified with persons, who form, as it
+were, the focus on which the passions concentrate. At present we may
+consent to forget Wolsey, and fix our attention on the more permanently
+essential matter--the reform of the laws. The world was changing; how
+swiftly, how completely, no living person knew;--but a confusion no longer
+tolerable was a patent fact to all men; and with a wise instinct it was
+resolved that the grievances of the nation, which had accumulated through
+centuries, should be submitted to a complete ventilation, without reserve,
+check, or secrecy.
+
+For this purpose it was essential that the Houses should not be interfered
+with, that they should be allowed full liberty to express their wishes and
+to act upon them. Accordingly, the practice then usual with ministers, of
+undertaking the direction of the proceedings, was clearly on this occasion
+foregone. In the House of Commons then, as much as now, there was in theory
+unrestricted liberty of discussion, and free right for any member to
+originate whatever motion he pleased. "The discussions in the English
+Parliament," wrote Henry himself to the pope, "are free and unrestricted;
+the crown has no power to limit their debates or to controul the votes of
+the members. They determine everything for themselves, as the interests of
+the commonwealth require."[217] But so long as confidence existed between
+the crown and the people, these rights were in great measure surrendered.
+The ministers prepared the business which was to be transacted; and the
+temper of the Houses was usually so well understood, that, except when
+there was a demand for money, it was rare that a measure was proposed the
+acceptance of which was doubtful, or the nature of which would provoke
+debate. So little jealousy, indeed, was in quiet times entertained of the
+power of the crown, and so little was a residence in London to the taste of
+the burgesses and the country gentlemen, that not only were their expenses
+defrayed by a considerable salary, but it was found necessary to forbid
+them absenting themselves from their duties by a positive enactment.[218]
+
+In the composition of the House of Commons, however, which had now
+assembled, no symptoms appeared of such indifference. The election had
+taken place in the midst of great and general excitement; and the members
+chosen, if we may judge from their acts and their petitions, were men of
+that broad resolved temper, who only in times of popular effervescence are
+called forward into prominence. It would have probably been unsafe for the
+crown to attempt dictation or repression at such a time, if it had desired
+to do so. Under the actual circumstances, its interest was to encourage the
+fullest expression of public feeling.
+
+The proceedings were commenced with a formal "act of accusation" against
+the clergy, which was submitted to the king in the name of the Commons of
+England, and contained a summary of the wrongs of which the people
+complained. This remarkable document must have been drawn up before the
+opening of parliament, and must have been presented in the first week of
+the session,--probably on the first day on which the House met to transact
+business.[219] There is appearance of haste in the composition, little
+order being observed in the catalogue of grievances; but inasmuch as it
+contains the germ of all the acts which were framed in the following years
+for the reform of the church, and is in fact the most complete exhibition
+which we possess of the working of the church system at the time when it
+ceased to be any more tolerable, I have thought it well to insert it
+uncurtailed. Although the fact of the presentation of this petition has
+been well known, it has not been accurately described by any of our
+historians, none of them appearing to have seen more than incorrect and
+imperfect epitomes of it.[220]
+
+"TO THE KING OUR SOVEREIGN LORD
+
+"In most humble wise show unto your Highness and your most prudent wisdom
+your faithful, loving, and most obedient servants the Commons in this your
+present parliament assembled; that of late, as well through new fantastical
+and erroneous opinions grown by occasion of frantic seditious books
+compiled, imprinted, published, and made in the English tongue, contrary
+and against the very true Catholic and Christian faith; as also by the
+extreme and uncharitable behaviour and dealing of divers ordinaries, their
+commissaries and sumners, which have heretofore had, and yet have the
+examination in and upon the said errours and heretical opinions; much
+discord, variance, and debate hath risen, and more and more daily is like
+to increase and ensue amongst the universal sort of your said subjects, as
+well spiritual as temporal, each against the other--in most uncharitable
+manner, to the great inquietation, vexation, and breach of your peace
+within this your most Catholic Realm:
+
+"The special particular griefs whereof, which most principally concern your
+Commons and lay subjects, and which are, as they undoubtedly suppose, the
+very chief fountains, occasions, and causes that daily breedeth and
+nourisheth the said seditious factions, deadly hatred, and most
+uncharitable part taking, of either part of said subjects spiritual and
+temporal against the other, followingly do ensue.--
+
+"I. First the prelates and spiritual ordinaries of this your most excellent
+Realm of England, and the clergy of the same, have in their convocations
+heretofore made or caused to be made, and also daily do make many and
+divers fashions of laws, constitutions, and ordinances; without your
+knowledge or most Royal assent, and without the assent and consent of any
+of your lay subjects; unto the which laws your said lay subjects have not
+only heretofore been and daily be constrained to obey, in their bodies,
+goods, and possessions; but have also been compelled to incur daily into
+the censures of the same, and been continually put to importable charges
+and expenses, against all equity, right, and good conscience. And yet your
+said humble subjects ne their predecessors could ever be privy to the said
+laws; ne any of the said laws have been declared unto them in the English
+tongue, or otherwise published, by knowledge whereof they might have
+eschewed the penalties, dangers, or censures of the same; which laws so
+made your said most humble and obedient servants, under the supportation of
+your Majesty, suppose to be not only to the diminution and derogation of
+your imperial jurisdiction and prerogative royal, but also to the great
+prejudice, inquietation, and damage of your said subjects.
+
+"II. Also now of late there hath been devised by the Most Reverend Father
+in God, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, that in the courts which he
+calleth his Courts of the Arches and Audience, shall only be ten proctors
+at his deputation, which be sworn to preserve and promote the only
+jurisdiction of his said courts; by reason whereof, if any of your lay
+subjects should have any lawful cause against the judges of the said
+courts, or any doctors or proctors of the same, or any of their friends
+and adherents, they can ne may in nowise have indifferent counsel: and
+also all the causes depending in any of the said courts may by the
+confederacy of the said few proctors be in such wise tracted and delayed,
+as your subjects suing in the same shall be put to importable charges,
+costs, and expense. And further, in case that any matter there being
+preferred should touch your crown, your regal jurisdiction, and
+prerogative Royal, yet the same shall not be disclosed by any of the
+said proctors for fear of the loss of their offices. Your most obedient
+subjects do therefore, under protection of your Majesty, suppose that
+your Highness should have the nomination of some convenient number of
+proctors to be always attendant upon the said Courts of Arches and
+Audience, there to be sworn to the preferment of your jurisdiction and
+prerogative, and to the expedition of the causes of your lay subjects
+repairing and suing to the same.
+
+"III. And also many of your said most humble and obedient subjects, and
+_specially those that be of the poorest sort_, within this your Realm, be
+daily convented and called before the said spiritual ordinaries, their
+commissaries and substitutes, _ex officio_; sometimes, at the pleasure of
+the said ordinaries, for malice without any cause; and sometimes at the
+only promotion and accusement of their summoners and apparitors, being
+light and undiscreet persons; without any lawful cause of accusation, or
+credible fame proved against them, and without any presentment in the
+visitation: and your said poor subjects be thus inquieted, disturbed,
+vexed, troubled, and put to excessive and importable charges for them to
+bear--and many times be suspended and excommunicate for small and light
+causes upon the only certificate of the proctors of the adversaries, made
+under a feigned seal which every proctor hath in his keeping; whereas the
+party suspended or excommunicate many times never had any warning; and yet
+when he shall be absolved, if it be out of court, he shall be compelled to
+pay to his own proctor twenty[221] _pence_; to the proctor which is against
+him other twenty pence, and twenty pence to the scribe, besides a privy
+reward that the judge shall have, to the great impoverishing of your said
+poor lay subjects.
+
+"IV. Also your said most humble and obedient servants find themselves
+grieved with the great and excessive fees taken in the said spiritual
+courts, and especially in the said Courts of the Arches and Audience; where
+they take for every citation two shillings and sixpence; for every
+inhibition six shillings and eightpence; for every proxy sixteen pence; for
+every certificate sixteen pence; for every libel three shillings and
+fourpence; for every answer for every libel three shillings and fourpence;
+for every act, if it be but two words according to the register, fourpence;
+for every personal citation or decree three shillings and fourpence; for
+every sentence or judgment, to the judge twenty-six shillings and
+eightpence; for every testament upon such sentence or judgment twenty-six
+shillings and eightpence; for every significavit twelve shillings; for
+every commission to examine witnesses twelve shillings, which charges be
+thought importable to be borne by your said subjects, and very necessary to
+be reformed.
+
+"V. And also the said prelates and ordinaries daily do permit and suffer
+the parsons, vicars, curates, parish priests, and other spiritual persons
+having cure of souls within this your Realm, to exact and take of your
+humble servants divers sums of money for the sacraments and sacramentals of
+Holy Church, sometimes denying the same without they be first paid[222] the
+said sums of money, which sacraments and sacramentals your said most humble
+and obedient subjects, under protection of your Highness, do suppose and
+think ought to be in most reverend, charitable, and godly wise freely
+ministered unto them at all times requisite, without denial, or exaction of
+any manner sums of money to be demanded or asked for the same.
+
+"VI. And also in the spiritual courts of the said prelates and ordinaries
+there be limited and appointed so many judges, scribes, apparitors,
+summoners, appraysers, and other ministers for the approbation of
+Testaments, which covet so much their own private lucres, and the
+satisfaction and appetites of the said prelates and ordinaries, that when
+any of your said loving subjects do repair to any of the said courts for
+the probate of any Testaments, they do in such wise make so long delays, or
+excessively do take of them so large fees and rewards for the same as is
+importable for them to bear, directly against all justice, law, equity, and
+good conscience. Therefore your most humble and obedient subjects do, under
+your gracious correction and supportation, suppose it were very necessary
+that the said ordinaries in their deputation of judges should be bound to
+appoint and assign such discreet, gracious, and honest persons, having
+sufficient learning, wit, discretion, and understanding; and also being
+endowed with such spiritual promotion, stipend, and salary; as they being
+judges in their said courts might and may minister to every person
+repairing to the same, justice--without taking any manner of fee or reward
+for any manner of sentence or judgment to be given before them.
+
+"VII. And also divers spiritual persons being presented as well by your
+Highness as others within this your Realm to divers benefices or other
+spiritual promotions, the said ordinaries and their ministers do not only
+take of them for their letters of institution and induction many large sums
+of money and rewards; but also do pact and covenant with the same, taking
+sure bonds for their indemnity to answer to the said ordinaries for the
+firstfruits of their said benefices after their institution--so as they,
+being once presented or promoted, as aforesaid, are by the said ordinaries
+very uncharitably handled, to their no little hindrance and impoverishment;
+which your said subjects suppose not only to be against all laws, right,
+and good conscience, but also to be simony, and contrary to the laws of
+God.
+
+"VIII. And also _the said spiritual ordinaries do daily confer and give
+sundry benefices unto certain young folks, calling them their nephews or
+kinsfolk_, being in their minority and within age, not apt ne able to serve
+the cure of any such benefice: whereby the said ordinaries do keep and
+detain the fruits and profits of the same benefices in their own hands, and
+thereby accumulate to themselves right great and large sums of money and
+yearly profits, to the most pernicious example of your said lay
+subjects--and so the cures and promotions given unto such infants be only
+employed to the enriching of the said ordinaries; and the poor silly souls
+of your people, which should be taught in the parishes given as aforesaid,
+for lack of good curates [be left] to perish without doctrine or any good
+teaching.
+
+"IX. Also, a great number of holydays now at this present time, with very
+small devotion, be solemnised and kept throughout this your Realm, upon the
+which many great, abominable, and execrable vices, idle and wanton sports,
+be used and exercised, which holydays, if it may stand with your Grace's
+pleasure, and specially such as fall in the harvest, might, by your
+Majesty, with the advice of your most honourable council, prelates, and
+ordinaries, be made fewer in number; and those that shall be hereafter
+ordained to stand and continue, might and may be the more devoutly,
+religiously, and reverendly observed, to the laud of Almighty God, and to
+the increase of your high honour and favour.
+
+"X. And furthermore the said spiritual ordinaries, their commissaries and
+substitutes, sometimes for their own pleasure, sometimes by the sinister
+procurement of other spiritual persons, use to make out process against
+divers of your said subjects, and thereby compel them to appear before
+themselves, to answer at a certain day and place to such articles as by
+them shall be, _ex officio_, then proposed; and that secretly and not in
+open places;[223] and forthwith upon their appearance, without any
+declaration made or showed, commit and send them to ward, sometimes for
+[half] a year, sometimes for a whole year or more, before they may in
+anywise know either the cause of their imprisonment or the name of their
+accuser;[224] and finally after their great costs and charges therein, when
+all is examined and nothing can be proved against them, but they clearly
+innocent for any fault or crime that can be laid unto them, they be again
+set at large without any recompence or amends in that behalf to be towards
+them adjudged.
+
+"XI. And also if percase upon the said process and appearance any party be
+upon the said matter, cause, or examination, brought forth and named,
+either as party or witness, and then upon the proof and trial thereof be
+not able to prove and verify the said accusation and testimony against the
+party accused, then the person so accused is for the more part without any
+remedy for his charges and wrongful vexation to be towards him adjudged and
+recovered.
+
+"XII. Also upon the examination of the said accusation, if heresy be
+ordinarily laid unto the charge of the parties so accused, then the said
+ordinaries or their ministers use to put to them such subtle
+interrogatories concerning the high mysteries of our faith, as are able
+quickly to trap a simple unlearned, or yet a well-witted layman without
+learning, and bring them by such sinister introductions soon to their own
+confusion. And further, if there chance any heresy to be by such subtle
+policy, by any person confessed in words, and yet never committed neither
+in thought nor deed, then put they, without further favour, the said person
+either to make his purgation, and so thereby to lose his honesty and
+credence for ever; or else as some simple silly soul [may do], the said
+person may stand precisely to the testimony of his own well-known
+conscience, rather than confess his innocent truth in that behalf [to be
+other than he knows it to be], and so be utterly destroyed. And if it
+fortune the said party so accused to deny the said accusation, and to put
+his adversaries to prove the same as being untrue, forged and imagined
+against him, then for the most part such witnesses as are brought forth for
+the same, be they but two in number, never so sore diffamed, of little
+truth or credence, they shall be allowed and enabled, only by discretion of
+the said ordinaries, their commissaries or substitutes; and thereupon
+sufficient cause be found to proceed to judgment, to deliver the party so
+accused either to secular hands, after abjuration,[225] without remedy; or
+afore if he submit himself, as best happeneth, he shall have to make his
+purgation and bear a faggot, to his extreme shame and undoing.
+
+"In consideration of all these things, most gracious Sovereign Lord, and
+forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a few years past hath
+been outrageous violence on the one part and much default and lack of
+patient sufferance, charity, and good will on the other part; and
+consequently a marvellous disorder [hath ensued] of the godly quiet, peace,
+and tranquillity in which this your Realm heretofore, ever hitherto, has
+been through your politic wisdom, most honourable fame, and catholic faith
+inviolably preserved; it may therefore, most benign Sovereign Lord, like
+your excellent goodness for the tender and universally indifferent zeal,
+benign love and favour which your Highness beareth towards both the said
+parties, that the said articles (if they shall be by your most clear and
+perfect judgment, thought any instrument of the said disorders and
+factions), being deeply and weightily, after your accustomed ways and
+manner, searched and considered; graciously to provide (all violence on
+both sides utterly and clearly set apart) some such necessary and behoveful
+remedies as may effectually reconcile and bring in perpetual unity, your
+said subjects, spiritual and temporal; and for the establishment thereof,
+to make and ordain on both sides such strait laws against transgressors and
+offenders as shall be too heavy, dangerous, and weighty for them, or any of
+them, to bear, suffer, and sustain.
+
+"Whereunto your said Commons most humbly and entirely beseech your Grace,
+as the only Head, Sovereign Lord and Protector of both the said parties, in
+whom and by whom the only and sole redress, reformation, and remedy herein
+absolutely resteth [of your goodness to consent]. By occasion whereof all
+your Commons in their conscience surely account that, beside the marvellous
+fervent love that your Highness shall thereby engender in their hearts
+towards your Grace, ye shall do the most princely feat, and show the most
+honourable and charitable precedent and mirrour that ever did sovereign
+lord upon his subjects; and therewithal merit and deserve of our merciful
+God eternal bliss--whose goodness grant your Grace in goodly, princely, and
+honourable estate long to reign, prosper, and continue as the Sovereign
+Lord over all your said most humble and obedient servants."[226]
+
+But little comment need be added in explanation of this petition, which,
+though drawn with evident haste, is no less remarkable for temper and good
+feeling, than for the masterly clearness with which the evils complained of
+are laid bare. Historians will be careful for the future how they swell the
+charges against Wolsey with quoting the lamentations of Archbishop Warham,
+when his Court of Arches was for a while superseded by the Legate's Court,
+and causes lingering before his commissaries were summarily dispatched at a
+higher tribunal.[227] The archbishop professed, indeed, that he derived no
+personal advantage from his courts,[228] and as we have only the popular
+impression to the contrary to set against his word, we must believe him;
+yet it was of small moment to the laity who were pillaged, whether the
+spoils taken from them filled the coffers of the master, or those of his
+followers and friends.
+
+When we consider, also, the significant allusion[229] to the young folks
+whom the bishops called their nephews, we cease to wonder at their lenient
+dealing with the poor priests who had sunk under the temptations of frail
+humanity; and still less can we wonder at the rough handling which was soon
+found necessary to bring back these high dignitaries to a better mind.
+
+The House of Commons, in casting their grievances into the form of a
+petition, showed that they had no desire to thrust forward of themselves
+violent measures of reform; they sought rather to explain firmly and
+decisively what the country required. The king, selecting out of the many
+points noticed those which seemed most immediately pressing, referred them
+back to the parliament, with a direction to draw up such enactments as in
+their own judgment would furnish effective relief. In the meantime he
+submitted the petition itself to the consideration of the bishops,
+requiring their immediate answer to the charges against them, and
+accompanied this request with a further important requisition. The
+legislative authority of convocation lay at the root of the evils which
+were most complained of. The bishops and clergy held themselves independent
+of either crown or parliament, passing canons by their own irresponsible
+and unchecked will, irrespective of the laws of the land, and sometimes in
+direct violation of them; and to these canons the laity were amenable
+without being made acquainted with their provisions, learning them only in
+the infliction of penalties for their unintended breach. The king required
+that thenceforward the convocation should consent to place itself in the
+position of parliament, and that his own consent should be required and
+received before any law passed by convocation should have the force of
+statute.[230]
+
+Little notion, indeed, could the bishops have possessed of the position in
+which they were standing. It seemed as if they literally believed that the
+promise of perpetuity which Christ had made to his church was a charm which
+would hold them free in the quiet course of their injustice; or else, under
+the blinding influence of custom, they did not really know that any
+injustice adhered to them. They could see in themselves only the ideal
+virtues of their saintly office, and not the vices of their fragile
+humanity; they believed that they were still holy, still spotless, still
+immaculate, and therefore that no danger might come near them. It cannot
+have been but that, before the minds of such men as Warham and Fisher, some
+visions of a future must at times have floated, which hung so plainly
+before the eyes of Wolsey and of Sir Thomas More.[231] They could not have
+been wholly deaf to the storm in Germany; and they must have heard
+something of the growls of smothered anger which for years had been audible
+at home, to all who had ears to hear.[232] Yet if any such thoughts at
+times did cross their imagination, they were thrust aside as an uneasy
+dream, to be shaken off like a nightmare, or with the coward's consolation,
+"It will last my time." If the bishops ever felt an uneasy moment, there is
+no trace of uneasiness in the answer which they sent in to the king, and
+which now, when we read it with the light which is thrown back out of the
+succeeding years, seems like the composition of mere lunacy. Perhaps they
+had confidence in the support of Henry. In their courts they were in the
+habit of identifying an attack upon themselves with an attack upon the
+doctrines of the Church; and reading the king's feelings in their own, they
+may have considered themselves safe under the protection of a sovereign who
+had broken a lance with Luther, and had called himself the Pope's champion.
+Perhaps they thought that they had bound him to themselves by a declaration
+which they had all signed in the preceding summer in favour of the
+divorce.[233] Perhaps they were but steeped in the dulness of official
+lethargy. The defence is long, wearying the patience to read it; wearying
+the imagination to invent excuses for the falsehoods which it contains. Yet
+it is well to see all men in the light in which they see themselves; and
+justice requires that we allow the bishops the benefit of their own reply.
+It was couched in the following words:--[234]
+
+"After our most humble wise, with our most bounden duty of honour and
+reverence to your excellent Majesty, endued from God with incomparable
+wisdom and goodness. Please it the same to understand that we, your orators
+and daily bounden bedemen, have read and perused a certain supplication
+which the Commons of your Grace's honourable parliament now assembled have
+offered unto your Highness, and by your Grace's commandment delivered unto
+us, that we should make answer thereunto. We have, as the time hath served,
+made this answer following, beseeching your Grace's indifferent benignity
+graciously to hear the same.
+
+"And first for that discord, variance, and debate which, in the preface of
+the said supplication they do allege to have risen among your Grace's
+subjects, spiritual and temporal, occasioned, as they say, by the
+uncharitable behaviour and demeanour of divers ordinaries: to this we, the
+ordinaries, answer, assuring your Majesty that in our hearts there is no
+such discord or variance ort our part against our brethren in God and
+ghostly children your subjects, as is induced in this preface; but our
+daily prayer is and shall be that all peace and concord may increase among
+your Grace's true subjects our said children, whom God be our witness we
+love, have loved, and shall love ever with hearty affection; never
+intending any hurt ne harm towards any of them in soul or body; ne have we
+ever enterprised anything against them of trouble, vexation, or
+displeasure; but only have, with all charity, exercised the spiritual
+jurisdiction of the Church, as we are bound of duty, upon certain
+evil-disposed persons infected with the pestilent poison of heresy. And to
+have peace with such had been against the Gospel of our Saviour Christ,
+wherein he saith, _Non veni mittere pacem sed gladium_. Wherefore,
+forasmuch as we know well that there be as well-disposed and
+well-conscienced men of your Grace's Commons in no small number assembled,
+as ever we knew at any time in parliament; and with that consider how on
+our part there is given no such occasion why the whole number of the
+spirituality and clergy should be thus noted unto your Highness; we
+humbling our hearts to God and remitting the judgment of this our
+inquietation to Him, and trusting, as his Scripture teacheth, that if we
+love him above all, omnia cooperabuntur in bonum, shall endeavour to
+declare to your Highness the innocency of us, your poor orators.
+
+"And where, after the general preface of the same supplication, your
+Grace's Commons descend to special particular griefs, and first to those
+divers fashions of laws concerning temporal things, whereon, as they say,
+the clergy in their convocation have made and daily do make divers laws, to
+their great trouble and inquietation, which said laws be sometimes
+repugnant to the statutes of your Realm, with many other complaints
+thereupon:[235] To this we say, that forasmuch as we repute and take our
+authority of making of laws to be grounded upon the Scriptures of God and
+the determination of Holy Church, which must be the rule and square to try
+the justice and righteousness of all laws, as well spiritual as temporal,
+we verily trust that in such laws as have been made by us, or by our
+predecessors, the same being sincerely interpreted, and after the meaning
+of the makers, there shall be found nothing contained in them but such as
+may be well justified by the said rule and square. And if it shall
+otherwise appear, as it is our duty whereunto we shall always most
+diligently apply ourselves to reform our ordinances to God's commission,
+and to conform our statutes to the determination of Scripture and Holy
+Church; _so we hope in God, and shall daily pray for the same, that your
+Highness will, if there appear cause why, with the assent of your people,
+temper your Grace's laws accordingly; whereby shall ensue a most sure and
+hearty conjunction and agreement; God being lapis angularis_.
+
+"And as concerning the requiring of your Highness's royal assent to the
+authorising of such laws as have been made by our predecessors, or shall be
+made by us, in such points and articles, as we have authority to rule and
+order; we knowing your Highness's wisdom, virtue, and learning, nothing
+doubt but that the same perceiveth how the granting thereunto dependeth not
+upon our will and liberty, _and that we may not submit the execution of our
+charges and duty certainly prescribed to us by God to your Highness's
+assent_; although, indeed, the same is most worthy for your most princely
+and excellent virtues, not only to give your royal assent, but also to
+devise and command what we should for good order or manners by statutes and
+laws provide in the church. Nevertheless, we considering we may not so nor
+in such sort restrain the doing of our office in the feeding and ruling of
+Christ's people, we most humbly desire your Grace (as the same hath done
+heretofore) to show your Grace's mind and opinion unto us, which we shall
+most gladly hear and follow if it shall please God to inspire us so to do;
+and with all humility we therefore beseech your Grace, following the steps
+of your most noble progenitors, to maintain and defend such laws and
+ordinances as we, according to our calling and by the authority of God,
+shall for his honour make to the edification of virtue and the maintaining
+of Christ's faith, whereof your Highness is defender in name, and hath been
+hitherto indeed a special protector.
+
+"Furthermore, where there be found in the said supplication, with mention
+of your Grace's person, other griefs that some of the said laws extend to
+the goods and possessions of your said lay subjects, declaring the
+transgressors not only to fall under the terrible censure of
+excommunication, but also under the detestable crime of heresy:
+
+"To this we answer that we remember no such, and yet if there be any such,
+it is but according to the common law of the Church, and also to your
+Grace's law, which determine and decree that every person spiritual or
+temporal condemned of heresy shall forfeit his moveables or immoveables to
+your Highness, or to the lord spiritual or temporal that by law hath right
+to them.[236] Other statutes we remember none that toucheth lands or goods.
+If there be, it were good that they were brought forth to be weighed and
+pondered accordingly.
+
+"Item as touching the second principal article of the said supplication,
+where they say that divers and many of your Grace's obedient subjects, and
+especially they that be of the poorest sort, be daily called before us or
+before our substitutes ex officio; sometimes at the pleasure of us, the
+ordinaries, without any probable cause, and sometimes at the only promotion
+of our summoner, without any credible fame first proved against them, and
+without presentment in the visitation or lawful accusation:
+
+"On this we desire your high wisdom and learning to consider that albeit in
+the ordering of Christ's people, your Grace's subjects, God of His
+spiritual goodness assisteth his church, and inspireth by the Holy Ghost as
+we verily trust such rules and laws as tend to the wealth of his elect
+folk; yet upon considerations to man unknown, his infinite wisdom leaveth
+or permitteth men to walk in their infirmity and frailty; so that we cannot
+ne will arrogantly presume of ourselves, as though being in name spiritual
+men, we were also in all our acts and doings clean and void from all
+temporal affections and carnality of this world, or that the laws of the
+church made for spiritual and ghostly purpose be not sometime applied to
+worldly intent. This we ought and do lament, as becometh us, very sore.
+Nevertheless, as the evil deeds of men be the mere defaults of those
+particular men, and not of the whole order of the clergy, nor of the law
+wholesomely by them made; our request and petition shall be with all
+humility and reverence; that laws well made be not therefore called evil
+because by all men and at all times they be not well executed; and that in
+such defaults as shall appear such distribution may be used _ut unusquisque
+onus suum portet_, and remedy be found to reform the offenders; unto the
+which your Highness shall perceive as great towardness in your said orators
+as can be required upon declaration of particulars. And other answer than
+this cannot be made in the name of your whole clergy, for though _in multis
+offendimus omnes_, as St. James saith, yet not 'in omnibus offendimus
+omnes;' and the whole number can neither justify ne condemn particular acts
+to them unknown but thus. He that calleth a man ex officio for correction
+of sin, doeth well. He that calleth men for pleasure or vexation, doeth
+evil. Summoners should be honest men. If they offend in their office, they
+should be punished. To prove first [their faults] before men be called, is
+not necessary. He that is called according to the laws ex officio or
+otherwise, cannot complain. He that is otherwise ordered should have by
+reason convenient recompence and so forth; that is well to be allowed, and
+misdemeanour when it appeareth to be reproved.
+
+"Item where they say in the same article that upon their appearance ex
+officio at the only pleasure of the ordinaries, they be committed to prison
+without bail or mainprize; and there they lie some half a year or more
+before they come to their deliverance; to this we answer,--
+
+"That we use no prison before conviction but for sure custody, and only of
+such as be suspected of heresy, in which crime, thanked be God, there hath
+fallen no such notable person in our time, or of such qualities as hath
+given occasion of any sinister suspicion to be conceived of malice or
+hatred to his person other than the heinousness of their crime deserveth.
+_Truth it is that certain apostates, friars, monks, lewd priests, bankrupt
+merchants, vagabonds, and lewd idle fellows of corrupt intent, have
+embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany_;
+and by them some have been seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against
+these, if judgment has been exercised according to the laws of the church,
+and conformably to the laws of this realm, we be without blame. If we have
+been too remiss and slack, we shall gladly do our duty from henceforth. If
+any man hath been, under pretence of this [crime], particularly offended,
+it were pity to suffer any man to be wronged; and thus it ought to be, and
+otherwise we cannot answer, no man's special case being declared in the
+said petition.
+
+"Item where they say further that they so appearing ex officio, be
+condemned to answer to many subtle questions by the which a simple,
+unlearned, or else a well-witted layman without learning sometimes is, and
+commonly may be trapped and induced into peril of open penance to their
+shame, or else [forced] to redeem their penance for money, as is commonly
+used; to this we answer that we should not use subtlety, for we should do
+all things plainly and openly; and if we do otherwise, we do amiss. We
+ought not to ask questions, but after the capacities of the man. Christ
+hath defended his true doctrine and faith in his Catholic church from all
+subtlety, and so preserved good men in the same, as they have not (blessed
+be God) been vexed, inquieted, or troubled in Christ's church. Thereupon
+evil men fall in danger by their own subtlety; we protest afore God we have
+neither known, read, nor heard of any one man damaged or prejudiced by
+spiritual jurisdiction in this behalf, neither in this realm nor any other,
+but only by his own deserts. Such is the goodness of God in maintaining the
+cause of his Catholic faith.
+
+"Item where they say they be compelled to do open penance, or else redeem
+the same for money; as for penance, we answer it consisteth in the arbitre
+of a judge who ought to enjoin such penance as might profit for correction
+of the fault. Whereupon we disallow that judge's doing who taketh money for
+penance for lucre or advantage, not regarding the reformation of sin as he
+ought to do. But when open penance may sometimes work in certain persons
+more hurt than good, it is commendable and allowable in that case to punish
+by the purse, and preserve the fame of the party; foreseeing always the
+money be converted _in usus pios et eleemosynam_, and thus we think of the
+thing, and that the offenders should be punished.
+
+"Item where they complain that two witnesses be admitted, be they never so
+defamed, of little truth or credence, adversaries or enemies to the
+parties; yet in many cases they be allowed by the discretion of the
+ordinaries to put the party defamed, ex officio, to open penance, and then
+to redemption for money; so that every of your subjects, upon the only will
+of the ordinaries or their substitutes, without any accuser, proved fame,
+or presentment, is or may be infamed, vexed, and troubled, to the peril of
+their lives, their shames, costs, and expenses:
+
+"To this we reply, _the Gospel of Christ teacheth us to believe two
+witnesses; and as the cause is, so the judge must esteem the quality of the
+witness; and in heresy no exception is necessary to be considered if their
+tale be likely; which hath been highly provided lest heretics without
+jeopardy might else plant their_ _heresies in lewd and light persons, and
+taking exception to the witnesses, take boldness to continue their folly.
+This is the universal law of Christendom, and hath universally done good.
+Of any injury done to any man thereby we know not_.
+
+"Item where they say it is not intended by them to take away from us our
+authority to correct and punish sins, and especially the detestable crime
+of heresy:
+
+"To this we answer, in the prosecuting heretics we regard our duty and
+office whereunto we be called, and if God will discharge us thereof, or
+cease that plague universal, as, by directing the hearts of princes, and
+specially the heart of your Highness (laud and thanks be unto Him), His
+goodness doth commence and begin to do, we should and shall have great
+cause to rejoice; as being our authority therein costly, dangerous, full of
+trouble and business, without any fruit, pleasure, or commodity worldly,
+but a continued conflict and vexation with pertinacity, wilfulness, folly,
+and ignorance, whereupon followeth their bodily and ghostly destruction, to
+our great sorrow.
+
+"Item where they desire that by assent of your Highness (if the laws
+heretofore made be not sufficient for the repression of heresy) more
+dreadful and terrible laws may be made; this We think is undoubtedly a more
+charitable request than as we trust necessary, considering that by the aid
+of your Highness, and the pains of your Grace's statutes freely executed,
+your realm may be in short time clean purged from the few small dregs that
+do remain, if any do remain.
+
+"Item where they desire some reasonable declaration may be made to your
+people, how they may, if they will, avoid the peril of heresy. No better
+declaration, we say, can be made than is already by our Saviour Christ, the
+Apostles, and the determination of the church, which if they keep, they
+shall not fail to eschew heresy.
+
+"Item where they desire that some charitable fashion may be devised by your
+wisdom for the calling of any of your subjects before us, that it shall not
+stand in the only will and pleasure of the ordinaries at their own
+imagination, without lawful accusation by honest witness, according to your
+law; to this we say that a better provision cannot be devised than is
+already devised by the clergy in our opinion; and if any default appear in
+the execution, it shall be amended on declaration of the particulars, and
+the same proved.
+
+"Item where they say that your subjects be cited out of the diocese which
+they dwell in, and many times be suspended and excommunicate for light
+causes upon the only certificate devised by the proctors, and that all your
+subjects find themselves grieved with the excessive fees taken in the
+spiritual courts:
+
+"To this article, for because it concerneth specially the spiritual courts
+of me the Archbishop of Canterbury, please it your Grace to understand that
+about twelve months past I reformed certain things objected here; and now
+within these ten weeks I reformed many other things in my said courts, as I
+suppose is not unknown unto your Grace's Commons; and some of the fees of
+the officers of my courts I have brought down to halves, some to the third
+part, and some wholly taken away and extincted; and yet it is objected to
+me as though I had taken no manner of reformation therein. Nevertheless I
+shall not cease yet; but in such things as I shall see your Commons most
+offended I will set redress accordingly, so as, I trust, they will be
+contented in that behalf. And I, the said archbishop, beseech your Grace to
+consider what service the doctors in civil law, which have had their
+practice in my courts, have done your Grace concerning treaties, truces,
+confederations, and leagues devised and concluded with outward princes; and
+that without such learned men in civil law your Grace could not have been
+so conveniently served as at all times you have been, which thing, perhaps,
+when such learned men shall fail, will appear more evident than it doth
+now. The decay whereof grieveth me to foresee, not so greatly for any cause
+concerning the pleasure or profit of myself, being a man spent, and at the
+point to depart this world, and having no penny of any advantage by my said
+courts, but principally for the good love which I bear to the honour of
+your Grace and of your realm. And albeit there is, by the assent of the
+Lords Temporal and the Commons of your Parliament, an act passed thereupon
+already, the matter depending before your Majesty by way of supplication
+offered to your Highness by your said Commons;[237] yet, forasmuch as we
+your Grace's humble chaplains, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, be
+bounden by oath to be intercessors for the rights of our churches; and
+forasmuch as the spiritual prelates of the clergy, being of your Grace's
+parliament, consented to the said act for divers great causes moving their
+conscience, we your Grace's said chaplains show unto your Highness that it
+hath appertained to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for the space of
+four hundred years or thereabouts to have spiritual jurisdiction over all
+your Grace's subjects dwelling within the provinces; and to have authority
+to call before them, not only in spiritual causes devolved to them by way
+of appeal, but also by way of querimony and complaint; which right and
+privilege pertaineth not only to the persons of the said archbishops, but
+also to the pre-eminences of their churches. Insomuch that when the
+archbishop of either of the sees dieth, the said privileges do not only
+remain to his successor (by which he is named Legatus natus), but also in
+the meantime of vacation the same privilege resteth in the churches of
+Canterbury and York; and is executed by the prior, dean and chapter of the
+said churches; and so the said act is directly against the liberty and
+privileges of the churches of Canterbury and York; and what dangers be to
+them which study and labour to take away the liberties and privileges of
+the church, whoso will read the general councils of Christendom and the
+canons of the fathers of the Catholic church ordained in that behalf, shall
+soon perceive. And further, we think verily that our churches, to which the
+said privileges were granted, can give no cause why the pope himself (whose
+predecessors granted that privilege) or any other (the honour of your Grace
+ever except) may justly take away the same privileges so lawfully
+prescribed from our churches, though we [ourselves] had greatly offended,
+abusing the said privileges. But when in our persons we trust we have given
+no cause why to lose that privilege, we beseech your Grace of your goodness
+and absolute power to set such orders in this behalf as we may enjoy our
+privileges lawfully admitted so long.
+
+"Item where they complain that there is exacted and demanded in divers
+parishes of this your realm, other manner of tythes than hath been
+accustomed to be paid this hundred years past; and in some parts of this
+your realm there is exacted double tythes, that is to say, threepence, or
+twopence-halfpenny, for one acre, over and beside the tythe for the
+increase of cattle that pastureth the same:
+
+"To this we say, that tythes being due by God's law, be so duly paid
+(thanked be God), by all good men, as there needeth not exaction in the
+most parts of this your Grace's realm. As for double tythes, they cannot be
+maintained due for one increase; whether in any place they be unduly
+exacted in fact we know not. This we know in learning, that neither a
+hundred years, nor seven hundred of non-payment, may debar the right of
+God's law. The manner of payment, and person unto whom to pay, may be in
+time altered, but the duty cannot by any means be taken away.
+
+"Item where they say that when a mortuary is due, curates sometimes, before
+they will demand it, will bring citation for it; and then will not receive
+the mortuaries till they may have such costs as they say they have laid out
+for the suit of the same; when, indeed, if they would first have charitably
+demanded it, they needed not to have sued for the same, for it should have
+been paid with good will:
+
+"We answer that curates thus offending, if they were known, ought to be
+punished, but who thus doeth we know not.
+
+"Item where they say that divers spiritual persons being presented to
+benefices within this your realm, we and our ministers do take of them
+great sums of money and reward; we reply that this is a particular abuse,
+and he that taketh reward doeth not well; and if any penny be exacted above
+the accustomed rate and after convenient proportion, it is not well done.
+But in taking the usual fee for the sealing, writing, and registering the
+letters, which is very moderate, we cannot think it to be reputed as any
+offence; neither have we heard any priests in our days complain of any
+excess therein.
+
+"And where they say in the same article that such as be presented be
+delayed without reasonable cause, to the intent that we the ordinaries may
+have the profit of the benefice during the vacation, unless they will pact
+and convent with us by temporal bonds, whereof some bonds contain that we
+should have part of the profit of the said benefice, which your said
+subjects suppose to be not only against right and conscience, but also
+seemeth to be simony, and contrary to the laws of God:
+
+"To this we do say that a delay without reasonable cause, and for a
+lucrative intent, is detestable in spiritual men, and the doers cannot
+eschew punishment: but otherwise a delay is sometimes expedient to examine
+the clerk, and sometimes necessary when the title is in variance. All other
+bargains and covenants being contrary to the law ought to be punished, as
+the quality is of the offence more or less, as simony or inordinate
+covetousness.
+
+"Item where they say that we give benefices to our nephews and kinsfolk,
+being in young age or infants, whereby the cure is not substantially looked
+into, nor the parishioners taught as they should be; we reply to this that
+the thing which is not lawful in others is in spiritual men more
+detestable. Benefices should be disposed of not _secundum carnem et
+sanguinem, sed secundum merita_. And when there is a default it is not
+authorised by the clergy as good, but reproved; whereupon in this the
+clergy is not to be blamed, but the default as it may appear must be laid
+to particular men.
+
+"And where they say that we take the profit of such benefices for the time
+of the minority of our said kinsfolk, if it be done to our own use and
+profit it is not well; _if it be bestowed to the bringing up and use of the
+same parties_, or applied to the maintenance of the church and God's
+service, or distributed among the poor, we do not see but that it may be
+allowed.
+
+"Item where they say that divers and many spiritual persons, not contented
+with the convenient livings and promotions of the church, daily intromit
+and exercise themselves in secular offices and rooms, as stewards,
+receivers, auditors, bailiffs, and other temporal occupations, withdrawing
+themselves from the good contemplative lives that they have professed, not
+only to the damage but also to the perilous example of your loving and
+obedient subjects; to this we your bedesmen answer that beneficed men may
+lawfully be stewards and receivers to their own bishops, as it evidently
+appeareth in the laws of the church; and we by the same laws ought to have
+no other. And as for priests to be auditors and bailiffs, we know none
+such.
+
+"And where, finally, they, in the conclusion of their supplication, do
+repeat and say that forasmuch as there is at this present time, and by a
+few years past hath been much misdemeanour and violence upon the one part,
+and much default and lack of patience, charity, and good will on the other
+part; and marvellous discord in consequence of the quiet, peace, and
+tranquillity in which this your realm hath been ever hitherto preserved
+through your politic wisdom:
+
+"To the first part as touching such discord as is reported, and also the
+misdemeanour which is imputed to us and our doings, we trust we have
+sufficiently answered the same, humbly beseeching your Grace so to esteem
+and weigh such answer with their supplication as shall be thought good and
+expedient by your high wisdom. Furthermore we ascertain your Grace as
+touching the violence which they seem to lay to our charge, albeit divers
+of the clergy of this your realm have sundry times been _rigorously
+handled, and with much violence entreated by certain ill-disposed and
+seditious persons of the lay fee, have been injured in their bodies, thrown
+down in the kennel in the open_ _streets at mid-day_, even here within your
+city and elsewhere, to the great rebuke and disquietness of the clergy of
+your realm, the great danger of the souls of the said misdoers, and
+perilous example of your subjects. Yet we think verily, and do affirm the
+same, that no violence hath been so used on our behalf towards your said
+lay subjects in any case; unless they esteem this to be violence that we do
+use as well for the health of their souls as for the discharge of our
+duties in taking, examining, and punishing heretics according to the law:
+wherein we doubt not but that your Grace, and divers of your Grace's
+subjects, do understand well what charitable entreaty we have used with
+such as have been before us for the same cause of heresy; and what means we
+have devised and studied for safeguard specially of their souls; and that
+charitably, as God be our judge, and without violence as [far as] we could
+possibly devise. In execution thereof, and also of the laws of the church
+for repression of sin, and also for reformation of mislivers, it hath been
+to our great comfort that your Grace hath herein of your goodness, assisted
+and aided us in this behalf for the zeal and love which your Grace beareth
+to God's church and to His ministers; especially in defence of His faith
+whereof your Grace only and most worthily amongst all Christian princes
+beareth the title and name. And for that marvellous discord and grudge
+among your subjects as is reported in the supplication of your Commons, we
+beseech your Majesty, all the premises considered, to repress those that be
+misdoers; protesting in our behalf that we ourselves have no grudge nor
+displeasure towards your lay subjects our ghostly children. We intreat your
+Grace of your accustomed goodness to us your bedemen to continue our chief
+protector, defender, and aider in and for the execution of our office and
+duty; specially touching repression of heresy, reformation of sin, and due
+behaviour and order of all your Grace's subjects, spiritual and temporal;
+which (no doubt thereof) shall be much to the pleasure of God, great
+comfort to men's souls, quietness and unity of all your realm; and, as we
+think, most principally to the great comfort of your Grace's Majesty. Which
+we beseech lowly upon our knees, so entirely as we can, to be the author of
+unity, charity, and concord as above, for whose preservation we do and
+shall continually pray to Almighty God long to reign and prosper in most
+honourable estate to his pleasure."
+
+This was the bishops' defence; the best which, under the circumstances,
+they considered themselves capable of making. The House of Commons had
+stated their complaints in the form of special notorious facts; the bishops
+replied with urging the theory of their position, and supposed that they
+could relieve the ecclesiastical system from the faults of its ministers,
+by laying the sole blame on the unworthiness of individual persons. The
+degenerate representatives of a once noble institution could not perhaps be
+expected to admit their degeneracy, and confess themselves, as they really
+were, collectively incompetent; yet the defence which they brought forward
+would have been valid only so long as the blemishes were the rare
+exceptions in the working of an institution which was still generally
+beneficent. It was no defence at all when the faults had become the rule,
+and when there was no security in the system itself for the selection of
+worth and capacity to exercise its functions. The clergy, as I have already
+said, claimed the privileges of saints, while their conduct fell below the
+standard of that of ordinary men; and the position taken in this answer was
+tenable only on the hypothesis which it, in fact, deliberately asserted,
+that the judicial authority of the church had been committed to it by God
+Himself; and that no misconduct of its ministers in detail could forfeit
+their claims or justify resistance to them.
+
+There is something touching in the bishops' evidently sincere
+unconsciousness that there could be real room for blame. Warham, who had
+been Archbishop of Canterbury thirty years, took credit to himself for the
+reforms which, under the pressure of public opinion, he had introduced, in
+the last few weeks or months; and did not know that in doing so he had
+passed sentence on a life of neglect. In the opinion of the entire bench no
+infamy, however notorious, could shake the testimony of a witness in a case
+of heresy; no cruelty was unjust when there was suspicion of so horrible a
+crime; while the appointment of minors to church benefices (not to press
+more closely the edge of the accusation) they admitted while they affected
+to deny it; since they were not ashamed to defend the appropriation of the
+proceeds of benefices occupied by such persons, if laid out on the
+education and maintenance of the minors themselves.
+
+Yet these things were as nothing in comparison with the powers claimed for
+convocation; and the prelates of the later years of Henry's reign must have
+looked back with strange sensations at the language which their
+predecessors had so simply addressed to him. If the canons which
+convocation might think good to enact were not consistent with the laws of
+the Realm, "His Majesty" was desired to produce the wished-for uniformity
+by altering the laws of the Realm; and although the bishops might not
+submit their laws to His Majesty's approval, they would be happy, they told
+him, to consider such suggestions as he might think proper to make. The
+spirit of the Plantagenets must have slumbered long before such words as
+these could have been addressed to an English sovereign, and little did the
+bishops dream that these light words were the spell which would burst the
+charm, and bid that spirit wake again in all its power and terror.
+
+The House of Commons in the mean time had not been idle. To them the
+questions at issue were unincumbered with theoretic difficulties. Enormous
+abuses had been long ripe for dissolution, and there was no occasion to
+waste time in unnecessary debates. At such a time, with a House practically
+unanimous, business could be rapidly transacted, the more rapidly indeed in
+proportion to its importance. In six weeks, for so long only the session
+lasted, the astonished church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up
+before the Lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their
+incomes would be dried up to flow no longer; or would flow only in shallow
+rivulets along the beds of the once abundant torrents, The jurisdiction of
+the spiritual courts was not immediately curtailed, and the authority which
+was in future to be permitted to convocation lay over for further
+consideration, to be dealt with in another manner. But probate duties and
+legacy duties, hitherto assessed at discretion, were dwarfed into fixed
+proportions,[238] not to touch the poorer laity any more, and bearing even
+upon wealth with a reserved and gentle hand. Mortuaries were shorn of their
+luxuriance; when effects were small, no mortuary should be required; when
+large, the clergy should content themselves with a modest share. No velvet
+cloaks should be stripped any more from strangers' bodies to save them from
+a rector's grasp;[239] no shameful battles with apparitors should disturb
+any more the recent rest of the dead.[240] Such sums as the law would
+permit should be paid thenceforward in the form of decent funeral fees for
+householders dying in their own parishes, and there the exactions should
+terminate.[241]
+
+The carelessness of the bishops in the discharge of their most immediate
+duties obliged the legislature to trespass also in the provinces purely
+spiritual, and undertake the discipline of the clergy. The Commons had
+complained in their petition that the clergy, instead of attending to their
+duties, were acting as auditors, bailiffs, stewards, or in other
+capacities, as laymen; they were engaged in trade also, in farming, in
+tanning, in brewing, in doing anything but the duties which they were paid
+for doing; while they purchased dispensations for non-residence on their
+benefices; and of these benefices, in favoured cases, single priests held
+as many as eight or nine. It was thought unnecessary to wait for the
+bishops' pleasure to apply a remedy here. If the clergy were unjustly
+accused of these offences, a law of general prohibition would not touch
+them. If the belief of the House of Commons was well founded, there was no
+occasion for longer delay. It was therefore enacted[242]--"for the more
+quiet and virtuous increase and maintenance of divine service, the
+preaching and teaching the Word of God with godly and good example, for the
+better discharge of cures, the maintenance of hospitality, the relief of
+poor people, the increase of devotion and good opinion of the lay fee
+towards spiritual persons"--that no such persons thenceforward should take
+any land to farm beyond what was necessary, _bona fide_, for the support of
+their own households; that they should not buy merchandise to sell again;
+that they should keep no tanneries or brewhouses, or otherwise directly or
+indirectly trade for gain. Pluralities were not to be permitted with
+benefices above the yearly value of eight pounds, and residence was made
+obligatory under penalty in cases of absence without special reason, of ten
+pounds for each month of such absence. The law against pluralities was
+limited as against existing holders, each of whom, for their natural lives,
+might continue to hold as many as four benefices. But dispensations, either
+for non-residence or for the violation of any other provision of the act,
+were made penal in a high degree, whether obtained from the bishops or from
+the court of Rome.
+
+These bills struck hard and struck home. Yet even persons who most
+disapprove of the Reformation will not at the present time either wonder at
+their enactment or complain of their severity. They will be desirous rather
+to disentangle their doctrine from suspicious connection, and will not be
+anxious to compromise their theology by the defence of unworthy professors
+of it.
+
+The bishops, however, could ill tolerate an interference with the
+privileges of the ecclesiastical order. The Commons, it was exclaimed, were
+heretics and schismatics;[243] the cry was heard everywhere, of Lack of
+faith, Lack of faith; and the lay peers being constitutionally
+conservative, and perhaps instinctively apprehensive of the infectious
+tendencies of innovation, it seemed likely for a time that an effective
+opposition might be raised in the Upper House. The clergy commanded an
+actual majority in that House from their own body, which they might employ
+if they dared; and although they were not likely to venture alone on so
+bold a measure, yet a partial support from the other members was a
+sufficient encouragement. The aged Bishop of Rochester was made the
+spokesman of the ecclesiastics on this occasion. "My Lords," he said, "you
+see daily what bills come hither from the Commons House, and all is to the
+destruction of the church. For God's sake see what a realm the kingdom of
+Bohemia was; and when the church went down, then fell the glory of that
+kingdom. Now with the Commons is nothing but Down with the church, and all
+this meseemeth is for lack of faith only."[244] "In result," says Hall,
+"the acts were sore debated; the Lords Spiritual would in no wise consent,
+and committees of the two Houses sate continually for discussion." The
+spiritualty defended themselves by prescription and usage, to which a
+Gray's Inn lawyer something insolently answered, on one occasion, "the
+usage hath ever been of thieves to rob on Shooter's Hill, _ergo_, it is
+lawful." "With this answer," continues Hall, "the spiritual men were sore
+offended because their doings were called robberies, but the temporal men
+stood by their sayings, insomuch that the said gentlemen declared to the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, that both the exaction of probates of testaments
+and the taking of mortuaries were open robbery and thefts."
+
+At length, people out of doors growing impatient, and dangerous symptoms
+threatening to show themselves, the king summoned a meeting in the
+Star-chamber between eight members of both Houses. The lay peers, after
+some discussion, conclusively gave way; and the bishops, left without
+support, were obliged to yield. They signified their unwilling consent, and
+the bills, "somewhat qualified," were the next day agreed to--"to the great
+rejoicing of the lay people, and the great displeasure of the spiritual
+persons."[245]
+
+Nor were the House of Commons contented with the substance of victory. The
+reply to their petition had perhaps by that time been made known to them,
+and at any rate they had been accused of sympathy with heresy, and they
+would not submit to the hateful charge without exacting revenge. The more
+clamorous of the clergy out of doors were punished probably by the stocks;
+from among their opponents in the Upper House, Fisher was selected for
+special and signal humiliation. The words of which he had made use were
+truer than the Commons knew; perhaps the latent truth of them was the
+secret cause of the pain which they inflicted; but the special anxiety of
+the English reformers was to disconnect themselves, with marked emphasis,
+from the movement in Germany, and they determined to compel the offending
+bishop to withdraw his words.
+
+They sent the speaker, Sir Thomas Audeley, to the king, who "very
+eloquently declared what dishonour it was to his Majesty and the realm,
+that they which were elected for the wisest men in the shires, cities, and
+boroughs within the realm of England, should be declared in so noble a
+presence to lack faith." It was equivalent to saying "that they were
+infidels, and no Christians--as ill as Turks and Saracens." Wherefore he
+"most humbly besought the King's Highness to call the said bishop before
+him, and to cause him to speak more discreetly of such a number as was in
+the Commons House."[246] Henry consented to their request, it is likely
+with no great difficulty, and availed himself of the opportunity to read a
+lesson much needed to the remainder of the bench. He sent for Fisher, and
+with him for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for six other bishops. The
+speaker's message was laid before them, and they were asked what they had
+to say. It would have been well for the weak trembling old men if they
+could have repeated what they believed and had maintained their right to
+believe it. Bold conduct is ever the most safe; it is fatal only when there
+is courage but for the first step, and fails when a second is required to
+support it. But they were forsaken in their hour of calamity, not by
+courage only, but by prudence, by judgment, by conscience itself. The
+Bishop of Rochester stooped to an equivocation too transparent to deceive
+any one; he said that "he meant only the doings of the Bohemians were for
+lack of faith, and not the doings of the Commons House"--"which saying was
+confirmed by the bishops present." The king allowed the excuse, and the
+bishops were dismissed; but they were dismissed into ignominy, and
+thenceforward, in all Henry's dealings with them, they were treated with
+contemptuous disrespect. For Fisher himself we must feel only sorrow. After
+seventy-six years of a useful and honourable life, which he might have
+hoped to close in a quiet haven, he was launched suddenly upon stormy
+waters, to which he was too brave to yield, which he was too timid to
+contend against; and the frail vessel drifting where the waves drove it,
+was soon piteously to perish.
+
+Thus triumphant on every side, the parliament, in the middle of December,
+closed its session, and lay England celebrated its exploits as a national
+victory. "The king removed to Greenwich, and there kept his Christmas with
+the queen with great triumph, with great plenty of viands, and disguisings,
+and interludes, to the great rejoicing of his people;"[247] the members of
+the House of Commons, we may well believe, following the royal example in
+town and country, and being the little heroes of the day. Only the bishops
+carried home sad hearts within them, to mourn over the perils of the church
+and the impending end of all things; Fisher, unhappily for himself, to
+listen to the wailings of the Nun of Kent, and to totter slowly into
+treason.
+
+Here, for the present leaving the clergy to meditate on their future, and
+reconsider the wisdom of their answer to the king respecting the
+ecclesiastical jurisdiction (a point on which they were not the less
+certain to be pressed, because the process upon it was temporarily
+suspended), we must turn to the more painful matter which, for a time
+longer, ran parallel with the domestic reformation, and as yet was unable
+to unite with it. After the departure of Campeggio, the further hearing of
+the divorce cause had been advoked to Rome, where it was impossible for
+Henry to consent to plead; while the appearance of the supposed brief had
+opened avenues of new difficulty which left no hope of a decision within
+the limits of an ordinary lifetime. Henry was still, however, extremely
+reluctant[248] to proceed to extremities, and appeal to the parliament. He
+had threatened that he would tolerate no delay, and Wolsey had evidently
+expected that he would not. Queen Catherine's alarm had gone so far, that
+in the autumn she had procured an injunction from the pope, which had been
+posted in the churches of Flanders, menacing the king with spiritual
+censures if he took any further steps.[249] Even this she feared that he
+would disregard, and in March, 1529-30, a second inhibition was issued at
+her request, couched in still stronger language.[250] But these measures
+were needless, or at least premature. Henry expected that the display of
+temper in the country in the late session would produce an effect both on
+the pope and on the emperor; and proposing to send an embassy to
+remonstrate jointly with them on the occasion of the emperor's coronation,
+which was to take place in the spring at Bologna, he had recourse in the
+mean time to an expedient which, though blemished in the execution, was
+itself reasonable and prudent.
+
+Among the many _technical_ questions which had been raised upon the
+divorce, the most serious was on the validity of the original dispensation;
+a question not only on the sufficiency of the form the defects of which the
+brief had been invented to remedy; but on the more comprehensive
+uncertainty whether Pope Julius had not exceeded his powers altogether in
+granting a dispensation where there was so close affinity. No one supposed
+that the pope could permit a brother to marry a sister; a dispensation
+granted in such a case would be _ipso facto_ void.--Was not the
+dispensation similarly void which permitted the marriage of a brother's
+widow? The advantage which Henry expected from raising this difficulty was
+the transfer of judgment from the partial tribunal of Clement to a broader
+court. The pope could not, of course, adjudicate on the extent of his own
+powers; especially as he always declared himself to be ignorant of the law;
+and the decision of so general a question rested either with a general
+council, or must be determined by the consent of Christendom, obtained in
+some other manner. If such general consent declared against the pope, the
+cause was virtually terminated. If there was some approach to a consent
+against him, or even if there was general uncertainty, Henry had a legal
+pretext for declining his jurisdiction, and appealing to a council.
+
+Thomas Cranmer, then a doctor of divinity at Cambridge,[251] is said to
+have been the person who suggested this ingenious expedient, and to have
+advised the king, as the simplest means of carrying it out, to consult in
+detail the universities and learned men throughout Europe. His notorious
+activity in collecting the opinions may have easily connected him with the
+origination of the plan, which probably occurred to many other persons as
+well as to him; but whoever was the first adviser, it was immediately acted
+upon, and English agents were despatched into Germany, Italy, and France,
+carrying with them all means of persuasion, intellectual, moral, and
+material, which promised to be of most cogent potency with lawyers'
+convictions.
+
+This matter was in full activity when the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn's
+father, with Cranmer, the Bishop of London, and Edward Lee, afterwards
+Archbishop of York, was despatched to Bologna to lay Henry's remonstrances
+before the emperor, who was come at last in person to enjoy his miserable
+triumph, and receive from the pope the imperial crown. Sir Nicholas Carew,
+who had been sent forward a few weeks previously, described in piteous
+language the state to which Italy had been reduced by him. Passing through
+Pavia, the English emissary saw the children crying about the streets for
+bread, and dying of hunger; the grapes in midwinter rotting on the vines,
+because there was no one to gather them; and for fifty miles scarcely a
+single creature, man or woman, in the fields. "They say," added Carew, "and
+the pope also showed us the same, that the whole people of that country,
+with divers other places in Italia, with war, famine, and pestilence, are
+utterly dead and gone."[252] Such had been the combined work of the vanity
+of Francis and the cold selfishness of Charles; and now the latter had
+arrived amidst the ruins which he had made, to receive his crown from the
+hands of a pope who was true to Italy, if false to all the world besides,
+and whom, but two years before, he had imprisoned and disgraced. We think
+of Clement as the creature of the emperor, and such substantially he
+allowed himself to be; but his obedience was the obedience of fear to a
+master whom he hated, and the bishop of Tarbes, who was present at the
+coronation, and stood at his side through the ceremony, saw him trembling
+under his robes with emotion, and heard him sigh bitterly.[253] Very
+unwillingly, we may be assured, he was compelled to act his vacillating
+part to England, and England, at this distance of time, may forgive him for
+faults to which she owes her freedom, and need not refuse him some tribute
+of sympathy in his sorrows.
+
+Fallen on evil times, which greater wisdom and greater courage than had for
+many a century been found in the successors of St. Peter would have failed
+to encounter successfully, Clement VII. remained, with all his cowardice, a
+true Italian; his errors were the errors of his age and nation, and were
+softened by the presence, in more than usual measure, of Italian genius and
+grace. Benvenuto Cellini, who describes his character with much minuteness,
+has left us a picture of a hot-tempered, but genuine and kind-hearted man,
+whose taste was elegant, and whose wit, from the playful spirit with which
+it was pervaded, and from a certain tendency to innocent levity, approached
+to humour. He was liable to violent bursts of feeling; and his inability to
+control himself, his gesticulations, his exclamations, and his tears, all
+represent to us a person who was an indifferent master of the tricks of
+dissimulation to which he was reduced, and whose weakness entitles him to
+pity, if not to respect. The papacy had fallen to him at the crisis of its
+deepest degradation. It existed as a politically organised institution,
+which it was convenient to maintain, but from which the private hearts of
+all men had fallen away; and it depended for its very life upon the support
+which the courts of Europe would condescend to extend to it. Among these
+governments, therefore, distracted as they were by mutual hostility, the
+pope was compelled to make his choice; and the fatality of his position
+condemned him to quarrel with the only prince on whom, at the outset of
+these complications, he had a right to depend.
+
+In 1512, France had been on the point of declaring her religious
+independence; and as late as 1525, Francis entertained thoughts of offering
+the patriarchate to Wolsey.[254] Charles V., postponing his religious
+devotion for the leisure of old age, had reserved the choice of his party,
+to watch events and to wait upon opportunity; while, from his singular
+position, he wielded in one hand the power of Catholic Spain, in the other
+that of Protestant Germany, ready to strike with either, as occasion or
+necessity recommended. If his Spaniards had annexed the New World to the
+papacy, his German lanzknechts had stormed the Holy City, murdered
+cardinals, and outraged the pope's person: while both Charles and Francis,
+alike caring exclusively for their private interests, had allowed the Turks
+to overrun Hungary, to conquer Rhodes, and to collect an armament at
+Constantinople so formidable as to threaten Italy itself, and the very
+Christian faith. Henry alone had shown hitherto a true feeling for
+religion; Henry had made war with Louis XII. solely in the pope's quarrel;
+Henry had broken an old alliance with the emperor to revenge the capture of
+Rome, and had won Francis back to his allegiance. To Henry, if to any one,
+the Roman bishop had a right to look with confidence. But the power of
+England was far off, and could not reach to Rome. Francis had been baffled
+and defeated, his armies destroyed, his political influence in the
+Peninsula annihilated. The practical choice which remained to Clement lay
+only, as it seemed, between the emperor and martyrdom; and having, perhaps,
+a desire for the nobler alternative, yet being without the power to choose
+it, his wishes and his conduct, his words to private persons and his open
+actions before the world, were in perpetual contradiction. He submitted
+while his heart revolted; and while at Charles's dictation he was
+threatening Henry with excommunication if he proceeded further with his
+divorce, he was able at that very time to say, in confidence, to the Bishop
+of Tarbes, that he would be well contented if the King of England would
+marry on his own responsibility, availing himself of any means which he
+might possess among his own people, so only that he himself was not
+committed to a consent or the privileges of the papacy were not trenched
+upon.[255]
+
+Two years later, when the course which the pope would really pursue under
+such circumstances was of smaller importance, Henry gave him an opportunity
+of proving the sincerity of this language; and the result was such as he
+expected it to be. As yet, however, he had not relinquished the hope of
+succeeding by a more open course.
+
+In March, 1529-30, the English ambassadors appeared at Bologna. Their
+instructions were honest, manly, and straightforward. They were directed to
+explain, _ab initio_, the grounds of the king's proceedings, and to appeal
+to the emperor's understanding of the obligations of princes. Full
+restitution was to be offered of Catherine's dowry, and the Earl of
+Wiltshire was provided with letters of credit adequate to the amount.[256]
+If these proposals were not accepted, they were to assume a more peremptory
+tone, and threaten the alienation of England; and if menaces were equally
+ineffectual, they were to declare that Henry, having done all which lay
+within his power to effect his purpose with the goodwill of his friends,
+since he could not do as he would, must now do as he could, and discharge
+his conscience. If the emperor should pretend that he would "abide the law,
+and would defer to the pope," they were to say, "that the sacking of Rome
+by the Spaniards and Germans had so discouraged the pope and cardinals,
+that they feared for body and goods," and had ceased to be free agents; and
+concluding finally that the king would fear God rather than man, and would
+rely on comfort from the Saviour against those who abused their authority,
+they were then to withdraw.[257] The tone of the directions was not
+sanguine, and the political complications of Europe, on which the emperor's
+reply must more or less have depended, were too involved to allow us to
+trace the influences which were likely to have weighed with him. There
+seems no prima facie reason, however, why the attempt might not have been
+successful. The revolutionary intrigues in England had decisively failed,
+and the natural sympathy of princes, and a desire to detach Henry from
+Francis, must have combined to recommend a return of the old cordiality
+which had so long existed between the sovereigns of England and Flanders.
+But whatever was the cause, the opening interview assured the Earl of
+Wiltshire that he had nothing to look for. He was received with distant
+courtesy; but Charles at once objected even to hearing his instructions, as
+an interested party.[258] The earl replied that he stood there, not as the
+father of the queen's rival, but as the representative of his sovereign;
+but the objection declared the attitude which Charles was resolved to
+maintain, and which, in fact, he maintained throughout. "The emperor,"
+wrote Lord Wiltshire to Henry, "is stiffly bent against your Grace's
+matter, and is most earnest in it; while the pope is led by the emperor,
+and neither will nor dare displease him."[259] From that quarter, so long
+as parties remained in their existing attitude, there was no hope. It seems
+to have been hinted, indeed, that if war broke out again between Charles
+and Francis, something might be done as the price of Henry's surrendering
+the French alliance;[260] but the suggestion, if it was made, was probably
+ironical; and as Charles was unquestionably acting against his interest in
+rejecting the English overtures, it is fair to give him credit for having
+acted on this one occasion of his life, upon generous motives. A respectful
+compliment was paid to his conduct by Henry himself in the reproaches which
+he addressed to the pope.[261]
+
+So terminated the first and the last overture on this subject which Henry
+attempted with Charles V. The ambassadors remained but a few days at
+Bologna, and then discharged their commission and returned. The pope,
+however, had played his part with remarkable skill, and by finessing
+dexterously behind the scenes, had contrived to prevent the precipitation
+of a rupture with himself. His simple and single wish was to gain time,
+trusting to accident or Providence to deliver him from his dilemma. On the
+one hand, he yielded to the emperor in refusing to consent to Henry's
+demand; on the other, he availed himself of all the intricacies to parry
+Catherine's demand for a judgment in her favour. He even seemed to part
+with the emperor on doubtful terms. "The latter," said the Bishop of
+Tarbes,[262] "before leaving Bologna, desired his Holiness to place two
+cardinals' hats at his disposal, to enable him to reward certain services."
+His Holiness ventured to refuse. During his imprisonment, he said he had
+been compelled to nominate several persons for that office whose conduct
+had been a disgrace to their rank; and when the emperor denied his orders,
+the pope declared that he had seen them. The cardinals' hats, therefore,
+should be granted only when they were deserved, "when the Lutherans in
+Germany had been reduced to obedience, and Hungary had been recovered from
+the Turks." If this was acting, it was skilfully managed, and it deceived
+the eyes of the French ambassador.
+
+Still further to gratify Henry, the pope made a public declaration with
+respect to the dispute which had arisen on the extent of his authority,
+desiring, or professing to desire, that all persons whatever throughout
+Italy should be free to express their opinions without fear of incurring
+his displeasure. This declaration, had it been honestly meant, would have
+been creditable to Clement's courage: unfortunately for his reputation, his
+outward and his secret actions seldom corresponded, and the emperor's
+agents were observed to use very dissimilar language in his name. The
+double policy, nevertheless, was still followed to secure delay. Delay was
+his sole aim,--either that Catherine's death, or his own, or Henry's, or
+some relenting in one or other of the two princes who held their minatory
+arms extended over him, might spare himself and the church the calamity of
+a decision. For to the church any decision was fatal. If he declared for
+Charles, England would fall from it; if for Henry, Germany and Flanders
+were lost irrecoverably, and Spain itself might follow. His one hope was to
+procrastinate; and in this policy of hesitation for two more years he
+succeeded, till at length the patience of Henry and of England was worn
+out, and all was ended. When the emperor required sentence to be passed, he
+pretended to be about to yield; and at the last moment, some technical
+difficulty ever interfered to make a decision impossible. When Henry was
+cited to appear at Rome, a point of law was raised upon the privilege of
+kings, threatening to open into other points of law, and so to multiply to
+infinity. The pope, indeed, finding his own ends so well answered by
+evasion, imagined that it would answer equally those of the English nation,
+and he declared to Henry's secretary that "if the King of England would
+send a mandate ad totam causam, then if his Highness would, there might be
+given so many delays by reason of matters which his Highness might lay in,
+and the remissorials that his Grace might ask, ad partes, that peradventure
+in ten years or longer a sentence should not be given."[263] In point of
+worldly prudence, his conduct was unexceptionably wise; but something
+beyond worldly prudence was demanded of a tribunal which claimed to be
+inspired by the Holy Ghost.
+
+The dreary details of the negotiations I have no intention of pursuing.
+They are of no interest to any one,--a miserable tissue of insincerity on
+one side, and hesitating uncertainty on the other. There is no occasion for
+us to weary ourselves with the ineffectual efforts to postpone an issue
+which was sooner or later inevitable.
+
+I may not pass over in similar silence another unpleasant episode in this
+business,--the execution of Cranmer's project for collecting the sentiments
+of Europe on the pope's dispensing power. The details of this transaction
+are not wearying only, but scandalous; and while the substantial justice of
+Henry's cause is a reason for deploring the means to which he allowed
+himself to be driven in pursuing it, we may not permit ourselves either to
+palliate those means or to conceal them. The project seemed a simple one,
+and likely to be effective and useful. Unhappily, the appeal was still to
+ecclesiastics, to a body of men who were characterised throughout Europe by
+a universal absence of integrity, who were incapable of pronouncing an
+honest judgment, and who courted intimidation and bribery by the readiness
+with which they submitted to be influenced by them. Corruption was resorted
+to on all sides with the most lavish unscrupulousness, and the result
+arrived at was general discredit to all parties, and a conclusion which
+added but one more circle to the labyrinth of perplexities. Croke,[264] a
+Doctors' Commons lawyer, who was employed in Italy, described the state of
+feeling in the peninsula as generally in Henry's favour; and he said that
+he could have secured an all but universal consent, except for the secret
+intrigues of the Spanish agents, and their open direct menaces, when
+intrigue was insufficient. He complained bitterly of the treachery of the
+Italians who were in the English pay; the two Cassalis, Pallavicino, and
+Ghinucci, the Bishop of Worcester. These men, he said, were betraying Henry
+when they were pretending to serve him, and were playing secretly into the
+hands of the emperor.[265] His private despatches were intercepted, or the
+contents of them by some means were discovered; for the persons whom he
+named as inclining against the papal claims, became marked at once for
+persecution. One of them, a Carmelite friar, was summoned before the
+Cardinal Governor of Bologna, and threatened with death;[266] and a certain
+Father Omnibow, a Venetian who had been in active co-operation with Dr.
+Croke, wrote himself to Henry, informing him in a very graphic manner of
+the treatment to which, by some treachery, he had been exposed. Croke and
+Omnibow were sitting one morning in the latter's cell, "when there entered
+upon them the emperor's great ambassador, accompanied with many gentlemen
+of Spain, and demanded of the Father how he durst be so bold to take upon
+him to intermeddle in so great and weighty a matter, the which did not only
+lessen and enervate the pope's authority, but was noyful and odious to all
+Realms Christened."[267] Omnibow being a man of some influence in Venice,
+the ambassador warned him on peril of his life to deal no further with such
+things: there was not the slightest chance that the King of England could
+obtain a decision in his favour, because the question had been placed in
+the hands of six cardinals who were all devoted to the emperor: the pope,
+it was sternly added, had been made aware of his conduct, and was
+exceedingly displeased, and the general[268] of his order had at the same
+time issued an injunction, warning all members to desist at their peril
+from intercourse with the English agents. The Spanish party held themselves
+justified in resorting to intimidation to defend themselves against English
+money; the English may have excused their use of money as a defence against
+Spanish intimidation; and each probably had recourse to their several
+methods prior to experience of the proceedings of their adversaries, from a
+certain expectation of what those proceedings would be. Substantially, the
+opposite manoeuvres neutralised each other, and in Catholic countries,
+opinions on the real point at issue seem to have been equally balanced. The
+Lutheran divines, from their old suspicion of Henry, were more decided in
+their opposition to him. "The Italian Protestants," wrote Croke to the
+king, "be utterly against your Highness in this cause, and have letted as
+much as with their power and malice they could or might."[269] In Germany
+Dr. Bames and Cranmer found the same experience. Luther himself had not
+forgotten his early passage at arms with the English Defender of the Faith,
+and was coldly hostile; the German theologians, although they expressed
+themselves with reserve and caution, saw no reason to court the anger of
+Charles by meddling in a quarrel in which they had no interest; they
+revenged the studied slight which had been passed by Henry on themselves,
+with a pardonable indifference to the English ecclesiastical revolt.
+
+If, however, in Germany and Italy the balance of unjust interference lay on
+the imperial side, it was more than adequately compensated by the answering
+pressure which was brought to bear in England and in France on the opposite
+side. Under the allied sovereigns, the royal authority was openly exercised
+to compel such expressions of sentiment as the courts of London and Paris
+desired; and the measures which were taken oblige us more than ever to
+regret the inventive efforts of Cranmer's genius. For, in fact, these
+manoeuvres, even if honestly executed, were all unrealities. The question
+at issue was one of domestic English politics, and the metamorphosis of it
+into a question of ecclesiastical law was a mere delusion. The discussion
+was transferred to a false ground, and however the king may have chosen to
+deceive himself, was not being tried upon its real merits. A complicated
+difficulty vitally affecting the interests of a great nation, was laid for
+solution before a body of persons incompetent to understand or decide it,
+and the laity, with the alternative before them of civil war, and the
+returning miseries of the preceding century, could brook no judgment which
+did not answer to their wishes.
+
+The French king, contemptuously indifferent to justice, submitted to be
+guided by his interest; feeling it necessary for his safety to fan the
+quarrel between Henry and the emperor, he resolved to encourage whatever
+measures would make the breach between them irreparable. The reconciliation
+of Herod and Pontius Pilate[270] was the subject of his worst alarm; and a
+slight exercise of ecclesiastical tyranny was but a moderate price by which
+to ensure himself against so dangerous a possibility.
+
+Accordingly, at the beginning of June, the University of Paris was
+instructed by royal letters to pronounce an opinion on the extent to which
+the pope might grant dispensations for marriage within the forbidden
+degrees. The letters were presented by the grand master, and the latter in
+his address to the faculty, maintained at the outset an appearance of
+impartiality. The doctors were required to decide according to their
+conscience, having the fear of God before their eyes; and no open effort
+was ventured to dictate the judgment which was to be delivered.
+
+The majority of the doctors understood their duty and their position, and a
+speedy resolution was anticipated, when a certain Dr. Beda, an energetic
+Ultramontane, commenced an opposition. He said that, on a question which
+touched the power of the pope, they were not at liberty to pronounce an
+opinion without the permission of his Holiness himself; and that the
+deliberation ought not to go forward till they had applied for that
+permission and had received it. This view was supported by the Spanish and
+Italian party in the university. The debate grew warm, and at length the
+meeting broke up in confusion without coming to a resolution. Beda, when
+remonstrated with on the course which he was pursuing, did not hesitate to
+say that he had the secret approbation of his prince; that, however Francis
+might disguise from the world his real opinions, in his heart he only
+desired to see the pope victorious. An assertion so confident was readily
+believed, nor is it likely that Beda ventured to make it without some
+foundation. But being spoken of openly it became a matter of general
+conversation, and reaching the ears of the English ambassador, it was met
+with instant and angry remonstrance. "The ambassador," wrote the grand
+master to Francis, "has been to me in great displeasure, and has told me
+roundly that his master is trifled with by us. We give him words in plenty
+to keep his beak in the water; but it is very plain that we are playing
+false, and that no honesty is intended. Nor are his words altogether
+without reason; for many persons declare openly that nothing will be done.
+If the alliance of England, therefore, appear of importance to your
+Highness, it would be well for you to write to the Dean of the Faculty,
+directing him to close an impertinent discussion, and require an answer to
+the question asked as quickly as possible."[271] The tone of this letter
+proves, with sufficient clearness, the true feelings of the French
+government; but at the moment the alternative suggested by the grand master
+might not be ventured. Francis could not afford to quarrel with England, or
+to be on less than cordial terms with it, and for a time at least his
+brother sovereigns must continue to be at enmity. The negotiations for the
+recovery of the French princes out of their Spanish prison, were on the
+point of conclusion; and, as Francis was insolvent, Henry had consented to
+become security for the money demanded for their deliverance. Beda had,
+moreover, injured his cause by attacking the Gallican liberties; and as
+this was a point on which the government was naturally sensitive, some
+tolerable excuse was furnished for the lesson which it was thought proper
+to adminster to the offending doctor.
+
+On the seventeenth of June, 1530, therefore, Francis wrote as follows to
+the President of the Parliament of Paris:--
+
+"We have learnt, to our great displeasure, that one Beda, an imperialist,
+has dared to raise an agitation among the theologians, dissuading them from
+giving their voices on the cause of the King of England.--On receipt of
+this letter, therefore, you shall cause the said Beda to appear before you,
+and you shall show him the grievous anger which he has given us cause to
+entertain towards him. And further you shall declare to him, laying these
+our present writings before his eyes that he may not doubt the truth of
+what you say, that if he does not instantly repair the fault which he has
+committed, he shall be punished in such sort as that he shall remember
+henceforth what it is for a person of his quality to meddle in the affairs
+of princes. If he venture to remonstrate; if he allege that it is matter of
+conscience, and that before proceeding to pronounce an opinion it is
+necessary to communicate with the pope; in our name you shall forbid him to
+hold any such communication: and he and all who abet him, and all persons
+whatsoever, not only who shall themselves dare to consult the pope on this
+matter, but who shall so much as entertain the proposal of consulting him,
+shall be dealt with in such a manner as shall be an example to all the
+world. The liberties of the Gallican Church are touched, and the
+independence of our theological council, and there is no privilege
+belonging to this realm on which we are more peremptorily determined to
+insist."[272]
+
+The haughty missive, a copy of which was sent to England,[273] produced the
+desired effect. The doctors became obedient and convinced, and the required
+declaration of opinion in Henry's favour, was drawn up in the most ample
+manner. They made a last desperate effort to escape from the position in
+which they were placed when the seal of the university was to be affixed to
+the decision; but the resistance was hopeless, the authorities were
+inexorable, and they submitted. It is not a little singular that the
+English political agent employed on this occasion, and to whose lot it fell
+to communicate the result to the king, was Reginald Pole. He it was, who
+behind the scenes, and assisting to work the machinery of the intrigue,
+first there, perhaps, contracted his disgust with the cause on which he was
+embarked. There learning to hate the ill with which he was forced
+immediately into contact, he lost sight of the greater ill to which it was
+opposed; and in the recoil commenced the first steps of a career, which
+brought his mother to the scaffold, which overspread all England with an
+atmosphere of treason and suspicion, and which terminated at last after
+years of exile, rebellion, and falsehood, in a brief victory of blood and
+shame. So ever does wrong action beget its own retribution, punishing
+itself by itself, and wrecking the instruments by which it works. The
+letter which Pole wrote from Paris to Henry will not be uninteresting. It
+revealed his distaste for his occupation, though prudence held him silent
+as to his deeper feelings.
+
+"Please it your Highness to be advertised, that the determination and
+conclusion of the divines in this university was achieved and finished
+according to your desired purpose, upon Saturday last past. The sealing of
+the same has been put off unto this day, nor never could be obtained before
+for any soliciting on our parts which were your agents here, which never
+ceased to labour, all that lay in us, for the expedition of it, both with
+the privy president and with all such as we thought might in any part aid
+us therein. But what difficulties and stops hath been, to let the obtaining
+of the seal of the university, notwithstanding the conclusion passed and
+agreed unto by the more part of the faculty, by reason of such oppositions
+as the adversary part hath made to embezzle the determination that it
+should not take effect nor go forth in that same form as it was concluded,
+it may please your Grace, to be advertised by this bearer, Master Fox; who,
+with his prudence, diligence, and great exercise in the cause, hath most
+holp to resist all these crafts, and to bring the matter to that point as
+your most desired purpose hath been to have it. He hath indeed acted
+according to that hope which I had of him at the beginning and first
+breaking of the matter amongst the faculty here, when I, somewhat fearing
+and foreseeing such contentions, altercations, and empeschements as by most
+likelihood might ensue, did give your Grace advertisement, how necessary I
+thought it was to have Master Fox's presence. And whereas I was informed by
+Master Fox how it standeth with your Grace's pleasure, considering my
+fervent desire thereon, that, your motion once achieved and brought to a
+final conclusion in this university, I should repair to your presence, your
+Grace could not grant me at this time a petition more comfortable unto me.
+And so, making what convenient speed I may, my trust is shortly to wait
+upon your Highness. Thus Jesu preserve your most noble Grace to his
+pleasure, and your most comfort and honour. Written at Paris, the seventh
+day of July, by your Grace's most humble and faithful servant, REGINALD
+POLE."[274]
+
+We must speak of this transaction as it deserves, and call it wholly bad,
+unjust, and inexcusable. Yet we need not deceive ourselves into supposing
+that the opposition which was crushed so roughly was based on any principal
+of real honesty. In Italy, intrigue was used against intimidation. In
+France intimidation was used against intrigue; and the absence of rectitude
+in the parties whom it was necessary to influence, provoked and justified
+the contempt with which they were treated.
+
+The conduct of the English universities on the same occasion was precisely
+what their later characters would have led us respectively to expect from
+them. At Oxford the heads of houses and the senior doctors and masters
+submitted their consciences to state dictation, without opposition, and, as
+it seemed, without reluctance. Henry was wholly satisfied that the right
+was on his own side; he was so convinced of it, that an opposition to his
+wishes among his own subjects, he could attribute only to disloyalty or to
+some other unworthy feeling; and therefore, while he directed the
+convocation, "giving no credence to sinister persuasions, to show and
+declare their just and true learning in his cause," he was able to dwell
+upon the answer which he expected from them, as a plain matter of duty; and
+obviously as not admitting of any uncertainty whatever.
+
+"We will and command you," he said, "that ye, not leaning to wilful and
+sinister opinions of your own several minds, considering that we be your
+sovereign liege lord [and] totally giving your time, mind, and affections
+to the true overtures of divine learning in this behalf, do show and
+declare your true and just learning in the said cause, like as ye will
+abide by: wherein ye shall not only please Almighty God, but also us your
+liege lord. And we, for your so doing, shall be to you and to our
+university there so good and gracious a lord for the same, as ye shall
+perceive it well done in your well fortune to come. And in case you do not
+uprightly, according to divine learning, handle yourselves herein, ye may
+be assured that we, not without great cause, shall so quickly and sharply
+look to your unnatural misdemeanour herein, that it shall not be to your
+quietness and ease hereafter."[275] The admonitory clauses were
+sufficiently clear; they were scarcely needed, however, by the older
+members of the university. An enlarged experience of the world which years,
+at Oxford as well as elsewhere, had not failed to bring with them, a just
+apprehension of the condition of the kingdom, and a sense of the
+obligations of subjects in times of political difficulty, sufficed to
+reconcile the heads of the colleges to obedience; and threats were not
+required where it is unlikely that a thought of hesitation was entertained.
+But there was a class of residents which appears to be perennial in that
+university, composed out of the younger masters; a class of men who,
+defective alike in age, in wisdom, or in knowledge, were distinguished by a
+species of theoretic High Church fanaticism; who, until they received their
+natural correction from advancing years, required from time to time to be
+protected against their own extravagance by some form of external pressure.
+These were the persons whom the king was addressing in his more severe
+language, and it was not without reason that he had recourse to it.
+
+In order to avoid difficulty, and to secure a swift and convenient
+resolution, it was proposed that both at Oxford and Cambridge the
+universities should be represented by a committee composed of the heads of
+houses, the proctors, and the graduates in divinity and law: that this
+committee should agree upon a form of a reply; and that the university seal
+should then be affixed without further discussion. This proposition was
+plausible as well as prudent, for it might be supposed reasonably that
+young half-educated students were incapable of forming a judgment on an
+intricate point of law; and to admit their votes was equivalent to allowing
+judgment to be given by party feeling. The masters who were to be thus
+excluded refused however to entertain this view of their incapacity. The
+question whether the committee should be appointed was referred to
+convocation, where, having the advantage of numbers, they coerced the
+entire proceedings; and some of them "expressing themselves in a very
+forward manner" to the royal commissioners,[276] and the heads of houses
+being embarrassed, and not well knowing what to do, the king found it
+necessary again to interpose. He was unwilling, as he said, to violate the
+constitution of the university by open interference, "considering it to
+exist under grant and charter from the crown as a body politic, in the
+ruling whereof in things to be done in the name of the whole, the number of
+private suffrages doth prevail." "He was loth, too," he added, "to show his
+displeasure, whereof he had so great cause ministered unto him, unto the
+whole in general, whereas the fault perchance consisted and remained in
+light and wilful heads," and he trusted that it might suffice if the
+masters of the colleges used their private influence and authority[277] in
+overcoming the opposition. For the effecting of this purpose, however, and
+in order to lend weight to their persuasion, he assisted the convocation
+towards a conclusion with the following characteristic missive:--
+
+"To our trusty and well-beloved the heads of houses, doctors, and proctors
+of our University of Oxford:
+
+"Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well; and of late being informed, to
+our no little marvel and discontentation, that a great part of the youth of
+that our university, with contentious and factious manner daily combining
+together, neither regarding their duty to us their sovereign lord, nor yet
+conforming themselves to the opinions and orders of the virtuous, wise,
+sage, and profound learned men of that university, wilfully do stick upon
+the opinion to have a great number of regents and non-regents to be
+associate unto the doctors, proctors, and bachelors of divinity for the
+determination of our question; which we believe hath not been often seen,
+that such a number of right small learning in regard to the other should be
+joined with so famous a sort, or in a manner stay their seniors in so
+weighty a cause. And forasmuch as this, we think, should be no small
+dishonour to our university there, but most especially to you the seniors
+and rulers of the same; and as also, we assure you, this their unnatural
+and unkind demeanour is not only right much to our displeasure, but much to
+be marvelled of, upon what ground and occasion, they being our mere
+subjects, should show themselves more unkind and wilful in this matter than
+all other universities, both in this and all other regions do: we, trusting
+in the dexterity and wisdom of you and other the said discreet and
+substantial learned men of that university, be in perfect hope that ye will
+conduce and frame the said young persons unto order and conformity as it
+becometh you to do. Whereof we be desirous to hear with incontinent
+diligence; and doubt you not we shall regard the demeanour of every one of
+the university according to their merits and deserts. And if the youth of
+the university will play masteries as they begin to do, we doubt not but
+they shall well perceive that non est bonum irritare crabrones.[278]
+
+"Given under our hand and seal, at our Castle of Windsor,
+
+"HENRY R."[279]
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say, that, armed with this letter, the heads of
+houses subdued the recalcitrance of the overhasty "youth;" and Oxford duly
+answered as she was required to answer.
+
+The proceedings at Cambridge were not very dissimilar; but Cambridge being
+distinguished by greater openness and largeness of mind on this as on the
+other momentous subjects of the day than the sister university, was able to
+preserve a more manly bearing, and escape direct humiliation. Cranmer had
+written a book upon the divorce in the preceding year, which, as coming
+from a well-known Cambridge man, had occasioned a careful ventilation of
+the question there; the resident masters had been divided by it into
+factions nearly equal in number, though unharmoniously composed. The heads
+of houses, as at Oxford, were inclined to the king, but they were
+embarrassed and divided by the presence on the same side of the suspected
+liberals, the party of Shaxton, Latimer, and Cranmer himself. The agitation
+of many months had rendered all members of the university, young and old,
+so well acquainted (as they supposed) with the bearings of the difficulty,
+that they naturally resisted, as at the other university, the demand that
+their power should be delegated to a committee; and the Cambridge
+convocation, as well as that of Oxford, threw out this resolution when it
+was first proposed to them. A king's letter having made them more amenable,
+a list of the intended committee was drawn out, which, containing Latimer's
+name, occasioned a fresh storm. But the number in the senate house being
+nearly divided, "the labour of certain friends" turned the scale; the vote
+passed, and the committee was allowed, on condition that the question
+should be argued publicly in the presence of the whole university. Finally,
+judgment was obtained on the king's side, though in a less absolute form
+than he had required, and the commissioners did not think it prudent to
+press for a more extreme conclusion. They had been desired to pronounce
+that the pope had no power to permit a man to marry his brother's widow.
+They consented only to say that a marriage within those degrees was
+contrary to the divine law; but the question of the pope's power was left
+unapproached.[280]
+
+It will not be uninteresting to follow this judgment a further step, to the
+delivery of it into the hands of the king, where it will introduce us to a
+Sunday at Windsor Castle three centuries ago. We shall find present there,
+as a significant symptom of the time, Hugh Latimer, appointed freshly
+select preacher in the royal chapel, but already obnoxious to English
+orthodoxy, on account of his Cambridge sermons. These sermons, it had been
+said, contained many things good and profitable, "on sin, and godliness,
+and virtue," but much also which was disrespectful to established beliefs,
+the preacher being clearly opposed to "candles and pilgrimages," and
+"calling men unto the works that God commanded in his Holy Scripture, all
+dreams and unprofitable glosses set aside and utterly despised." The
+preacher had, therefore, been cited before consistory courts and
+interdicted by bishops, "swarms of friars and doctors flocking against
+Master Latimer on every side."[281] This also was to be noted about him,
+that he was one of the most fearless men who ever lived. Like John Knox,
+whom he much resembled, in whatever presence he might be, whether of poor
+or rich, of laymen or priests, of bishops or kings, he ever spoke out
+boldly from his pulpit what he thought, directly if necessary to particular
+persons whom he saw before him respecting their own actions. Even Henry
+himself he did not spare where he saw occasion for blame; and Henry, of
+whom it was said that he never was mistaken in a _man_--loving a _man_[282]
+where he could find him with all his heart--had, notwithstanding, chosen
+this Latimer as one of his own chaplains.
+
+The unwilling bearer of the Cambridge judgment was Dr. Buckmaster, the
+vice-chancellor, who, in a letter to a friend, describes his reception at
+the royal castle.
+
+"To the right worshipful Dr. Edmonds, vicar of Alborne, in Wiltshire, my
+duty remembered,--
+
+"I heartily commend me unto you, and I let you understand that yesterday
+week, being Sunday at afternoon, I came to Windsor, and also to part of Mr.
+Latimer's sermon; and after the end of the same I spake with Mr. Secretary
+[Cromwell], and also with Mr. Provost; and so after evensong I delivered
+our letters in the Chamber of Presence, all the court beholding. The king,
+with Mr. Secretary, did there read them; and did then give me thanks and
+talked with me a good while. He much lauded our wisdom and good conveyance
+in the matter, with the great quietness in the same. He showed me also what
+he had in his hands for our university, according to that which Mr.
+Secretary did express unto us, and so he departed from me. But by and bye
+he greatly praised Mr. Latimer's sermon; and in so praising said on this
+wise: 'This displeaseth greatly Mr. Vice-Chancellor yonder; yon same,' said
+he to the Duke of Norfolk, 'is Mr. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge,' and so
+pointed unto me. Then he spake secretly unto the said duke, which, after
+the king's departure, came unto me and welcomed me, saying, among other
+things, the king would speak with me on the next day. And here is the first
+act. On the next day I waited until it was dinner time; and so at the last
+Dr. Butts, [king's physician,] came unto me, and brought a reward, twenty
+nobles for me, and five marks for the junior proctor which was with me,
+saying that I should take that for a resolute answer, and that I might
+depart from the court when I would. Then came Mr. Provost, and when I had
+shewed him of the answer, he said I should speak with the king after dinner
+for all that, and so he brought me into a privy place where after dinner he
+would have me wait. I came thither and he both; and by one of the clock the
+king entered in. It was in a gallery. There were Mr. Secretary, Mr.
+Provost, Mr. Latimer, Mr. Proctor, and I, and no more. The king then talked
+with us until six of the clock. I assure you he was scarce contented with
+Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, that this was not also determined, _an Papa
+possit dispensare_. I made the best, and confirmed the same that they had
+shewed his Grace before; and how it would never have been so obtained. He
+opened his mind, saying he would have it determined after Easter, and of
+the same was counselled awhile.
+
+"Much other communication we had, which were too long here to recite. Then
+his Highness departed, casting a little holy water of the court; and I
+shortly after took my leave of Mr. Secretary and Mr. Provost, with whom I
+did not drink, nor yet was bidden, and on the morrow departed from thence,
+thinking more than I did say, and being glad that I was out of the court,
+where many men, as I did both hear and perceive, did wonder at me. And here
+shall be an end for this time of this fable.
+
+"All the world almost crieth out of Cambridge for this act, and specially
+on me; but I must bear it as well as I may. I have lost a benefice by it,
+which I should have had within these ten days; for there hath one fallen in
+Mr. Throgmorton's[283] gift which he hath faithfully promised unto me many
+a time, but now his mind is turned and alienate from me. If ye go to court
+after Easter I pray you have me in remembrance. Mr. Latimer preacheth
+still,--quod aemuli ejus graviter ferunt.
+
+"Thus fare you well. Your own to his power,
+WILLIAM BUCKMASTER.[284]
+Cambridge, Monday after Easter, 1530."
+
+It does not appear that Cambridge was pressed further, and we may,
+therefore, allow it to have acquitted itself creditably, If we sum up the
+results of Cranmer's measure as a whole, it may be said that opinions had
+been given by about half Europe directly or indirectly unfavourable to the
+papal claims; and that, therefore, the king had furnished himself with a
+legal pretext for declining the jurisdiction of the court of Rome, and
+appealing to a general council. Objections to the manner in which the
+opinions had been gained could be answered by recriminations equally just;
+and in the technical aspect of the question a step had certainly been
+gained. It will be thought, nevertheless, on wider grounds, that the
+measure was a mistake; that it would have been far better if the legal
+labyrinth had never been entered, and if the divorce had been claimed only
+upon those considerations of policy for which it had been first demanded,
+and which formed the true justification of it. Not only might a shameful
+chapter of scandal have been spared out of the world's history, but the
+point on which the battle was being fought lay beside the real issue.
+Europe was shaken with intrigue, hundreds of books were written, and tens
+of thousands of tongues were busy for twelve months weaving logical
+subtleties, and all for nothing. The truth was left unspoken because it was
+not convenient to speak it, and all parties agreed to persuade themselves
+and accept one another's persuasions, that they meant something which they
+did not mean. Beyond doubt the theological difficulty really affected the
+king. We cannot read his own book[285] upon it without a conviction that
+his arguments were honestly urged, that his misgivings were real, and that
+he meant every word which he said. Yet it is clear at the same time that
+these misgivings would not have been satisfied, if all the wisdom of the
+world--pope, cardinals, councils, and all the learned faculties
+together--had declared against him, the true secret of the matter lying
+deeper, understood and appreciated by all the chief parties concerned, and
+by the English laity, whose interests were at stake; but in all these
+barren disputings ignored as if it had no existence.
+
+It was perhaps less easy than it seems to have followed the main road. The
+bye ways often promise best at first entrance into them, and Henry's
+peculiar temper never allowed him to believe beforehand that a track which
+he had chosen could lead to any conclusion except that to which he had
+arranged that it should lead. With an intellect endlessly fertile in
+finding reasons to justify what he desired, he could see no justice on any
+side but his own, or understand that it was possible to disagree with him
+except from folly of ill-feeling. Starting always with a foregone
+conclusion, he arrived of course where he wished to arrive. His "Glasse of
+Truth" is a very picture of his mind. "If the marshall of the host bids us
+do anything," he said, "shall we do it if it be against the great captain?
+Again, if the great captain bid us do anything, and the king or the emperor
+commandeth us to do another, dost thou doubt that we must obey the
+commandment of the king or emperor, and contemn the commandment of the
+great captain? Therefore if the king or the emperor bid one thing, and God
+another, we must obey God, and contemn and not regard neither king nor
+emperor." And, therefore, he argued, "we are not to obey the pope, when the
+pope commands what is unlawful."[286] These were but many words to prove
+what the pope would not have questioned; and either they concluded nothing
+or the conclusion was assumed.
+
+We cannot but think that among the many misfortunes of Henry's life his
+theological training was the greatest; and that directly or indirectly it
+was the parent of all the rest. If in this unhappy business he had trusted
+only to his instincts as an English statesman; if he had been contented
+himself with the truth, and had pressed no arguments except those which in
+the secrets of his heart had weight with him, he would have spared his own
+memory a mountain of undeserved reproach, and have spared historians their
+weary labour through these barren deserts of unreality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CHURCH AND STATE
+
+The authorities of the church, after the lesson which they had received
+from the parliament in its first session, were now allowed a respite of two
+years, during which they might reconsider the complaints of the people, and
+consult among themselves upon the conduct which they would pursue with
+respect to those complaints. They availed themselves of their interval of
+repose in a manner little calculated to recover the esteem which they had
+forfeited, or to induce the legislature further to stay their hand. Instead
+of reforming their own faults, they spent the time in making use of their
+yet uncurtailed powers of persecution; and they wreaked the bitterness of
+their resentment upon the unfortunate heretics, who paid with their blood
+at the stake for the diminished revenues and blighted dignities of their
+spiritual lords and superiors. During the later years of Wolsey's
+administration, the Protestants, though threatened and imprisoned, had
+escaped the most cruel consequences of their faith. Wolsey had been a
+warm-hearted and genuine man, and although he had believed as earnestly as
+his brother bishops, that Protestantism was a pernicious thing, destructive
+alike to the institutions of the country and to the souls of mankind, his
+memory can be reproached with nothing worse than assiduous but humane
+efforts for the repression of it. In the three years which followed his
+dismissal, a far more bloody page was written in the history of the
+reformers; and under the combined auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism,
+and the spleen of the angry clergy, the stake re-commenced its hateful
+activity. This portion of my subject requires a full and detailed
+treatment; I reserve the account of it, therefore, for a separate chapter,
+and proceed for the present with the progress of the secular changes.
+
+Although, as I said, no further legislative measures were immediately
+contemplated against the clergy, yet they were not permitted to forget the
+alteration in their position which had followed upon Wolsey's fall; and as
+they had shown in the unfortunate document which they had submitted to the
+king, so great a difficulty in comprehending the nature of that alteration,
+it was necessary clearly and distinctly to enforce it upon them. Until that
+moment they had virtually held the supreme power in the state. The
+nobility, crippled by the wars of the Roses, had sunk into the second
+place; the Commons were disorganised, or incapable of a definite policy;
+and the chief offices of the government had fallen as a matter of course to
+the only persons who for the moment were competent to hold them. The
+jealousy of ecclesiastical encroachments, which had shown itself so
+bitterly under the Plantagenets, had been superseded from the accession of
+Henry VII. by a policy of studied conciliation, and the position of Wolsey
+had but symbolised the position of his order. But Wolsey was now gone, and
+the ecclesiastics who had shared his greatness while they envied it, were
+compelled to participate also in his change of fortune.
+
+This great minister, after the failure of a discreditable effort to fasten
+upon him a charge of high treason,--a charge which, vindictively pressed
+through the House of Lords, was wisely rejected by the Commons,--had been
+prosecuted with greater justice for a breach of the law, in having
+exercised the authority of papal legate within the realm of England. His
+policy had broken down: he had united against him in a common exasperation
+all orders in the state, secular and spiritual; and the possible
+consequences of his adventurous transgression had fallen upon him. The
+parliaments of Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV. had by a
+series of statutes pronounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any
+office or dignity in the Anglican church, under penalty of a premunire; the
+provisions of these acts extending not only to the persons themselves who
+accepted office under such conditions, but comprehending equally whoever
+acknowledged their authority, "their executors, procurators, fautors,
+maintainers, and receivers."[287] The importance attached to these laws was
+to be seen readily in the frequent re-enactment of them, with language of
+increasing vehemence; and although the primary object was to neutralise the
+supposed right of the pope to present to English benefices, and although
+the office of papal legate is not especially named in any one of the
+prohibitory clauses, yet so acute a canonist as Wolsey could not have been
+ignorant that it was comprehended under the general denunciation. The 5th
+of the 16th of Richard II. was in fact explicitly universal in its
+language, and dwelt especially on the importance of prohibiting the
+exercise of any species of jurisdiction which could encroach on the royal
+authority. He had therefore consciously violated a law on his own
+responsibility, which he knew to exist, but which he perhaps trusted had
+fallen into desuetude, and would not again be revived. It cannot be denied
+that in doing so, being at the time the highest law officer of the crown,
+he had committed a grave offence, and was justly liable to the full
+penalties of the broken statute. He had received the royal permission, but
+it was a plea which could not have availed him, and he did not attempt to
+urge it.[288] The contingency of a possible violation of the law by the
+king himself had been expressly foreseen and provided against in the act
+under which he was prosecuted,[289] and being himself the king's legal
+adviser, it was his duty to have kept his sovereign[290] informed of the
+true nature of the statute. He had neglected this, his immediate
+obligation, in pursuit of the interests of the church, and when Henry's
+eyes were opened, he did not consider himself called upon to interfere to
+shield his minister from the penalties which he had incurred, nor is it
+likely that in the face of the irritation of the country he could have done
+so if he had desired. It was felt, indeed, that the long services of
+Wolsey, and his generally admirable administration, might fairly save him
+(especially under the circumstances of the case) from extremity of
+punishment; and if he had been allowed to remain unmolested in the affluent
+retirement which was at first conceded to him, his treatment would not have
+caused the stain which we have now to lament on the conduct of the
+administration which succeeded his fall. He indeed himself believed that
+the final attack upon him was due to no influence of rival statesmen, but
+to the hatred of Anne Boleyn; and perhaps he was not mistaken. This,
+however, is a matter which does not concern us here, and I need not pursue
+it. It is enough that he had violated the law of England, openly and
+knowingly, and on the revival of the national policy by which that law had
+been enacted, he reaped the consequences in his own person.
+
+It will be a question whether we can equally approve of the enlarged
+application of the statute which immediately followed. The guilt of Wolsey
+did not rest with himself; it extended to all who had recognised him in his
+capacity of legate; to the archbishops and bishops, to the two Houses of
+Convocation, to the Privy Council, to the Lords and Commons, and indirectly
+to the nation itself. It was obvious that such a state of things was not
+contemplated by the act under which he was tried, and where in point of law
+all persons were equally guilty, in equity they were equally innocent; the
+circumstances of the case, therefore, rendered necessary a general pardon,
+which was immediately drawn out. The government, however, while granting
+absolution to the nation, determined to make some exceptions in their
+lenity; and harsh as their resolution appeared, it is not difficult to
+conjecture the reasons which induced them to form it. The higher clergy had
+been encouraged by Wolsey's position to commit those excessive acts of
+despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. The
+overthrow of the last ecclesiastical minister was an opportunity to teach
+them that the privileges which they had abused were at an end; and as the
+lesson was so difficult for them to learn, the letter of the law which they
+had broken was put in force to quicken their perceptions. They were to be
+punished indirectly for their other evil doings, and forced to surrender
+some portion of the unnumbered exactions which they had extorted from the
+helplessness of their flocks.
+
+In pursuance of this resolution, therefore, official notice was issued in
+December, 1530, that the clergy lay all under a premunire, and that the
+crown intended to prosecute. Convocation was to meet in the middle of
+January, and this comforting fact was communicated to the bishops in order
+to divert their attention to subjects which might profitably occupy their
+deliberations. The church legislature had sate in the preceding years
+contemporaneously with the sitting of parliament, at the time when their
+privileges were being discussed, and when their conduct had been so angrily
+challenged: but these matters had not disturbed their placid equanimity:
+and while the bishops were composing their answer to the House of Commons,
+Convocation had been engaged in debating the most promising means of
+persecuting heretics and preventing the circulation of the Bible.[291] The
+session had continued into the spring of 1529-30, when the king had been
+prevailed upon to grant an order in council prohibiting Tyndale's
+Testament, in the preface of which the clergy were spoken of
+disrespectfully.[292] His consent had been obtained with great difficulty,
+on the representation of the bishops that the translation was faulty, and
+on their undertaking themselves to supply the place of it with a corrected
+version. But in obtaining the order, they supposed themselves to have
+gained a victory; and their triumph was celebrated in St. Paul's churchyard
+with an auto da fe, over which the Bishop of London consented to preside;
+when such New Testaments as the diligence of the apparitors could discover,
+were solemnly burned.
+
+From occupation such as this a not unwholesome distraction was furnished by
+the intimation of the premunire; and that it might produce its due effect,
+it was accompanied with the further information that the clergy of the
+province of Canterbury would receive their pardon only upon payment of a
+hundred thousand pounds--a very considerable fine, amounting to more than a
+million of our money. Eighteen thousand pounds was required simultaneously
+from the province of York; and the whole sum was to be paid in instalments
+spread over a period of five years.[293] The demand was serious, but the
+clergy had no alternative but to submit or to risk the chances of the law;
+and feeling that, with the people so unfavourably disposed towards them,
+they had no chance of a more equitable construction of their position, they
+consented with a tolerable grace, the Upper House of Convocation first, the
+Lower following. Their debates upon the subject have not been preserved. It
+was probably difficult to persuade them that they were treated with
+anything but the most exquisite injustice; since Wolsey's legatine
+faculties had been the object of their general dread; and if he had
+remained in power, the religious orders would have been exposed to a
+searching visitation in virtue of these faculties, from which they could
+have promised themselves but little advantage. But their punishment, if
+tyrannical in form, was equitable in substance, and we can reconcile
+ourselves without difficulty to an act of judicial confiscation.
+
+The money, however, was not the only concession which the threat of the
+premunire gave opportunity to extort; and it is creditable to the clergy
+that the demand which they showed most desire to resist was not that which
+most touched their personal interests. In the preamble of the subsidy bill,
+under which they were to levy their ransom, they were required by the
+council to designate the king by the famous title which gave occasion for
+such momentous consequences, of "Protector and only Supreme Head of the
+Church and Clergy of England."[294] It is not very easy to see what Henry
+proposed to himself by requiring this designation, at so early a stage in
+the movement. The breach with the pope was still distant, and he was
+prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even seriously contemplate
+a step which he so little desired. It may have been designed as a reply to
+the papal censures: it may have been to give effect to his own menaces,
+which Clement to the last believed to be no more than words;[295] or
+perhaps (and this is the most likely) he desired by some emphatic act, to
+make his clergy understand the relation in which thenceforward they were to
+be placed towards the temporal authority. It is certain only that this
+title was not intended to imply what it implied when, four years later, it
+was conferred by act Of parliament, and when virtually England was severed
+by it from the Roman communion.
+
+But whatever may have been the king's motive, he was serious in requiring
+that the title should be granted to him. Only by acknowledging Henry as
+Head of the Church should the clergy receive their pardon, and the longer
+they hesitated, the more peremptorily he insisted on their obedience. The
+clergy had defied the lion, and the lion held them in his grasp; and they
+could but struggle helplessly, supplicate and submit. Archbishop Warham,
+just drawing his life to a close, presided for the last time in the
+miserable scene, imagining that the clouds were gathering for the storms of
+the latter day, and that Antichrist was coming in his power.
+
+There had been a debate of three days, whether they should or should not
+consent, when, on the 9th of February, a deputation of the judges appeared
+in Convocation, to ask whether the Houses were agreed, and to inform them
+finally that the king had determined to allow no qualifications. The clergy
+begged for one more day, and the following morning the bishops held a
+private meeting among themselves, to discuss some plan to turn aside the
+blow. They desired to see Cromwell, to learn, perhaps, if there was a
+chance of melting the hard heart of Henry; and after an interview with the
+minister which could not have been encouraging, they sent two of their
+number, the Bishops of Exeter and Lincoln, to attempt the unpromising task.
+It was in vain; the miserable old men were obliged to return with the
+answer that the king would not see them--they had seen only the judges, who
+had assured them, in simple language, that the pardon was not to be settled
+until the supremacy was admitted. The answer was communicated to the House,
+and again "debated." Submission was against the consciences of the unhappy
+clergy; to obey their consciences involved forfeiture of property; and
+naturally in such a dilemma they found resolution difficult. They attempted
+another appeal, suggesting that eight of their number should hold a
+conference with the privy council, and "discover, if they might, some
+possible expedient." But Henry replied, as before, that he would have a
+clear answer, "_yes_, or _no_." They might say "yes," and their pardon was
+ready. They might say "no"--and accept the premunire and its penalties. And
+now, what should the clergy have done? No very great courage was required
+to answer, "This thing is wrong; it is against God's will, and therefore it
+must not be, whether premunire come or do not come." They might have said
+it, and if they could have dared this little act of courage, victory was in
+their hands. With the cause against them so doubtful, their very attitude
+would have commanded back the sympathies of half the nation, and the king's
+threats would have exploded as an empty sound. But Henry knew the persons
+with whom he had to deal--forlorn shadows, decked in the trappings of
+dignity--who only by some such rough method could be brought to a knowledge
+of themselves. "Shrink to the clergy"--I find in a state paper of the
+time--"Shrink to the clergy, and they be lions; lay their faults roundly
+and charitably to them, and they be as sheep, and will lightly be reformed,
+for their consciences will not suffer them to resist."[296]
+
+They hesitated for another night. The day following, the archbishop
+submitted the clause containing the title to the Upper House, with a saving
+paragraph, which, as Burnet sententiously observes, the nature of things
+did require to be supposed.[297] "Ecclesiae et cleri Anglicani," so it ran,
+"singularem protectorem, et unicum et supremum Dominum, et quantum per
+legem Christi licet, etiam supremum caput ipsius Majestatem agnoscimus--We
+recognise the King's Majesty to be our only sovereign lord, the singular
+protector of the church and clergy of England, and as far as is allowed by
+the law of Christ, also as our Supreme Head." The words were read aloud by
+the archbishop, and were received in silence. "Do you assent?" he asked.
+The House remained speechless. "Whoever is silent seems to consent," the
+archbishop said. A voice answered out of the crowd, "Then are we all
+silent." They separated for a few hours to collect themselves. In the
+afternoon sitting they discussed the sufficiency of the subterfuge; and at
+length agreeing that it saved their consciences, the clause was finally
+passed, the Bishop of Rochester, among the rest, giving his unwilling
+acquiescence.
+
+So for the present terminated this grave matter. The pardon was immediately
+submitted to parliament, where it was embodied in a statute;[298] and this
+act of dubious justice accomplished, the Convocation was allowed to return
+to its usual occupations, and continue the prosecutions of the heretics.
+
+The House of Commons, during their second session, had confined themselves
+meanwhile to secular business. They had been concerned chiefly with
+regulations affecting trade and labour; and the proceedings on the
+premunire being thought for the time to press sufficiently on the clergy,
+they deferred the further prosecution of their own complaints till the
+following year. Two measures, however, highly characteristic of the age,
+must not be passed over, one of which concerned a matter that must have
+added heavily to the troubles of the Bishop of Rochester at a time when he
+was in no need of any addition to his burdens.
+
+Fisher was the only one among the prelates for whom it is possible to feel
+respect. He was weak, superstitious, pedantical; towards the Protestants he
+was even cruel; but he was a singlehearted man, who lived in honest fear of
+evil, so far as he understood what evil was; and he alone could rise above
+the menaces of worldly suffering, under which his brethren on the bench
+sank so rapidly into meekness and submission. We can therefore afford to
+compassionate him in the unexpected calamity by which he was overtaken, and
+which must have tried his failing spirit in no common manner.
+
+He lived, while his duties required his presence in London, at a house in
+Lambeth, and being a hospitable person, he opened his doors at the dinner
+hour for the poor of the neighbourhood. Shortly after the matter which I
+have just related, many of these people who were dependent on his bounty
+were reported to have become alarmingly ill, and several gentlemen of the
+household sickened also in the same sudden and startling manner. One of
+these gentlemen died, and a poor woman also died; and it was discovered on
+inquiry that the yeast which had been used in various dishes had been
+poisoned. The guilty person was the cook, a certain Richard Rouse; and
+inasmuch as all crimes might be presumed to have had motives, and the
+motive in the present instance was undiscoverable, it was conjectured by
+Queen Catherine's friends that he had been bribed by Anne Boleyn, or by
+some one of her party, to remove out of the way the most influential of the
+English opponents of the divorce.[299] The story was possibly without
+foundation, although it is not unlikely that Fisher himself believed it.
+The shock of such an occurrence may well have unsettled his powers of
+reasoning, and at all times he was a person whose better judgment was
+easily harassed into incapacity. The origin of the crime, however, is of
+less importance than the effect of the discovery upon the nation, in whom
+horror of the action itself absorbed every other feeling. Murder of this
+kind was new in England. Ready as the people ever were with sword or
+lance--incurably given as they were to fighting in the best ordered
+times--an Englishman was accustomed to face his enemy, man to man, in the
+open day; and the Italian crime (as it was called) of poisoning had not
+till recent years been heard of.[300] Even revenge and passion recognised
+their own laws of honour and fair play; and the cowardly ferocity which
+would work its vengeance in the dark, and practise destruction by wholesale
+to implicate one hated person in the catastrophe, was a new feature of
+criminality. Occurring in a time so excited, when all minds were on the
+stretch, and imaginations were feverish with fancies, it appeared like a
+frightful portent, some prodigy of nature, or enormous new birth of
+wickedness, not to be received or passed by as a common incident, and not
+to be dealt with by the process of ordinary law. Parliament undertook the
+investigation, making it the occasion, when the evidence was completed, of
+a special statute, so remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording.
+The English were a stern people--a people knowing little of compassion
+where no lawful ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful
+and solemn horror of evil things,--a feeling which, in proportion as it
+exists, inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man
+is ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and is still
+contending with it; but we purchase compassion for utter wickedness only by
+doubting in our hearts whether wickedness is more than misfortune.
+
+"The King's royal Majesty," says the 9th of the 22nd of Henry VIII.,
+"calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of good and
+wholesome laws, and due execution of the same against the offenders
+thereof, is the only cause that good obedience and order hath been
+preserved in this realm; and his Highness having most tender zeal for the
+same, considering that man's life above all things is chiefly to be
+favoured, and voluntary murders most highly to be detested and abhorred;
+and specially all kinds of murders by poisoning, which in this realm
+hitherto, our Lord be thanked, hath been most rare and seldom committed or
+practised: and now, in the time of this present parliament, that is to say,
+on the eighteenth day of February, in the twenty-second year of his most
+victorious reign, one Richard Rouse, late of Rochester, in the county of
+Kent, cook, otherwise called Richard Cook, of his most wicked and damnable
+disposition, did cast a certain venom or poison into a vessel replenished
+with yeast or barm, standing in the kitchen of the reverend father in God,
+John Bishop of Rochester, at his place in Lambeth Marsh; with which yeast
+or barm, and other things convenient, porridge or gruel was forthwith made
+for his family there being; whereby not only the number of seventeen
+persons of his said family, which did eat of that porridge, were mortally
+infected or poisoned, and one of them, that is to say, Bennet Curwan,
+gentleman, is thereof deceased; but also certain poor people which resorted
+to the said bishop's place, and were there charitably fed with the remains
+of the said porridge and other victuals; were in like wise infected; and
+one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Tryppitt, widow, is also
+thereof now deceased: Our said sovereign lord the king, of his blessed
+disposition inwardly abhorring all such abominable offences, because that
+in manner no person can live in surety out of danger of death by that
+means, if practices thereof should not be eschewed, hath ordained and
+enacted by authority of this present parliament, that the said poisoning be
+adjudged and deemed as high treason; and that the said Richard, for the
+said murder and poisoning of the said two persons, shall stand and be
+attainted of high treason.
+
+"And because that detestable offence, now newly practised and committed,
+requireth condign punishment for the same, it is ordained and enacted by
+authority of this present parliament that the said Richard Rouse shall be
+therefore boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy; and
+that from henceforth every wilful murder of any person or persons hereafter
+to be committed or done by means or way of poisoning, shall be reputed,
+deemed, and judged in the law to be high treason; and that all and every
+person or persons which shall hereafter be indicted and condemned by order
+of the law of such treason, shall not be admitted to the benefit of his or
+their clergy, but shall be immediately after such attainder or
+condemnation, committed to execution of death by boiling for the same."
+
+The sentence was carried into effect[301] in Smithfield, "on the tenebra
+Wednesday following, to the terrible example of all others." The spectacle
+of a living human being boiled to death, was really witnessed three hundred
+years ago by the London citizens, within the walls of that old
+cattle-market; an example terrible indeed, the significance of which is not
+easily to be exhausted. For the poisoners of the soul there was the
+stake,[302] for the poisoners of the body, the boiling cauldron,--the two
+most fearful punishments for the most fearful of crimes. The stake at which
+the heretic suffered was an inherited institution descending through the
+usage of centuries; the poisoner's cauldron was the fresh expression of the
+judgment of the English nation on a novel enormity; and I have called
+attention to it because the temper which this act exhibits is the key to
+all which has seemed most dark and cruel in the rough years which followed;
+a temper which would keep no terms with evil, or with anything which,
+rightly or wrongly, was believed to be evil, but dreadfully and inexorably
+hurried out the penalties of it.
+
+Following the statute against poisoning, there stands "an act for the
+banishment out of the country of divers outlandish and vagabond people
+called Egyptians;"[303] and attached to it another of analogous import,
+"for the repression of beggars and vagabonds," the number of whom, it was
+alleged, was increasing greatly throughout the country, and much crime and
+other inconveniences were said to have been occasioned by them. We may
+regard these two measures, if we please, as a result of the energetic and
+reforming spirit in the parliament, which was dragging into prominence all
+forms of existing disorders, and devising remedies for those disorders. But
+they indicate something more than this: they point to the growth of a
+disturbed and restless disposition, the interruption of industry, and other
+symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us
+the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which
+it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation
+for its approaching trial. The act against the gipsies especially,
+illustrates one of the most remarkable features of the times. The air was
+impregnated with superstition; in a half consciousness of the impending
+changes, all men were listening with wide ears to rumours and prophecies
+and fantastic fore-shadowings of the future; and fanaticism, half deceiving
+and half itself deceived, was grasping the lever of the popular excitement
+to work out its own ends.[304] The power which had ruled the hearts of
+mankind for ten centuries was shaking suddenly to its foundation. The
+Infallible guidance of the Church was failing; its light gone out, or
+pronounced to be but a mere deceitful ignis fatuus; and men found
+themselves wandering in darkness, unknowing where to turn or what to think
+or believe. It was easy to clamour against the spiritual courts. From men
+smarting under the barefaced oppression of that iniquitous jurisdiction,
+the immediate outcry rose without ulterior thought; but unexpectedly the
+frail edifice of the church itself threatened under the attack to crumble
+into ruins; and many gentle hearts began to tremble and recoil when they
+saw what was likely to follow on their light beginnings. It was true that
+the measures as yet taken by the parliament and the crown professed to be
+directed, not to the overthrow of the church, but to the re-establishment
+of its strength. But the exulting triumph of the Protestants, the promotion
+of Latimer to a royal chaplaincy, the quarrel with the papacy, and a dim
+but sure perception of the direction in which the stream was flowing,
+foretold to earnest Catholics a widely different issue; and the simplest of
+them knew better than the court knew, that they were drifting from the sure
+moorings of the faith into the broad ocean of uncertainty. There seems,
+indeed, to be in religious men, whatever be their creed, and however
+limited their intellectual power, a prophetic faculty of insight into the
+true bearings of outward things,--an insight which puts to shame the
+sagacity of statesmen, and claims for the sons of God, and only for them,
+the wisdom even of the world. Those only read the world's future truly who
+have faith in principle, as opposed to faith in human dexterity; who feel
+that in human things there lies really and truly a spiritual nature, a
+spiritual connection, a spiritual tendency, which the wisdom of the serpent
+cannot alter, and scarcely can affect.
+
+Excitement, nevertheless, is no guarantee for the understanding; and these
+instincts, powerful as they are, may be found often in minds wild and
+chaotic, which, although they vaguely foresee the future, yet have no power
+of sound judgment, and know not what they foresee, or how wisely to
+estimate it. Their wisdom, if we may so use the word, combines crudely with
+any form of superstition or fanaticism. Thus in England, at the time of
+which we are speaking, Catholics and Protestants had alike their horoscope
+of the impending changes, each nearer to the truth than the methodical
+calculations of the statesmen; yet their foresight did not affect their
+convictions, or alter the temper of their hearts. They foresaw the same
+catastrophe, yet their faith still coloured the character of it. To the one
+it was the advent of Antichrist, to the other the inauguration of the
+millennium. The truest hearted men on all sides were deserted by their
+understandings at the moment when their understandings were the most deeply
+needed: and they saw the realities which were round them transfigured into
+phantoms through the mists of their hopes and fears. The present was
+significant only as it seemed in labour with some gigantic issue, and the
+events of the outer world flew from lip to lip, taking as they passed every
+shape most wild and fantastical. Until "the king's matter" was decided,
+there was no censorship upon speech, and all tongues ran freely on the
+great subjects of the day. Every parish pulpit rang with the divorce, or
+with the perils of the Catholic faith; at every village ale-house, the talk
+was of St. Peter's keys, the sacrament, or of the pope's supremacy, or of
+the points in which a priest differed from a layman. Ostlers quarrelled
+over such questions as they groomed their masters' horses; old women
+mourned across the village shopboards of the evil days which were come or
+coming; while every kind of strangest superstition, fairy stories and witch
+stories, stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and
+to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue of the
+general imagination.[305]
+
+These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English
+mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement,
+the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant,
+who to a man were devoted to the pope and to Queen Catherine, passed up and
+down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster, and
+the wrath of God; and mingling with their prophecies more than dubious
+language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who was opposing
+God and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste
+to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those
+wandering encampments of "outlandish people," whose habits rendered them
+the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide
+a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate
+policy.[306] Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the emperor
+or the pope might pass unsuspected from the Land's End to
+Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying the links of
+the Catholic organisation: and in the later years of the struggle, as the
+intrigues became more determined and a closer connection was established
+between the Continental powers and the disaffected English, it became
+necessary to increase the penalty against these irregular wanderers from
+banishment to death. As yet, however, the milder punishment was held
+sufficient, and even this was imperfectly enforced.[307] The tendencies to
+treason were still incipient--they were tendencies only, which had as yet
+shown themselves in no decisive acts; the future was uncertain, the action
+of the government doubtful. The aim was rather to calm down the excitement
+of the people, and to extinguish with as little violence as possible the
+means by which it was fed.
+
+Ominous symptoms of eccentric agitation, however, began to take shape in
+the confusion, A preacher, calling himself the favourite of the Virgin
+Mary, had started up at Edinburgh, professing miraculous powers of
+abstinence from food. This man was sent by James V. to Rome, where, after
+having been examined by Clement, and having sufficiently proved his
+mission, he was furnished with a priest's habit and a certificate under
+leaden seal.[308] Thus equipped, he went a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and
+loaded himself with palm-leaves and with stones from the pillar at which
+Christ was scourged; and from thence making his way to England, he appeared
+at Paul's Cross an evident saint and apostle, cursing the king and his
+divorce, denouncing his apostacy, and threatening the anger of Heaven. He
+was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained, as it was believed,
+fifty days without food, or fed in secret by the Virgin, At the close of
+the time the government thought it prudent to send him back to Scotland,
+without further punishment.[309]
+
+Another more famous prophetess was then in the zenith of her
+reputation--the celebrated Nun of Kent--whose cell at Canterbury, for some
+three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the
+orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself. This singular
+woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes
+of England. By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired.
+Wolsey believed it, Warham believed it, the bishops believed it, Queen
+Catherine believed it, Sir Thomas More's philosophy was no protection to
+him against the same delusion; and finally, she herself believed the world,
+when she found the world believed in her. Her story is a psychological
+curiosity; and, interwoven as it was with the underplots of the time, we
+cannot observe it too accurately.
+
+In the year 1525, there lived in the parish of Aldington, in Kent, a
+certain Thomas Cobb, bailiff or steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
+who possessed an estate there. Among the servants of this Thomas Cobb was a
+country girl called Elizabeth Barton--a decent person, so far as we can
+learn, but of mere ordinary character, and until that year having shown
+nothing unusual in her temperament. She was then attacked, however, by some
+internal disease; and after many months of suffering, she was reduced into
+that abnormal and singular condition, in which she exhibited the phenomena
+known to modern wonder-seekers as those of somnambulism or clairvoyance.
+The scientific value of such phenomena is still undetermined, but that they
+are not purely imaginary is generally agreed. In the histories of all
+countries and of all times, we are familiar with accounts of young women of
+bad health and irritable nerves, who have exhibited at recurring periods
+certain unusual powers; and these exhibitions have had especial attraction
+for superstitious persons, whether they have believed in God, or in the
+devil, or in neither. A further feature also uniform in such cases, has
+been that a small element of truth may furnish a substructure for a
+considerable edifice of falsehood; human credulity being always an
+insatiable faculty, and its powers being unlimited when once the path of
+ordinary experience has been transcended. We have seen in our own time to
+what excesses occurrences of this kind may tempt the belief, even when
+defended with the armour of science. In the sixteenth century, when
+demoniacal possession was the explanation usually received even of ordinary
+insanity, we can well believe that the temptation must have been great to
+recognise supernatural agency in a manifestation far more uncommon; and
+that the difficulty of retaining the judgment in a position of equipoise
+must have been very great not only to the spectators but still more to the
+subject of the phenomenon herself. To sustain ourselves continuously under
+the influence of reason, even when our faculties are preserved in their
+natural balance, is a task too hard for most of us. We cannot easily make
+too great allowance for the moral derangement likely to follow, when a weak
+girl suddenly found herself possessed of powers which she was unable to
+understand. Bearing this in mind, for it is only just that we should do so,
+we continue the story.
+
+This Elizabeth Barton, then, "in the trances, of which she had divers and
+many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and
+said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had
+heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism
+and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel
+was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil.
+The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of
+so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard
+Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The
+girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been
+brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to
+it, "she spake words of marvellous holyness in rebuke of sin and
+vice;"[311] or, as another account says, "she spake very godly certain
+things concerning the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments."[312]
+This seemed satisfactory as to the source of the inspiration. It was
+clearly not a devil that spoke words against sin, and therefore, as there
+was no other alternative, it was plain that God had visited her. Her powers
+were assuredly from heaven; and it was plain, also, by a natural sequence
+of reasoning, that she held some divine commission, of which her
+clairvoyance was the miracle in attestation.
+
+An occurrence of such moment was not to be kept concealed in the parish of
+Aldington. The priest mounted his horse, and rode to Lambeth with the news
+to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the story having lost nothing of its
+marvel by the way,[313] the archbishop, who was fast sinking into dotage,
+instead of ordering a careful inquiry, and appointing some competent person
+to conduct it, listened with greedy interest; he assured Father Richard
+that "the speeches which she had spoken came of God; and bidding him keep
+him diligent account of all her utterances, directed him to inform her in
+his name that she was not to refuse or hide the goodness and works of God."
+Cobb, the bailiff, being encouraged by such high authority, would not keep
+any longer in his kitchen a prophetess with the archbishop's imprimatur
+upon her; and as soon as the girl was sufficiently recovered from her
+illness to leave her bed, he caused her to sit at his own mess with his
+mistress and the parson.[314] The story spread rapidly through the country;
+inquisitive foolish people came about her to try her skill with questions;
+and her illness, as she subsequently confessed, having then left her, and
+as only her reputation was remaining, she bethought herself whether it
+might not be possible to preserve it a little longer. "Perceiving herself
+to be much made of, to be magnified and much set by, by reason of trifling
+words spoken unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, she conceived in her
+mind that having so good success, and furthermore from so small an occasion
+and nothing to be esteemed, she might adventure further to enterprise and
+essay what she could do, being in good advisement and remembrance."[315]
+Her fits no longer recurred naturally, but she was able to reproduce either
+the reality or the appearance of them; and she continued to improvise her
+oracles with such ability as she could command, and with tolerable success.
+
+In this undertaking she was speedily provided with an efficient coadjutor.
+The Catholic church had for some time been unproductive of miracles, and as
+heresy was raising its head and attracting converts, so opportune an
+occurrence was not to be allowed to sleep. The archbishop sent his
+comptroller to the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury, with directions
+that two monks whom he especially named, Doctor Bocking, the cellarer, and
+Dan William Hadley, should go to Aldington to observe.[316] At first, not
+knowing what was before them, both prior and monks were unwilling to meddle
+with the matter.[317] They submitted, however, "from the obedience which
+they owed unto their lord;" and they had soon reason to approve the
+correctness of the archbishop's judgment. Bocking, selected no doubt from
+previous knowledge of his qualities, was a man devoted to his order, and
+not over-scrupulous as to the means by which he furthered the interests of
+it. With instinctive perception he discovered material in Elizabeth Barton
+too rich to be allowed to waste itself in a country village. Perhaps he
+partially himself believed in her, but he was more anxious to ensure the
+belief of others, and he therefore set himself to assist her inspiration
+towards more effective utterance. Conversing with her in her intervals of
+quiet, he discovered that she was wholly ignorant, and unprovided with any
+stock of mental or imaginative furniture; and that consequently her
+prophecies were without body, and too indefinite to be theologically
+available. This defect he remedied by instructing her in the Catholic
+legends, and by acquainting her with the revelations of St. Brigitt and St.
+Catherine of Sienna.[318] In these women she found an enlarged reflection
+of herself; the details of their visions enriched her imagery; and being
+provided with these fair examples, she was able to shape herself into
+fuller resemblance with the traditionary model of the saints.
+
+As she became more proficient, Father Bocking extended his lessons to the
+Protestant controversy, initiating his pupil into the mysteries of
+justification, sacramental grace, and the power of the keys. The ready
+damsel redelivered his instructions to the world in her moments of
+possession; and the world discovered a fresh miracle in the inspired wisdom
+of the untaught peasant. Lists of these pregnant sayings were
+forwarded[319] regularly to the archbishop, which still possibly lie
+mouldering in the Lambeth library, to be discovered by curious antiquaries.
+It is idle to inquire how far she was yet conscious of her falsehood.
+Conscious wilful deception lies far down the road in a course of this kind;
+and supported by the assurance of an archbishop, she was in all likelihood
+deep in lying before she actually knew it. Fanaticism and deceit are
+strangely near relations to each other, and the deceiver is often the
+person first deceived, and the last who is aware of the imposture.
+
+The instructions of the Father had made her acquainted with many stories of
+miraculous cures. The Catholic saints followed the type of the apostles,
+and to heal diseases by supernatural means was a more orthodox form of
+credential than clairvoyance or second sight. Being now cured of her real
+disorder, yet able to counterfeit the appearance of it, she could find no
+difficulty in arranging in her own case a miracle of the established kind,
+and so striking an incident would answer a further end. In the parish was a
+chapel of the Virgin, which was a place of pilgrimage; the pilgrims added
+something to the income of the priest; and if, by a fresh demonstration of
+the Virgin's presence at the favoured spot, the number of these pilgrims
+could be increased, they would add more. For both reasons, therefore, the
+miracle was desired; and the priest and the monk were agreed that any means
+were justifiable which would encourage the devotion of the people.[320]
+Accordingly, the girl announced, in one of her trances, that "she would
+never take health of her body till such time as she had visited the image
+of our Lady" in that chapel. The Virgin had herself appeared to her, she
+said, and had fixed a day for her appearance there, and had promised that
+on her obedience she would present herself in person and take away her
+disorder.[321] The day came; and as (under the circumstances) there was no
+danger of failure, the holy fathers had collected a vast concourse of
+people to witness the marvel. The girl was conducted to the chapel by a
+procession of more than two thousand persons, headed by the monk, the
+clergyman, and many other religious persons, the whole multitude "singing
+the Litany and saying divers psalms and orations by the way."
+
+"And when she was brought thither[322] and laid before the image of our
+Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her
+eyes being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly
+deformed. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had
+been in a tonne, her lips not greatly moving: she all that while continuing
+by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it
+told of anything of the joys of heaven, spake so sweetly and so heavenly,
+that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof; and contrarywise,
+when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly, that it
+put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many things for the
+confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of masses and confession,
+and many other such things. And after she had lyen there a long time, she
+came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. So this miracle was
+finished and solemnly sung; and a book was written of all the whole story
+thereof, and put into print; which ever since that time was commonly sold,
+and went abroad among the people."
+
+The miracle successfully accomplished, the residence at Aldington was no
+longer adapted for an acknowledged and favoured saint. The Virgin informed
+her that she was to leave the bailiff and devote herself to her exclusive
+service. She was to be Sister Elizabeth, and her especial favourite; and
+Father Bocking was to be her spiritual father. The priory of St.
+Sepulchre's, Canterbury, was chosen for the place of her profession; and as
+soon as she was established in her cell, she became a recognised priestess
+or prophetess, alternately communicating revelations, or indulging the
+curiosity of foolish persons, and for both services consenting to be paid.
+The church had by this time spread her reputation through England. The book
+of her oracles, which extended soon to a considerable volume, was shown by
+Archbishop Warham to the king, who sent it to Sir Thomas More, desiring him
+to look at it. More's good sense had not yet forsaken him; he pronounced it
+"a right poor production, such as any simple woman might speak of her own
+wit;"[323] and Henry himself "esteemed the matter as light as it afterwards
+proved lewd." But the world were less critical censors: the saintly halo
+was round her head, and her most trivial words caught the reflection of the
+glory, and seemed divine. "Divers and many, as well great men of the realm
+as mean men, and many learned men, but specially many religious men, had
+great confidence in her, and often resorted to her."[324] They "consulted
+her much as to the will of God touching the heresies and schisms in the
+realm;" and when the dispute arose between the bishops and the House of
+Commons, they asked her what judgment there was in heaven "on the taking
+away the liberties of the church;" to which questions her answers, being
+dictated by her confessor, were all which the most eager churchman could
+desire. Her position becoming more and more determined, the eccentric
+periods of her earlier visions subsided into regularity. Once a fortnight
+she was taken up into heaven into the presence of God and the saints, with
+heavenly lights, heavenly voices, heavenly melodies and joys. The place of
+ascent was usually the priory chapel, to which it was essential, therefore,
+that she should have continual access: and she was allowed, in consequence,
+to pass the dormitory door when she pleased--a privilege of which the
+Statute uncharitably hints that she availed herself for a less respectable
+purpose. But whatever was her secret conduct, her outward behaviour was in
+full keeping with her language and profession. She related many startling
+stories, not always of the most decent kind, of the attempts which the
+devil made to lead her astray. The devil and the angels were in fact
+alternate visitors to her cell, and the former, on one occasion, burnt a
+mark upon her hand, which she exhibited publicly, and to which the monks
+were in the habit of appealing, when there were any signs of scepticism in
+the visitors to the priory. On the occasion of these infernal visits,
+"great stinking smokes" were seen to issue from her chamber, "savouring
+grievously through all the dorture;" with which, however, it was suspected
+subsequently that a paper of brimstone and assafoetida, found among her
+property after her arrest, had been in some way connected. We smile at
+these stories, looking back at them with eyes enlightened by scientific
+scepticism; but they furnished matter for something else than smiles when
+the accounts of them could be exhibited by the clergy as a living proof of
+the credibility of the Aurea Legenda,--when the subject of them could be
+held up as a witness, accredited by miracles, to the truth of the old
+faith, a living evidence to shame the incredulity of the Protestant
+sectaries. She became a figure of great and singular significance; a "wise
+woman," to whom persons of the highest rank were not ashamed to have
+recourse to inquire of her the will of God, and to ask the benefit of her
+intercessory prayers, for which also they did not fail to pay at a rate
+commensurate with their credulity.[325]
+
+This position the Nun of Kent, as she was now called, had achieved for
+herself, when the divorce question was first agitated. The monks at the
+Canterbury priory, of course, eagerly espoused the side of the queen, and
+the Nun's services were at once in active requisition. Absurd as the
+stories of her revelations may seem to us, she had already given evidence
+that she was no vulgar impostor, and in the dangerous career on which she
+now entered, she conducted herself with the utmost skill and audacity. Far
+from imitating the hesitation of the pope and the bishops, she issued
+boldly, "in the name and by the authority of God," a solemn prohibition
+against the king; threatening that, if he divorced his wife, he should not
+"reign a month, but should die a villain's death."[326] Burdened with this
+message, she forced herself into the presence of Henry himself;[327] and
+when she failed to produce an effect upon Henry's obdurate scepticism, she
+turned to the hesitating ecclesiastics, and roused their flagging spirits.
+The archbishop bent under her denunciations, and at her earnest request
+introduced her to Wolsey, then tottering on the edge of ruin.[328] He, too,
+in his confusion and perplexity, was frightened, and doubted. She made
+herself known to the papal ambassadors, and through them she took upon
+herself to threaten Clement,[329] assuming, in virtue of her divine
+commission, an authority above all principalities and powers. If it were
+likely that she could have heard the story of the Maid of Orleans, it might
+be supposed that her imagination tempted her to play again a similar career
+on an English stage, and that she fancied herself the destined saviour of
+the Church of Christ, as the Maid had been the saviour of France.
+
+It would indeed be a libel on the fair fame of Joan of Arc, if she were to
+be compared to a confessed impostor; but Joan of Arc might have been the
+reality which the Nun attempted to counterfeit; and the history of the true
+heroine might have suggested easily to the imitator the outline of her
+part. A revolution had been effected in Europe by a somnambulist peasant
+girl; another peasant girl, a somnambulist also, might have seen in the
+achievement which had been already accomplished, an earnest of what might
+be done by herself. While we call the Nun, too, an impostor, we are bound
+to believe that she first imposed upon herself, and that her wildest
+adventures into falsehood were compatible with a belief that she was really
+and truly inspired. Nothing short of such a conviction would have enabled
+her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest
+statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on
+the failure of her prophecies, into the desperate career of treason into
+which we are soon to see her launched.
+
+Her proceedings were known partially, but partially only, to the king; and
+the king seems to have been the only person whose understanding was proof
+against her influence. To him she appeared nothing worse than an excited
+fanatic, and he allowed her to go her own way, as the best escapement of a
+frenzy. Until parliament had declared it illegal to discuss the marriage
+question further, he interfered with no one, and therefore not with her. If
+her own word was to be taken, he even showed her much personal kindness,
+having offered to make her an abbess, which is difficult to believe,
+especially as she said that she had refused his offer. She stated also that
+at the time of Lord Wiltshire's mission to the emperor, the Countess of
+Wiltshire endeavoured to persuade her to accept a place at the court, as a
+companion to Anne; which again is unsupported by other evidence, and sounds
+improbable.[330] But it is plain, that until she was found to be meditating
+treason, she experienced no treatment from the government of which she had
+cause to complain; and thus for the present we may leave her pursuing her
+machinations with the Canterbury friars, and return to the parliament.
+
+The second session had been longer than the first; it had commenced on the
+16th of January, and continued for ten weeks. On the 30th of March, which
+was to be its last day, Sir Thomas More came down to the House of Commons,
+and there read aloud to the members the decision of the various
+universities on the papal power, and the judgment of European learning on
+the general question of the king's divorce. The country, he said, was much
+disturbed, and the king desired them each to report what they had heard in
+their several counties and towns, "in order that all men might perceive
+that he had not attempted this matter of his own will or pleasure, as some
+strangers reported, but only for the discharge of his conscience and surety
+of the succession of his realm."[331] This appears to have been the first
+time that the subject was mentioned before parliament, and the occasion was
+reasonably and sensibly chosen. The clergy having possession of the
+pulpits, had used their opportunity to spread a false impression where the
+ignorance of the people would allow them to venture the experiment; the
+king having resolved to fall back upon the support of his subjects,
+naturally desired the assistance of the country gentlemen and the nobles to
+counteract the efforts of disaffection, and provided them with accurate
+information in the simplest manner which he could have chosen.
+
+But the desire expressed by Henry was no more than an unnecessary form, for
+as a body, the educated laity were as earnestly bent upon the divorce as
+the king himself could be, and might have been trusted to use all means by
+which to further it. The parliament was prorogued, but the Lords, shortly
+after the separation, united with such of the Commons as remained in
+London, to give a proof of their feeling by a voluntary address to the
+pope. The meaning of this movement was not to be mistaken. On one side, the
+Nun of Kent was threatening Clement, speaking, perhaps, the feelings of the
+clergy and of all the women in England; on the other side, the parliament
+thought well to threaten him, speaking for the great body of English _men_,
+for all persons of substance and property, who desired above all things
+peace and order and a secured succession.
+
+The language of this remarkable document[332] was as follows:--
+
+"To the Most Holy Lord our Lord and Father in Christ, Clement, by Divine
+Providence the seventh of that name, we desire perpetual happiness in our
+Lord Jesus Christ.
+
+"Most blessed Father, albeit the cause concerning the marriage of the most
+invincible prince, our sovereign lord, the King of England and of France,
+Defender of the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, does for sundry great and
+weighty reasons require and demand the aid of your Holiness, that it may be
+brought to that brief end and determination which we with so great and
+earnest desire have expected, and which we have been contented hitherto to
+expect, though so far vainly, at your Holiness's hands; we have been
+unable, nevertheless, to keep longer silence herein, seeing that this
+kingdom and the affairs of it are brought into so high peril through the
+unseasonable delay of sentence. His Majesty, who is our head, and by
+consequence the life of us all, and we through him as subject members by a
+just union annexed to the head, have with great earnestness entreated your
+Holiness for judgment; we have however entreated in vain: we are by the
+greatness of our grief therefore forced separately and distinctly by these
+our letters most humbly to demand a speedy determination. There ought,
+indeed, to have been no need of this request on our part. The justice of
+the cause itself, approved to be just by the sentence of so many learned
+men, by the suffrage of the most famous universities in England, France,
+and Italy, should have sufficed alone to have induced your Holiness to
+confirm the sentence given by others; especially when the interests of a
+king and kingdom are at stake, which in so many ways have deserved well of
+the apostolic see. This we say ought to have been motive sufficient with
+you, without need of petition on our part; and if we had added our
+entreaties, it should have been but as men yielding to a causeless anxiety,
+and wasting words for which there was no occasion. Since, however, neither
+the merit of the cause nor the recollection of the benefits which you have
+received, nor the assiduous and diligent supplications of our prince have
+availed anything with your Holiness; since we cannot obtain from you what
+it is your duty as a father to grant; the load of our grief, increased as
+it is beyond measure by the remembrance of the past miseries and calamities
+which have befallen this nation, makes vocal every member of our
+commonwealth, and compels us by word and letter to utter our complaints.
+
+"For what a misfortune is this,--that a sentence which our own two
+universities, which the University of Paris, and many other universities in
+France, which men of the highest learning and probity everywhere, at home
+and abroad, are ready to defend with word and pen, that such sentence, we
+say, cannot be obtained from the apostolic see by a prince to whom that see
+owes its present existence. Amidst the attacks of so many and so powerful
+enemies, the King of England ever has stood by that see with sword and pen,
+with voice and with authority. Yet he alone is to reap no benefit from his
+labours. He has saved the papacy from ruin, that others might enjoy the
+fruits of the life which he has preserved for it. We see not what answer
+can be made to this; and meanwhile we perceive a flood of miseries
+impending over the commonwealth, threatening to bring back upon us the
+ancient controversy on the succession, which had been extinguished only
+with so much blood and slaughter. We have now a king most eminent for his
+virtues, and reigning by unchallenged title, who will secure assured
+tranquillity to the realm if he leave a son born of his body to succeed
+him. The sole hope that such a son may be born to him lies in the being
+found for him some lawful marriage into which he may enter; and to such
+marriage the only obstacle lies with your Holiness. It cannot be until you
+shall confirm the sentence of so many learned men on the character of his
+former connection. This if you will not do, if you who ought to be our
+father have determined to leave us as orphans, and to treat us as
+castaways, we shall interpret such conduct to mean only that we are left to
+care for ourselves, and to seek our remedy elsewhere. We do not desire to
+be driven to this extremity, and therefore we beseech your Holiness without
+further delay to assist his Majesty's just and reasonable desires. We
+entreat you to confirm the judgment of these learned men; and for the sake
+of that love and fatherly affection which your office requires you to show
+towards us, not to close your bowels of compassion against us, your most
+dutiful, most loving, most obedient children. The cause of his Majesty is
+the cause of each of ourselves; the head cannot suffer, but the members
+must bear a part. We have all our common share in the pain and in the
+injury; and as the remedy is wholly in the power of your Holiness, so does
+the duty of your fatherly office require you to administer it. If, however,
+your Holiness will not do this, or if you choose longer to delay to do it,
+our condition hitherto will have been so much the more wretched, that we
+have so long laboured fruitlessly and in vain. But it will not be wholly
+irremediable; extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that
+is sick will by any means be rid of his distemper; and there is hope in the
+exchange of miseries, when, if we cannot obtain what is good, we may obtain
+a lesser evil, and trust that time may enable us to endure it.
+
+"These things we beseech your Holiness, in the name of our Lord Jesus
+Christ, to consider with yourself. You profess that on earth you are His
+vicar. Endeavour, then, to show yourself so to be, by pronouncing your
+sentence to the glory and praise of God, and giving your sanction to that
+truth which has been examined, approved, and after much deliberation
+confirmed by the most learned men of all nations. We meanwhile will pray
+the all-good God, whom we know by most sure testimony to be truth itself,
+that He will deign so to inform and direct the counsels of your Holiness,
+that we obtaining by your authority what is holy, just, and true, may be
+spared from seeking it by other more painful methods."
+
+Thus was the great crisis steadily maturing itself, and the cause by this
+petition was made to rest upon its proper merits. The justification of the
+demand for the divorce was the danger of civil war; and into civil war the
+nation had no intention of permitting themselves to be drifted by papal
+imbecility. Whatever was the origin of Henry's resolution, it was acted out
+with calmness, and justified by sober reason; and backed by the good sense
+of his lay subjects, he proceeded bravely, in spite of excommunication,
+interdict, and the Nun of Kent, towards the object which his country's
+interests, as well as his own, required.
+
+It would have been well if his private behaviour as a man had been as
+unobjectionable as his conduct as a sovereign. Hitherto he had remained
+under the same roof with Queen Catherine, but with that indelicacy which
+was the singular blemish on his character, he had maintained her rival in
+the same household with the state of a princess,[333] and needlessly
+wounded feelings which he was bound to have spared to the utmost which his
+duty permitted. The circumstances of the case, if they were known to us,
+though they could never excuse such a proceeding, might perhaps partially
+palliate it. Catherine was harsh and offensive, and it was by her own
+determination, and not by Henry's desire, that she was unprovided with an
+establishment elsewhere. There lay, moreover, as I have said, behind the
+scenes a whole drama of contention and bitterness, which now is happily
+concealed from us; but which being concealed, leaves us without the clue to
+these painful doings. Indelicate, however, the position given to Anne
+Boleyn could not but be; and, if it was indelicate in Henry to grant such a
+position, what shall we say of the lady who consented, in the presence of
+her sovereign and mistress, to wear such ignominious splendour?
+
+But in these most offensive relations there was henceforth to be a change.
+In June, 1531, two months after the prorogation of parliament, a deputation
+of the privy council went to the apartments of Catherine at Greenwich, and
+laying before her the papers which had been read by Sir Thomas More to the
+two Houses, demanded formally, whether, for the sake of the country, and
+for the quiet of the king's conscience, she would withdraw her appeal to
+Rome, and submit to an arbitration in the kingdom. It was, probably, but an
+official request, proposed without expectation that she would yield. After
+rejecting a similar entreaty from the pope himself, she was not likely,
+inflexible as she had ever been, to yield when the pope had admitted her
+appeal, and the emperor, victorious through Europe, had promised her
+support. She refused, of course, like herself, proudly, resolutely,
+gallantly, and not without the scorn which she was entitled to feel. The
+nation had no claims upon her, and "for the king's conscience," she
+answered, "I pray God send his Grace good quiet therein, and tell him I say
+I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married; and in that point I will
+abide till the court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, hath made
+thereof a determination and a final ending."[334] The learned councillors
+retired with their answer. A more passive resistance would have been more
+dignified; but Catherine was a queen, and a queen she chose to be; and in
+defence of her own high honour, and of her daughter's, by no act of hers
+would she abate one tittle of her dignity, or cease to assert her claim to
+it. Her reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request
+was only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency,
+and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the
+court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king
+to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw her
+again. She was removed to the More, a house in Hertfordshire, which had
+been originally built by George Neville, Archbishop of York, and had
+belonged to Wolsey, who had maintained it with his usual splendour.[335]
+Once more an attempt was made to persuade her to submit; but with no better
+result, and a formal establishment was then provided for her at Ampthill, a
+large place belonging to Henry not far from Dunstable. There at least she
+was her own mistress, surrounded by her own friends, who were true to her
+as queen, and she attracted to her side from all parts of England those
+whom sympathy or policy attached to her cause. The court, though keeping a
+partial surveillance over her, did not dare to restrict her liberty; and as
+the measures against the church became more stringent, and a separation
+from the papacy more nearly imminent, she became the nucleus of a powerful
+political party. Her injuries had deprived the king and the nation of a
+right to complain of her conduct. She owed nothing to England. Her
+allegiance, politically, was to Spain; spiritually she was the subject of
+the pope; and this dubious position gave her an advantage which she was not
+slow to perceive. Rapidly every one rallied to her who adhered to the old
+faith, and to whom the measures of the government appeared a sacrilege.
+Through herself, or through her secretaries and confessors, a
+correspondence was conducted which brought the courts of the continent into
+connection with the various disaffected parties in England, with the Nun of
+Kent and her friars, with the Poles, the Nevilles, the Courtenays, and all
+the remaining faction of the White Rose. And so first the great party of
+sedition began to shape itself, which for sixty years, except in the
+shortlived interlude of its triumph under Catherine's daughter, held the
+nation on the edge of civil war. We shall see this faction slowly and
+steadily organising itself, starting from scattered and small beginnings,
+till at length it overspread all England and Ireland and Scotland,
+exploding from time to time in abortive insurrections, yet ever held in
+check by the tact and firmness of the government, and by the inherent
+loyalty of the English to the land of their birth. There was a proverb then
+current that "the treasons of England should never cease."[336] It was
+perhaps fortunate that the papal cause was the cause of a foreign power,
+and could only be defended by a betrayal of the independence of the
+country. In Scotland and Ireland the insurrectionists were more successful,
+being supported in either instance by the national feeling. But the
+strength of Scotland had been broken at Flodden; and Ireland, though hating
+"the Saxons" with her whole heart, was far off and divided. The true danger
+was at home; and when the extent and nature of it is fairly known and
+weighed, we shall understand better what is called the "tyranny" of Henry
+VIII. and of Elizabeth; and rather admire the judgment than condemn the
+resolution which steered the country safe among those dangerous shoals.
+Elizabeth's position is more familiar to us, and is more reasonably
+appreciated because the danger was more palpable. Henry has been hardly
+judged because he trampled down the smouldering fire, and never allowed it
+to assume the form which would have justified him with the foolish and the
+unthinking. Once and once only the flame blazed out; but it was checked on
+the instant, and therefore it has been slighted and forgotten. But with
+despatches before his eyes, in which Charles V. was offering James of
+Scotland the hand of the Princess Mary, with the title for himself of
+Prince of England and Duke of York[337]--with Ireland, as we shall speedily
+see it, in flame from end to end, and Dublin castle the one spot left
+within the island on which the banner of St. George still floated--with a
+corps of friars in hair shirts and chains, who are also soon to be
+introduced to us, and an inspired prophetess at their head preaching
+rebellion in the name of God--with his daughter, and his daughter's mother
+in league against him, some forty thousand clergy to be coerced into honest
+dealing, and the succession to the crown floating in uncertainty--finally,
+with excommunication hanging over himself, and at length falling, and his
+deposition pronounced, Henry, we may be sure, had no easy time of it, and
+no common work to accomplish; and all these things ought to be present
+before our minds, as they were present before his mind, if we would see him
+as he was, and judge him as we would be judged ourselves.
+
+Leaving disaffection to mature itself, we return to the struggle between
+the House of Commons and the bishops, which recommenced in the following
+winter; first pausing to notice a clerical interlude of some illustrative
+importance which took place in the close of the summer. The clergy, as we
+saw, were relieved of their premunire on engaging to pay 118,000 pounds
+within five years. They were punished for their general offences; the
+formal offence for which they were condemned being one which could not
+fairly be considered an offence at all. When they came to discuss therefore
+the manner in which the money was to be levied, they naturally quarrelled
+among themselves as to where the burden of the fine should fairly rest, and
+a little scene has been preserved to us by Hall, through which, with
+momentary distinctness, we can look in upon those poor men in their
+perplexity. The bishops had settled among themselves that each diocese
+should make its own arrangements; and some of these great persons intended
+to spare their own shoulders to the utmost decent extremity. With this
+object, Stokesley, Bishop of London, who was just then very busy burning
+heretics, and therefore in bad odour with the people, resolved to call a
+meeting of five or six of his clergy, on whom he could depend; and passing
+quietly with their assistance such resolutions as seemed convenient, to
+avoid in this way the more doubtful expedient of a large assembly.
+
+The necessary intimations were given, and the meeting was to be held on the
+1st of September, in the Chapter-house of St. Paul's. The bishop arrived at
+the time appointed, but unhappily for his hopes, not only the chosen six,
+but with them six hundred of the clergy of Middlesex, accompanied by a mob
+of the London citizens, all gathered in a crowd at the Chapter-house door,
+and clamouring to be admitted.
+
+The bishop, trusting in the strength of the chains and bolts, and still
+hoping to manage the affair officially, sent out a list of persons who
+might be allowed to take part in the proceedings, and these with difficulty
+made their way to the entrance. A rush was made by the others as they were
+going in, and there was a scuffle, which ended for the moment in the
+victory of the officials: but the triumph was of brief duration; the
+excluded clergy were now encouraged by the people; they returned vigorously
+to the attack, broke down the doors, "struck the bishop's officers over the
+face," and the whole crowd, priests and laity, rushed together, storming
+and shouting, into the Chapter-house. The scene may be easily imagined;
+dust flying, gowns torn, heads broken, well-fed faces in the hot September
+weather steaming with anger and exertion, and every voice in loudest
+outcry. At length the clamour was partially subdued, and the bishop,
+beautifully equal to the emergency, arose bland and persuasive.
+
+"My brethren," he said, "I marvel not a little why ye be so heady. Ye know
+not what shall be said to you, therefore I pray you keep silence, and hear
+me patiently. My friends, ye all know that we be men, frail of condition
+and no angels; and by frailty and lack of wisdom we have misdemeaned
+ourselves towards the king our sovereign lord and his laws; so that all we
+of the clergy were in premunire, by reason whereof all our promotions,
+lands, goods, and chattels were to him forfeit, and our bodies ready to be
+imprisoned. Yet his Grace, moved with pity and compassion, demanded of us
+what we could say why he should not extend his laws upon us.
+
+"Then the fathers of the clergy humbly besought his Grace for mercy, to
+whom he answered he was ever inclined to mercy. Then for all our great
+offences we had but little penance; for when he might, by the rigour of his
+laws, have taken all our livelihoods, he was contented with one hundred
+thousand pounds, to be paid in five years. And though this sum may be more
+than we may easily bear, yet, by the rigour of his law, we should have
+borne the whole burden; whereupon, my brethren, I charitably exhort you to
+bear your parts of your livelihood and salary towards payment of this sum
+granted."[338]
+
+The ingenuity of this address deserved all praise; but the beauty of the
+form was insufficient to disguise the inconclusiveness of the reasoning. It
+confessed an offence which the hearers knew to be none; the true
+provocation which had led to the penalty--the unjust extortion of the high
+church officials--was ignored. The crowd laughed and hooted. The clergy
+fiercely tightened their purse-strings, and the bishop was heard out with
+hardly restrained indignation. "My lord," it was shortly answered by one of
+them, "twenty nobles a year is but a bare living for a priest. Victual and
+all else is now so dear that poverty enforceth us to say nay. Besides that,
+my lord, we never meddled with the cardinal's faculties. Let the bishops
+and abbots which have offended pay." Loud clamour followed and shouts of
+applause. The bishop's officers gave the priests high words. The priests
+threw back the taunts as they came; and the London citizens, delighting in
+the scandalous quarrel, hounded on the opposition. From words they passed
+to blows; the bedell and vergers tried to keep order, but "were buffeted
+and stricken,"[339] and the meeting broke up in wild uproar and confusion.
+For this matter five of the lay crowd and fifteen London curates were sent
+to the Tower by Sir Thomas More; but the undignified manoeuvre had failed,
+and the fruit of it was but fresh disgrace. United, the clergy might have
+defied the king and the parliament; but in the race of selfishness the
+bishops and high dignitaries had cared only for their own advantage. They
+had left the poorer members of their order with no interest in common with
+that of their superiors, beyond the shield which the courts consented to
+extend over moral delinquency; and in the hour of danger they found
+themselves left naked and alone to bear the storm as they were able.
+
+This incident, and it was perhaps but one of many, is not likely to have
+softened the disposition of the Commons, or induced them to entertain more
+respectfully the bishops' own estimate of their privileges. The convocation
+and the parliament met simultaneously, on the 15th of January, and the
+conflict, which had been for two years in abeyance, recommenced. The
+initial measure was taken by convocation, and this body showed a spirit
+still unsubdued, and a resolution to fight in their own feebly tyrannical
+manner to the last. A gentleman in Gloucestershire had lately died, by name
+Tracy. In his last testament he had bequeathed his soul to God through the
+mercies of Christ, declining the mediatorial offices of the saints; and
+leaving no money to be expended in masses.[340] Such notorious heresy could
+not be passed over with impunity, and the first step of the assembled
+clergy[341] was to issue a commission to raise the body and burn it. Their
+audacity displayed at once the power which they possessed, and the temper
+in which they were disposed to use it. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems
+to have been responsible for this monstrous order, which unfortunately was
+carried into execution before Henry had time to interfere.[342] It was the
+last act of the kind, however, in which he was permitted to indulge, and
+the legislature made haste to take away such authority from hands so
+incompetent to use it. From their debates upon burning the dead Tracy,
+convocation were proceeding to discuss the possibility of burning the
+living Latimer,[343] when they were recalled to their senses by a summons
+to prepare some more reasonable answer than that which the bishops had made
+for them on their privilege of making laws. Twenty more years of work were
+to be lived by Latimer before they were to burn him, and their own
+delinquencies were for the present of a more pressing nature. The House of
+Commons at the same time proceeded to frame necessary bills on the other
+points of their complaint.
+
+The first act upon the roll recalls the Constitutions of Clarendon and the
+famous quarrel between Becket and the Crown. When Catholicism was a living
+belief, when ordained priests were held really and truly to possess those
+awful powers which the mystery of transubstantiation assigns to them, they
+were acknowledged by common consent to be an order apart from the rest of
+mankind, and being spiritual men, to be amenable only to spiritual
+jurisdiction. It was not intended that, if they committed crimes, they
+should escape the retributive consequences of those crimes: offenders
+against the law might (originally at least) be degraded, if the bishops
+thought good, and stripped of their commission be delivered thus to the
+secular arm. But the more appropriate punishment for such persons was of a
+more awful kind, proportioned to the magnitude of the fault; and was
+conveyed or held to be conveyed in the infliction of the spiritual death of
+excommunication. Excommunication was, in real earnest, the death of the
+soul, at a time when communion with the church was the only means by which
+the soul could be made partaker of the divine life; and it was a noble
+thing to believe that there was something worse for a man than legal
+penalties on his person or on his mortal body; it was beautiful to
+recognise in an active living form, that the heaviest ill which could
+befall a man was to be cut off from God. But it is only for periods that
+humanity can endure the atmosphere of these high altitudes of morality. The
+early Christians attempted a community of goods, but they were unequal to
+it for more than a generation. The discipline of Catholicism was assisted
+by superstition,--it remained vigorous for many hundreds of years, but it
+languished at last; and although there was so great virtue in a living
+idea, that its forms preserved the reverence of mankind unabated, even when
+in their effect and working they had become as evil as they once were
+noble; yet reverence and endurance were at length exhausted, and these
+forms were to submit to alteration in conformity with the altered nature of
+the persons whom they affected.
+
+I have already alluded to the abuse of "benefit of clergy;"[344] we have
+arrived at the first of those many steps by which at length it was finally
+put away,--a step which did not, however, as yet approach the heart of the
+evil, but touched only its extreme outworks. The clergy had monopolised the
+learning of the middle ages, and few persons external to their body being
+able to read or write, their privileges became co-extensive, as I above
+stated, with these acquirements. The exemption from secular jurisdiction,
+which they obtained in virtue of their sacred character, had been used as a
+protection in villainy for every scoundrel who could write his name. Under
+this plea, felons of the worst kind might claim, till this time, to be
+taken out of the hands of the law judges, and to be tried at the bishops'
+tribunals; and at these tribunals, such a monstrous solecism had
+Catholicism become, the payment of money was ever welcomed as the ready
+expiation of crime. To prevent the escape of the Bishop of Rochester's
+cook, who was a "clerk," parliament had specially interfered, and sentenced
+him without trial, by attainder. They now passed a general act, remarkable
+alike in what it provided as in what, for the present, it omitted to
+provide.[345] The preamble related the nature of the evil which was to be
+remedied, and the historical position of it. It dwelt upon the assurances
+which had been given again and again by the ordinaries that their
+privileges should not be abused; but these promises had been broken as
+often as they had been made; so that "continually manifest thieves and
+murderers, indicted and found guilty of their misdeeds by good and
+substantial inquests, and afterwards, by the usages of the common lawes of
+the land, delivered to the ordinaries as clerks convict, were speedily and
+hastily delivered and set at large by the ministers of the said ordinaries
+for corruption and lucre; or else because the ordinaries enclaiming such
+offenders by the liberties of the church would in no wise take the charges
+in safe keeping of them, but did suffer them to make their purgation by
+such as nothing knew of their misdeeds, and by such fraud did annull and
+make void the good and provable trial which was used against such offenders
+by the king's law; to the pernicious example, increase, and courage of such
+offenders, if the King's Highness by his authority royal put not speedy
+remedy thereto."
+
+To provide such necessary remedy, it was enacted that thenceforward no
+person under the degree of subdeacon, if guilty of felony, should be
+allowed to plead "his clergy" any more, but should be proceeded against by
+the ordinary law. So far it was possible to go--an enormous step if we
+think of what the evil had been; and in such matters to make a beginning
+was the true difficulty--it was the logical premise from which the
+conclusion could not choose but follow. Yet such was the mystical
+sacredness which clung about the ordained clergy, that their patent
+profligacy had not yet destroyed it--a priest might still commit a murder,
+and the profane hand of the law might not reach to him.
+
+The measure, however, if imperfect, was excellent in its degree; and when
+this had been accomplished, the House proceeded next to deal with the
+Arches Court--the one enormous grievance of the time. The petition of the
+Commons has already exhibited the condition of this institution; but the
+act by which the power of it was limited added more than one particular to
+what had been previously stated, and the first twenty lines of the statute
+which was now passed[346] may be recommended to the consideration of the
+modern censors of the Reformation. The framer of the resolution was no bad
+friend to the bishops, if they had possessed the faculty of knowing who
+their true friends were, for the statement of complaint was limited, mild,
+and moderate. Again, as with the "benefit of clergy," the real ground for
+surprise is that any fraction of a system so indefensible should have been
+permitted to continue. The courts were nothing else but the vicious sources
+of unjust revenue; and with the opportunity so fairly offered, it is
+strange indeed that they were not swept utterly away. But sweeping measures
+have never found favour in England. There has ever been in English
+legislation, even when most reforming, that temperate spirit of equity
+which has refused to visit the sins of centuries upon a single generation.
+The statute limited its accusations to the points which it was designed to
+correct, and touched these with a hand firmly gentle.
+
+"Whereas great numbers of the king's subjects," says the preamble, "as well
+men, wives, servants, or others dwelling in divers dioceses of the realm of
+England and Wales, heretofore have been at many times called by citations
+and other processes compulsory to appear in the Arches, Audience, and other
+high Courts of the archbishops of this realm, far from and out of the
+dioceses where such persons are inhabitant and dwelling; and many times to
+answer to surmised and feigned causes and matters, which have been sued
+more for vexation and malice than from any just cause of suit; and when
+certificate hath been made by the sumners, apparitors, or any such light
+litterate persons, that the party against whom such citations have been
+awarded hath been cited or summoned; and thereupon the same party so
+certified to be cited or summoned hath not appeared according to the
+certificate, the same party therefore hath been excommunicated, or, at the
+least, suspended from all divine service; and thereupon, before that he or
+she could be absolved, hath been compelled, not only to pay the fees of the
+court whereunto he or she was so called, amounting to the sum of two
+shillings, or twenty pence at the least; but also to pay to the sumner, for
+every mile distant from the place where he or she then dwelled unto the
+same court whereunto he or she was summoned to appear, twopence; to the
+great charge and impoverishment of the king's subjects, and to the great
+occasion of misbehaviour of wives, women, and servants, and to the great
+impairment and diminution of their good names and honesties--be it
+enacted----" We ask what?--looking with impatience for some large measure
+to follow these solemn accusations; and we find parliament contenting
+itself with forbidding the bishops, under heavy penalties, to cite any man
+out of his own diocese, except for specified causes (heresy being one of
+them), and with limiting the fees which were to be taken by the officers of
+the courts.[347] It could hardly be said that in this parliament there was
+any bitter spirit against the church. This act showed only mild forbearance
+and complacent endurance of all tolerable evil.
+
+Another serious matter was dealt with in the same moderate temper. The
+Mortmain Act had prohibited the church corporations from further absorbing
+the lands; but the Mortmain Act was evaded in detail, the clergy using
+their influence to induce persons on their deathbeds to leave estates to
+provide a priest for ever "to sing for their souls." The arrangement was
+convenient possibly for both parties, or if not for both, certainly for
+one; but to tie up lands for ever for a special service was not to the
+advantage of the country; and it was held unjust to allow a man a perpetual
+power over the disposition of property to atone for the iniquities of his
+life. But the privilege was not abolished altogether; it was submitted only
+to reasonable limitation. Men might still burden their lands to find a
+priest for twenty years. After twenty years the lands were to relapse for
+the service of the living, and sinners were expected in equity to bear the
+consequence in their own persons of such offences as remained after that
+time unexpiated.[348]
+
+Thus, in two sessions, the most flagrant of the abuses first complained of
+were in a fair way of being remedied. The exorbitant charges for
+mortuaries, probate duties, legacy duties, the illegal exactions for the
+sacraments, the worst injustices of the ecclesiastical courts, the
+non-residence, pluralities, neglect of cures, the secular occupations and
+extravagant privileges of the clergy, were either terminated or brought
+within bounds. There remained yet to be disposed of the legislative power
+of the convocation and the tyrannical prosecutions for heresy. The last of
+these was not yet ripe for settlement; the former was under reconsideration
+by the convocation itself, which at length was arriving at a truer
+conception of its position; and this question was not therefore to be dealt
+with by the legislature.
+
+One more important measure, however, was passed by parliament before it
+separated, and it is noticeable as the first step which was taken in the
+momentous direction of a breach with the See of Rome. A practice had
+existed for some hundreds of years in all the churches of Europe, that
+bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees, should transmit to
+the pope, on receiving their bulls of investment, one year's income from
+their new preferments. It was called the payment of annates, or
+firstfruits, and had originated in the time of the crusades, as a means of
+providing a fund for the holy wars. Once established, it had settled into
+custom,[349] and was one of the chief resources of the papal revenue. From
+England alone, as much as 160,000 pounds had been paid out of the country
+in fifty years;[350] and the impost was alike oppressive to individuals and
+injurious to the state. Men were appointed to bishopricks frequently at an
+advanced age, and dying, as they often did, within two or three years of
+their nomination, their elevation had sometimes involved their families and
+friends in debt and embarrassment;[351] while the annual export of so much
+bullion was a serious evil at a time when the precious metals formed the
+only currency, and were so difficult to obtain. Before a quarrel with the
+court of Rome had been thought of as a possible contingency, the king had
+laboured with the pope to terminate the system by some equitable
+composition; and subsequently cessation of payment had been mentioned more
+than once in connection with the threats of a separation. The pope had made
+light of these threats, believing them to be no more than words; there was
+an opportunity, therefore, of proving that the English government was
+really in earnest, in a manner which would touch him in a point where he
+was naturally sensitive, and would show him at the same time that he could
+not wholly count on the attachment even of the clergy themselves. For, in
+fact, the church itself was fast disintegrating, and the allegiance even of
+the bishops and the secular clergy to Rome had begun to waver: they had a
+stronger faith in their own privileges than in the union of Christendom;
+and if they could purchase the continuance of the former at the price of a
+quarrel with the pope, some among them were not disinclined to venture the
+alternative. The Bishop of Rochester held aloof from such tendencies, and
+Warham, though he signed the address of the House of Lords to the pope,
+regretted the weakness to which he had yielded: but in the other prelates
+there was little seriousness of conviction; and the constitution of the
+bench had been affected also by the preferment of Gardiner and Edward Lee
+to two of the sees made vacant by the death of Wolsey. Both these men had
+been active agents in the prosecution of the divorce; and Gardiner,
+followed at a distance by the other, had shaped out, as the pope grew more
+intractable, the famous notion that the English church could and should
+subsist as a separate communion, independent of foreign control, self
+governed, self organised, and at the same time adhering without variation
+to Catholic doctrine. This principle (if we may so abuse the word) shot
+rapidly into popularity: a party formed about it strong in parliament,
+strong in convocation, strong out of doors among the country gentlemen and
+the higher clergy--a respectable, wealthy, powerful body, trading upon a
+solecism, but not the less, therefore, devoted to its maintenance, and in
+their artificial horror of being identified with heresy, the most
+relentless persecutors of the Protestants. This party, unreal as they were,
+and influential perhaps in virtue of their unreality, became for the moment
+the arbiters of the Church of England; and the bishops belonging to it, and
+each rising ecclesiastic who hoped to be a bishop, welcomed the resistance
+of the annates as an opportunity for a demonstration of their strength. On
+this question, with a fair show of justice, they could at once relieve
+themselves of a burden which pressed upon their purses, and as they
+supposed, gratify the king. The conservatives were still numerically the
+strongest, and for a time remained in their allegiance to the Papacy,[352]
+but their convictions were too feeble to resist the influence brought to
+bear upon them, and when Parliament re-assembled after the Easter recess,
+the two Houses of Convocation presented an address to the crown for the
+abolition of the impost, and with it of all other exactions, direct and
+indirect,--the indulgences, dispensations, delegacies, and the thousand
+similar forms and processes by which the privileges of the Church of
+England were abridged for the benefit of the Church of Rome, and weighty
+injury of purse inflicted both on the clergy and the laity.[353]
+
+That they contemplated a conclusive revolt from Rome as a consequence of
+the refusal to pay annates, appears positively in the close of their
+address: "May it please your Grace," they concluded, after detailing their
+occasions for complaint,--"may it please your Grace to cause the said
+unjust exactions to cease, and to be foredone for ever by act of your high
+Court of Parliament; and in case the pope will make process against this
+realm for the attaining those annates, or else will retain bishops' bulls
+till the annates be paid; forasmuch as the exaction of the said annates is
+against the law of God and the pope's own laws, forbidding the buying or
+selling of spiritual gifts or promotions; and forasmuch as all good
+Christian men be more bound to obey God than any man; and forasmuch as St.
+Paul willeth us to withdraw from all such as walk inordinately; may it
+please your Highness to ordain in this present parliament that the
+obedience of your Highness and of the people be withdrawn from the See of
+Rome."[354]
+
+It was perhaps cruel to compel the clergy to be the first to mention
+separation--or the language may have been furnished by the Erastian party
+in the Church, who hoped to gratify the King by it, and save the annates
+for themselves; but there was no intention, if the battle was really to be
+fought, of decorating the clergy with the spoils. The bill was passed, but
+passed conditionally, leaving power to the Crown if the pope would consent
+to a compromise of settling the question by a composition. There was a
+Papal party in the House of Commons whose opposition had perhaps to be
+considered,[355] and the annates were left suspended before Clement at once
+as a menace and a bribe.
+
+"Forasmuch," concluded the statute, "as the King's Highness and this his
+high Court of Parliament neither have nor do intend in this or any other
+like cause any manner of extremity or violence, before gentle courtesy and
+friendly ways and means be first approved and attempted, and without a very
+great urgent cause and occasion given to the contrary; but principally
+coveting to disburden this Realm of the said great exactions and
+intolerable charges of annates and firstfruits: [the said Court of
+Parliament] have therefore thought convenient to commit the final order and
+determination of the premises unto the King's Highness, so that if it may
+seem to his high wisdom and most prudent discretion meet to move the Pope's
+Holiness and the Court of Rome, amicably, charitably, and reasonably, to
+compound either to extinct the said annates, or by some friendly, loving,
+and tolerable composition to moderate the same in such way as may be by
+this his Realm easily borne and sustained, then those ways of composition
+once taken shall stand in the strength, force, and effect of a law."[356]
+
+The business of the session was closing. It remained to receive the reply
+of convocation on the limitation of its powers. The convocation, presuming,
+perhaps, upon its concessions on the annates question, and untamed by the
+premunire, had framed their answer in the same spirit which had been
+previously exhibited by the bishops. They had re-asserted their claims as
+resting on divine authority, and had declined to acknowledge the right of
+any secular power to restrain or meddle with them.[357] The second answer,
+as may be supposed, fared no better than the first. It was returned with a
+peremptory demand for submission; and taught by experience the uselessness
+of further opposition, the clergy with a bad grace complied. The form was
+again drawn by the bishops, and it is amusing to trace the workings of
+their humbled spirit in their reluctant descent from their high estate.
+They still laboured to protect their dignity in the terms of their
+concession:--
+
+"As concerning such constitutions and ordinances provincial," they wrote,
+"as shall be made hereafter by your most humble subjects, we having our
+special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, your princely
+goodness, and fervent zeal for the promotion of God's honour and Christian
+religion, and specially in your incomparable learning far exceeding in our
+judgment the learning of all other kings and princes that we have read of;
+and not doubting but that the same should still continue and daily increase
+in your Majesty; do offer and promise here unto the same, that from
+henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put in execution any
+such constitutions and ordinances so by us to be made in time coming,
+unless your Highness by your Royal assent shall license us to make,
+promulge, and execute such constitutions, and the same so made be approved
+by your Highness's authority.
+
+"And whereas your Highness's most honourable Commons do pretend that divers
+of the constitutions provincial, which have been heretofore enacted, be not
+only much prejudicial to your Highness's prerogative royal, but be also
+overmuch onerous to your said Commons, we, your most humble servants for
+the consideration before said, be contented to refer all the said
+constitutions to the judgment of your Grace only. And whatsoever of the
+same shall finally be found prejudicial and overmuch onerous as is
+pretended, we offer and promise your Highness to moderate or utterly to
+abrogate and annul the same, according to the judgment of your Grace.
+Saving to us always such liberties and immunities of this Church of England
+as hath been granted unto the same by the goodness and benignity of your
+Highness and of others your most noble progenitors; with such constitutions
+provincial as do stand with the laws of Almighty God and of your Realm
+heretofore made, which we most humbly beseech your Grace to ratify and
+approve by your most Royal assent for the better execution of the same in
+times to come."[358]
+
+The acknowledgment appeared to be complete, and might perhaps have been
+accepted without minute examination, except for the imprudent acuteness of
+the Lower House of Convocation. As it passed through their hands, they
+discovered--what had no doubt been intended as a loophole for future
+evasion--that the grounds which were alleged to excuse the submission were
+the virtues of the reigning king: and therefore, as they sagaciously
+argued, the submission must only remain in force for his life. They
+introduced a limitation to that effect. Some further paltry dabbling was
+also attempted with the phraseology: and at length, impatient with such
+dishonest trifling, and weary of a discussion in which they had resolved to
+allow but one conclusion, the king and the legislature thought it well to
+interfere with a high hand, and cut short such unprofitable folly. The
+language of the bishops was converted into an act of parliament; a mixed
+commission was appointed to revise the canon law, and the clergy with a few
+brief strokes were reduced for ever into their fit position of
+subjects.[359] Thus with a moderate hand this great revolution was
+effected, and, to outward appearance, with offence to none except the
+sufferers, whose misuse of power when they possessed it deprived them of
+all sympathy in their fall.
+
+But no change of so vast a kind can be other than a stone of stumbling to
+those many persons for whom the beaten ways of life alone are tolerable,
+and who, when these ways are broken, are bewildered and lost. Religion,
+when men are under its influence at all, so absorbs their senses, and so
+pervades all their associations, that no faults in the ministers of it can
+divest their persons of reverence; and just and necessary as all these
+alterations were, many a pious and noble heart was wounded, many a man was
+asking himself in his perplexity where things would end, and still more
+sadly, where, if these quarrels deepened, would lie his own duty. Now the
+Nun of Kent grew louder in her Cassandra wailings. Now the mendicant friars
+mounted the pulpits exclaiming sacrilege; bold men, who feared nothing that
+men could do to them, and who dared in the king's own presence, and in his
+own chapel, to denounce him by name.[360] The sacred associations of twelve
+centuries were tumbling into ruin; and hot and angry as men had been before
+the work began, the hearts of numbers sank in them when they "saw what was
+done;" and they fell away slowly to doubt, disaffection, distrust, and at
+last treason.
+
+The first outward symptom of importance pointing in this direction, was the
+resignation of the seals by Sir Thomas More.[361] More had not been an
+illiberal man; when he wrote the _Utopia_, he seemed even to be in advance
+of his time. None could see the rogue's face under the cowl clearer than
+he, or the proud bad heart under the scarlet hat; and few men had ventured
+to speak their thoughts more boldly. But there was in More a want of
+confidence in human nature, a scorn of the follies of his fellow creatures
+which, as he became more earnestly religious, narrowed and hardened his
+convictions, and transformed the genial philosopher into the merciless
+bigot. "Heresy" was naturally hateful to him; his mind was too clear and
+genuine to allow him to deceive himself with the delusions of Anglicanism;
+and as he saw the inevitable tendency of the Reformation to lead ultimately
+to a change of doctrine, he attached himself with increasing determination
+to the cause of the pope and of the old faith. As if with an instinctive
+prescience of what would follow from it, he had from the first been opposed
+to the divorce; and he had not concealed his feeling from the king at the
+time when the latter had pressed the seals on his unwilling acceptance. In
+consenting to become chancellor, he had yielded only to Henry's entreaties;
+he had held his office for two years and a half--and it would have been
+well for his memory if he had been constant in his refusal--for in his
+ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to counterpoise
+the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy Protestants. At the
+close of the session, however, the acts of which we have just described, he
+felt that he must no longer countenance, by remaining in an office so near
+to the crown, measures which he so intensely disapproved and deplored; it
+was time for him to retire from a world not moving to his mind; and in the
+fair tranquillity of his family prepare himself for the evil days which he
+foresaw. In May, 1532, he petitioned for permission to resign, resting his
+request unobtrusively on failing health; and Henry sadly consented to lose
+his services.
+
+Parallel to More's retirement, and though less important, yet still
+noticeable, is a proceeding of old Archbishop Warham under the same trying
+circumstances. In the days of his prosperity, Warham had never reached to
+greatness as a man. He had been a great ecclesiastic, successful,
+dignified, important, but without those highest qualities which command
+respect or interest. The iniquities of Warham's spiritual courts were
+greater than those of any other in England. He had not made them what they
+were. They grew by their own proper corruption; and he was no more
+responsible for them than every man is responsible for the continuance of
+an evil by which he profits, and which he has power to remedy. We must look
+upon him as the leader of the bishops in their opposition to the reform;
+and he was the probable author of the famous answer to the Commons'
+petition, which led to such momentous consequences.[362] These consequences
+he had lived partially to see. Powerless to struggle against the stream, he
+had seen swept away one by one those gigantic privileges to which he had
+asserted for his order a claim divinely sanctioned; and he withdrew himself
+heartbroken, into his palace at Lambeth, and there entered his solemn
+protest against all which had been done. Too ill to write, and trembling on
+the edge of the grave, he dictated to his notaries from his bed these not
+unaffecting words:--
+
+"In the name of God, Amen. We, William, by Divine Providence Archbishop of
+Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, hereby
+publicly and expressly do protest for ourselves and for our Holy
+Metropolitan Church of Canterbury, that to any statute passed or hereafter
+to be passed in this present Parliament, began the third of November, 1529,
+and continued until this present time; in so far as such statute or
+statutes be in derogation of the Pope of Rome or the Apostolic See, or be
+to the hurt, prejudice, or limitation of the powers of the Church, or shall
+tend to the subverting, enervating, derogating from, or diminishing the
+laws, customs, privileges, prerogatives, pre-eminence of liberties of our
+Metropolitan Church of Canterbury; we neither will, nor intend, nor with
+clear conscience are able to consent to the same, but by these writings we
+do dissent from, refuse, and contradict them."[363]
+
+Thus formally having delivered his soul, he laid himself down and died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MARRIAGE OF HENRY AND ANNE BOLEYN
+
+Although in the question of the divorce the king had interfered
+despotically to control the judgment of the universities, he had made no
+attempt, as we have seen, to check the tongues of the clergy. Nor if he had
+desired to check them, is it likely that at the present stage of
+proceedings he could have succeeded. No law had as yet been passed which
+made a crime of a difference of opinion on the pope's dispensing powers;
+and so long as no definitive sentence had been pronounced, every one had
+free liberty to think and speak as he pleased. So great, indeed, was the
+anxiety to disprove Catherine's assertion that England was a _locus
+suspectus_, and therefore that the cause could not be equitably tried
+there, that even in the distribution of patronage there was an ostentatious
+display of impartiality. Not only had Sir Thomas More been made chancellor,
+although emphatically on Catherine's side; but Cuthbert Tunstal, who had
+been her counsel, was promoted to the see of Durham. The Nun of Kent, if
+her word was to be believed, had been offered an abbey,[364] and that Henry
+permitted language to pass unnoticed of the most uncontrolled violence,
+appears from a multitude of informations which were forwarded to the
+government from all parts of the country. But while imposing no restraint
+on the expression of opinion, the council were careful to keep themselves
+well informed of the opinions which were expressed, and an instrument was
+ready made to their hands, which placed them in easy possession of what
+they desired. Among the many abominable practices which had been introduced
+by the ecclesiastical courts, not the least hateful was the system of
+espionage with which they had saturated English society; encouraging
+servants to be spies on their masters, children on their parents,
+neighbours on their neighbours, inviting every one who heard language
+spoken anywhere of doubtful allegiance to the church, to report the words
+to the nearest official, as an occasion of instant process. It is not
+without a feeling of satisfaction, that we find this detestable invention
+recoiling upon the heads of its authors. Those who had so long suffered
+under it, found an opportunity in the turning tide, of revenging themselves
+on their oppressors; and the country was covered with a ready-made army of
+spies, who, with ears ever open, were on the watch for impatient or
+disaffected language in their clerical superiors, and furnished steady
+reports of such language to Cromwell.[365]
+
+Specimens of these informations will throw curious light on the feelings of
+a portion at least of the people. The English licence of speech, if not
+recognised to the same extent as it is at present, was certainly as fully
+practised. On the return of the Abbot of Whitby from the convocation at
+York in the summer of 1532, when the premunire money was voted, the
+following conversation was reported as having been overheard in the abbey.
+
+The prior of the convent asked the abbot what the news were. "What news,"
+said the abbot, "evil news. The king is ruled by a common ---- Anne Boleyn,
+who has made all the spiritualty to be beggared, and the temporalty also.
+Further he told the prior of a sermon that he had heard in York, in which
+it was said, when a great wind rose in the west we should hear news. And he
+asked what that was; and he said a great man told him at York, and if he
+knew as much as three in England he would tell what the news were. And he
+said who were they? and he said the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire,
+and the common ---- Anne Boleyn."[366]
+
+The dates of these papers cannot always be determined; this which follows,
+probably, is something later, but it shows the general temper in which the
+clergy were disposed to meet the measures of the government.
+
+"Robert Legate, friar of Furness, deposeth that the monks had a prophecy
+among them, that 'in England shall be slain the decorate rose in his
+mother's belly,' and this they interpret of his Majesty, saying that his
+Majesty shall die by the hands of priests; for the church is the mother,
+and the church shall slay his Grace. The said Robert maintaineth that he
+hath heard the monks often say this. Also, it is said among them that the
+King's Grace was not the right heir to the crown; for that his Grace's
+father came in by no line, but by the sword. Also, that no secular knave
+should be head of the church; also that the abbot did know of these
+treasons, and had made no report thereof."[367]
+
+Nor was it only in the remote abbeys of the North that such dangerous
+language was ventured. The pulpit of St. Paul's rang Sunday after Sunday
+with the polemics of the divorce; and if "the holy water of the court" made
+the higher clergy cringing and cowardly, the rank and file, even in London
+itself, showed a bold English front, and spoke out their thoughts with
+entire recklessness. Among the preachers on Catherine's side, Father
+Forest, famous afterward in Catholic martyrologies, began to distinguish
+himself. Forest was warden of a convent of Observants at Greenwich attached
+to the royal chapel, and having been Catherine's confessor, remained, with
+the majority of the friars, faithful to her interests, and fearless in the
+assertion of them. From their connection with the palace, the intercourse
+of these monks with the royal household was considerable; their position
+gave them influence, and Anne Boleyn tried the power of her charms, if
+possible, to gain them over. She had succeeded with a few of the weaker
+brothers, but she was unable (and her inability speaks remarkably for
+Henry's endurance of opposition through the early stages of the
+controversy) to protect those whose services she had won from the anger of
+their superiors. One monk in whom she was interested the warden
+imprisoned,[368] another there was an effort to expel,[369] because he was
+ready to preach on her side; and Forest himself preached a violent sermon
+at Paul's Cross, attacking Cromwell and indirectly the king.[370] He was
+sent for to the court, and the persecuted brothers expected their triumph;
+but he returned, as one of them wrote bitterly to Cromwell, having been
+received with respect and favour, as if, after all, the enmity of a brave
+man found more honour at the court than the complacency of cowardice.
+Father Forest, says this letter, has been with the king. "He says he spake
+with the king for half an hour and more, and was well retained by his
+Grace; and the King's Grace did send him a great piece of beef from his own
+table; and also he met with my Lord of Norfolk, and he says he took him in
+his arms and bade him welcome."[371]
+
+Forest, unfortunately for himself, misconstrued forbearance into fear, and
+went his way at last, through treason and perjury, to the stake. In the
+meantime the Observants were left in possession of the royal chapel, the
+weak brother died in prison, and the king, when at Greenwich, continued to
+attend service, submitting to listen, as long as submission was possible,
+to the admonitions which the friars used the opportunity to deliver to him.
+
+In these more courteous days we can form little conception of the licence
+which preachers in the sixteenth century allowed themselves, or the
+language which persons in high authority were often obliged to bear.
+Latimer spoke as freely to Henry VIII. of neglected duties, as to the
+peasants in his Wiltshire parish. St. Ambrose did not rebuke the Emperor
+Theodosius more haughtily than John Knox lectured Queen Mary and her
+ministers on the vanities of Holyrood; and Catholic priests, it seems, were
+not afraid to display even louder disrespect.
+
+On Sunday, the first of May, 1532, the pulpit at Greenwich was occupied by
+Father Peto, afterwards Cardinal Peto, famous through Europe as a Catholic
+incendiary; but at this time an undistinguished brother of the Observants
+convent. His sermon had been upon the story of Ahab and Naboth, and his
+text had been, "Where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall
+they lick thy blood, O king." Henry, the court, and most likely Anne Boleyn
+herself, were present; the first of May being the great holy-day of the
+English year, and always observed at Greenwich with peculiar splendour.
+The preacher had dilated at length upon the crimes and the fall of Ahab,
+and had drawn the portrait in all its magnificent wickedness.  He had
+described the scene in the court of heaven, and spoken of the lying
+prophets who had mocked the monarch's hopes before the fatal battle. At the
+end, he turned directly to Henry, and assuming to himself the mission of
+Micaiah, he closed his address in the following audacious words:--"And now,
+O king," he said, "hear what I say to thee.  I am that Micaiah whom thou
+wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that this marriage is unlawful,
+and I know that I shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the waters of
+sorrow, yet because the Lord hath put it in my mouth I must speak it.
+There are other preachers, yea too many, which preach and persuade thee
+otherwise, feeding they folly and frail affections upon hopes of their own
+worldly promotion; and by that means they betray thy soul, thy honour, and
+thy posterity; to obtain fat benefices, to become rich abbots and bishops,
+and I know not what.  These I say are the four hundred prophets who, in the
+spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee.  Take heed lest thou, being seduced,
+find Ahab's punishment, who had his blood licked up by the dogs."
+
+Henry must have been compelled to listen to many such invectives. He left
+the chapel without noticing what had passed; and in the course of the week
+Peto went down from Greenwich to attend a provincial council at Canterbury,
+and perhaps to communicate with the Nun of Kent. Meantime a certain Dr.
+Kirwan was commissioned to preach on the other side of the question the
+following Sunday.
+
+Kirwan was one of those men of whom the preacher spoke prophetically, since
+by the present and similar services he made his way to the archbishopric of
+Dublin and the bishopric of Oxford, and accepting the Erastian theory of a
+Christian's duty, followed Edward VI. into heresy, and Mary into popery and
+persecution. He regarded himself as an official of the state religion; and
+his highest conception of evil in a Christian was disobedience to the
+reigning authority. We may therefore conceive easily the burden of his
+sermon in the royal chapel. "He most sharply reprehended Peto," calling him
+foul names, "dog, slanderer, base beggarly friar, rebel, and traitor,"
+saying "that no subject should speak so audaciously to his prince:" he
+"commended" Henry's intended marriage, "thereby to establish his seed in
+his seat for ever;" and having won, as he supposed, his facile victory, he
+proceeded with his peroration, addressing his absent antagonist. "I speak
+to thee, Peto," he exclaimed, "to thee, Peto, which makest thyself Micaiah,
+that thou mayest speak evil of kings; but now art not to be found, being
+fled for fear and shame, as unable to answer my argument." In the royal
+chapel at Greenwich there was more reality than decorum. A voice out of the
+rood-loft cut short the eloquent declamation. "Good sir," it said, "you
+know Father Peto is gone to Canterbury to a provincial council, and not
+fled for fear of you; for to-morrow he will return again. In the meantime I
+am here as another Micaiah, and will lay down my life to prove those things
+true which he hath taught. And to this combat I challenge thee; thee
+Kirwan, I say, who art one of the four hundred into whom the spirit of
+lying is entered, and thou seekest by adultery to establish the succession,
+betraying thy king for thy own vain glory into endless perdition."
+
+A scene of confusion followed, which was allayed at last by the king
+himself, who rose from his seat and commanded silence. It was thought that
+the limit of permissible licence had been transcended, and the following
+day Peto and Elstowe, the other speaker, were summoned before the council
+to receive a reprimand. Lord Essex told them they deserved to be sewn into
+a sack and thrown into the Thames. "Threaten such things to rich and dainty
+folk, which have their hope in this world," answered Elstowe, gallantly,
+"we fear them not; with thanks to God we know the way to heaven to be as
+ready by water as by land."[372] Men of such metal might be broken, but
+they could not be bent. The two offenders were hopelessly unrepentant and
+impracticable, and it was found necessary to banish them. They retired to
+Antwerp, where we find them the following year busy procuring copies of the
+Bishop of Rochester's book against the king, which was broadly disseminated
+on the continent, and secretly transmitting them into England; in close
+correspondence also with Fisher himself, with Sir Thomas More, and for the
+ill fortune of their friends, with the court at Brussels, between which and
+the English Catholics the intercourse was dangerously growing.[373]
+
+The Greenwich friars, with their warden, went also a bad way. The death of
+the persecuted brother was attended with circumstances in a high degree
+suspicious.[374] Henry ordered an enquiry, which did not terminate in any
+actual exposure; but a cloud hung over the convent, which refused to be
+dispelled; the warden was deposed, and soon after it was found necessary to
+dissolve the order.
+
+If the English monks had shared as a body the character of the Greenwich
+Observants, of the Carthusians of London and Richmond, and of some other
+establishments,--which may easily be numbered,--the resistance which they
+might have offered to the government, with the sympathy which it would have
+commanded, would have formed an obstacle to the Reformation that no power
+could have overcome. It was time, however, for the dissolution of the
+monasteries, when the few among them, which on other grounds might have
+claimed a right to survive, were driven by their very virtues into treason.
+The majority perished of their proper worthlessness; the few remaining
+contrived to make their existence incompatible with the safety of the
+state.
+
+Leaving for the present these disorders to mature themselves, I must now
+return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous
+course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying
+what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very
+Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and
+we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that,
+although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the
+hard ground is immediately beyond.
+
+We shall, perhaps, be able most readily to comprehend the position of the
+various parties in Europe, by placing them before us as they stood
+severally in the summer of 1532, and defining briefly the object which each
+was pursuing.
+
+Henry only, among the great powers, laid his conduct open to the world,
+declaring truly what he desired, and seeking it by open means. He was
+determined to proceed with the divorce, and he was determined also to
+continue the Reformation of the English Church. If consistently with these
+two objects he could avoid a rupture with the pope, he was sincerely
+anxious to avoid it. He was ready to make great efforts, to risk great
+sacrifices, to do anything short of surrendering what he considered of
+vital moment, to remain upon good terms with the See of Rome. If his
+efforts failed, and a quarrel was inevitable, he desired to secure himself
+by a close maintenance of the French alliance; and having induced Francis
+to urge compliance upon the pope by a threat of separation if he refused,
+to prevail on him, in the event of the pope's continued obstinacy, to put
+his threat in execution, and unite with England in a common schism. All
+this is plain and straightforward--Henry concealed nothing, and, in fact,
+had nothing to conceal. In his threats, his promises, and his entreaties,
+we feel entire certainty that he was speaking his real thoughts.
+
+The emperor's position, also, though not equally simple, is intelligible,
+and commands our respect. Although if he had consented to sacrifice his
+aunt, he might have spared himself serious embarrassment; although both by
+the pope and by the consistory such a resolution would probably have been
+welcomed with passionate thankfulness; yet at all hazards Charles was
+determined to make her his first object, even with the risk of convulsing
+Europe. At the same time his position was encumbered with difficulty. The
+Turks were pressing upon him in Hungary and in the Mediterranean; his
+relations with Francis--fortunately for the prospects of the
+Reformation--were those of inveterate hostility; while in Germany he had
+been driven to make terms with the Protestant princes; he had offended the
+pope by promising them a general council, in which the Lutheran divines
+should be represented; and the pope, taught by recent experience, was made
+to fear that these symptoms of favour towards heresy, might convert
+themselves into open support.
+
+With Francis the prevailing feeling was rivalry with the emperor, combined
+with an eager desire to recover his influence in Italy, and to restore
+France to the position in Europe which had been lost by the defeat of
+Pavia, and the failure of Lautrec at Naples. This was his first object, to
+which every other was subsidiary. He was disinclined to a rupture with the
+pope; but the possibility of such a rupture had been long contemplated by
+French statesmen. It was a contingency which the pope feared:--which the
+hopes of Henry pictured as more likely than it was--and Francis, like his
+rivals in the European system, held the menace of it extended over the
+chair of St. Peter, to coerce its unhappy occupant into compliance with his
+wishes. With respect to Henry's divorce, his conduct to the University of
+Paris, and his assurances repeated voluntarily on many occasions, show that
+he was sincerely desirous to forward it. He did not care for Henry, or for
+England, or for the cause itself; he desired only to make the breach
+between Henry and Charles irreparable; to make it impossible for ever that
+"his two great rivals" should become friends together; and by inducing the
+pope to consent to the English demand, to detach the court of Rome
+conclusively from the imperial interests.
+
+The two princes who disputed the supremacy of Europe, were intriguing one
+against the other, each desiring to constitute himself the champion of the
+church; and to compel the church to accept his services, by the threat of
+passing over to her enemies. By a dexterous use of the cards which were in
+his hands, the King of France proposed to secure one of two alternatives.
+Either he would form a league between himself, Henry, and the pope, against
+the emperor, of which the divorce, and the consent to it, which he would
+extort from Clement, should be the cement; or, if this failed him, he would
+avail himself of the vantage ground which was given to him by the English
+alliance to obtain such concessions for himself at the emperor's expense as
+the pope could be induced to make, and the emperor to tolerate.
+
+Such, in so far as I can unravel the web of the diplomatic correspondence,
+appear to have been the open positions and the secret purposes of the great
+European powers.
+
+There remains the fourth figure upon the board, the pope himself, labouring
+with such means as were at his disposal to watch over the interests of the
+church, and to neutralise the destructive ambition of the princes, by
+playing upon their respective selfishnesses. On the central question, that
+of the divorce, his position was briefly this. Both the emperor and Henry
+pressed for a decision. If he decided for Henry, he lost Germany; if he
+decided for Catherine, while Henry was supported by Francis, France and
+England threatened both to fall from him. It was therefore necessary for
+him to induce the emperor to consent to delay, while he worked upon the
+King of France; and, if France and England could once be separated, he
+trusted that Henry would yield in despair. This most subtle and difficult
+policy reveals itself in the transactions open and secret of the ensuing
+years. It was followed with a dexterity as extraordinary as its
+unscrupulousness, and with all but perfect success. That it failed at all,
+in the ordinary sense of failure, was due to the accidental delay of a
+courier; and Clement, while he succeeded in preserving the allegiance of
+France to the Roman see, succeeded also--and this is no small thing to have
+accomplished--in weaving the most curious tissue of falsehood which will be
+met with even in the fertile pages of Italian subtlety.
+
+With this general understanding of the relation between the great parties
+in the drama, let us look to their exact position in the summer of 1532.
+
+Charles was engaged in repelling an invasion of the Turks, with an
+anarchical Germany in his rear, seething with fanatical anabaptists, and
+clamouring for a general council.
+
+Henry and Francis had been called upon to furnish a contingent against
+Solyman, and had declined to act with the emperor. They had undertaken to
+concert their own measures between themselves, if it proved necessary for
+them to move; and in the meantime Cardinal Grammont and Cardinal Tournon
+were sent by Francis to Rome, to inform Clement that unless he gave a
+verdict in Henry's favour, the Kings of France and England, being _une
+mesme chose_, would pursue some policy with respect to him,[375] to which
+he would regret that he had compelled them to have recourse. So far their
+instructions were avowed and open. A private message revealed the secret
+means by which the pope might escape from his dilemma; the cardinals were
+to negotiate a marriage between the Duke of Orleans and the pope's niece
+(afterwards so infamously famous), Catherine de Medicis. The marriage, as
+Francis represented it to Henry, was beneath the dignity of a prince of
+France, he had consented to it, as he professed, only for Henry's
+sake;[376] but the pope had made it palatable by a secret article in the
+engagement, for the grant of the duchy of Milan as the lady's dowry.
+
+Henry, threatened as we have seen with domestic disturbance, and with
+further danger on the side of Scotland, which Charles had succeeded in
+agitating, concluded, on the 23rd of June, a league, offensive and
+defensive, with Francis, the latter engaging to send a fleet into the
+Channel, and to land 15,000 troops in England if the emperor should attempt
+an invasion from the sea.[378] For the better consolidation of this league,
+and to consult upon the measures which they would pursue on the great
+questions at issue in Christendom, and lastly to come to a final
+understanding on the divorce, it was agreed further that in the autumn the
+two kings should meet at Calais. The conditions of the interview were still
+unarranged on the 22nd of July, when the Bishop of Paris, who remained
+ambassador at the English court, wrote to Montmorency to suggest that Anne
+Boleyn should be invited to accompany the King of England on this occasion,
+and that she should be received in state. The letter was dated from
+Ampthill, to which Henry had escaped for a while from his Greenwich friars
+and other troubles, and where the king was staying a few weeks before the
+house was given up to Queen Catherine. Anne Boleyn was with him; she now,
+as a matter of course, attended him everywhere. Intending her, as he did,
+to be the mother of the future heir to his crown, he preserved what is
+technically called her honour unimpeached and unimpaired. In all other
+respects she occupied the position and received the homage due to the
+actual wife of the English sovereign; and in this capacity it was the
+desire of Henry that she should be acknowledged by a foreign prince.
+
+The bishop's letter on this occasion is singularly interesting and
+descriptive. The court were out hunting, he said, every day; and while the
+king was pursuing the heat of the chase, he and Mademoiselle Anne were
+posted together, each with a crossbow, at the point to which the deer was
+to be driven. The young lady, in order that the appearance of her reverend
+cavalier might correspond with his occupation, had made him a present of a
+hunting cap and frock, a horn and a greyhound. Her invitation to Calais he
+pressed with great earnestness, and suggested that Marguerite de Valois,
+the Queen of Navarre, should be brought down to entertain her. The Queen of
+France being a Spaniard, would not, he thought, be welcome: "the sight of a
+Spanish dress being as hateful in the King of England's eyes as the devil
+himself." In other respects the reception should be as magnificent as
+possible, "and I beseech you," he concluded, "keep out of the court, _deux
+sortes de gens_, the imperialists, and the wits and mockers; the English
+can endure neither of them."[379]
+
+Through the tone of this language the contempt is easily visible with which
+the affair was regarded in the French court. But for Francis to receive in
+public the rival of Queen Catherine, to admit her into his family, and to
+bring his sister from Paris to entertain her, was to declare in the face of
+Europe, in a manner which would leave no doubt of his sincerity, that he
+intended to countenance Henry. With this view only was the reception of
+Anne desired by the King of England; with this view it was recommended by
+the bishop, and assented to by the French court. Nor was this the only
+proof which Francis was prepared to give, that he was in earnest. He had
+promised to distribute forty thousand crowns at Rome, in bribing cardinals
+to give their voices for Henry in the consistory, with other possible
+benefactions.[380]
+
+He had further volunteered his good offices with the court of Scotland,
+where matters were growing serious, and where his influence could be used
+to great advantage. The ability of James the Fifth to injure Henry happily
+fell short of his inclination, but encouraged by secret promises from
+Clement and from the emperor, he was waiting his opportunity to cross the
+Border with an army; and in the meantime he was feeding with efficient
+support a rebellion in Ireland. Of what was occurring at this time in that
+perennially miserable country I shall speak in a separate chapter. It is
+here sufficient to mention, that on the 23rd of August, Henry received
+information that McConnell of the Isles, after receiving knighthood from
+James, had been despatched into Ulster with four thousand men,[381] and was
+followed by Mackane with seven thousand more on the 3rd of September.[382]
+Peace with England nominally continued; but the Kers, the Humes, the Scotts
+of Buccleugh, the advanced guard of the Marches, were nightly making forays
+across the Border, and open hostilities appeared to be on the point of
+explosion.[383] If war was to follow, Henry was prepared for it. He had a
+powerful force at Berwick, and in Scotland itself a large party were
+secretly attached to the English interests. The clan of Douglas, with their
+adherents, were even prepared for open revolt, and open transfer of
+allegiance.[384] But, although Scottish nobles might be gained over, and
+Scottish armies might be defeated in the field, Scotland itself, as the
+experience of centuries had proved, could never be conquered. The policy of
+the Tudors had been to abstain from aggression, till time should have
+soothed down the inherited animosity between the two countries; and Henry
+was unwilling to be forced into extremities which might revive the bitter
+memories of Flodden. The Northern counties also, in spite of their Border
+prejudices, were the stronghold of the papal party, and it was doubtful how
+far their allegiance could be counted upon in the event of an invasion
+sanctioned by the pope. The hands of the English government were already
+full without superadded embarrassment, and the offered mediation of Francis
+was gratefully welcomed.
+
+These were the circumstances under which the second great interview was to
+take place between Francis the First and Henry of England.[385] Twelve
+years had passed since their last meeting, and the experience which those
+years had brought to both of them, had probably subdued their inclination
+for splendid pageantry. Nevertheless, in honour of the occasion, some faint
+revival was attempted of the magnificence of the Field of the Cloth of
+Gold. Anne Boleyn was invited duly; and the Queen of Navarre, as the Bishop
+of Paris recommended, came down to Boulogne to receive her. The French
+princes came also to thank Henry in person for their deliverance out of
+their Spanish prison; and he too, on his side, brought with him his young
+Marcellus, the Duke of Richmond, his only son--illegitimate
+unfortunately--but whose beauty and noble promise were at once his father's
+misery and pride; giving point to his bitterness at the loss of his sons by
+Catherine; quickening his hopes of what might be, and deepening his
+discontent with that which was. If this boy had lived, he would have been
+named to follow Edward the Sixth in the succession, and would have been
+King of England;[386] but he too passed away in the flower of his
+loveliness, one more evidence of the blight which rested upon the stem of
+the Tudors.
+
+The English court was entertained by Francis at Boulogne. The French court
+was received in return at Calais by the English. The outward description of
+the scene, the magnificent train of the princes, the tournaments, the
+feasts, the dances, will be found minutely given in the pages of Hall, and
+need not be repeated here. To Hall indeed, the outward life of men, their
+exploits in war, and their pageantries in peace, alone had meaning or
+interest; and the backstairs secrets of Vatican diplomacy, the questionings
+of opinion, and all the brood of mental sicknesses then beginning to
+distract the world, were but impertinent interferences with the true
+business of existence. But the healthy objectiveness of an old English
+chronicler is no longer possible for us; we may envy where we cannot
+imitate; and our business is with such features of the story as are of
+moment to ourselves.
+
+The political questions which were to be debated at the conference, were
+three; the Turkish Invasion, the General Council, and King Henry's divorce.
+
+On the first, it was decided that there was no immediate occasion for
+France and England to move. Solyman's retreat from Vienna had relieved
+Europe from present peril; and the enormous losses which he had suffered,
+might prevent him from repeating the experiment. If the danger became again
+imminent, however, the two kings agreed to take the field in person the
+following year at the head of eighty thousand men.
+
+On the second point they came to no conclusion, but resolved only to act in
+common.
+
+On the third and most important, they parted with a belief that they
+understood each other; but their memories, or the memory of one of them,
+proved subsequently treacherous; and we can only extract what passed
+between them out of their mutual recriminations.
+
+It was determined certainly that at the earliest convenient moment, a
+meeting should take place between the pope and Francis; and that at this
+meeting Francis should urge in person concession to Henry's demands. If the
+pope professed himself unable to risk the displeasure of the emperor, it
+should be suggested that he might return to Avignon, where he would be
+secure under the protection of France and England. If he was still
+reluctant, and persisted in asserting his right to compel Henry to plead
+before him at Rome, or if he followed up his citations by inhibitions,
+suspensions, excommunications, or other form of censure, Francis declared
+that he would support Henry to the last, whether against the pope himself
+or against any prince or potentate who might attempt to enforce the
+sentence. On this point the promises of the King of France were most
+profuse and decided; and although it was not expressly stated in words,
+Henry seems to have persuaded himself that, if the pope pressed matters to
+extremities, Francis had engaged further that the two countries should
+pursue a common course, and unite in a common schism. The two princes did
+in fact agree, that if the general council which they desired was refused,
+they would summon provincial councils on their own authority. Each of them
+perhaps interpreted their engagements by their own wishes or
+interests.[387]
+
+We may further believe, since it was affirmed by Henry, and not denied by
+Francis, that the latter advised Henry to bring the dispute to a close, by
+a measure from which he could not recede; that he recommended him to act on
+the general opinion of Europe that his marriage with Queen Catherine was
+null, and at once upon his return to England to make Anne Boleyn his
+wife.[388]
+
+So far the account is clear. This advice was certainly given, and as
+certainly Francis undertook to support Henry through all the consequences
+in which the marriage might involve him. But a league for mutual defence
+fell short of what Henry desired, and fell short also of what Francis, by
+the warmth of his manner, had induced Henry for the moment to believe that
+he meant. It is probable that the latter pressed upon him engagements which
+he avoided by taking refuge in general professions; and no sooner had Henry
+returned to England, than either misgivings occurred to him as to the
+substantial results of the interview, or he was anxious to make the French
+king commit himself more definitely. He sent to him to beg that he would
+either write out, or dictate and sign, the expressions which he had used;
+professing to wish it only for the comfort which he would derive from the
+continual presence of such refreshing words--but surely for some deeper
+reason.[389]
+
+Francis had perhaps said more than he meant; Henry supposed him to have
+meant more than he said. Yet some promise was made, which was not
+afterwards observed; and Francis acknowledged some engagement in an apology
+which he offered for the breach of it. He asserted, in defence of himself,
+that he had added a stipulation which Henry passed over in silence,--that
+no steps should be taken towards annulling the marriage with Catherine in
+the English law courts until the effect had been seen of his interview with
+the pope, provided the pope on his side remained similarly inactive.[390]
+Whatever it was which he had bound himself to do, this condition, if made
+at all, could be reconciled only with his advice that Henry should marry
+Anne Boleyn without further delay, on the supposition that the interview in
+question was to take place immediately; for the natural consequences of the
+second marriage would involve, as a matter of course, some speedy legal
+declaration with respect to the first. And when on various pretexts the
+pope postponed the meeting, and on the other part of his suggestion Henry
+had acted within a few months of his return from Calais, it became
+impossible that such a condition could be observed. It availed for a formal
+excuse; but Francis vainly endeavoured to disguise his own infirmity of
+purpose behind the language of a negotiation which conveyed, when it was
+used, a meaning widely different.
+
+The conference was concluded on the 1st of November, but the court was
+detained at Calais for a further fortnight by violent gales in the Channel.
+In the excited state of public feeling, events in themselves ordinary
+assumed a preternatural significance. The friends of Queen Catherine, to
+whom the meeting between the kings was of so disastrous augury, and the
+nation generally, which an accident to Henry at such a time would have
+plunged into a chaos of confusion, alike watched the storm with anxious
+agitation; on the king's return to London, Te Deums were offered in the
+churches, as if for his deliverance from some extreme and imminent peril.
+The Nun of Kent on this great occasion was admitted to conferences with
+angels. She denounced the meeting, under celestial instruction, as a
+conspiracy against Heaven. The king, she said, but for her interposition,
+would have proceeded, while at Calais, to his impious marriage;[391] and
+God was so angry with him, that he was not permitted to profane with his
+unholy eyes the blessed Sacrament. "It was written in her revelations,"
+says the statute of her attainder, "that when the King's Grace was at
+Calais, and his Majesty and the French king were hearing mass in the Church
+of Our Lady, that God was so displeased with the King's Highness, that his
+Grace saw not at that time the blessed sacrament in the form of bread, for
+it was taken away from the priest, being at mass, by an angel, and was
+ministered to the said Elizabeth, there being present and invisible, and
+suddenly conveyed and rapt thence again into the nunnery where she was
+professed."[392]
+
+She had an interview with Henry on his return through Canterbury, to try
+the effect of her Cassandra presence on his fears;[393] but if he still
+delayed his marriage, it was probably neither because he was frightened by
+her denunciations, nor from alarm at the usual occurrence of an equinoctial
+storm. Many motives combined to dissuade him from further hesitation. Six
+years of trifling must have convinced him that by decisive action alone he
+could force the pope to a conclusion. He was growing old, and the
+exigencies of the succession, rendered doubly pressing by the long
+agitation, required immediate resolution. He was himself satisfied that he
+was at liberty to marry whom he pleased and when he pleased, his
+relationship to Catherine, according to his recent convictions, being such
+as had rendered his connection with her from the beginning invalid and
+void. His own inclinations and the interests of the nation pointed to the
+same course. The King of France had advised it. Even the pope himself, at
+the outset of the discussion, had advised it also. "Marry freely," the pope
+had said; "fear nothing, and all shall be arranged as you desire." He had
+forborne to take the pope at his word; he had hoped that the justice of his
+demands might open a less violent way to him; and he had shrunk from a step
+which might throw even a causeless shadow over the legitimacy of the
+offspring for which he longed. The case was now changed; no other
+alternative seemed to be open to his choice, and it was necessary to bring
+the matter to a close once and for all.
+
+But Henry, as he said himself, was past the age when passion or appetite
+would be likely to move him, and having waited so many years, he could
+afford to wait a little longer, till the effects of the Calais conferences
+upon the pope should have had time to show themselves. In December, Clement
+was to meet the emperor at Bologna. In the month following, it might be
+hoped that he would meet Francis at Marseilles or Avignon, and from their
+interview would be seen conclusively the future attitude of the papal and
+imperial courts. Experience of the past forbade anything like sanguine
+expectation; yet it was not impossible that the pope might be compelled at
+last to yield the required concessions. The terms of Henry's understanding
+with Francis were not perhaps made public, but he was allowed to dictate
+the language which the French cardinals were to make use of in the
+consistory;[394] and the reception of Anne Boleyn by the French king was
+equivalent to the most emphatic declaration that if the censures of the
+church were attempted in defence of Catherine, the enforcement of them
+would be resisted by the combined arms of France and England.
+
+And the pope did in fact feel himself in a dilemma from which all his
+address was required to extricate him. He had no support from his
+conscience, for he knew that he was acting unjustly in refusing the
+divorce; while to risk the emperor's anger, which was the only honest
+course before him, was perhaps for that very reason impossible. He fell
+back upon his Italian cunning, and it did not fail him in his need. But his
+conduct, though creditable to his ingenuity, reflects less pleasantly on
+his character; and when it is traced through all its windings, few
+reasonable persons will think that they have need to blush at the causes
+which led to the last breach between England and the papacy.
+
+From the time of Catherine's appeal and the retirement of Campeggio,
+Clement, with rare exceptions, had maintained an attitude of impassive
+reserve. He had allowed judgment to be delayed on various pretexts, because
+until that time delay had answered his purposes sufficiently. But to the
+English agents he had been studiously cold, not condescending even to hold
+out hopes to them that concession might be possible. Some little time
+before the meeting at Calais, however, a change was observed in the
+language both of the pope himself and of the consistory. The cardinals were
+visibly afraid of the position which had been taken by the French king;
+questions supposed to be closed were once more admitted to debate in a
+manner which seemed to show that their resolution was wavering; and one
+day, at the close of a long argument, the following curious conversation
+took place between some person (Sir Gregory Cassalis, apparently), who
+reported it to Henry, and Clement himself. "I had desired a private
+interview with his Holiness," says the writer, "intending to use all my
+endeavours to persuade him to satisfy your Majesty. But although I did my
+best, I could obtain nothing from him; he had an answer for everything
+which I advanced, and it was in vain that I laboured to remove his
+difficulties. At length, however, in reply to something which I had
+proposed, he said shortly,--Multo minus scandalosum fuisset dispensare cum
+majestate vestra super duabus uxoribus, quam ea cedere quae ego petebam,
+_it would have created less scandal to have granted your Majesty a
+dispensation to have two wives than to concede what I was then demanding_.
+As I did not know how far this alternative would be pleasing to your
+Majesty, I endeavoured to divert him from it, and to lead him back to what
+I had been previously saying. He was silent for a while, and then, paying
+no regard to my interruption, he continued to speak of the 'two wives,'
+admitting however that there were difficulties in the way of such an
+arrangement, principally it seemed because the emperor would refuse his
+consent from the possible injury which it might create to his cousin's
+prospects of the succession. I replied, that as to the succession, I could
+not see what right the emperor had to a voice upon the matter. If some
+lawful means could be discovered by which your Majesty could furnish
+yourself with male offspring, the emperor could no more justly complain
+than if the queen were to die and the prospects of the princess were
+interfered with by a second marriage of an ordinary kind. To this the pope
+made no answer. I cannot tell what your Majesty will think, nor how far
+this suggestion of the pope would be pleasing to your Majesty. Nor indeed
+can I feel sure, in consequence of what he said about the emperor, that he
+actually would grant the dispensation of which he spoke. I have thought it
+right, however, to inform you of what passed."[395]
+
+This letter is undated, but it was written, as appears from internal
+evidence, some time in the year 1532.[396]
+
+The pope's language was ambiguous, and the writer did not allow himself to
+derive from it any favourable augury; but the tone in which the suggestions
+had been made was by many degrees more favourable than had been heard for a
+very long time in the quarter from which they came, and the symptoms which
+it promised of a change of feeling were more than confirmed in the
+following winter.
+
+Charles was to be at Bologna in the middle of December, where he was to
+discuss with Clement the situation of Europe, and in particular of Germany,
+with the desirableness of fulfilling the engagements into which he had
+entered for a general council.
+
+This was the avowed object of the meeting. But, however important the
+question of holding a council was becoming, it was not immediately
+pressing; and we cannot doubt that the disquiet occasioned by the alliance
+of England and France was the cause that the conference was held at so
+inconvenient a season. The pope left Rome on the 18th of November, having
+in his train a person who afterwards earned for himself a dark name in
+English history, Dr. Bonner, then a famous canon lawyer attached to the
+embassy. The journey in the wild weather was extremely miserable; and
+Bonner, whose style was as graphic as it was coarse, sent home a humorous
+account of it to Cromwell.[397] Three wretched weeks the party were upon
+the road, plunging through mire and water. They reached Bologna on the 8th
+of December, where, four days after them, arrived Charles V. It is
+important, as we shall presently see, to observe the dates of these
+movements. I shall have to compare with them the successive issues of
+several curious documents. On the 12th of December the pope and the emperor
+met at Bologna; on the 24th Dr. Bennet, Henry's able secretary, who had
+been despatched from England to be present at the conference, wrote to
+report the result of his observations. He had been admitted to repeated
+interviews with the pope, as well before as after the emperor's arrival;
+and the language which the former made use of could only be understood, and
+was of course intended to be understood, as expressing the attitude in
+which he was placing himself towards the imperial faction. Bennet's letter
+was as follows:--
+
+"I have been sundry and many times with the pope, as well afore the coming
+of the emperour as sythen, yet I have not at any time found his Holiness
+more tractable or propense to show gratuity unto your Highness than now of
+late,--insomuch that he hath more freely opened his mind than he was
+accustomed, and said also that he would speak with me frankly without any
+observance or respect at all. At which time, I greatly lamented (your
+Highness's cause being so just) no means could be found and taken to
+satisfy your Highness therein; and I said also that I doubted not but that
+(if his Holiness would) ways might be found by his wisdom, now at the
+emperour's being with him, to satisfy your Highness; and that done, his
+Holiness should not only have your Highness in as much or more friendship
+than he hath had heretofore, but also procure thereby that thing which his
+Holiness hath chiefly desired, which is, as he hath said, a universal
+concord among the princes of Christendom. His Holiness answered, that he
+would it had cost him a joint of his hand that such a way might be
+excogitate; and he said also, that the best thing which he could see to be
+done therein at this present, for a preparation to that purpose, was the
+thing which is contained in the first part of the cipher.[398] Speaking of
+the justness of your cause, he called to his remembrance the thing which he
+told me two years past; which was, that the opinion of the lawyers was more
+certain, favourable, and helping to your cause than the opinion of the
+divines; for he said that as far as he could perceive, the lawyers, though
+they held quod Papa possit dispensare in this case, yet they commonly do
+agree quod hoc fieri debeat ex maxima causa, adhibita causae cognitione,
+which in this case doth not appear; and he said, that to come to the truth
+herein he had used all diligence possible, and enquired the opinion of
+learned men, being of fame and indifferency both in the court here and in
+other places. And his Holiness promised me that he would herein use all
+good policy and dexterity to imprint the same in the emperour's head; which
+done, he reckoneth many things to be invented that may be pleasant and
+profitable to your Highness; adding yet that this is not to be done with a
+fury, but with leisure and as occasion shall serve, lest if he should
+otherwise do, he should let and hinder that good effect which peradventure
+might ensue thereby."[399]
+
+This letter has all the character of truth about it. The secretary had no
+interest in deceiving Henry, and it is quite certain that, whether honestly
+or not, the pope had led him to believe that his sympathies were again on
+the English side, and that he was using his best endeavours to subdue the
+emperor's opposition.
+
+On the 26th of December, two days later, Sir Gregory Cassalis, who had also
+followed the papal court to Bologna, wrote to the same effect. He, too, had
+been with the pope, who had been very open and confidential with him. The
+emperor, the pope said, had complained of the delay in the process, but he
+had assured him that it was impossible for the consistory to do more than
+it had done. The opinion of the theologians was on the whole against the
+papal power of dispensation in cases of so close relationship; of the canon
+lawyers part agreed with the theologians, and those who differed from them
+were satisfied that such a power might not be exercised unless there were
+most urgent cause, unless, that is, the safety of a kingdom were dependent
+upon it. Such occasion he had declared that he could not find to have
+existed for the dispensation granted by his predecessor. The emperor had
+replied that there had been such occasion: the dispensation had been
+granted to prevent war between Spain and England; and that otherwise great
+calamities would have befallen both countries. But this was manifestly
+untrue; and his Holiness said that he had answered, It was a pity, then,
+that these causes had not been submitted at the time, as the reason for the
+demand, which it was clear that they had not been: as the case stood, it
+was impossible for him to proceed further. Upon which he added, "Se vidisse
+Caesarem obstupefactum." "I write the words," continued Sir Gregory,
+"exactly as the pope related them to me. Whether he really spoke in this
+way, I cannot tell; of this, however, I am sure, that on the day of our
+conversation he had taken the blessed sacrament. He assured me further,
+that he had laboured to induce the emperor to permit him to satisfy your
+Majesty. I recommended him that when next the emperor spoke with him upon
+the subject, he should enter at greater length on the question of
+_justice_, and that some other person should be present at the conference,
+that there might be no room left for suspicion."[400]
+
+The manner of Clement was so unlike what Cassalis had been in the habit
+of witnessing in him, that he was unable, as we see, wholly to persuade
+himself that the change was sincere: the letter, however, was despatched
+to England, and was followed in a few days by Bonner, who brought
+with him the result of the pope's good will in the form of definite
+propositions--instructions of similar purport having been forwarded at the
+same time to the papal nuncio in England. The pope, so Henry was informed,
+was now really well disposed to do what was required; he had urged upon the
+emperor the necessity of concessions, and the cause might be settled in one
+of two ways, to either of which he was himself ready to consent. Catherine
+had appealed against judgment being passed in England, as a place which was
+not indifferent. Henry had refused to allow his cause to be heard anywhere
+but in his own realm; pleading first his privilege as a sovereign prince;
+and secondly, his exemption as an Englishman.[401] The pope, with
+appearance of openness, now suggested that Henry should either "send a
+mandate requiring the remission of his cause to an indifferent place, in
+which case he would himself surrender his claim to have it tried in the
+courts at Rome, and would appoint a legate and two auditors to hear the
+trial elsewhere;" or else, a truce of three or four years being concluded
+between England, France, and Spain, the pope would "with all celerity
+indict a general council, to which he would absolutely and wholly remit the
+consideration of the question."[402]
+
+Both proposals carried on their front a show of fair dealing, and if
+honestly proffered, were an evidence that something more might at length be
+hoped than words. But the true obstacle to a settlement lay, as had been
+long evident, rather in the want of an honest will, than in legal
+difficulties or uncertainty as to the justice of the cause; and while
+neither of the alternatives as they stood were admissible or immediately
+desirable, there were many other roads, if the point of honesty were once
+made good, which would lead more readily to the desired end. Once for all
+Henry could not consent to plead out of England; while an appeal to a
+council would occupy more time than the condition of the country could
+conveniently allow. But the offer had been courteously made; it had been
+accompanied with language which might be sincere; and the king replied with
+grace, and almost with cordiality; not wholly giving Clement his
+confidence, but expressing a hope that he might soon be no longer justified
+in withholding it. He was unable, he said, to accept the first condition,
+because it was contrary to his coronation oath; "it so highly touched the
+prerogative royal of the realm, that though he were minded to do it, yet
+must he abstain without the assent of the court of parliament, which he
+thought verily would never condescend to it."[403] The other suggestion he
+did not absolutely reject, but the gathering of a council was too serious a
+matter to be precipitated, and the situation of Christendom presented many
+obstacles to a measure which would be useless unless it were carried
+through by all the great powers in a spirit of cordial unanimity. He
+trusted therefore that if the pope's intentions were really such as he
+pretended to entertain, he would find some method more convenient of
+proving his sincerity.
+
+It was happy for Henry that experience had taught him to be distrustful.
+Events proved too clearly that Clement's assumed alteration of tone was no
+more than a manoeuvre designed to entice him to withdraw from the position
+in which he had entrenched himself, and to induce him to acknowledge that
+he was amenable to an earthly authority exterior to his own realm.[404] In
+his offer to refer the cause to a general council, he proved that he was
+insincere, when in the following year he refused to allow a council to be a
+valid tribunal for the trial of it. The course which he would have followed
+if the second alternative had been accepted, may be conjectured from the
+measures which, as I shall presently show, he was at this very moment
+secretly pursuing. Henry, however, had happily resolved that he would be
+trifled with no further; he felt instinctively that only action would cut
+the net in which he was entangled; and he would not hesitate any longer to
+take a step which, in one way or another, must bring the weary question to
+a close. If the pope meant well, he would welcome a resolution which made
+further procrastination impossible; if he did not mean well, he could not
+be permitted to dally further with the interests of the English nation.
+Within a few days, therefore, of Bonner's return from Bologna, he took the
+final step from which there was no retreat, and "somewhere about St. Paul's
+day,"[405] Anne Boleyn received the prize for which she had thirsted seven
+long years, in the hand of the King of England. The ceremony was private.
+No authentic details are known either of the scene of it or the
+circumstances under which it took place; but it is said to have been
+performed by the able Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, summoned up for the
+purpose from the Welsh Marches, of which he was warden. It was done,
+however--in one way or other finally done--the cast was thrown, and a match
+was laid to the train which now at length could explode the spell of
+intrigue, and set Henry and England free.
+
+We have arrived at a point from which the issue of the labyrinth is clearly
+visible. The course of it has been very dreary; and brought in contact as
+we have been with so much which is painful, so much which is discreditable
+to all parties concerned, we may perhaps have lost our sense of the broad
+bearings of the question in indiscriminate disgust. It will be well,
+therefore, to pause for a moment to recapitulate those features of the
+story which are the main indications of its character, and may serve to
+guide our judgment in the censure which we shall pass.
+
+It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII. had
+been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the interests of
+the kingdom, if he had forborne, while his request was pending, to affront
+the princess who had for many years been his companion and his queen; if he
+had shown her that respect which her high character gave her a right to
+demand, and which her situation as a stranger ought to have made it
+impossible to him to refuse; his conduct would have been liable to no
+imputation, and our sympathies would without reserve have been on his side.
+He could not have been expected to love a person to whom he had been
+married as a boy for political convenience, merely because she was his
+wife; especially when she was many years his senior in age, disagreeable in
+her person, and by the consciousness of it embittered in her temper. His
+kingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience, it
+may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his children; and
+looking upon it as the sentence of Heaven upon a connection, the legality
+of which had from the first been violently disputed, he believed that he
+had been living in incest, and that his misfortunes were the consequence of
+it. Under these circumstances he had a full right to apply for a
+divorce.[406]
+
+The causa urgentissima of the canon law for which, by the pope's own
+showing, the dispensing powers had been granted to him, had arisen in an
+extreme form; and when the vital interests of England were sacrificed to
+the will of a foreign prince, sufficient reason had arisen for the nation
+to decline submission to so emphatic injustice, and to seek within itself
+its own remedies for its own necessities. These considerations must be
+allowed all their weight; and except for them, it is not to be supposed
+that Henry would have permitted private distaste or inclination to induce
+him to create a scandal in Europe. In his conduct, however, as in that of
+most men, good was chequered with evil, and sincerity with self-deception.
+Personal feeling can be traced from the first, holding a subsidiary,
+indeed, but still an influential place, among his motives; and exactly so
+far as he was influenced by it, his course was wrong, as the consequence
+miserably proved. The position which, in his wife's presence, he assigned
+to another woman, however he may have persuaded himself that Catherine had
+no claim to be considered his wife, admits neither of excuse nor of
+palliation; and he ought never to have shared his throne with a person who
+consented to occupy that position. He was blind to the coarseness of Anne
+Boleyn, because, in spite of his chivalry, his genius, his accomplishments,
+in his relations with women he was without delicacy himself. He directed,
+or attempted to direct, his conduct by the broad rules of what he thought
+to be just; and in the wide margin of uncertain ground where rules of
+action cannot be prescribed, and where men must guide themselves by
+consideration for the feelings of others, he--so far as women were
+concerned--was altogether or almost a stranger. Such consideration is a
+virtue which can be learned only in the society of equals, where necessity
+obliges men to practise it. Henry had been a king from his boyhood; he had
+been surrounded by courtiers who had anticipated all his desires; and
+exposed as he was to an ordeal from which no human being could have escaped
+uninjured, we have more cause, after all, to admire him for those
+excellences which he conquered for himself, than to blame the defects which
+he retained.
+
+But if in his private relations the king was hasty and careless, towards
+the pope to whom we must now return, he exhausted all resources of
+forbearance: and although, when separation from Rome was at length forced
+upon him, he then permitted no half measures, and swept into his new career
+with the strength of irresistible will, it was not till he had shown
+resolution no less great in the endurance of indignity; and of the three
+great powers in Europe, the prince who was compelled to break the unity of
+the Catholic church, was evidently the only one who was capable of real
+sacrifices to preserve it unbroken. Clement comprehended his reluctance,
+but presumed too far upon it; and if there was sin in the "great schism" of
+the Reformation, the guilt must rest where it is due. We have now to show
+the reverse side of the transactions at Bologna, and explain what a person
+wearing the title of his Holiness, in virtue of his supposed sanctity, had
+been secretly doing.
+
+In January, 1532, some little time before his conversation with Sir Gregory
+Cassalis on the subject of the two wives, the pope had composed a pastoral
+letter to Henry, which had never been issued. From its contents it would
+seem to have been written on the receipt of an indignant remonstrance of
+Queen Catherine, in which she had complained of her desertion by her
+husband, and of the public position which had been given to her rival. She
+had supposed (and it was the natural mistake of an embittered and injured
+woman) that Anne Boleyn had been placed in possession of the rights of an
+actual, and not only of an intended wife; and the pope, accepting her
+account of the situation, had written to implore the king to abstain, so
+long as the cause remained undetermined, from creating so great a scandal
+in Christendom, and to restore his late queen to her place at his side.
+This letter, as it was originally written, was one of Clement's happiest
+compositions.[407] He abstained in it from using any expression which could
+be construed into a threat: he appealed to Henry's honourable character,
+which no blot had hitherto stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion
+of the Christian world, he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects
+which would be produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the
+Holy See in a person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry had
+deserved that such a letter should be written to him; and the pope was more
+than justified in writing it. The letter, however, if it was sent, produced
+no effect, and on the 15th of November, three days before Clement's
+departure to Bologna, where he pretended (we must not forget) that he
+considered Henry substantially right; he added a postscript, in a tone not
+contrasting only with his words to the ambassadors, but with the language
+of the brief itself.
+
+Again urging Henry's delinquencies, his separation from his wife, and the
+scandal of his connection with another person, he commanded him, under
+penalty of excommunication, within one month of the receipt of those
+injunctions, to restore the queen to her place, and to abstain
+thenceforward from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn pending the issue of
+the trial. "Otherwise," the pope continued, "when the said term shall have
+elapsed, we pronounce thee, Henry King of England, and the said Anne, to be
+_ipso facto_ excommunicate, and command all men to shun and avoid your
+presence; and although our mind shrinks from allowing such a thought of
+your Serenity, although by ourselves and by our auditory of the Rota an
+inhibition has been already issued against you; although the act of which
+you are suspected be in itself forbidden by all laws human and divine, yet
+the reports which are brought to us do so move us, that once more we do
+inhibit you from dissolving your marriage with the aforesaid Catherine, or
+from continuing process, in your own courts, of divorce from her. And we do
+also hereby warn you, that you presume not to contract any new marriage
+with the said or with any other woman; we declare such marriage, if you
+still attempt it, to be vain and of none effect, and so to be regarded by
+all persons in obedience to the Apostolic see."[408]
+
+An inhibitory mandate, was a natural consequence of the conference of
+Calais, provided that the pope intended to proceed openly and uprightly;
+and if it had been sent upon the spot, Henry could have complained of
+nothing worse than of an honourable opposition to his wishes. But the
+mystery was not yet exhausted. The postscript was not issued, it was not
+spoken of; it was carried secretly to Bologna, and it bears at its foot a
+further date of the 23rd of December, the very time, that is to say, at
+which the pope was representing himself to Bennet as occupied only in
+devising the best means of satisfying Henry, and to Sir Gregory Cassalis,
+as so convinced of the justice of the English demands, that he had ventured
+in defence of them to the edge of rupture with the emperor.
+
+It might be urged that he was sincere both in his brief and in his
+conversation; that he believed that a verdict ought to be given, and would
+at last be given, against the original marriage, and that therefore he was
+the more anxious to prevent unnecessary scandal. Yet a menace of
+excommunication couched in so haughty a tone, could have been honestly
+reconciled with his other conduct, only by his following a course with
+respect to it which he did not follow--by informing the ambassadors openly
+of what he had done, and transmitting his letter through their hands to
+Henry himself. This he might have done; and though the issue of such a
+document at such a time would have been open to question, it might
+nevertheless have been defended. His Holiness, however, did nothing of the
+kind. No hint was let fall of the existence of any minatory brief; he
+sustained his pretence of good will, till there was no longer any occasion
+for him to counterfeit; and two months later it suddenly appeared on the
+doors of the churches in Flanders.
+
+Henry at first believed it to be forgery, One forged brief had already been
+produced by the imperialists in the course of their transactions, and he
+imagined that this was another; even his past experience of Clement had not
+prepared him for this last venture of effrontery; he wrote to Bennet,
+enclosing a copy, and requiring him to ascertain if it were really
+genuine.[409]
+
+The pope could not deny his hand, though the exposure, and the strange
+irregular character of the brief itself troubled him, and Bonner, who was
+again at the papal court, said that "he was in manner ashamed, and in great
+perplexity what he might do therein."[410]
+
+His conduct will be variously interpreted, and to attempt to analyse the
+motives of a double-minded man is always a hazardous experiment; but a
+comparison of date, the character of Clement himself, the circumstances in
+which he was placed, and the retrospective evidence from after events,
+points almost necessarily to but one interpretation. It is scarcely
+disputable that, frightened at the reception of Anne Boleyn in France, the
+pope found it necessary to pretend for a time an altered disposition
+towards Henry; and that the emperor, unable to feel wholly confident that a
+person who was false to others was true to himself, had exacted the brief
+from him as a guarantee for his good faith; Charles, on his side, reserving
+the publication until Francis had been gained over, and until Clement was
+screened against the danger which he so justly feared, from the
+consequences of the interview at Calais.
+
+There was duplicity of a kind; this cannot be denied; and if not designed
+to effect this object, this object in fact it answered. While Clement was
+talking smoothly to Bennet and Cassalis, secret overtures were advanced at
+Paris for a meeting at Nice between the pope, the emperor, and the King of
+France, from which Henry was to be excluded.[411] The emperor made haste
+with concessions to Francis, which but a few months before would have
+seemed impossible. He withdrew his army out of Lombardy, and left Italy
+free; he consented to the marriage which he had so earnestly opposed
+between Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Orleans, agreeing also, it is
+probable, to the contingency of the Duchy of Milan becoming ultimately her
+dowry. And Francis having coquetted with the proposal for the Nice
+meeting,[412] not indeed accepting, but not absolutely rejecting it,
+Charles consented also to waive his objections to the interview between
+Francis and the pope, on which he had looked hitherto with so much
+suspicion; provided that the pope would bear in mind some mysterious and
+unknown communication which had passed at Bologna.[413]
+
+Thus was Francis won. He cared only, as the pope had seen, for his own
+interests; and from this time he drew away, by imperceptible degrees, from
+his engagements to England. He did not stoop to dishonour or treacherous
+betrayal of confidence, for with all his faults he was, in the technical
+acceptation of that misused term, a gentleman. He declined only to maintain
+the attitude which, if he had continued in it, would have compelled the
+pope to yield; and although he continued honestly to urge him to make
+concessions, he no longer affected to make them the price of preserving
+France in allegiance to the Holy See. Nor need we regret that Francis
+shrank from a resolution which Henry had no right to require of him. To
+have united with France in a common schism at the crisis of the Reformation
+would have only embarrassed the free motions of England; and two nations
+whose interests and whose tendencies were essentially opposite, might not
+submit to be linked together by the artificial interests of their princes.
+The populace of England were unconsciously on the rapid road to
+Protestantism. The populace of France were fanatically Catholic. England
+was to go her way through a golden era of Elizabeth to Cromwell, the
+Puritans, and a Protestant republic; a republic to be perpetuated, if not
+in England herself, yet among her great children beyond the sea. France was
+to go her way through Bartholomew massacres and the dragonnades to a
+polished Louis the Magnificent, and thence to the bloody Medea's cauldron
+of Revolution, out of which she was to rise as now we know her. No common
+road could have been found for such destinies as these; and the French
+prince followed the direction of his wiser instincts when he preferred a
+quiet arrangement with the pope, in virtue of which his church should be
+secured by treaty the liberties which she desired, to a doubtful struggle
+for a freedom which his people neither wished nor approved. The interests
+of the nation were in fact his own. He could ill afford to forsake a
+religion which allowed him so pleasantly to compound for his amatory
+indulgences by the estrapade[414] and a zeal for orthodoxy.
+
+It became evident to Henry early in the spring that he was left
+substantially alone. His marriage had been kept secret with the intention
+that it should be divulged by the King of France to the pope when he met
+him at Marseilles; and as the pope had pretended an anxiety that either the
+King of England should be present in person at that interview, or should be
+represented by an ambassador of adequate rank, a train had been equipped
+for the occasion, the most magnificent which England could furnish. Time,
+meanwhile, passed on; the meeting, which was to have taken place first in
+January, and then in April, was delayed till October, and in the interval
+the papal brief had appeared in Flanders; the queen's pregnancy could not
+admit of concealment; and the evident proof which appeared that France was
+no longer to be depended upon, convinced the English government that they
+had nothing to hope for from abroad, and that Henry's best resources were
+to be found, where in fact they had always been, in the strength and
+affection of his own people.
+
+From this choking atmosphere, therefore, we now turn back to England and
+the English parliament; and the change is from darkness to light, from
+death to life. Here was no wavering, no uncertainty, no smiling faces with
+false hearts behind them; but the steady purpose of resolute men, who
+slowly, and with ever opening vision, bore the nation forward to the fair
+future which was already dawning.
+
+Parliament met at the beginning of February, a few days after the king's
+marriage, which, however, still remained a secret. It is, I think, no
+slight evidence of the calmness with which the statesmen of the day
+proceeded with their work, that in a session so momentous, in a session in
+which the decisive blow was to be struck of the most serious revolution
+through which the country as yet had passed, they should have first settled
+themselves calmly down to transact what was then the ordinary business of
+legislation, the struggle with the vital evils of society. The first nine
+statutes which were passed in this session were economic acts to protect
+the public against the frauds of money-making tradesmen; to provide that
+shoes and boots should be made of honest leather; that food should be sold
+at fair prices, that merchants should part with their goods at fair
+profits; to compel, or as far as the legislature was able to do it, to
+compel all classes of persons to be true men; to deal honestly with each
+other, in that high Quixotic sense of honesty which requires good subjects
+at all times and under all circumstances to consider the interests of the
+commonwealth as more important than their own. I have already spoken of
+this economic legislation, and I need not dwell now upon details of it;
+although under some aspects it may be thought that more which is truly
+valuable in English history lies in these unobtrusive statutes than in all
+our noisy wars, reformations, and revolutions. The history of this as of
+all other nations (or so much of it as there is occasion for any of us to
+know), is the history of the battles which it has fought and won with evil;
+not with political evil merely, or spiritual evil; but with all
+manifestations whatsoever of the devil's power. And to have beaten back, or
+even to have struggled against and stemmed in ever so small a degree those
+besetting basenesses of human nature, now held so invincible that the
+influences of them are assumed as the fundamental axioms of economic
+science; this appears to me a greater victory than Agincourt, a grander
+triumph of wisdom and faith and courage than even the English constitution
+or the English liturgy. Such a history, however, lies beside the purpose
+which I may here permit myself; and the two acts with which the session
+closed, alone in this place require our attention.
+
+The first of these is one of the many "Acts of Apparel," which are to be
+found in the early volumes of the statute book. The meaning of these laws
+becomes intelligible when we reflect upon the condition of the people. The
+English were an organised nation of soldiers; they formed an army
+perpetually ready for the field, where the degrees were determined by
+social position; and the dresses prescribed to the various orders of
+society were the graduated uniforms which indicated the rank of the
+wearers. When every man was a soldier, and every gentleman was an officer,
+the same causes existed for marking, by costume, the distinctions of
+authority, which lead to the answering differences in the modern regiments.
+
+The changing conditions of the country at the time of the Reformation, the
+growth of a middle class, with no landed possessions, yet made wealthy by
+trade or other industry, had tended necessarily to introduce confusion; and
+the policy of this reign, which was never more markedly operative than
+during the most critical periods of it, was to reinvigorate the discipline
+of the feudal system; and pending the growth of what might better suit the
+age, pending the great struggle in which the nation was engaged, to hold
+every man at his post. The statute specifies its object, and the motives
+with which it was passed.
+
+"Whereas," says the preamble, "divers laws, ordinances, and statutes have
+been with great deliberation and advice provided and established for the
+necessary repressing and avoiding the inordinate excess daily more and more
+used in the sumptuous and costly array and apparel accustomably worn in
+this realm, whereof hath ensued, and daily do chance such sundry high and
+notable inconveniences as be to the great and notorious detriment of the
+commonweal, the subversion of politic order in knowledge and distinction of
+people according to their preeminence and degrees, to the utter
+impoverishment and undoing of many light and inexpert persons inclined to
+pride, the mother of all vices: Be it enacted,"[415]--but I need not enter
+into the particulars of the uniforms worn by the nobles and gentlemen of
+the court of Henry VIII.; the temper, not the detail, is of importance; and
+of the wisdom or unwisdom of such enactments, we who live in a changed age
+should be cautious of forming a hasty opinion. The ends which the old
+legislation proposed to itself, have in latter ages been resigned as
+impracticable. We are therefore no longer adequate judges how far those
+ends may in other times have been attainable, and we can still less judge
+of the means through which the attainment of them was sought.
+
+The second act of which I have to speak is open to no such ambiguity; it
+remains among the few which are and will be of perpetual moment in our
+national history. The conduct of the pope had forced upon the parliament
+the reconsideration of the character of his supremacy; and when the
+question had once been asked, in the existing state of feeling but one
+answer to it was possible.
+
+The authority of the church over the state, the supreme kingship of Christ,
+and consequently of him who was held to be Christ's vicar, above all
+worldly sovereignties, was an established reality of mediaeval Europe. The
+princes had with difficulty preserved their jurisdiction in matters purely
+secular; while in matters spiritual, and in that vast section of human
+affairs in which the spiritual and the secular glide one into the other,
+they had been compelled--all such of them as lay within the pale of the
+Latin communion--to acknowledge a power superior to their own. To the popes
+was the ultimate appeal in all causes of which the spiritual courts had
+cognisance. Their jurisdiction had been extended by an unwavering pursuit
+of a single policy, and their constancy in the twelfth century was rewarded
+by absolute victory. In England, however, the field was no sooner won than
+it was again disputed, and the civil government gave way at last only when
+the danger seemed to have ceased. So long as the papacy was feared, so long
+as the successors of St. Peter held a sword which could inflict sensible
+wounds, and enforce obedience by penalties, the English kings had resisted
+both the theory and the application. While the pope was dangerous he was
+dreaded and opposed. When age had withered his arm, and the feeble
+lightnings flickered in harmless insignificance, they consented to withdraw
+their watchfulness, and his supremacy was silently allowed as an innocent
+superstition. It existed as some other institutions exist at the present
+day, with a merely nominal authority; with a tacit understanding, that the
+power which it was permitted to retain should be exerted only in conformity
+with the national will.
+
+Under these conditions the Tudor princes became loyal subjects to the Holy
+See, and so they would have willingly remained, had not Clement, in an evil
+hour for himself, forgotten the terms of the compact. He laid upon a legal
+fiction a strain which his predecessors, in their palmiest days, would have
+feared to attempt; and the nation, after grave remonstrance, which was only
+received with insults, exorcised the chimaera with a few resolute words for
+ever. The parliament, in asserting the freedom of England, carefully chose
+their language. They did not pass a new law, but they passed an act
+declaratory merely of the law which already existed, and which they were
+vindicating against illegal encroachment. "Whereas," says the Statute of
+Appeals, "by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is
+manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire,
+and so hath been accepted in the world; governed by one supreme head and
+king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the
+same; unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people,
+divided in terms by names of spiritualty and temporalty, be bound and ought
+to bear, next to God, a natural and humble obedience: he being also
+institute and furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with
+plenary, whole, and entire power, pre-eminence and authority, prerogative
+and jurisdiction, to render and yield justice and final determination to
+all manner of folk resident or subject within this his realm, without
+restraint or provocation to any foreign prince or potentate of the world:
+the body spiritual whereof having power when any cause of the law divine
+happened to come in question, or of spiritual learning, [such cause being]
+declared, interpret, and shewed by that part of the body politic called the
+spiritualty, now usually called the English church; (which also hath been
+reported and also found of that sort, that both for knowledge, integrity,
+and sufficiency of numbers, it hath been always thought to be, and is also
+at this hour sufficient and meet of itself, without the interfering of any
+exterior person or persons, to declare and determine all such doubts, and
+to administer all such offices and duties as to the administration of their
+rooms spiritual doth appertain): and the laws temporal, for trial of
+property of lands and goods, and for the conservation of the people of this
+realm in unity and peace, having been and yet being administered, adjudged,
+and executed by sundry judges and administers of the said body politic
+called the temporalty: and seeing that both these authorities and
+jurisdictions do conjoin together for the due administration of justice,
+the one to help the other: and whereas the king's most noble progenitors,
+and the nobility and commons of this said realm at divers and sundry
+parliaments, as well in the time of King Edward I., Edward III., Richard
+II., Henry IV., and other noble kings of this realm, made sundry
+ordinances, laws, and provisions for the conservation of the prerogatives,
+liberties, and pre-eminences of the imperial crown of this realm, and of
+the jurisdiction spiritual and temporal of the same, to keep it from the
+annoyance as well of the see of Rome as from the authority of other foreign
+potentates attempting the diminution or violation thereof, as often as from
+time to time any such annoyance or attempt might be known or espied: and
+notwithstanding the said good statutes and ordinances, and since the making
+thereof, divers inconveniences and dangers not provided for plainly by the
+said statutes, have risen and sprung by reason of appeals sued out of this
+realm to the see of Rome, in causes testamentary, causes of matrimony and
+divorce, right of tithes, oblations, and obventions, not only to the great
+inquietation, vexation, trouble, costs, and charges of the King's Highness,
+and many of his subjects and residents in this his realm; but also to the
+delay and let of the speedy determination of the said causes, for so much
+as parties appealing to the said court of Rome most commonly do the same
+for the delay of justice; and forasmuch as the great distance of way is so
+far out of this realm, so that the necessary proofs, nor the true knowledge
+of the causes, can neither there be so well known, nor the witnesses so
+well examined there as within this realm, so that the parties grieved by
+means of the said appeals be most times without remedy; in consideration
+hereof, all testamentary and matrimonial causes, and all suits for tithes,
+oblations, and obventions shall henceforth be adjudged in the spiritual and
+temporal courts within the realm, without regard to any process of foreign
+jurisdiction, or any inhibition, excommunication, or interdict. Persons
+procuring processes, inhibitions, appeals, or citations from the court of
+Rome, as well as their fautors, comforters, counsellors, aiders and
+abettors, all and every of them shall incur the penalties of premunire; and
+in all such cases as have hitherto admitted of appeal to Rome, the appeals
+shall be from the Archdeacon's court to the Bishop's court, from the
+Bishop's court to that of the Archbishop, and no further."[416]
+
+The act was carried through Parliament in February, but again, as with the
+Annates Bill, the king delayed his sanction till the post could reach and
+return from the Vatican. The Bishop of Bayonne wrote that there was hope
+that Clement might yet give way, and entreated that the king would send an
+"excusator," a person formally empowered to protest for him that he could
+not by the laws of England plead at a foreign tribunal; and that with this
+imperfect recognition of his authority the pope would be satisfied.
+
+Chastillon, the French ambassador, had an interview with the king, to
+communicate the bishop's message.
+
+"The morning after," Chastillon wrote, "his Majesty sent for me and desired
+me to repeat my words before the council. I obeyed; but the majority
+declared, that there was nothing in them to act upon, and that the king
+must not put himself in subjection. His Majesty himself, too, I found less
+warm than in his preceding conversation. I begged the council to be
+patient. I said everything that I could think of likely to weigh with the
+king, I promised him a sentence from our Holy Father declaring his first
+marriage null, his present marriage good. I urged him on all grounds,
+public and private, to avoid a rupture with the Holy See. Such a sentence,
+I said, would be the best security for the queen, and the safest guarantee
+for the unopposed succession of her offspring. If the marriage was
+confirmed by the Holy Father's authority, the queen's enemies would lose
+the only ground where they could make a stand. The peace of the realm was
+now menaced. The emperor talked loudly and made large preparations. Let the
+king be allied with France, and through France with the Holy See, and the
+emperor could do him no harm. Thus I said my proposals were for the benefit
+of the realm of his Majesty, and of the children who might be born to him.
+The king would act more prudently both for his own interest, and for the
+interest of his children, in securing himself, than in running a risk of
+creating universal confusion; and, besides, he owed something to the king
+his brother, who had worked so long and so hard for him.
+
+"After some further conversation, his Majesty took me aside into a garden,
+where he told me that for himself he agreed in what I had said; but he
+begged me to keep his confidence secret. He fears, I think, to appear to
+condescend too easily.
+
+"He will not, however, publish the acts of parliament till he sees what is
+done at Rome. The vast sums of money which used to be sent out of the
+country will go no longer; but in other respects he will be glad to return
+to good terms. He will send the excusator when he hears again from M. de
+Paris; and for myself, I think, that although the whole country is in a
+blaze against the pope, yet with the good will and assistance of the king,
+the Holy Father will be reinstated in the greater part of his
+prerogatives."
+
+But the hope that the pope would yield proved again delusive. Henry wrote
+to him himself in the spirit of his conversation with Chastillon. His
+letter was presented by Cardinal Tournon, and Clement said all that could
+be said in acknowledgment without making the one vital concession. But
+whenever it was put before him that the cause must be heard and decided in
+England and in no other place, he talked in the old language of uncertainty
+and impossibilities;[417] and Henry learning at the same time that a
+correspondence was going forward between Clement and Francis, with the
+secrets of which he was not made acquainted, went forward upon his own way.
+April brought with it the certainty that the expected concessions were
+delusive. Anne Boleyn's pregnancy made further delay impossible.
+D'Inteville, who had succeeded Chastillon as French ambassador, once more
+attempted to interfere, but in vain. Henry told him he could not help
+himself, the pope forced him to the course which he was pursuing, by the
+answer which he had been pleased to issue; and he could only encounter
+enmity with its own weapons. "The archbishop," d'Inteville wrote to
+Francis, "will try the question, and will give judgment. I entreated the
+king to wait till the conference at Nice, but he would not consent. I
+prayed him to keep the sentence secret till the pope had seen your Majesty;
+he replied it was impossible."[418]
+
+Thus the statute became law which transferred to the English courts of law
+the power so long claimed and exercised by the Roman see. There are two
+aspects under which it may be regarded, as there were two objects for which
+it was passed. Considered as a national act, few persons will now deny that
+it was as just in itself as it was politically desirable. If the pope had
+no jurisdiction over English subjects, it was well that he should be known
+to have none; if he had, it was equally well that such jurisdiction should
+cease. The question was not of communion between the English and Roman
+churches, which might or might not continue, but which this act would not
+affect. The pope might still retain his rights of episcopal precedency,
+whatever those might be, with all the privileges attached to it. The
+parliament merely declared that he possessed no right of interference in
+domestic disputes affecting persons and property.
+
+But the act had a special as well as a national bearing, and here it is
+less easy to arrive at a just conclusion. It destroyed the validity of
+Queen Catherine's appeal; it placed a legal power in the hands of the
+English judges to proceed to pass sentence upon the divorce; and it is open
+to the censure which we ever feel entitled to pass upon a measure enacted
+to meet the particular position of a particular person. When embarrassments
+have arisen from unforeseen causes, we have a right to legislate to prevent
+a repetition of those embarrassments. Our instincts tell us that no
+legislation should be retrospective, and should affect only positions which
+have been entered into with a full knowledge at the time of the condition
+of the laws.
+
+The statute endeavours to avoid the difficulty by its declaratory form; but
+again this is unsatisfactory; for that the pope possessed some authority
+was substantially acknowledged in every application which was made to him;
+and when Catherine had married under a papal dispensation, it was a strange
+thing to turn upon her, and to say, not only that the dispensation in the
+particular instance had been unlawfully granted, but that the pope had no
+jurisdiction in the matter by the laws of the land which she had entered.
+
+On the other hand, throughout the entire negotiations King Henry and his
+ministers had insisted jealously on the English privileges. They had
+declared from the first that they might, if they so pleased, fall back upon
+their own laws. In desiring that the cause might be heard by a papal legate
+in England, they had represented themselves rather as condescending to a
+form than acknowledging a right; and they had, in fact, in allowing the
+opening of Campeggio's court, fallen, all of them, even Henry himself,
+under the penalties of the statutes of provisors. The validity of
+Catherine's appeal they had always consistently denied. If the papal
+jurisdiction was to be admitted at all, it could only be through a minister
+sitting as judge within the realm of England; and the maxim, "Ne Angli
+extra Angliam litigare cogantur," was insisted upon as the absolute
+privilege of every English subject.
+
+Yet, if we allow full weight to these considerations, a feeling of painful
+uncertainty continues to cling to us; and in ordinary cases to be uncertain
+on such a point is to be in reality certain. The state of the law could not
+have been clear, or the statute of appeals would not have been required;
+and explain it as we may, it was in fact passed for a special cause against
+a special person; and that person a woman.
+
+How far the parliament was justified by the extremity of the case is a
+further question, which it is equally difficult to answer. The alternative,
+as I have repeatedly said, was an all but inevitable civil war, on the
+death of the king; and practically, when statesmen are entrusted with the
+fortunes of an empire, the responsibility is too heavy to allow them to
+consider other interests. Salus populi suprema lex, ever has been and ever
+will be the substantial canon of policy with public men, and morality is
+bound to hesitate before it censures them. There are some acts of injustice
+which no national interest can excuse, however great in itself that
+interest may be, or however certain to be attained by the means proposed.
+Yet government, in its easiest tax, trenches to a certain extent on natural
+right and natural freedom; and trenches further and further in proportion
+to the emergency with which it has to deal. How far it may go in this
+direction, or whether Henry VIII. and his parliament went too far, is a
+difficult problem; their best justification is an exceptive clause
+introduced into the act, which was intended obviously to give Queen
+Catherine the utmost advantage which was consistent with the liberties of
+the realm. "In case," says the concluding paragraph, "of any cause, or
+matter, or contention now depending for the causes before rehearsed, or
+that hereafter shall come into contention for any of the same causes in any
+of the foresaid courts, which hath, doth, shall, or may touch the king, his
+heirs or successors, kings of this realm; in all or every such case or
+cases the party grieved as aforesaid shall or may appeal from any of the
+said courts of this realm, to the spiritual prelates and other abbots and
+priors of the Upper House, assembled and convocate by the king's writ in
+convocation."[419] If Catherine's cause was as just as Catholics and
+English high churchmen are agreed to consider it, the English church might
+have saved her. If Catherine herself had thought first or chiefly of
+justice, she would not perhaps have accepted the arbitration of the English
+convocation; but long years before she would have been in a cloister.
+
+Thus it is that while we regret, we are unable to blame; and we cannot wish
+undone an act, to have shrunk from which might have spared a single heart,
+but _might_ have wrecked the English nation. We increase our pity for
+Catherine because she was a princess. We measure the magnitude of the evils
+which human beings endure by their position in the scale of society; and
+misfortunes which private persons would be expected to bear without
+excessive complaining, furnish matter for the lamentation of ages when they
+touch the sacred head which has been circled with a diadem. Let it be so.
+Let us compensate the queen's sorrows with unstinted sympathy; but let us
+not trifle with history, by confusing a political necessity with a moral
+crime.
+
+The English parliament, then, had taken up the gauntlet which the pope had
+flung to it with trembling fingers: and there remained nothing but for the
+Archbishop of Canterbury to make use of the power of which by law he was
+now possessed. And the time was pressing, for the new queen was enciente,
+and further concealment was not to be thought of. The delay of the
+interview between the pope and Francis, and the change in the demeanour of
+the latter, which had become palpably evident, discharged Henry of all
+promises by which he might have bound himself; and to hesitate before the
+menaces of the pope's brief would have been fatal.
+
+The act of appeals being passed, convocation was the authority to which the
+power of determining unsettled points of spiritual law seemed to have
+lapsed. In the month of April, therefore, Cranmer, now Archbishop of
+Canterbury,[420] submitted to it the two questions, on the resolution of
+which the sentence which he was to pass was dependent.
+
+The first had been already answered separately by the bench of bishops and
+by the universities, and had been agitated from end to end of Europe--was
+it lawful to marry the widow of a brother dying without issue, but having
+consummated his marriage; and was the Levitical prohibition of such a
+marriage grounded on a divine law, with which the pope could not dispense,
+or on a canon law of which a dispensation was permissible?[421]
+
+The pope had declared himself unable to answer; but he had allowed that the
+general opinion was against the power of dispensing,[422] and there could
+be little doubt, therefore, of the reply of the English convocation, or at
+least of the upper house. Fisher attempted an opposition; but wholly
+without effect. The, question was one in which the interests of the higher
+clergy were not concerned, and they were therefore left to the dominion of
+their ordinary understandings. Out of two hundred and sixty-three votes,
+nineteen only were in the pope's favour.[423]
+
+The lower house was less unanimous, as might have been expected, and as had
+been experienced before; the opposition spirit of the English clergy being
+usually then, as much as now, in the ratio of their poverty. But there too
+the nature of the case compelled an overwhelming majority.[424] It was
+decided by both houses that Pope Julius, in granting a licence for the
+marriage of Henry and Catherine, had exceeded his authority, and that this
+marriage was therefore, _ab initio_, void.
+
+The other question to be decided was one of fact; whether the marriage of
+Catherine with Prince Arthur had or had not been consummated, a matter
+which the Catholic divines conceived to be of paramount importance, but
+which to few persons at the present day will seem of any importance
+whosoever. We cannot even read the evidence which was produced without a
+sensation of disgust, although in those broader and less conscious ages the
+indelicacy was less obviously perceptible. And we may console ourselves
+with the hope that the discussion was not so wounding as might have been
+expected to the feelings of Queen Catherine, since at all official
+interviews, with all classes of persons, at all times and in all places,
+she appeared herself to court the subject.[425] There is no occasion in
+this place to follow her example. It is enough that Ferdinand, at the time
+of her first marriage, satisfied himself, after curious inquiry, that he
+might hope for a grandchild; and that the fact of the consummation was
+asserted in the treaty between England and Spain, which preceded the
+marriage with Henry, and in this supposed brief of Pope Julius which
+permitted it.[426] We cannot in consequence be surprised that the
+convocation accepted the conclusion which was sanctioned by so high
+authority, and we rather wonder at the persistency of Catherine's denials.
+With respect to this vote, therefore, we need notice nothing except that
+Dr. Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells[427] was one of an exceedingly small
+minority, who were inclined to believe that the denial might be true, and
+this bishop was one of the four who were associated with Cranmer when he
+sate at Dunstable for the trial of the cause.
+
+The ground being thus opened, and all preparations being completed, the
+archbishop composed a formal letter to the king, in which he dwelt upon the
+uncertain prospects of the succession, and the danger of leaving a question
+which closely affected it so long unsettled. He expatiated at length on the
+general anxiety which was felt throughout the realm, and requested
+permission to employ the powers attached to his office to bring it to some
+conclusion. The recent alterations had rendered the archbishop something
+doubtful of the nature of his position; he was diffident and unwilling to
+offend; and not clearly knowing in the exercise of the new authority which
+had been granted to him, whether the extension of his power was accompanied
+with a parallel extension of liberty in making use of it, he wrote two
+copies of this letter, with slight alterations of language, that the king
+might select between them the one which he would officially recognise. Both
+these copies are extant; both were written the same day from the same
+place; both were folded, sealed, and sent. It seems, therefore, that
+neither was Cranmer furnished beforehand with a draught of what he was to
+write; nor was his first letter sent back to him corrected. He must have
+acted by his own judgment; and a comparison of the two letters is singular
+and instructive. In the first he spoke of his office and duty in language,
+chastened indeed and modest, but still language of independence; and while
+he declared his unwillingness to "enterprise any part of that office"
+without his Grace's favour obtained, and pleasure therein first known, he
+implied nevertheless that his request was rather of courtesy than of
+obligation, and had arisen rather from a sense of moral propriety than
+because he might not legally enter on the exercise of his duty without the
+permission of the crown.[428]
+
+The moderate gleam of freedom vanishes in the other copy under a few pithy
+changes, as if Cranmer instinctively felt the revolution which had taken
+place in the relations of church and state. Where in the first letter he
+asked for his Grace's favour, in the second he asked for his Grace's favour
+_and licence_--where in the first he requested to know his Grace's pleasure
+as to his proceeding, in the second he desired his Most Excellent Majesty
+to _license_ him to proceed. The burden of both letters was the same, but
+the introduction of the little word license changed all. It implied a
+hesitating belief that the spiritual judges might perhaps thenceforward be
+on a footing with the temporal judges and the magistrates; that under the
+new constitution they were to understand that they held their offices not
+directly under God as they had hitherto pretended, but under God through
+the crown.
+
+The answer of Henry indicated that he had perceived the archbishop's
+uncertainty; and that he was desirous by the emphatic distinctness of his
+own language to spare him a future recurrence of it. He accepted the
+deferential version of the petition; but even Cranmer's anticipation of
+what might be required of him had not reached the reality. In running
+through the preamble, the king flung into the tone of it a character of
+still deeper humility;[429] and he conceded the desired licence in the
+following imperial style. "In consideration of these things,"--_i.e._ of
+the grounds urged by the archbishop for the petition--"albeit we being your
+King and Sovereign, do recognise no superior on earth but only God, and not
+being subject to the laws of any earthly creature; yet because ye be under
+us, by God's calling and ours, the most principal minister of our spiritual
+jurisdiction within this our Realm, who we think assuredly is so in the
+fear of God, and love towards the observance of his laws, to the which
+laws, we as a Christian king have always heretofore, and shall ever most
+obediently submit ourself, we will not therefore refuse (our pre-eminence,
+power, and authority to us and to our successors in this behalf
+nevertheless saved) your humble request, offer, and towardness--that is, to
+mean to make an end according to the will and pleasure of Almighty God in
+our said great cause of matrimony, which hath so long depended
+undetermined, to our great and grievous unquietness and burden of our
+conscience. Wherefore we, inclining to your humble petition, by these our
+letters sealed with our seal, and signed with our sign manual, do license
+you to proceed in the said cause, and the examination and final
+determination of the same; not doubting but that ye will have God and the
+justice of the said cause only before your eyes, and not to regard any
+earthly or worldly affection therein; for assuredly the thing which we most
+covet in the world, is so to proceed in all our acts and doings as may be
+the most acceptable to the pleasure of Almighty God our Creator, to the
+wealth and honour of us, our successors and posterity, and the surety of
+our Realm, and subjects within the same."[430]
+
+The vision of ecclesiastical independence, if Cranmer had indulged in it,
+must have faded utterly before his eyes on receiving this letter. As clergy
+who committed felony were no longer exempted from the penalties of their
+crimes; so henceforward the courts of the clergy were to fell into
+conformity with the secular tribunals. The temporal prerogatives of
+ecclesiastics as a body whose authority over the laity was countervailed
+with no reciprocal obligation, existed no longer. This is what the language
+of the king implied. The difficulty which the persons whom he was
+addressing experienced in realising the change in their position, obliged
+him to be somewhat emphatic in his assertion of it; and it might be
+imagined at first sight, that in insisting on his superiority to the
+officers of the spiritual courts, he claimed a right to dictate their
+sentences. But to venture such a supposition would be to mistake the nature
+of English sovereignty and the spirit of the change. The supreme authority
+in England was the law; and the king no more possessed, or claimed a power
+of controlling the judgment of the bishops or their ministers, than he
+could interfere with the jurisdiction of the judges of the bench. All
+persons in authority, whether in church or state, held their offices
+thenceforth by similar tenure; but the rule of the proceedings in each
+remained alike the law of the land, which Henry had no more thought of
+superseding by his own will than the most constitutional of modern princes.
+
+The closing sentences of his reply to Cranmer are striking, and it is
+difficult to believe that he did not mean what he was saying. From the
+first step in the process to the last, he maintained consistently that his
+only object was to do what was right. He was thoroughly persuaded that the
+course which he was pursuing was sanctioned by justice--and persons who are
+satisfied that he was entitled to feel such persuasion, need not refuse him
+the merit of sincerity, because (to use the language which Cromwell used at
+the fatal crisis of his life[431]) "It may be well that they who medelle in
+many matters are not able to answer for them all."
+
+Cranmer, then, being fortified with this permission, and taking with him
+the Bishops of London, Winchester, Lincoln, and Bath and Wells (the latter
+perhaps having been chosen in consequence of his late conduct in the
+convocation, to give show of fairness to the proceeding), went down to
+Dunstable and opened his court there. The queen was at Ampthill, six miles
+distant, having entered on her sad tenancy, it would seem, as soon as the
+place had been evacuated by the gaudy hunting party of the preceding
+summer. The cause being undecided, and her title being therefore uncertain,
+she was called by the safe name of "the Lady Catherine," and under this
+designation she was served with a citation from the archbishop to appear
+before him on Saturday, the 10th of May. The bearers of the summons were
+Sir Francis Bryan (an unfortunate choice, for he was cousin of the new
+queen, and insolent in his manner and bearing), Sir Thomas Gage, and Lord
+Vaux. She received them like herself with imperial sorrow. They delivered
+their message; she announced that she refused utterly to acknowledge the
+competency of the tribunal before which she was called; the court was a
+mockery; the archbishop was a shadow.[432] She would neither appear before
+him in person, nor commission any one to appear on her behalf.
+
+The court had but one course before it--she was pronounced contumacious,
+and the trial went forward. None of her household were tempted even by
+curiosity to be present. "There came not so much as a servant of hers to
+Dunstable, save such as were brought in as witnesses;" some of them having
+been required to give evidence in the re-examination which was thought
+necessary, as to the nature of the relation of their mistress with her
+first boy husband. As soon as this disgusting question had been
+sufficiently investigated, nothing remained but to pronounce judgment. The
+marriage with the king was declared to have been null and void from the
+beginning, and on the 23rd of May, the archbishop sent to London the
+welcome news that the long matter was at an end.[433]
+
+It was over;--over at last; yet so over, that the conclusion could but
+appear to the losing party a fresh injustice. To those who were concerned
+in bringing it to pass, to the king himself, to the nation, to Europe, to
+every one who heard of it at the time, it must have appeared, as it appears
+now to us who read the story of it, if a necessity, yet a most unwelcome
+and unsatisfying one. That the king remained uneasy is evident from the
+efforts which he continued to make, or which he allowed to be made,
+notwithstanding the brief of the 23rd of December, to gain the sanction of
+the pope. That the nation was uneasy, we should not require the evidence of
+history to tell us. "There was much murmuring in England," says Hall, "and
+it was thought by the unwise that the Bishop of Rome would curse all
+Englishmen; that the emperor and he would destroy all the people." And
+those who had no such fears, and whose judgment in the main approved of
+what had been done, were scandalised at the presentation to them at the
+instant of the publication of the divorce, of a new queen, four months
+advanced in pregnancy. This also was a misfortune which had arisen out of
+the chain of duplicities, a fresh accident swelling a complication which
+was already sufficiently entangled. It had been occasioned by steps which
+at the moment at which they were ventured, prudence seemed to justify; but
+we the more regret it, because, in comparison with the interests which were
+at issue, the few months of additional delay were infinitely unimportant.
+
+Nevertheless, we have reason to be thankful that the thing, well or ill,
+was over; seven years of endurance were enough for the English nation, and
+may be supposed to have gained even for Henry a character for patience. In
+some way, too, it is needless to say, the thing must have ended. The life
+of none of us is long enough to allow us to squander so large a section of
+it struggling in the meshes of a law-suit; and although there may be a
+difference of opinion on the wisdom of having first entered upon ground of
+such a kind, few thinking persons can suggest any other method in which
+either the nation or the king could have extricated themselves. Meanwhile,
+it was resolved that such spots and blemishes as hung about the transaction
+should be forgotten in the splendour of the coronation. If there was
+scandal in the condition of the queen, yet under another aspect that
+condition was matter of congratulation to a people so eager for an heir;
+and Henry may have thought that the sight for the first time in public of
+so beautiful a creature, surrounded by the most magnificent pageant which
+London had witnessed since the unknown day on which the first stone of it
+was laid, and bearing in her bosom the long-hoped-for inheritor of the
+English crown, might induce a chivalrous nation to forget what it was the
+interest of no loyal subject to remember longer, and to offer her an
+English welcome to the throne.
+
+In anticipation of the timely close of the proceedings at Dunstable, notice
+had been given in the city early in May, that preparations should be made
+for the coronation on the first of the following month. Queen Anne was at
+Greenwich, but, according to custom, the few preceding days were to be
+spent at the Tower; and on the 19th of May, she was conducted thither in
+state by the lord mayor and the city companies, with one of those splendid
+exhibitions upon the water which in the days when the silver Thames
+deserved its name, and the sun could shine down upon it out of the blue
+summer sky, were spectacles scarcely rivalled in gorgeousness by the
+world-famous wedding of the Adriatic. The river was crowded with boats, the
+banks and the ships in the pool swarmed with people; and fifty great barges
+formed the procession, all blazing with gold and banners. The queen herself
+was in her own barge, close to that of the lord mayor; and in keeping with
+the fantastic genius of the time, she was preceded up the water by "a foyst
+or wafter full or ordnance, in which was a great dragon continually moving
+and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst stood terrible monsters and
+wild men, casting fire and making hideous noise."[434] So, with trumpets
+blowing, cannon pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns of the ships, in
+a blaze of fireworks and splendour, Anne Boleyn was borne along to the
+great archway of the Tower, where the king was waiting on the stairs to
+receive her.
+
+And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the welcome news to
+have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life
+dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of expectation. No
+bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had been huddled over
+like a stolen love-match, and the marriage feast had been eaten in vexation
+and disappointment. These past mortifications were to be atoned for by a
+coronation pageant which the art and the wealth of the richest city in
+Europe should be poured out in the most lavish profusion to adorn.
+
+On the morning of the 31st of May, the families of the London citizens were
+stirring early in all houses. From Temple Bar to the Tower, the streets
+were fresh strewed with gravel, the footpaths were railed off along the
+whole distance, and occupied on one side by the guilds, their workmen, and
+apprentices, on the other by the city constables and officials in their
+gaudy uniforms, "with their staves in hand for to cause the people to keep
+good room and order."[435] Cornhill and Gracechurch Street had dressed
+their fronts in scarlet and crimson, in arras and tapestry, and the rich
+carpet-work from Persia and the East. Cheapside, to outshine her rivals,
+was draped even more splendidly in cloth of gold, and tissue, and velvet.
+The sheriffs were pacing up and down on their great Flemish horses, hung
+with liveries, and all the windows were thronged with ladies crowding to
+see the procession pass. At length the Tower guns opened, the grim gates
+rolled back, and under the archway in the bright May sunshine, the long
+column began slowly to defile. Two states only permitted their
+representatives to grace the scene with their presence--Venice and France.
+It was, perhaps, to make the most of this isolated countenance, that the
+French ambassador's train formed the van of the cavalcade. Twelve French
+knights came riding foremost in surcoats of blue velvet with sleeves of
+yellow silk, their horses trapped in blue, with white crosses powdered on
+their hangings. After them followed a troop of English gentlemen, two and
+two, and then the Knights of the Bath, "in gowns of violet, with hoods
+purfled with miniver like doctors." Next, perhaps at a little interval, the
+abbots passed on, mitred in their robes; the barons followed in crimson
+velvet, the bishops then, and then the earls and marquises, the dresses of
+each order increasing in elaborate gorgeousness. All these rode on in
+pairs. Then came alone Audeley, lord-chancellor, and behind him the
+Venetian ambassador and the Archbishop of York; the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, and Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne and of Paris, not now with
+bugle and hunting-frock, but solemn with stole and crozier. Next, the lord
+mayor, with the city mace in hand, the Garter in his coat of arms; and then
+Lord William Howard--Belted Will Howard, of the Scottish Border, Marshal of
+England. The officers of the queen's household succeeded the marshal in
+scarlet and gold, and the van of the procession was closed by the Duke of
+Suffolk, as high constable, with his silver wand. It is no easy matter to
+picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splendour which in such a pageant
+must have drawn along the London streets,--those streets which now we know
+so black and smoke-grimed, themselves then radiant with masses of colour,
+gold, and crimson, and violet. Yet there it was, and there the sun could
+shine upon it, and tens of thousands of eyes were gazing on the scene out
+of the crowded lattices.
+
+Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps however, it passed unheeded. Those
+eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near. In an open
+space behind the constable there was seen approaching "a white chariot,"
+drawn by two palfreys in white damask which swept the ground, a golden
+canopy borne above it making music with silver bells: and in the chariot
+sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful occasion of all this
+glittering homage; fortune's plaything of the hour, the Queen of
+England--queen at last--borne along upon the waves of this sea of glory,
+breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had risked her fair
+name, her delicacy, her honour, her self-respect, to win; and she had won
+it.
+
+There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing loose
+over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of gold
+and diamonds--most beautiful--loveliest--most favoured perhaps, as she
+seemed at that hour, of all England's daughters. Alas! "within the hollow
+round" of that coronet--
+
+  Kept death his court, and there the antick sate,
+  Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp.
+  Allowing her a little breath, a little scene
+  To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks,
+  Infusing her with self and vain conceit,
+  As if the flesh which walled about her life
+  Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus,
+  Bored through her castle walls; and farewell, Queen.
+
+Fatal gift of greatness! so dangerous ever! so more than dangerous in those
+tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the great deeps of
+thought; and nations are in the throes of revolution;--when ancient order
+and law and tradition are splitting in the social earthquake; and as the
+opposing forces wrestle to and fro, those unhappy ones who stand out above
+the crowd become the symbols of the struggle, and fall the victims of its
+alternating fortunes. And what if into an unsteady heart and brain,
+intoxicated with splendour, the outward chaos should find its way,
+converting the poor silly soul into an image of the same confusion,--if
+conscience should be deposed from her high place, and the Pandora box be
+broken loose of passions and sensualities and follies; and at length there
+be nothing left of all which man or woman ought to value, save hope of
+God's forgiveness.
+
+Three short years have yet to pass, and again, on a summer morning, Queen
+Anne Boleyn will leave the Tower of London--not radiant then with beauty on
+a gay errand of coronation, but a poor wandering ghost, on a sad tragic
+errand, from which she will never more return, passing away out of an earth
+where she may stay no longer, into a presence where, nevertheless, we know
+that all is well--for all of us--and therefore for her.
+
+But let us not cloud her shortlived sunshine with the shadow of the future.
+She went on in her loveliness, the peeresses following in their carriages,
+with the royal guard in their rear. In Fenchurch Street she was met by the
+children of the city schools; and at the corner of Gracechurch Street a
+masterpiece had been prepared of the pseudo-classic art, then so
+fashionable, by the merchants of the Styll Yard. A Mount Parnassus had been
+constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into a basin with four
+jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope
+at his feet, and on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or
+harps, and singing each of them some "posy" or epigram in praise of the
+queen, which was presented, after it had been sung, written in letters of
+gold.
+
+From Gracechurch Street, the procession passed to Leadenhall, where there
+was a spectacle in better taste, of the old English Catholic kind, quaint
+perhaps and forced, but truly and even beautifully emblematic. There was
+again a "little mountain," which was hung with red and white roses; a gold
+ring was placed on the summit, on which, as the queen appeared, a white
+falcon was made to "descend as out of the sky"--"and then incontinent came
+down an angel with great melody, and set a close crown of gold upon the
+falcon's head; and in the same pageant sat Saint Anne with all her issue
+beneath her; and Mary Cleophas with her four children, of the which
+children one made a goodly oration to the queen, of the fruitfulness of St.
+Anne, trusting that like fruit should come of her."[436]
+
+With such "pretty conceits," at that time the honest tokens of an English
+welcome, the new queen was received by the citizens of London. These scenes
+must be multiplied by the number of the streets, where some fresh fancy met
+her at every turn. To preserve the festivities from flagging, every
+fountain and conduit within the walls ran all day with wine; the bells of
+every steeple were ringing; children lay in wait with song, and ladies with
+posies, in which all the resources of fantastic extravagance were
+exhausted; and thus in an unbroken triumph--and to outward appearance
+received with the warmest affection--she passed under Temple Bar, down the
+Strand by Charing Cross to Westminster Hall. The king was not with her
+throughout the day; nor did he intend to be with her in any part of the
+ceremony. She was to reign without a rival, the undisputed sovereign of the
+hour.
+
+Saturday being passed in showing herself to the people, she retired for the
+night to "the king's manour house at Westminster," where she slept. On the
+following morning, between eight and nine o'clock, she returned to the
+hall, where the lord mayor, the city council, and the peers were again
+assembled, and took her place on the high dais at the top of the stairs
+under the cloth of state; while the bishops, the abbots, and the monks of
+the abbey formed in the area. A railed way had been laid with carpets
+across Palace Yard and the Sanctuary to the abbey gates, and when all was
+ready, preceded by the peers in their robes of parliament, the Knights of
+the Garter in the dress of the order, she swept out under her canopy, the
+bishops and the monks "solemnly singing." The train was borne by the old
+Duchess of Norfolk her aunt, the Bishops of London and Winchester on either
+side "bearing up the lappets of her robe." The Earl of Oxford carried the
+crown on its cushion immediately before her. She was dressed in purple
+velvet furred with ermine, her hair escaping loose, as she usually wore it,
+under a wreath of diamonds.
+
+On entering the abbey, she was led to the coronation chair Where she sat
+while the train fell into their places, and the preliminaries, of the
+ceremonial were despatched. Then she was conducted up to the high altar,
+and anointed Queen of England, and she received from the hands of Cranmer,
+fresh come in haste from Dunstable, with the last words of his sentence
+upon Catherine scarcely silent upon his lips, the golden sceptre, and St.
+Edward's crown.
+
+Did any twinge of remorse, any pang of painful recollection, pierce at that
+moment the incense of glory which she was inhaling? Did any vision flit
+across her of a sad mourning figure which once had stood where she was
+standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into the darkening twilight of a
+life cut short by sorrow? Who can tell? At such a time, that figure would
+have weighed heavily upon a noble mind, and a wise mind would have been
+taught by the thought of it, that although life be fleeting as a dream, it
+is long enough to experience strange vicissitudes of fortune. But Anne
+Boleyn was not noble and was not wise,--too probably she felt nothing but
+the delicious, all-absorbing, all-intoxicating present, and if that plain,
+suffering face presented itself to her memory at all, we may fear that it
+was rather as a foil to her own surpassing loveliness. Two years later, she
+was able to exult over Catherine's death; she is not likely to have thought
+of her with gentler feelings in the first glow and flush of triumph.
+
+We may now leave these scenes. They concluded in the usual English style,
+with a banquet in the great hall, and with all outward signs of enjoyment
+and pleasure. There must have been but few persons present however who did
+not feel that the sunshine of such a day might not last for ever, and that
+over so dubious a marriage no Englishman could exult with more than half a
+heart. It is foolish to blame lightly actions which arise in the midst of
+circumstances which are and can be but imperfectly known; and there may
+have been political reasons which made so much pomp desirable. Anne Boleyn
+had been the subject of public conversation for seven years, and Henry, no
+doubt, desired to present his jewel to them in the rarest and choicest
+setting. Yet to our eyes, seeing, perhaps, by the light of what followed, a
+more modest introduction would have appeared more suited to the doubtful
+nature of her position.
+
+At any rate we escape from this scene of splendour very gladly as from
+something unseasonable. It would have been well for Henry VIII. if he had
+lived in a world in which women could have been dispensed with; so ill, in
+all his relations with them, he succeeded. With men he could speak the
+right word, he could do the right thing; with women he seemed to be under a
+fatal necessity of mistake.
+
+It was now necessary, however, after this public step, to communicate in
+form to the emperor the divorce and the new marriage. The king was assured
+of the rectitude of the motives on which he had himself acted, and he knew
+at the same time that he had challenged the hostility of the papal world.
+Yet he did not desire a quarrel if there were means of avoiding it; and
+more than once he had shown respect for the opposition which he had met
+with from Charles, as dictated by honourable care for the interests of his
+kinswoman. He therefore, in the truest language which will be met with in
+the whole long series of the correspondence, composed a despatch for his
+ambassador at Brussels, and expressed himself in a tone of honest sorrow
+for the injury which he had been compelled to commit. Neither the coercion
+which the emperor had exerted over the pope, nor his intrigues with his
+subjects in Ireland and England, could deprive the nephew of Catherine of
+his right to a courteous explanation; and Henry directed Doctor Nicholas
+Hawkins in making his communication "to use only gentle words;" to express
+a hope that Charles would not think only of his own honour, but would
+remember public justice; and that a friendship of long standing, which the
+interests of the subjects of both countries were concerned so strongly in
+maintaining, might not be broken. The instructions are too interesting to
+pass over with a general description. After stating the grounds on which
+Henry had proceeded, and which Charles thoroughly understood, Hawkins was
+directed to continue thus:--
+
+"The King of England is not ignorant what respect is due unto the world.
+How much he hath laboured and travailed therein he hath sufficiently
+declared and showed in his acts and proceedings. If he had contemned the
+order and process of the world, or the friendship and amity of your
+Majesty, he needed not to have sent so often to the pope and to you both,
+nor continued and spent his time in delays. He might have done what he has
+done now, had it so liked him, with as little difficulty as now, if without
+such respect he would have followed his pleasure."
+
+The minister was then to touch the pope's behaviour and Henry's
+forbearance, and after that to say:--
+
+"Going forward in that way his Highness saw that he could come to no
+conclusion; and he was therefore compelled to step right forth out of the
+maze, and so to quiet himself at last. And is it not time to have an end in
+seven years? It is not to be asked nor questioned whether the matter hath
+been determined after the common fashion, but whether it hath in it common
+justice, truth, and equity. For observation of the common order, his Grace
+hath done what lay in him. Enforced by necessity he hath found the true
+order which he hath in substance followed with effect, and hath done as
+becometh him. He doubteth not but your Majesty, remembering his cause from
+the beginning hitherto, will of yourself consider and think, that among
+mortal men nothing should be immortal; and suits must once have an end, si
+possis recte, si non quocunque modo. If his Highness cannot as he would,
+then must he do as he may; and he that hath a journey to be perfected must,
+if he cannot go one way, essay another. For his matter with the pope, he
+shall deal with him apart. Your Majesty he taketh for his friend, and as to
+a friend he openeth these matters to you, trusting to find your Majesty no
+less friendly than he hath done heretofore."[437]
+
+If courtesy obliged Henry to express a confidence in the stability of the
+relations between himself and Charles, which it was impossible that he
+could have felt, yet in other respects this letter has the most pleasant
+merit of honesty. Hawkins was so much overcome by "the sweetness of it,"
+that "he nothing doubted if that the emperor read the same, by God's grace
+he should be utterly persuaded;" and although in this expectation he was a
+little over sanguine, as in calmer moments he would have acknowledged, yet
+plain speech is never without its value; and Charles himself after he had
+tried other expedients, and they had not succeeded with him, found it more
+prudent to acquiesce in what could no longer be altered, and to return to
+cordiality.
+
+For the present he remained under the impression that by the great body of
+the English the divorce was looked upon with coldness and even with
+displeasure, that the king was supported only by the complacency of a few
+courtiers, and that the nation were prepared to compel him to undo the
+wrong which had been inflicted upon Catherine and the princess. So he was
+assured by the Spanish party in England; so all the disaffected assured
+him, who were perhaps themselves deceived. He had secured Ireland, and
+Scotland also in so far as James's promises could secure it;[438] and he
+was not disposed to surrender for the present so promising a game till he
+had tried his strength and proved his weakness. He replied coldly to
+Hawkins, "That for the King of England's amity he would be glad thereof, so
+the said king would do works according. The matter was none of his; but the
+lady, whose rights had been violated, was his aunt and an orphan, and that
+he must see for her, and for her daughter his cousin."[439]
+
+The scarcely ambiguous answer was something softened the following day;
+perhaps only, however, because it was too plain a betrayal of his
+intentions. He communicated at once with Catherine, and Henry speedily
+learnt the nature of the advice which he had given to her. After the
+coronation had passed off so splendidly, when no disturbance had risen, no
+voice had been raised for her or for her daughter, the poor queen's spirit
+for the moment had sunk; she had thought of leaving the country, and flying
+with the Princess Mary to Spain. The emperor sent to urge her to remain a
+little longer, guaranteeing her, if she could command her patience, an
+ample reparation for her injuries. Whatever might appear upon the surface,
+the new queen, he was assured, was little loved by the people, and "they
+were ready to join with any prince who would espouse her quarrel."[440] All
+classes, he said, were agreed in one common feeling of displeasure. They
+were afraid of a change of religion; they were afraid of the wreck of their
+commerce; and the whole country was fast ripening towards insurrection. The
+points on which he relied as the occasion of the disaffection betrayed the
+sources of his information. He was in correspondence with the regular
+clergy through Peto at Antwerp, and through his Flemish subjects with
+merchants of London. Among both these classes, as well as among the White
+Rose nobles, he had powerful adherents; and it could not have been
+forgotten in the courts, either of London or Brussels, that within the
+memory of living men, a small band of exiles, equipped by a Duke of
+Burgundy, had landed at a Yorkshire village, and in a month had
+revolutionised the kingdom.
+
+In the eyes of Charles there was no reason why an attempt which had
+succeeded once might not succeed again under circumstances seemingly of far
+fairer promise. The strength of a party of insurrection is a power which
+official statesmen never justly comprehend. It depends upon moral
+influences, which they are professionally incapable of appreciating. They
+are able complacently to ignore the existence of substantial disaffection
+though all society may be undermined; they can build their hopes, When it
+suits their convenience, on the idle trifling of superficial discontent. In
+the present instance there was some excuse for the mistake. That in England
+there really existed an active and organised opposition, prepared, when
+opportunity offered, to try the chances of rebellion, was no delusion of
+persons who measured facts by their desires; it was an ascertained peril of
+serious magnitude, which might be seriously calculated upon; and if the
+experiment was tried, reasonable men might fairly be divided in opinion on
+the result to be expected.
+
+In the meantime the government had been obliged to follow up the coronation
+of the new queen by an act which the situation of the kingdom explained and
+excused; but which, if Catherine had been no more than a private person,
+would have been wanton cruelty. Among the people she still bore her royal
+title; but the name of queen, so long as she was permitted to retain it,
+was an allowed witness against the legality of the sentence at Dunstable.
+There could not be "two queens" in England,[441] and one or other must
+retire from the designation. A proclamation was therefore issued by the
+council, declaring, that in consequence of the final proofs that the Lady
+Catherine had never been lawfully married to the king, she was to bear
+thenceforward the title which she had received after the death of her first
+husband, and be called the Princess Dowager.
+
+Harsh as this measure was, she had left no alternative to the government by
+which to escape the enforcement of it, by her refusal to consent to any
+form of compromise. If she was queen, Anne Boleyn was not queen. If she was
+queen, the Princess Mary remained the heir to the crown, and the expected
+offspring of Anne would be illegitimate. If the question had been merely of
+names, to have moved it would have been unworthy and wicked; but where
+respect for private feeling was incompatible with the steps which a nation
+felt necessary in order to secure itself against civil convulsions, private
+feeling was compelled not unjustly to submit to injury. Mary, though still
+a girl, had inherited both her father's will and her mother's obstinacy.
+She was in correspondence, as we have seen, with the Nun of Kent, and aware
+at least, if she was not further implicated in it, of a conspiracy to place
+her on the throne. Charles was engaged in the same designs; and it will not
+be pretended that Catherine was left without information of what was going
+forward, or that her own conduct was uninfluenced by policy. These
+intrigues it was positively necessary to stifle, and it was impossible to
+leave a pretext of which so powerful a use might be made in the hands of a
+party whose object was not only to secure to the princess her right to
+succeed her father, but to compel him by arms either to acknowledge it, or
+submit to be deposed.[442]
+
+Our sympathies are naturally on the side of the weak and the unsuccessful.
+State considerations lose their force after the lapse of centuries, when no
+interests of our own are any longer in jeopardy; and we feel for the great
+sufferers of history only in their individual capacity, without recalling
+or caring for the political exigencies to which they were sacrificed. It is
+an error of disguised selfishness, the counterpart of the carelessness with
+which in our own age, when we are ourselves constituents of an interested
+public, we ignore what it is inconvenient to remember.
+
+Thus, therefore, on one hot Midsummer Sunday in this year 1533, the people
+gathering to church in every parish through the English counties, read,
+nailed upon the doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that the Lady
+Catherine of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not to be
+called by that title any more, but was to be called Princess Dowager, and
+so to be held and esteemed. The proclamation, we may suppose, was read with
+varying comments; of the reception of it in the northern counties, the
+following information was forwarded to the crown. The Earl of Derby,
+lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had
+arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on
+the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness
+and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses,
+which he had sent with his letter, and which were to the following
+effect:--
+
+Richard Clark deposeth that the said James Harrison reading the
+proclamation, said that Queen Catherine was queen, Nan Bullen should not be
+queen, nor the king should be no king but on his bearing.
+
+William Dalton deposeth, that in his hearing the above-named James said, I
+will take none for queen but Queen Catherine--who the devil made Nan
+Bullen, that hoore, queen? I will never take her for queen--and he the said
+William answered, "Hold thy peace, thou wot'st not what thou sayest--but
+that thou art a priest I should punish thee, that others should take
+example."
+
+Richard Sumner and John Clayton depose, that they came in company with the
+said James from Perbalt to Eccleston, when the said James did say, "This is
+a marvellous world--the king will put down the order of priests and destroy
+the Sacrament, but he cannot reign long, for York will be in London
+hastily."[443]
+
+Here was the later growth of the spirit which we saw a few months
+previously in the monks of Furness. The mutterings of discontent had
+developed into plain open treason, confident of success, and scarcely
+caring to conceal itself--and Yorkshire was preparing for rebellion and
+"the Pilgrimage of Grace."
+
+There is another quarter also into which we must follow the proclamation,
+and watch the effect of the royal order in a scene where it is well that we
+should for a few moments rest. Catherine was still at Ampthill, surrounded
+by her own attendants, who formed an inner circle, shielding her retirement
+against impertinent curiosity. She rarely or never allowed herself to be
+seen; Lord Mountjoy, with an official retinue, was in attendance in the
+house; but the occupation was not a pleasant one, and he was as willing to
+respect the queen's seclusion as she to remain secluded. Injunctions
+arrived however from the court at the end of June, which compelled him to
+request an interview; a deputation of the privy council had come down to
+inform the ex-queen of the orders of the government, and to desire that
+they might be put in force in her own family. Aware probably of the nature
+of the communication which was to be made to her, she refused repeatedly to
+admit them to her presence. At length, however, she nerved herself for the
+effort, and on the 3rd of July Mountjoy and the state commissioners were
+informed that she was ready to receive them.
+
+As they entered her room she was lying on a sofa. She had a bad cough, and
+she had hurt her foot with a pin, and was unable to stand or walk. Her
+attendants were all present by her own desire; she was glad to see around
+her some sympathising human faces, to enable her to endure the cold hard
+eyes of the officials of the council.
+
+She inquired whether the message was to be delivered in writing or by word
+of mouth.
+
+They replied that they had brought with them instructions which they were
+to read, and that they were further charged with a message which was to be
+delivered verbally. She desired that they would read their written
+despatch. It was addressed to the Princess Dowager, and she at once
+excepted to the name. She was not Princess Dowager, she said, but queen,
+and the king's true wife. She came to the king a clear maid for any bodily
+knowledge of Prince Arthur; she had borne him lawful issue and no bastard,
+and therefore queen she was, and queen she would be while she lived.
+
+The commissioners were prepared for the objection, and continued, without
+replying, to read. The paper contained a statement of worn-out unrealities;
+the old story of the judgment of the universities and the learned men, the
+sentence of convocation, and of the houses of parliament; and, finally, the
+fact of substantial importance, that the king, acting as he believed
+according to the laws of God, had married the Lady Anne Boleyn, who was now
+his lawful wife, and anointed Queen of England.
+
+Oh yes, she answered when they had done, we know that, and "we know the
+authority by which it has been done--more by power than justice." The
+king's learned men were learned heretics; the honest learning was for her.
+As for the seals of the universities there were strange stories about the
+way in which they had been obtained. The universities and the parliament
+had done what the king bade them; and they had gone against their
+consciences in doing it; but it was of no importance to her--she was in the
+hands of the pope, who was God's vicar, and she acknowledged no other
+judge.
+
+The commissioners informed her of the decision of the council that she was
+no longer to bear the title of queen. It stood, they said, neither with the
+laws of God nor man, nor with the king's honour, to have two queens named
+within the realm; and in fact, there was but one queen, the king's lawful
+wife, to whom he was now married.
+
+She replied shortly that she was the king's lawful queen, and none other.
+
+There was little hope in her manner that anything which could be said would
+move her; but her visitors were ordered to try her to the uttermost.
+
+The king, they continued, was surprised that she could be so disobedient;
+and not only that she was disobedient herself, but that she allowed and
+encouraged her servants in the same conduct.
+
+She was ready to obey the king; she answered, when she could do so without
+disobeying God; but she could not damn her soul even for him. Her servants,
+she said, must do the best they could; they were standing round her as she
+was speaking; and she turned to them with an apology, and a hope that they
+would pardon her. She would hinder her cause, she said; and put her soul in
+danger, if on their account she were to relinquish her name, and she could
+not do it.
+
+The deputation next attempted her on her worldly side. If she would obey,
+they informed her that she would be allowed not only her jointure as
+Princess Dowager and her own private fortune, but all the settlements which
+had been made upon her on her marriage with the king.
+
+She "passed not upon possessions, in regard of this matter," she replied.
+It touched her conscience, and no worldly considerations were of the
+slightest moment.
+
+In disobeying the king, they said; seeing that she was none other than his
+subject, she might give cause for dissension and disturbance; and she might
+lose the favour of the people.
+
+She "trusted not," she replied--she "never minded it, nor would she"--she
+"desired only to save her right; and if she should lose the favour of the
+people in defending that right, yet she trusted to go to heaven cum fama et
+infamia."
+
+Promises and persuasions being unavailing, they tried threats. She was told
+that if she persisted in so obstinate a course, the king would be obliged
+to make known to the world the offers which he had made to her, and the ill
+reception which they had met with--and then he would perhaps withdraw those
+offers, and conceive some evil opinions of high displeasure towards her.
+
+She answered that there was no manner of offers neither of lands nor goods
+that she had respect unto in comparison of her cause--and as to the loss of
+the king's affection, she trusted to God, to whom she would daily pray for
+him.
+
+The learned council might as well have reasoned with the winds; or
+threatened the waves of the sea. But they were not yet weary, and their
+next effort was as foolish as it was ungenerous. They suggested, "that if
+she did reserve the name of queen, it was thought that she would do it of a
+vain desire and appetite of glory; and further, she might be an occasion
+that the king would withdraw his love from her most dear daughter the Lady
+Princess, which should chiefly move her, if none other cause did."
+
+They must have known little of Catherine, if they thought she could be
+influenced by childish vanity. It was for no vain glory that she cared, she
+answered proudly; she was the king's true wife, and her conscience forbade
+her to call herself otherwise; the princess was his true begotten child;
+and as God hath given her to them, so for her part she would render her
+again; neither for daughter, family, nor possessions, would she yield in
+her cause; and she made a solemn protestation, calling on every one present
+to bear witness to what she said, that the king's wife she was, and such
+she would take herself to be, and that she would never surrender the name
+of queen till the pope had decided that she must bear it no longer.
+
+So ended the first interview. Catherine, before the commissioners left her,
+desired to have a copy of the proposals which they had brought, that she
+might translate and send them to Rome. They returned with them the next
+day, when she requested to see the report which they intended to send to
+the council of the preceding conversation. It was placed in her hands; and
+as she read it and found there the name of Princess Dowager, she took a pen
+and dashed out the words, the mark of which indignant ink-stroke may now be
+seen in the letter from which this account is taken.[444] With the accuracy
+of the rest she appeared to be satisfied--only when she found again their
+poor suggestion that she was influenced by vanity, she broke out with a
+burst of passionate indignation.
+
+"I would rather be a poor beggar's wife," she said, "and be sure of heaven,
+than queen of all the world, and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own
+consent. I stick not so for vain glory, but because I know myself the
+king's true wife--and while you call me the king's subject, I was his
+subject while he took me for his wife. But if he take me not for his wife,
+I came not into this Realm as merchandise, nor to be married to any
+merchant; nor do I continue in the same but as his lawful wife, and not as
+a subject to live under his dominion otherwise. I have always demeaned
+myself well and truly towards the king--and if it can be proved that either
+in writing to the pope or any other, I have either stirred or procured
+anything against his Grace, or have been the means to any person to make
+any motion which might be prejudicial to his Grace or to his Realm, I am
+content to suffer for it. I have done England little good, and I should be
+sorry to do it any harm. But if I should agree to your motions and
+persuasions, I should slander myself, and confess to have been the king's
+harlot for twenty-four years. The cause, I cannot tell by what subtle
+means, has been determined here within the king's Realm, before a man of
+his own making, the Bishop of Canterbury, no person indifferent I think in
+that behalf; and for the indifference of the place, I think the place had
+been more indifferent to have been judged in hell; for no truth can be
+suffered here, whereas the devils themselves I suppose do tremble to see
+the truth in this cause so sore oppressed."[445]
+
+Most noble, spirited, and like a queen. Yet she would never have been
+brought to this extremity, and she would have shown a truer nobleness, if
+four years before she could have yielded at the pope's entreaty on the
+first terms which were proposed to her. Those terms would have required no
+humiliating confessions; they would have involved no sentence on her
+marriage nor touched her daughter's legitimacy. She would have broken no
+law of God, nor seemed to break it. She was required only to forget her own
+interests; and she would not forget them, though all the world should be
+wrecked by her refusal. She denied that she was concerned in "motions
+prejudicial to the king or to the Realm," but she must have placed her own
+interpretation on the words, and would have considered excommunication and
+interdict a salutary discipline to the king and parliament. She knew that
+this sentence was imminent, that in its minor form it had already fallen;
+and she knew that her nephew and her friends in England were plotting to
+give effect to the decree. But we may pass over this. It is not for an
+English writer to dwell upon those faults of Catherine of Arragon, which
+English remorse has honourably insisted on forgetting. Her injuries,
+inevitable as they were, and forced upon her in great measure by her own
+wilfulness, remain among the saddest spots in the pages of our history.
+
+One other brief incident remains to be noticed here, to bring up before the
+imagination the features of this momentous summer. It is contained in the
+postscript of a letter of Cranmer to Hawkins the ambassador in Germany; and
+the manner in which the story is told is no less suggestive than the story
+itself.
+
+The immediate present, however awful its import, will ever seem common and
+familiar to those who live and breathe in the midst of it. In the days of
+the September massacre at Paris, the theatres were open as usual; men ate,
+and drank, and laughed, and cried, and went about their common work,
+unconscious that those days which were passing by them, so much like other
+days, would remain the _dies nefasti_, accursed in the memory of mankind
+for ever. Nothing is terrible, nothing is sublime in human things, so long
+as they are before our eyes. The great man has so much in common with men
+in general, the routine of daily life, in periods the most remarkable in
+history, contains so much that is unvarying, that it is only when time has
+done its work; and all which was unimportant has ceased to be remembered,
+that such men and such times stand out in their true significance. It might
+have been thought that to a person like Cranmer, the court at Dunstable,
+the coronation of the new queen, the past out of which these things had
+risen, and the future which they threatened to involve, would have seemed
+at least serious; and that engaged as he had been as a chief actor, in a
+matter which, if it had done nothing else, had broken the heart of a
+high-born lady whom once he had honoured as his queen, he would have been
+either silent about his exploits, or if he had spoken of them, would have
+spoken not without some show of emotion. We look for a symptom of feeling,
+but we do not find it. When the coronation festivities were concluded he
+wrote to his friend an account of what had been done by himself and others
+in the light gossiping tone of easiest content; as if he were describing
+the common incidents of a common day. It is disappointing, and not wholly
+to be approved of. Still less can we approve of the passage with which he
+concludes his letter.
+
+"Other news we have none notable, but that one Frith, which was in the
+Tower in prison,[446] was appointed by the King's Grace to be examined
+before me, my Lord of London, my Lord of Winchester, my Lord of Suffolk, my
+Lord Chancellor, and my Lord of Wiltshire; whose opinion was so notably
+erroneous that we could not dispatch him, but were fain to leave him to the
+determination of his ordinary, which is the Bishop of London. His said
+opinion is of such nature, that he thought it not necessary to be believed
+as an article of our faith that there is the very corporeal presence of
+Christ within the host and sacrament of the altar; and holdeth on this
+point much after the opinion of Oecolampadius.
+
+"And surely I myself sent for him three or four times to persuade him to
+leave that imagination. But for all that we could do therein, he would not
+apply to any counsel. Notwithstanding now he is at a final end with all
+examinations; for my Lord of London hath given sentence, and delivered him
+to the secular power when he looketh every day to go unto the fire. And
+there is also condemned with him one Andrew a tailor for the self-same
+opinion; and thus fare you well."[447]
+
+These victims went as they were sentenced, dismissed to their martyr's
+crowns at Smithfield, as Queen Anne Boleyn but a few days before had
+received her golden crown at the altar of Westminster Abbey. Twenty years
+later another fire was blazing under the walls of Oxford; and the hand
+which was now writing these light lines was blackening in the flames of it,
+paying there the penalty of the same "imagination" for which Frith and the
+poor London tailor were with such cool indifference condemned. It is
+affecting to know that Frith's writings were the instruments of Cranmer's
+conversion; and the fathers of the Anglican church have left a monument of
+their sorrow for the shedding of this innocent blood in the Order of the
+Communion service, which closes with the very words on which the primate,
+with his brother bishops, had sate in judgment.[448]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PROTESTANTS
+
+Where changes are about to take place of great and enduring moment, a kind
+of prologue, on a small scale, sometimes anticipates the true opening of
+the drama; like the first drops which give notice of the coming storm, or
+as if the shadows of the reality were projected forwards into the future,
+and imitated in dumb show the movements of the real actors in the story.
+
+Such a rehearsal of the English Reformation was witnessed at the close of
+the fourteenth century, confused, imperfect, disproportioned, to outward
+appearance barren of results; yet containing a representative of each one
+of the mixed forces by which that great change was ultimately effected, and
+foreshadowing even something of the course which it was to run.
+
+There was a quarrel with the pope upon the extent of the papal privileges;
+there were disputes between the laity and the clergy,--accompanied, as if
+involuntarily, by attacks on the sacramental system and the Catholic
+faith,--while innovation in doctrine was accompanied also with the tendency
+which characterised the extreme development of the later
+Protestants--towards political republicanism, the fifth monarchy, and
+community of goods. Some account of this movement must be given in this
+place, although it can be but a sketch only. "Lollardry"[449] has a history
+of its own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation.
+It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced
+their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on
+which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out,
+and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the
+name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil
+from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy
+into their language; and in the word _miscreant_, misbeliever, as the
+synonym of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible record of
+the popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe.
+
+The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the see of
+Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and fifty
+years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the
+archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and
+exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church had
+recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been
+conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The practice which then became
+established was in accordance with the general spirit of the English
+constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the cathedral chapter applied to the
+crown for a conge d'elire. The application was a form; the consent was
+invariable. A bishop was then elected by a majority of suffrages; his name
+was submitted to the metropolitan, and by him to the pope. If the pope
+signified his approval, the election was complete; consecration followed;
+and the bishop having been furnished with his bulls of investiture, was
+presented to the king, and from him received "the temporalities" of his
+see. The mode in which the great abbots were chosen was precisely similar;
+the superiors of the orders to which the abbeys belonged were the channels
+of communication with the pope, in the place of the archbishops; but the
+elections in themselves were free, and were conducted in the same manner.
+The smaller church benefices, the small monasteries or parish churches,
+were in the hands of private patrons, lay or ecclesiastical; but in the
+case of each institution a reference was admitted, or was supposed to be
+admitted, to the court of Rome.
+
+There was thus in the pope's hand an authority of an indefinite kind, which
+it was presumed that his sacred office would forbid him to abuse, but
+which, however, if he so unfortunately pleased, he might abuse at his
+discretion. He had absolute power over every nomination to an English
+benefice; he might refuse his consent till such adequate reasons, material
+or spiritual, as he considered sufficient to induce him to acquiesce, had
+been submitted to his consideration. In the case of nominations to the
+religious houses, the superiors of the various orders residing abroad had
+equal facilities for obstructiveness; and the consequence of so large a
+confidence in the purity of the higher orders of the Church became visible
+in an act of parliament which it was found necessary to pass in
+1306-7.[450]
+
+"Of late," says this act, "it has come to the knowledge of the king, by the
+grievous complaint of the honourable persons, lords, and other noblemen of
+his realm, that whereas monasteries, priories, and other religious houses
+were founded to the honour and glory of God, and the advancement of holy
+church, by the king and his progenitors, and by the said noblemen and their
+ancestors; and a very great portion of lands and tenements have been given
+by them to the said monasteries, priories, and religious houses, and the
+religious men serving God in them; to the intent that clerks and laymen
+might be admitted in such houses, and that sick and feeble folk might be
+maintained, hospitality, almsgiving, and other charitable deeds might be
+done, and prayers be said for the souls of the founders and their heirs;
+the abbots, priors, and governors of the said houses, _and certain aliens
+their superiors_, as the abbots and priors of the Cistertians, the
+Premonstrants, the orders of Saint Augustine and of Saint Benedict, and
+many more of other religions and orders have at their own pleasure set
+divers heavy, unwonted heavy and importable tallages, payments, and
+impositions upon every of the said monasteries and houses subject unto
+them, in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, without the privity of the
+king and his nobility, contrary to the laws and customs of the said realm;
+and thereby the number of religious persons being oppressed by such
+tallages, payments, and impositions, the service of God is diminished, alms
+are not given to the poor, the sick, and the feeble; the healths of the
+living and the souls of the dead be miserably defrauded; hospitality,
+alms-giving, and other godly deeds do cease; and so that which in times
+past was charitably given to godly uses and to the service of God, is now
+converted to an evil end, by permission whereof there groweth great scandal
+to the people." To provide against a continuance of these abuses, it was
+enacted that no "religious" persons should, under any pretence or form,
+send out of the kingdom any kind of tax, rent, or tallage; and that "priors
+aliens" should not presume to assess any payment, charge, or other burden
+whatever upon houses within the realm.[451]
+
+The language of this act was studiously guarded. The pope was not alluded
+to; the specific methods by which the extortion was practised were not
+explained; the tax upon presentations to benefices, either having not yet
+distinguished itself beyond other impositions, or the government trusting
+that a measure of this general kind might answer the desired end. Lucrative
+encroachments, however, do not yield so easily to treatment; nearly fifty
+years after it became necessary to re-enact the same statute; and while
+recapitulating the provisions of it, the parliament found it desirable to
+point out more specifically the intention with which it was passed.
+
+The popes in the interval had absorbed in their turn from the heads of the
+religious orders, the privileges which by them had been extorted from the
+affiliated societies. Each English benefice had become the fountain of a
+rivulet which flowed into the Roman exchequer, or a property to be
+distributed as the private patronage of the Roman bishop: and the English
+parliament for the first time found itself in collision with the Father of
+Christendom.
+
+"The pope," says the fourth of the twenty-fifth of Edward III.,
+"accroaching to himself the signories of the benefices within the realm of
+England, doth give and grant the same to aliens which did never dwell in
+England, and to cardinals which could not dwell here, and to others as well
+aliens as denizens, whereby manifold inconveniences have ensued." "Not
+regarding" the statute of Edward I., he had also continued to present to
+bishopricks, abbeys, priories, and other valuable preferments: money in
+large quantities was carried out of the realm from the proceeds of these
+offices, and it was necessary to insist emphatically that the papal
+nominations should cease. They were made in violation of the law, and were
+conducted with simony so flagrant that English benefices were sold in the
+papal courts to any person who would pay for them, whether an Englishman or
+a stranger. It was therefore decreed that the elections to bishopricks
+should be free as in time past, that the rights of patrons should be
+preserved, and penalties of imprisonment, forfeiture, or outlawry,
+according to the complexion of the offence, should be attached to all
+impetration of benefices from Rome by purchase or otherwise.[452]
+
+If statute law could have touched the evil, these enactments would have
+been sufficient for the purpose; but the influence of the popes in England
+was of that subtle kind which was not so readily defeated. The law was
+still defied, or still evaded; and the struggle continued till the close of
+the century, the legislature labouring patiently, but ineffectually, to
+confine with fresh enactments their ingenious adversary.[453]
+
+At length symptoms appeared of an intention on the part of the popes to
+maintain their claims with spiritual censures, and the nation was obliged
+to resolve upon the course which, in the event of their resorting to that
+extremity, it would follow. The lay lords[454] and the House of Commons
+found no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion. They passed a fresh penal
+statute with prohibitions even more emphatically stringent, and decided
+that "if any man brought into this realm any sentence, summons, or
+excommunication, contrary to the effect of the statute, he should incur
+pain of life and members, with forfeiture of goods; and if any prelate made
+execution of such sentence, his temporalities should be taken from him, and
+should abide in the king's hands till redress was made."[455]
+
+So bold a measure threatened nothing less than open rupture. The act,
+however, seems to have been passed in haste, without determined
+consideration; and on second thoughts, it was held more prudent to attempt
+a milder course. The strength of the opposition to the papacy lay with the
+Commons.[456] When the session of parliament was over, a great council was
+summoned to reconsider what should be done, and an address was drawn up,
+and forwarded to Rome, with a request that the then reigning pope would
+devise some manner by which the difficulty could be arranged.[457] Boniface
+IX. replied with the same want of judgment which was shown afterwards on an
+analogous occasion by Clement VII. He disbelieved the danger; and daring
+the government to persevere, he granted a prebendal stall at Wells to an
+Italian cardinal, to which a presentation had been made already by the
+king. Opposing suits were instantly instituted between the claimants in the
+courts of the two countries. A decision was given in England in favour of
+the nominee of the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were
+excommunicated.[458] The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a
+struggle of force, and the government had no alternative but to surrender
+at discretion, or to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation.
+
+The proceedings on this occasion seem to have been unusual, and significant
+of the importance of the crisis. Parliament either was sitting at the time
+when the excommunication was issued, or else it was immediately assembled;
+and the House of Commons drew up, in the form of a petition to the king, a
+declaration of the circumstances which had occurred. After having stated
+generally the English law on the presentation to benefices, "Now of late,"
+they added, "divers processes be made by his Holiness the Pope, and
+censures of excommunication upon certain bishops, because they have made
+execution of the judgments [given in the king's courts], to the open
+disherison of the crown; whereby, if remedy be not provided, the crown of
+England, which hath been so free at all times, that it has been in no
+earthly subjection, should be submitted to the pope; and the laws and
+statutes of the realm by him be defeated and avoided at his will, in
+perpetual destruction of the sovereignty of the king our lord, his crown,
+his regality, and all his realm." The Commons, therefore, on their part,
+declared, "That the things so attempted were clearly against the king's
+crown and his regality, used and approved of in the time of all his
+progenitors, and therefore they and all the liege commons of the realm
+would stand with their said lord the king, and his said crown, in the cases
+aforesaid, to live and die."[459] Whether they made allusion to the act of
+1389 does not appear--a measure passed under protest from one of the
+estates of the realm was possibly held unequal to meet the emergency--at
+all events they would not rely upon it. For after this peremptory assertion
+of their own opinion, they desired the king, "and required him in the way
+of justice," to examine severally the lords spiritual and temporal how they
+thought, and how they would stand.[460] The examination was made, and the
+result was satisfactory. The lay lords replied without reservation that
+they would support the crown. The bishops (they were in a difficulty for
+which all allowance must be made) gave a cautious, but also a manly answer.
+They would not affirm, they said, that the pope had a right to
+excommunicate them in such cases, and they would not say that he had not.
+It was clear, however, that legal or illegal, such excommunication was
+against the privileges of the English crown, and therefore that, on the
+whole, they would and ought to be with the crown, _loialment_, like loyal
+subjects, as they were bound by their allegiance.[461]
+
+In this unusual and emphatic manner, the three estates agreed that the pope
+should be resisted; and an act passed "that all persons suing at the court
+of Rome, and obtaining thence any bulls, instruments, sentences of
+excommunication which touched the king, or were against him, his regality,
+or his realm, and they which brought the same within the realm, or received
+the same, or made thereof notification, or any other execution whatever,
+within the realm or without, they, their notaries, procurators, maintainers
+and abettors, fautors and counsellors, should be put out of the king's
+protection, and their lands and tenements, goods and chattels, be
+forfeited."
+
+The resolute attitude of the country terminated the struggle. Boniface
+prudently yielded, and for the moment; and indeed for ever under this
+especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back. The temper
+which had been roused in the contest, might perhaps have carried the nation
+further. The liberties of the crown had been asserted successfully. The
+analogous liberties of the church might have followed; and other channels,
+too, might have been cut off, through which the papal exchequer fed itself
+on English blood. But at this crisis the anti-Roman policy was arrested in
+its course by another movement, which turned the current of suspicion, and
+frightened back the nation to conservatism.
+
+While the crown and the parliament had been engaged with the pope, the
+undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the
+people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against
+the spiritual authorities at home. The parliament had lamented that the
+duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of the
+extortions of their superiors abroad. The people, who were equally
+convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an interpretation of the
+phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and attributed it to the
+temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence generated by enormous
+wealth.
+
+This form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great
+forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the
+crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of
+another forerunner of a greater change.
+
+The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. Lewis, on the authority of
+Leland,[462] says that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire. Fuller,
+though with some hesitation, prefers Durham.[463] He emerges into distinct
+notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of
+Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in
+divinity, and having earned for himself powerful friends and powerful
+enemies. He had made his name distinguished by attacks upon the clergy for
+their indolence and profligacy: attacks both written and orally
+delivered--those written, we observe, being written in English, not in
+Latin.[464] In 1365, Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him Warden
+of Canterbury Hall; the appointment, however, was made with some
+irregularity, and the following year, Archbishop Islip dying, his
+successor, Langham, deprived Wycliffe, and the sentence was confirmed by
+the king. It seemed, nevertheless, that no personal reflection was intended
+by this decision, for Edward III. nominated the ex-warden one of his
+chaplains immediately after, and employed him on an important mission to
+Bruges, where a conference on the benefice question was to be held with a
+papal commission.
+
+Other church preferment was subsequently given to Wycliffe; but Oxford
+remained the chief scene of his work. He continued to hold his
+professorship of divinity; and from this office the character of his
+history took its complexion. At a time when books were rare and difficult
+to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from the
+fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to
+imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all Europe
+flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a
+party by the mere fact of his position.
+
+The burden of Wycliffe's teaching was the exposure of the indolent fictions
+which passed under the name of religion in the established theory of the
+church. He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance, with bare
+feet and russet mantle.[465] As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great
+Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate. By the
+contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought as he did;
+and gradually, under his captaincy, these "poor priests," as they were
+called--vowed to poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no
+benefice, lest they should misspend the property of the poor, and because,
+as apostles, they were bound to go where their Master called them,[466]
+spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to preach the faith
+which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of relics and of indulgences,
+but of repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of
+the Bible which Wycliffe had translated, leaving here and there, as they
+travelled, their costly treasures, as shining seed points of light; and
+they refused to recognise the authority of the bishops, or their right to
+silence them.
+
+If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by a
+prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe might
+have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against the pope
+might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the
+church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a century. He
+was summoned to answer for himself before the Archbishop of Canterbury in
+1377. He appeared in court supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke
+of Lancaster, the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities
+were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield.
+
+But the "poor priests" had other doctrines besides those which they
+discovered in the Bible, relating to subjects with which, as apostles, they
+would have done better if they had shrunk from meddling. The inefficiency
+of the clergy was occasioned, as Wycliffe thought, by their wealth and by
+their luxury. He desired to save them from a temptation too heavy for them
+to bear, and he insisted that by neglect of duty their wealth had been
+forfeited, and that it was the business of the laity to take it from its
+unworthy possessors. The invectives with which the argument was accompanied
+produced a widely-spread irritation. The reins of the country fell
+simultaneously into the weak hands of Richard II., and the consequence was
+a rapid spread of disorder. In the year which followed Richard's accession,
+consistory judges were assaulted in their courts, sanctuaries were
+violated, priests were attacked and ill-treated in church, church-yard, and
+cathedral, and even while engaged in the mass;[467] the contagion of the
+growing anarchy seems to have touched even Wycliffe himself, and touched
+him in a point most deeply dangerous.
+
+His theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had led
+him to the near confines of Anabaptism. Expanding his views upon the
+estates of the church into an axiom, he taught that "charters of perpetual
+inheritance were impossible;" "that God could not give men civil
+possessions for ever;"[468] "that property was founded in grace, and
+derived from God;" and "seeing that forfeiture was the punishment of
+treason, and all sin was treason against God, the sinner must consequently
+forfeit his right to what he held of God." These propositions were nakedly
+true, as we shall most of us allow; but God has his own methods of
+enforcing extreme principles; and human legislation may only meddle with
+them at its peril. The theory as an abstraction could be represented as
+applying equally to the laity as to the clergy, and the new teaching
+received a practical comment in 1381, in the invasion of London by Wat, the
+tyler of Dartford, and 100,000 men, who were to level all ranks, put down
+the church, and establish universal liberty.[469] Two priests accompanied
+the insurgents, not Wycliffe's followers, but the licentious counterfeits
+of them, who trod inevitably in their footsteps, and were as inevitably
+countenanced by their doctrines. The insurrection was attended with the
+bloodshed, destruction, and ferocity natural to such outbreaks. The
+Archbishop of Canterbury and many gentlemen were murdered; and a great part
+of London sacked and burnt. It would be absurd to attribute this disaster
+to Wycliffe, nor was there any desire to hold him responsible for it; but
+it is equally certain that the doctrines which he had taught were
+incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the
+spirit which had caused the explosion. It is equally certain that he had
+brought discredit on his nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject
+of the utmost difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of
+the people to confound heterodoxy of opinion with sedition, anarchy, and
+disorder.
+
+So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a guarantee for the
+conduct of his immediate disciples; and although his favour had far
+declined, a party in the state remained attached to him, with sufficient
+influence to prevent the adoption of extreme measures against the "poor
+priests." In the year following the insurrection, an act was passed for
+their repression in the House of Lords, and was sent down by the king to
+the Commons. They were spoken of as "evil persons," going from place to
+place in defiance of the bishops, preaching in the open air to great
+congregations at markets and fairs, "exciting the people," "engendering
+discord between the estates of the realm." The ordinaries had no power to
+silence them, and had therefore desired that commissions should be issued
+to the sheriffs of the various counties, to arrest all such persons, and
+confine them, until they would "justify themselves" in the ecclesiastical
+courts.[470] Wycliffe petitioned against the bill, and it was rejected; not
+so much perhaps out of tenderness for the reformer, as because the Lower
+House was excited by the controversy with the pope; and being doubtfully
+disposed towards the clergy, was reluctant to subject the people to a more
+stringent spiritual control.
+
+But Wycliffe himself meanwhile had received a clear intimation of his own
+declining position. His opposition to the church authorities, and his
+efforts at re-invigorating the faith of the country, had led him into
+doubtful statements on the nature of the eucharist; he had entangled
+himself in dubious metaphysics on a subject on which no middle course is
+really possible; and being summoned to answer for his language before a
+synod in London, he had thrown himself again for protection on the Duke of
+Lancaster. The duke (not unnaturally under the circumstances) declined to
+encourage what he could neither approve nor understand;[471] and Wycliffe,
+by his great patron's advice, submitted. He read a confession of faith
+before the bishops, which was held satisfactory; he was forbidden, however,
+to preach again in Oxford, and retired to his living of Lutterworth, in
+Leicestershire, where two years later he died.
+
+With him departed all which was best and purest in the movement which he
+had commenced. The zeal of his followers was not extinguished, but the
+wisdom was extinguished which had directed it; and perhaps the being
+treated as the enemies of order had itself a tendency to make them what
+they were believed to be. They were left unmolested for the next twenty
+years, the feebleness of the government, the angry complexion which had
+been assumed by the dispute with Rome, and the political anarchy in the
+closing decade of the century, combining to give them temporary shelter;
+but they availed themselves of their opportunity to travel further on the
+dangerous road on which they had entered; and on the settlement of the
+country under Henry IV. they fell under the general ban which struck down
+all parties who had shared in the late disturbances.
+
+They had been spared in 1382, only for more sharp denunciation, and a more
+cruel fate; and Boniface having healed, on his side, the wounds which had
+been opened, by well-timed concessions, there was no reason left for
+leniency. The character of the Lollard teaching was thus described (perhaps
+in somewhat exaggerated language) in the preamble of the act of 1401.[472]
+
+"Divers false and perverse people," so runs the act _De Heretico
+comburendo_, "of a certain new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of the
+sacraments of the church, and of the authority of the same, against the law
+of God and of the church, usurping the office of preaching, do perversely
+and maliciously, in divers places within the realm, preach and teach divers
+new doctrines, and wicked erroneous opinions, contrary to the faith and
+determination of Holy Church. And of such sect and wicked doctrines they
+make unlawful conventicles, they hold and exercise schools, they make and
+write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and excite and
+stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division
+among the people, and other enormities horrible to be heard, daily do
+perpetrate and commit. The diocesans cannot by their jurisdiction
+spiritual, without aid of the King's Majesty, sufficiently correct these
+said false and perverse people, nor refrain their malice, because they do
+go from diocess to diocess, and will not appear before the said diocesans;
+but the jurisdiction spiritual, the keys of the church, and the censures of
+the same, do utterly contemn and despise; and so their wicked preachings
+and doctrines they do from day to day continue and exercise, to the
+destruction of all order and rule, right and reason."
+
+Something of these violent accusations is perhaps due to the horror with
+which false doctrine in matters of faith was looked upon in the Catholic
+church, the grace by which alone an honest life was made possible being
+held to be dependent upon orthodoxy. But the Lollards had become political
+revolutionists as well as religious reformers; the revolt against the
+spiritual authority had encouraged and countenanced a revolt against the
+secular; and we cannot be surprised, therefore, that these institutions
+should have sympathised with each other, and have united to repress a
+danger which was formidable to both.
+
+The bishops, by this act, received arbitrary power to arrest and imprison
+on suspicion, without check or restraint of law, at their will and
+pleasure. Prisoners who refused to abjure their errors, who persisted in
+heresy, or relapsed into it after abjuration, were sentenced to be burnt at
+the stake--a dreadful punishment, on the wickedness of which the world has
+long been happily agreed. Yet we must remember that those who condemned
+teachers of heresy to the flames, considered that heresy itself involved
+everlasting perdition; that they were but faintly imitating the severity
+which orthodoxy still ascribes to Almighty God Himself.
+
+The tide which was thus setting back in favour of the church did not yet,
+however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to
+sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of
+the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410,
+spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made
+upon the subject to the king.[473] The country, too, continued to be
+agitated with war and treason; and when Henry V. became king, in 1412, the
+church was still uneasy, and the Lollards were as dangerous as ever.
+Whether by prudent conduct they might have secured a repeal of the
+persecuting act is uncertain; it is more likely, from their conduct, that
+they had made their existence incompatible with the security of any
+tolerable government.
+
+A rumour having gone abroad that the king intended to enforce the laws
+against heresy, notices were found fixed against the doors of the London
+churches, that if any such measure was attempted, a hundred thousand men
+would be in arms to oppose it. These papers were traced to Sir John
+Oldcastle, otherwise called Lord Cobham, a man whose true character is more
+difficult to distinguish, in the conflict of the evidence which has come
+down to us about him, than that of almost any noticeable person in history.
+He was perhaps no worse than a fanatic. He was certainly prepared, if we
+may trust the words of a royal proclamation (and Henry was personally
+intimate with Oldcastle, and otherwise was not likely to have exaggerated
+the charges against him), he was prepared to venture a rebellion, with the
+prospect of himself becoming the president of some possible Lollard
+commonwealth.[474] The king, with swift decisiveness, annihilated the
+incipient treason. Oldcastle was himself arrested. He escaped out of the
+Tower into Scotland; and while Henry was absent in France he seems to have
+attempted to organise some kind of Scotch invasion; but he was soon after
+again taken on the Welsh Border, tried and executed. An act which was
+passed in 1414 described his proceedings as an "attempt to destroy the
+king, and all other manner of estates of the realm, as well spiritual as
+temporal, and also all manner of policy, and finally the laws of the land."
+The sedition was held to have originated in heresy, and for the better
+repression of such mischiefs in time to come, the lord chancellor, the
+judges, the justices of the peace, the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and
+every other officer having government of people, were sworn on entering
+their office to use their best power and diligence to detect and prosecute
+all persons suspected of so heinous a crime.[475]
+
+Thus perished Wycliffe's labour,--not wholly, because his translation of
+the Bible still remained a rare treasure; as seed of future life, which
+would spring again under happier circumstances. But the sect which he
+organised, the special doctrines which he set himself to teach, after a
+brief blaze of success, sank into darkness; and no trace remained of
+Lollardry except the black memory of contempt and hatred with which the
+heretics of the fourteenth century were remembered by the English people,
+long after the actual Reformation had become the law of the land.[476]
+
+So poor a close to a movement of so fair promise was due partly to the
+agitated temper of the times; partly, perhaps, to a want of judgment in
+Wycliffe; but chiefly and essentially because it was an untimely birth.
+Wycliffe saw the evil; he did not see the remedy; and neither in his mind
+nor in the mind of the world about him, had the problem ripened itself for
+solution. England would have gained little by the premature overthrow of
+the church, when the house out of which the evil spirit was cast out could
+have been but swept and garnished for the occupation of the seven devils of
+anarchy.
+
+The fire of heresy continued to smoulder, exploding occasionally in
+insurrection,[477] occasionally blazing up in nobler form, when some poor
+seeker for the truth, groping for a vision of God in the darkness of the
+years which followed, found his way into that high presence through the
+martyr's fire. But substantially, the nation relapsed into obedience--the
+church was reprieved for a century. Its fall was delayed till the spirit in
+which it was attacked was winnowed clean of all doubtful elements--until
+Protestantism had recommenced its enterprise in a desire, not for a fairer
+adjustment of the world's good things, but in a desire for some deeper,
+truer, nobler, holier insight into the will of God. It recommenced not
+under the auspices of a Wycliffe, not with the partial countenance of a
+government which was crossing swords with the Father of Catholic
+Christendom, and menacing the severance of England from the unity of the
+faith, but under a strong dynasty of undoubted Catholic loyalty, with the
+entire administrative power, secular as well as spiritual, in the hands of
+the episcopate. It sprung up spontaneously, unguided, unexcited, by the
+vital necessity of its nature, among the masses of the nation.
+
+Leaping over a century, I pass to the year 1525, at which time, or about
+which time, a society was enrolled in London calling itself "The
+Association of Christian Brothers."[478] It was composed of poor men,
+chiefly tradesmen, artisans, a few, a very few of the clergy; but it was
+carefully organised, it was provided with moderate funds, which were
+regularly audited; and its paid agents went up and down the country
+carrying Testaments and tracts with them, and enrolling in the order all
+persons who dared to risk their lives in such a cause. The harvest had been
+long ripening. The records of the bishops' courts[479] are filled from the
+beginning of the century with accounts of prosecutions for heresy--with
+prosecutions, that is, of men and women to whom the masses, the
+pilgrimages, the indulgences, the pardons, the effete paraphernalia of the
+establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen up in blind
+resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that whatever was the
+truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been idle; they had
+plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim after victim had
+been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it was all in vain:
+punishment only multiplied offenders, and "the reek" of the martyrs, as was
+said when Patrick Hamilton was burnt at St. Andrews, "infected all that it
+did blow upon."[480]
+
+There were no teachers, however, there were no books, no unity of
+conviction, only a confused refusal to believe in lies. Copies of
+Wycliffe's Bible remained, which parties here and there, under death
+penalties if detected, met to read;[481] copies, also, of some of his
+tracts[482] were extant; but they were unprinted transcripts, most rare and
+precious, which the watchfulness of the police made it impossible to
+multiply through the press, and which remained therefore necessarily in the
+possession of but a few fortunate persons.
+
+The Protestants were thus isolated in single groups or families, without
+organisation, without knowledge of each other, with nothing to give them
+coherency as a party; and so they might have long continued, except for an
+impulse from some external circumstances. They were waiting for direction,
+and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain.
+
+The state of England did but represent the state of all Northern Europe.
+Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic nature was
+in the people, there was the same weariness of unreality, the same craving
+for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a leader in the
+race of discontent. In Germany, all classes shared the common feeling; in
+England it was almost confined to the lowest. But, wherever it existed, it
+was a free, spontaneous growth in each separate breast, not propagated by
+agitation, but springing self sown, the expression of the honest anger of
+honest men at a system which had passed the limits of toleration, and which
+could be endured no longer. At such times the minds of men are like a train
+of gunpowder, the isolated grains of which have no relation to each other,
+and no effect on each other, while they remain unignited; but let a spark
+kindle but one of them, and they shoot into instant union in a common
+explosion. Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st
+of October, 1517. In the middle of that day Luther's denunciation of
+Indulgences was fixed against the gate of All Saints church, Wittenberg,
+and it became, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the sign to which
+the sick spirits throughout the western world looked hopefully and were
+healed. In all those millions of hearts the words of Luther found an echo,
+and flew from lip to lip, from ear to ear. The thing which all were longing
+for was done, and in two years from that day there was scarcely perhaps a
+village from the Irish Channel to the Danube in which the name of Luther
+was not familiar as a word of hope and promise. Then rose a common cry for
+guidance. Books were called for--above all things, the great book of all,
+the Bible. Luther's inexhaustible fecundity flowed with a steady stream,
+and the printing presses in Germany and in the Free Towns of the
+Netherlands, multiplied Testaments and tracts in hundreds of thousands.
+Printers published at their own expense as Luther wrote.[483] The continent
+was covered with disfrocked monks who had become the pedlars of these
+precious wares;[484] and as the contagion spread, noble young spirits from
+other countries, eager themselves to fight in God's battle, came to
+Wittenberg to learn from the champion who had struck the first blow at
+their great enemy how to use their weapons. "Students from all nations came
+to Wittenberg," says one, "to hear Luther and Melancthon. As they came in
+sight of the town they returned thanks to God with clasped hands; for from
+Wittenberg, as heretofore from Jerusalem, proceeded the light of
+evangelical truth, to spread thence to the utmost parts of the earth."[485]
+Thither came young Patrick Hamilton from Edinburgh, whose "reek" was of so
+much potency, a boy-enthusiast of nature as illustrious as his birth; and
+thither came also from England, which is here our chief concern, William
+Tyndal, a man whose history is lost in his work, and whose epitaph is the
+Reformation. Beginning life as a restless Oxford student, he moved thence
+to Cambridge, thence to Gloucestershire, to be tutor in a knight's family,
+and there hearing of Luther's doings, and expressing himself with too warm
+approval to suit his patron's conservatism,[486] he fell into disgrace.
+From Gloucestershire he removed to London, where Cuthbert Tunstall had
+lately been made bishop, and from whom he looked for countenance in an
+intention to translate the New Testament. Tunstall showed little
+encouragement to this enterprise; but a better friend rose where he was
+least looked for; and a London alderman, Humfrey Monmouth by name, hearing
+the young dreamer preach on some occasion at St. Dunstan's, took him to his
+home for half a year, and kept him there: where "the said Tyndal," as the
+alderman declared, "lived like a good priest, studying both night and day;
+he would eat but sodden meat, by his good will, nor drink but small single
+beer; nor was he ever seen to wear linen about him all the time of his
+being there."[487] The half year being passed, Monmouth gave him ten
+pounds, with which provision he went off to Wittenberg; and the alderman,
+for assisting him in that business, went to the Tower--escaping, however,
+we are glad to know, without worse consequences than a short imprisonment.
+Tyndal saw Luther,[488] and under his immediate direction translated the
+Gospels and Epistles while at Wittenberg. Thence he returned to Antwerp,
+and settling there under the privileges of the city, he was joined by Joy,
+who shared his great work with him. Young Frith from Cambridge came to him
+also, and Barnes, and Lambert, and many others of whom no written record
+remains, to concert a common scheme of action.
+
+In Antwerp, under the care of these men, was established the printing
+press, by which books were supplied, to accomplish for the teaching of
+England what Luther and Melancthon were accomplishing for Germany. Tyndal's
+Testament was first printed, then translations of the best German books,
+reprints of Wycliffe's tracts or original commentaries. Such volumes as the
+people most required were here multiplied as fast as the press could
+produce them; and for the dissemination of these precious writings, the
+brave London Protestants dared, at the hazard of their lives, to form
+themselves into an organised association.
+
+It is well to pause and look for a moment at this small band of heroes; for
+heroes they were, if ever men deserved the name. Unlike the first reformers
+who had followed Wycliffe, they had no earthly object, emphatically none;
+and equally unlike them, perhaps, because they had no earthly object, they
+were all, as I have said, poor men--either students, like Tyndal, or
+artisans and labourers who worked for their own bread, and in tough contact
+with reality, had learnt better than the great and the educated the
+difference between truth and lies. Wycliffe had royal dukes and noblemen
+for his supporters--knights and divines among his disciples--a king and a
+House of Commons looking upon him, not without favour. The first
+Protestants of the sixteenth century had for their king the champion of
+Holy Church, who had broken a lance with Luther; and spiritual rulers over
+them alike powerful and imbecile, whose highest conception of Christian
+virtue was the destruction of those who disobeyed their mandates. The
+masses of the people were indifferent to a cause which promised them no
+material advantage; and the Commons of Parliament, while contending with
+the abuses of the spiritual authorities, were laboriously anxious to wash
+their hands of heterodoxy. "In the crime of heresy, thanked be God," said
+the bishops in 1529, "there hath no notable person fallen in our time;" no
+chief priest, chief ruler, or learned Pharisee--not one. "Truth it is that
+certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt merchants,
+vagabonds and lewd idle fellows of corrupt nature, have embraced the
+abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them
+have been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if
+judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be
+without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our
+duty from henceforth."[489] Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of
+their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of
+authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige of centuries; here too
+were the phantom legions of superstition and cowardice; and here were all
+the worthier influences so pre-eminently English, which lead wise men to
+shrink from change, and to cling to things established, so long as one
+stone of them remains upon another, This was the army of conservatism.
+Opposed to it were a little band of enthusiasts, armed only with truth and
+fearlessness; "weak things of the world," about to do battle in God's name;
+and it was to be seen whether God or the world was the stronger. They were
+armed, I say, with the truth. It was that alone which could have given them
+victory in so unequal a struggle. They had returned to the essential
+fountain of life; they re-asserted the principle which has lain at the root
+of all religions, whatever their name or outward form, which once burnt
+with divine lustre in that Catholicism which was now to pass away; the
+fundamental axiom of all real life, that the service which man owes to God
+is not the service of words or magic forms, or ceremonies or opinions; but
+the service of holiness, of purity, of obedience to the everlasting laws of
+duty.
+
+When we look through the writings of Latimer, the apostle of the English
+Reformation, when we read the depositions against the martyrs, and the
+lists of their crimes against the established faith, we find no opposite
+schemes of doctrine, no "plans of salvation;" no positive system of
+theology which it was held a duty to believe; these things were of later
+growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the living spirit in a
+perishable body. We find only an effort to express again the old
+exhortation of the Wise Man--"Will you hear the beginning and the end of
+the whole matter? Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the whole
+duty of man."
+
+Had it been possible for mankind to sustain themselves upon this single
+principle without disguising its simplicity, their history would have been
+painted in far other colours than those which have so long chequered its
+surface. This, however, has not been given to us; and perhaps it never will
+be given. As the soul is clothed in flesh, and only thus is able to perform
+its functions in this earth, where it is sent to live; as the thought must
+find a word before it can pass from mind to mind; so every great truth
+seeks some body, some outward form in which to exhibit its powers. It
+appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it to
+themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and
+these things which in their proper nature are but illustrations, stiffen
+into essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises in era after
+era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at
+once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the
+spirit, the form and the reality. For a while the lower tendencies are held
+in check; the meaning of the symbolism is remembered and fresh; it is a
+living language, pregnant and suggestive. Bye and bye, as the mind passes
+into other phases, the meaning is forgotten; the language becomes a dead
+language; and the living robe of life becomes a winding-sheet of
+corruption. The form is represented as everything, the spirit as nothing;
+obedience is dispensed with; sin and religion arrange a compromise; and
+outward observances, or technical inward emotions, are converted into
+jugglers' tricks, by which men are enabled to enjoy their pleasures and
+escape the penalties of wrong. Then such religion becomes no religion, but
+a falsehood; and honourable men turn away from it, and fall back in haste
+upon the naked elemental life.
+
+This, as I understand it, was the position of the early Protestants. They
+found the service of God buried in a system where obedience was dissipated
+into superstition; where sin was expiated by the vicarious virtues of other
+men; where, instead of leading a holy life, men were taught that their
+souls might be saved through masses said for them, at a money rate, by
+priests whose licentiousness disgraced the nation which endured it; a
+system in which, amidst all the trickery of the pardons, pilgrimages,
+indulgences,--double-faced as these inventions are--wearing one meaning in
+the apologies of theologians, and quite another to the multitude who live
+and suffer under their influence--one plain fact at least is visible. The
+people substantially learnt that all evils which could touch either their
+spirits or their bodies, might be escaped by means which resolved
+themselves, scarcely disguised, into the payment of moneys.
+
+The superstition had lingered long; the time had come when it was to pass
+away. Those in whom some craving lingered for a Christian life turned to
+the heart of the matter, to the book which told them who Christ was, and
+what he was; and finding there that holy example for which they longed,
+they flung aside in one noble burst of enthusiastic passion, the disguise
+which had concealed it from them. They believed in Christ, not in the
+bowing rood, or the pretended wood of the cross on which he suffered; and
+when that saintly figure had once been seen--the object of all love, the
+pattern of all imitation--thenceforward neither form nor ceremony should
+stand between them and their God.
+
+Under much confusion of words and thoughts, confusion pardonable in all
+men, and most of all in them, this seems to me to be transparently visible
+in the aim of these "Christian Brothers;" a thirst for some fresh and noble
+enunciation of the everlasting truth, the one essential thing for all men
+to know and believe. And therefore they were strong; and therefore they at
+last conquered. Yet if we think of it, no common daring was required in
+those who would stand out at such a time in defence of such a cause. The
+bishops might seize them on mere suspicion; and the evidence of the most
+abandoned villains sufficed for their conviction.[490] By the act of Henry
+V., every officer, from the lord chancellor to the parish constable, was
+sworn to seek them out and destroy them; and both bishops and officials had
+shown no reluctance to execute their duty. Hunted like wild beasts from
+hiding-place to hiding-place, decimated by the stake, with the certainty
+that however many years they might be reprieved, their own lives would
+close at last in the same fiery trial; beset by informers, imprisoned,
+racked, and scourged; worst of all, haunted by their own infirmities, the
+flesh shrinking before the dread of a death of agony--thus it was that they
+struggled on; earning for _themselves_ martyrdom--for _us_, the free
+England in which we live and breathe. Among the great, until Cromwell came
+to power, they had but one friend, and he but a doubtful one, who long
+believed the truest kindness was to kill them. Henry VIII. was always
+attracted towards the persons of the reformers. Their open bearing
+commanded his respect. Their worst crime in the bishops' eyes--the
+translating the Bible--was in his eyes not a crime, but a merit; he had
+himself long desired an authorised English version, and at length compelled
+the clergy to undertake it; while in the most notorious of the men
+themselves, in Tyndal and in Frith, he had more than once expressed an
+anxious interest.[491] But the convictions of his early years were long in
+yielding. His feeling, though genuine, extended no further than to pity, to
+a desire to recover estimable heretics out of errors which he would
+endeavour to pardon. They knew, and all the "brethren" knew, that if they
+persisted, they must look for the worst from the king and from every
+earthly power; they knew it, and they made their account with it. An
+informer deposed to the council, that he had asked one of the society "how
+the King's Grace did take the matter against the sacrament; which answered,
+the King's Highness was extreme against their opinions, and would punish
+them grievously; also that my Lords of Norfolk and Suffolk, my Lord Marquis
+of Exeter, with divers other great lords, were very extreme against them.
+Then he (the informer) asked him how he and his fellows would do seeing
+this, the which answered they had two thousand books out against the
+Blessed Sacrament, in the commons' hands; and if it were once in the
+commons' heads, they would have no further care."[492]
+
+Tyndal then being at work at Antwerp, and the society for the dispersion of
+his books thus preparing itself in England, the authorities were not slow
+in taking the alarm. The isolated discontent which had prevailed hitherto
+had been left to the ordinary tribunals; the present danger called for
+measures of more systematic coercion. This duty naturally devolved on
+Wolsey, and the office of Grand Inquisitor, which he now assumed, could not
+have fallen into more competent hands.
+
+Wolsey was not cruel. There is no instance, I believe, in which he of his
+special motion sent a victim to the stake;--it would be well if the same
+praise could be allowed to Cranmer. There was this difference between the
+cardinal and other bishops, that while they seemed to desire to punish,
+Wolsey was contented to silence; while they, in their conduct of trials,
+made escape as difficult as possible, Wolsey sought rather to make
+submission easy. He was too wise to suppose that he could cauterise heresy,
+while the causes of it, in the corruption of the clergy, remained
+unremoved; and the remedy to which he trusted, was the infusing new vigour
+into the constitution of the church.[493] Nevertheless, he was determined
+to repress, as far as outward measures could repress it, the spread of the
+contagion; and he set himself to accomplish his task with the full energy
+of his nature, backed by the whole power, spiritual and secular, of the
+kingdom. The country was covered with his secret police, arresting
+suspected persons and searching for books. In London the scrutiny was so
+strict that at one time there was a general flight and panic; suspected
+butchers, tailors, and carpenters, hiding themselves in the holds of
+vessels in the river, and escaping across the Channel.[494] Even there they
+were not safe. Heretics were outlawed by a common consent of the European
+governments. Special offenders were hunted through France by the English
+emissaries with the permission and countenance of the court,[495] and there
+was an attempt to arrest Tyndal at Brussels, from which, for that time, he
+happily escaped.[496]
+
+Simultaneously the English universities fell under examination, in
+consequence of the appearance of dangerous symptoms among the younger
+students. Dr. Barnes, returning from the continent, had used violent
+language in a pulpit at Cambridge; and Latimer, then a neophyte in heresy,
+had grown suspect, and had alarmed the heads of houses. Complaints against
+both of them were forwarded to Wolsey, and they were summoned to London to
+answer for themselves.
+
+Latimer, for some cause, found favour with the cardinal, and was dismissed,
+with a hope on the part of his judge that his accusers might prove as
+honest as he appeared to be, and even with a general licence to
+preach.[497] Barnes was less fortunate; he was far inferior to Latimer; a
+noisy, unwise man, without reticence or prudence. In addition to his
+offences in matters of doctrine, he had attacked Wolsey himself with
+somewhat vulgar personality; and it was thought well to single him out for
+a public, though not a very terrible admonition. His house had been
+searched for books, which he was suspected, and justly suspected, of having
+brought with him from abroad. These, however, through a timely warning of
+the danger, had been happily secreted,[498] or it might have gone harder
+with him. As it was, he was committed to the Fleet on the charge of having
+used heretical language. An abjuration was drawn up by Wolsey, which he
+signed; and while he remained in prison preparations were made for a
+ceremony, in which he was to bear a part, in St. Paul's church, by which
+the Catholic authorities hoped to produce some salutary effect on the
+disaffected spirits of London.
+
+Vast quantities of Tyndal's publications had been collected by the police.
+The bishops, also, had subscribed among themselves[499] to buy up the
+copies of the New Testament before they left Antwerp;--an unpromising
+method, like an attempt to extinguish fire by pouring oil upon it; they had
+been successful, however, in obtaining a large immediate harvest, and a
+pyramid of offending volumes was ready to be consumed in a solemn _auto da
+fe_.
+
+In the morning of Shrove Sunday, then, 1527, we are to picture to ourselves
+a procession moving along London streets from the Fleet prison to St.
+Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight
+marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with
+bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men
+marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds'
+weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the
+fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy,
+was remitted. One of these was Barnes; the other five were "Stillyard men,"
+undistinguishable by any other name, but detected members of the
+brotherhood.
+
+It was eight o'clock when they arrived at St. Paul's. The people had
+flocked in crowds before them. The public seats and benches were filled.
+All London had hurried to the spectacle. A platform was erected in the
+centre of the nave, on the top of which, enthroned in pomp of purple and
+gold and splendour, sate the great cardinal, supported on each side with
+eighteen bishops, mitred abbots, and priors--six-and-thirty in all; his
+chaplains and "spiritual doctors" sitting also where they could find place,
+"in gowns of damask and satin." Opposite the platform, over the north door
+of the cathedral, was a great crucifix--a famous image, in those days
+called the Rood of Northen; and at the foot of it, inside a rail, a fire
+was burning, with the sinful books, the Tracts and Testaments, ranged round
+it in baskets, waiting for the execution of sentence.
+
+Such was the scene into the midst of which the six prisoners entered. A
+second platform stood in a conspicuous place in front of the cardinal's
+throne, where they could be seen and heard by the crowd; and there upon
+their knees, with their fagots on their shoulders, they begged pardon of
+God and the Holy Catholic Church for their high crimes and offences. When
+the confession was finished Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon:
+and the sermon over, Barnes turned to the people, declaring that "he was
+more charitably handled than he deserved, his heresies were so heinous and
+detestable."
+
+There was no other religious service: mass had perhaps been said previous
+to the admission into the church of heretics lying under censure; and the
+knight marshal led the prisoners down from the stage to the fire underneath
+the crucifix. They were taken within the rails, and three times led round
+the blazing pile, casting in their fagots as they passed. The contents of
+the baskets were heaped upon the fagots, and the holocaust was complete.
+This time, an unbloody sacrifice was deemed sufficient. The church was
+satisfied with penance, and Fisher pronounced the prisoners absolved, and
+received back into communion.[500]
+
+So ended this strange exhibition, designed to work great results on the
+consciences of the spectators. It may be supposed, however, that men whom
+the tragedies of Smithfield failed to terrify, were not likely to be
+affected deeply by melodrame and blazing paper.
+
+A story follows of far deeper human interest, a story in which the
+persecution is mirrored with its true lights and shadows, unexaggerated by
+rhetoric; and which, in its minute simplicity, brings us face to face with
+that old world, where men like ourselves lived, and worked, and suffered,
+three centuries ago.
+
+Two years before the time at which we have now arrived, Wolsey, in
+pursuance of his scheme of converting the endowments of the religious
+houses to purposes of education, had obtained permission from the pope to
+suppress a number of the smaller monasteries. He had added largely to the
+means thus placed at his disposal from his own resources, and had founded
+the great college at Oxford, which is now called Christchurch.[501]
+Desiring his magnificent institution to be as perfect as art could make it,
+he had sought his professors in Rome, in the Italian universities, wherever
+genius or ability could be found; and he had introduced into the foundation
+several students from Cambridge, who had been reported to him as being of
+unusual promise. Frith, of whom we have heard, was one of these. Of the
+rest, John Clark, Sumner, and Taverner are the most noticeable. At the time
+at which they were invited to Oxford, they were tainted, or some of them
+were tainted, in the eyes of the Cambridge authorities, with suspicion of
+heterodoxy;[502] and it is creditable to Wolsey's liberality, that he set
+aside these unsubstantiated rumours, not allowing them to weigh against
+ability, industry, and character. The church authorities thought only of
+crushing what opposed them, especially of crushing talent, because talent
+was dangerous. Wolsey's noble anxiety was to court talent, and if possible
+to win it.
+
+The young Cambridge students, however, ill repaid his confidence (so, at
+least, it must have appeared to him), and introduced into Oxford the rising
+epidemic. Clark, as was at last discovered, was in the habit of reading St.
+Paul's Epistles to young men in his rooms; and a gradually increasing
+circle of undergraduates, of three or four years' standing,[503] from
+various colleges, formed themselves into a spiritual freemasonry, some of
+them passionately insisting on being admitted to the lectures, in spite of
+warnings from Clark himself, whose wiser foresight knew the risk which they
+were running, and shrank from allowing weak giddy spirits to thrust
+themselves into so fearful peril.[504]
+
+This little party had been in the habit of meeting for about six
+months,[505] when at Easter, 1527, Thomas Garret, a fellow of
+Magdalen,[506] who had gone out of residence, and was curate at All Hallows
+church, in London, re-appeared in Oxford. Garret was a secret member of the
+London Society, and had come down at Clark's instigation, to feel his way
+in the university. So excellent a beginning had already been made, that he
+had only to improve upon it. He sought out all such young men as were given
+to Greek, Hebrew, and the polite Latin;[507] and in this visit met with so
+much encouragement, that the Christmas following he returned again, this
+time bringing with him treasures of forbidden books, imported by "the
+Christian Brothers;" New Testaments, tracts and volumes of German divinity,
+which he sold privately among the initiated.
+
+He lay concealed, with his store, at "the house of one Radley,"[508] the
+position of which cannot now be identified; and there he remained for
+several weeks, unsuspected by the university authorities, till orders were
+sent by Wolsey to the Dean of Christchurch, for his arrest. Precise
+information was furnished at the same time respecting himself, his mission
+in Oxford, and his place of concealment.[509]
+
+The proctors were put upon the scent, and directed to take him; but one of
+them, Arthur Cole, of Magdalen, by name, not from any sympathy with
+Garret's objects, as the sequel proved, but probably from old acquaintance,
+for they were fellows at the same college, gave him information of his
+danger, and warned him to escape.
+
+His young friends, more alarmed for their companion than for themselves,
+held a meeting instantly to decide what should be done; and at this meeting
+was Anthony Dalaber, an undergraduate of Alban Hall, and one of Clark's
+pupils, who will now tell the story of what followed.
+
+"The Christmas before that time, I, Anthony Dalaber, the scholar of Alban
+Hall, who had books of Master Garret, had been in my country, at
+Dorsetshire, at Stalbridge, where I had a brother, parson of this parish,
+who was very desirous to have a curate out of Oxford, and willed me in any
+wise to get him one there, if I could. This just occasion offered, it was
+thought good among the brethren (for so we did not only call one another,
+but were indeed one to another), that Master Garret, changing his name,
+should be sent forth with my letters into Dorsetshire, to my brother, to
+serve him there for a time, until he might secretly convey himself from
+thence some whither over the sea. According hereunto I wrote my letters in
+all haste possible unto my brother, for Master Garret to be his curate; but
+not declaring what he was indeed, for my brother was a rank papist, and
+afterwards was the most mortal enemy that ever I had, for the Gospel's
+sake.
+
+"So on Wednesday (Feb. 18), in the morning before Shrovetide, Master Garret
+departed out of Oxford towards Dorsetshire, with my letter, for his new
+service."
+
+The most important person being thus, as was supposed, safe from immediate
+danger, Dalaber was at leisure to think a little about himself; and
+supposing, naturally, that the matter would not end there, and that some
+change of residence might be of advantage for his own security, he moved
+off from Alban Hall (as undergraduates it seems were then at liberty to do)
+to Gloucester College,[510] under pretence that he desired to study civil
+law, for which no facilities existed at the hall. This little matter was
+affected on the Thursday; and all Friday and Saturday morning he "was so
+much busied in setting his poor stuff in order, his bed, his books, and
+such things else as he had," that he had no leisure to go forth anywhere
+those two days, Friday and Saturday.
+
+"Having set up my things handsomely," he continues, "the same day, before
+noon, I determined to spend that whole afternoon, until evensong time, at
+Frideswide College,[511] at my book in mine own study; and so shut my
+chamber door unto me, and my study door also, and took into my head to read
+Francis Lambert upon the Gospel of St. Luke, which book only I had then
+within there. All my other books written on the Scriptures, of which I had
+great numbers, I had left in my chamber at Alban's Hall, where I had made a
+very secret place to keep them safe in, because it was so dangerous to have
+any such books. And so, as I was diligently reading in the same book of
+Lambert upon Luke, suddenly one knocked at my chamber door very hard, which
+made me astonished, and yet I sat still and would not speak; then he
+knocked again more hard, and yet I held my peace; and straightway he
+knocked again yet more fiercely; and then I thought this: peradventure it
+is somebody that hath need of me; and therefore I thought myself bound to
+do as I would be done unto; and so, laying my book aside, I came to the
+door and opened it, and there was Master Garret, as a man amazed, whom I
+thought to have been with my brother, and one with him."
+
+Garret had set out on his expedition into Dorsetshire, but had been
+frightened, and had stolen back into Oxford on the Friday, to his old
+hiding place, where, in the middle of the night, the proctors had taken
+him. He had been carried to Lincoln, and shut up in a room in the rector's
+house, where he had been left all day. In the afternoon the rector went to
+chapel, no one was stirring about the college, and he had taken advantage
+of the opportunity to slip the bolt of the door and escape. He had a friend
+at Gloucester College, "a monk who had bought books of him;" and Gloucester
+lying on the outskirts of the town, he had hurried down there as the
+readiest place of shelter. The monk was out; and as no time was to be lost,
+Garret asked the servant on the staircase to show him Dalaber's rooms.
+
+As soon as the door was opened, "he said he was undone, for he was taken."
+"Thus he spake unadvisedly in the presence of the young man, who at once
+slipped down the stairs," it was to be feared, on no good errand. "Then I
+said to him," Dalaber goes on, "alas, Master Garret, by this your
+uncircumspect coming here and speaking so before the young man, you have
+disclosed yourself and utterly undone me. I asked him why he was not in
+Dorsetshire. He said he had gone a day's journey and a half; but he was so
+fearful, his heart would none other but that he must needs return again
+unto Oxford. With deep sighs and plenty of tears, he prayed me to help to
+convey him away; and so he cast off his hood and gown wherein he came to
+me, and desired me to give him a coat with sleeves, if I had any; and he
+told me that he would go into Wales, and thence convey himself, if he
+might, into Germany. Then I put on him a sleeved coat of mine. He would
+also have had another manner of cap of me, but I had none but priestlike,
+such as his own was.
+
+"Then kneeled we both down together upon our knees, and lifting up our
+hearts and hands to God our heavenly Father, desired him, with plenty of
+tears, so to conduct and prosper him in his journey, that he might well
+escape the danger of all his enemies, to the glory of His Holy Name, if His
+good pleasure and will so were. And then we embraced and kissed the one the
+other, the tears so abundantly flowing out from both our eyes, that we all
+bewet both our faces, and scarcely for sorrow could we speak one to
+another. And so he departed from me, apparelled in my coat, being committed
+unto the tuition of our Almighty and merciful Father.
+
+"When he was gone down the stairs from my chamber, I straightways did shut
+my chamber door, and went into my study; and taking the New Testament in my
+hands, kneeled down on my knees, and with many a deep sigh and salt tear, I
+did, with much deliberation, read over the tenth chapter of St. Matthew's
+Gospel,[512] praying that God would endue his tender and lately-born little
+flock in Oxford with heavenly strength by his Holy Spirit; that quietly to
+their own salvation, with all godly patience, they might bear Christ's
+heavy cross, which I now saw was presently to be laid on their young and
+weak backs, unable to bear so huge a burden without the greater help of his
+Holy Spirit.
+
+"This done, I laid aside my book safe, folded up Master Garret's gown and
+hood, and so, having put on my short gown, and shut my doors, I went
+towards Frideswide (Christchurch), to speak with that worthy martyr of God,
+Master Clark. But of purpose I went by St. Mary's church, to go first unto
+Corpus Christi College, to speak with Diet and Udal, my faithful brethren
+and fellows in the Lord. By chance I met by the way a brother of ours, one
+Master Eden, fellow of Magdalen, who, as soon as he saw me, said, we were
+all undone, for Master Garret was returned, and was in prison. I said it
+was not so; he said it was. I heard, quoth he, our Proctor, Master Cole,
+say and declare the same this day. Then I told him what was done; and so
+made haste to Frideswide, to find Master Clark, for I thought that he and
+others would be in great sorrow.
+
+"Evensong was begun; the dean and the canons were there in their grey
+amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came thither. I stood in
+the choir door and heard Master Taverner play, and others of the chapel
+there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont to sing also; but now my
+singing and music were turned into sighing and musing. As I there stood, in
+cometh Dr. Cottisford,[513] the commissary, as fast as ever he could go,
+bareheaded, as pale as ashes (I knew his grief well enough); and to the
+dean he goeth into the choir, were he was sitting in his stall, and talked
+with him, very sorrowfully: what, I know not; but whereof I might and did
+truly guess. I went aside from the choir door to see and hear more. The
+commissary and dean came out of the choir, wonderfully troubled as it
+seemed. About the middle of the church, met them Dr. London,[514] puffing,
+blustering, and blowing like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey.
+They talked together awhile; but the commissary was much blamed by them,
+insomuch that he wept for sorrow.
+
+"The doctors departed, and sent abroad their servants and spies everywhere.
+Master Clark, about the middle of the compline,[515] came forth of the
+choir. I followed him to his chamber, and declared what had happened that
+afternoon of Master Garret's escape. Then he sent for one Master Sumner and
+Master Bets, fellows and canons there. In the meantime he gave me a very
+godly exhortation, praying God to give us all the wisdom of the serpent and
+the harmlessness of doves, for we should shortly have much need thereof.
+When Master Sumner and Master Bets came, he caused me to declare again the
+whole matter to them two. Then desiring them to tell our other brethren in
+that college, I went to Corpus Christi College, to comfort our brethren
+there, where I found in Diet's chamber, looking for me, Fitzjames, Diet,
+and Udal. They all knew the matter before by Master Eden, whom I had sent
+unto Fitzjames. So I tarried there and supped with them, where they had
+provided meat and drink for us before my coming; and when we had ended,
+Fitzjames would needs have me to lie that night with him in my old lodging
+at Alban's Hall. But small rest and little sleep took we both there that
+night."
+
+The next day, which was Sunday, Dalaber rose at five o'clock, and as soon
+as he could leave the Hall, hastened off to his rooms at Gloucester. The
+night had been wet and stormy, and his shoes and stockings were covered
+with mud. The college gates, when he reached them, were still closed, an
+unusual thing at that hour; and he walked up and down under the walls in
+the bleak grey morning, till the clock struck seven, "much disquieted, his
+head full of forecasting cares," but resolved, like a brave man, that come
+what would, he would accuse no one, and declare nothing but what he saw was
+already known. The gates were at last opened; he went to his rooms, and for
+some time his key would not turn in the door, the lock having been meddled
+with. At length he succeeded in entering, and found everything in
+confusion, his bed tossed and tumbled, his study door open, and his clothes
+strewed about the floor. A monk who occupied the opposite rooms, hearing
+him return, came to him and said that the commissary and the two proctors
+had been there looking for Garret. Bills and swords had been thrust through
+the bed-straw, and every corner of the room searched for him. Finding
+nothing, they had left orders that Dalaber, as soon as he returned, should
+appear before the prior of the students.
+
+"This so troubled me," Dalaber says, "that I forgot to make clean my hose
+and shoes, and to shift me into another gown; and all bedirted as I was, I
+went to the said prior's chamber." The prior asked him where he had slept
+that night. At Alban's Hall, he answered, with his old bedfellow,
+Fitzjames. The prior said he did not believe him, and asked if Garret had
+been at his rooms the day before. He replied that he had. Whither had he
+gone, then? the prior inquired; and where was he at that time? "I
+answered," says Dalaber, "that I knew not, unless he was gone to Woodstock;
+he told me that he would go there, because one of the keepers had promised
+him a piece of venison to make merry with at Shrovetide. This tale I
+thought meetest, though it were nothing so."[516]
+
+At this moment the university beadle entered with two of the commissary's
+servants, bringing a message to the prior that he should repair at once to
+Lincoln, taking Dalaber with him. "I was brought into the chapel," the
+latter continues, "and there I found Dr. Cottisford, commissary; Dr.
+Higdon, Dean of Cardinal's College; and Dr. London, Warden of New College;
+standing together at the altar. They called for chairs and sate down, and
+then [ordered] me to come to them; they asked me what my name was, how long
+I had been at the university, what I studied," with various other
+inquiries: the clerk of the university, meanwhile, bringing pens, ink, and
+paper, and arranging a table with a few loose boards upon tressels. A mass
+book, he says, was then placed before him, and he was commanded to lay his
+hand upon it, and swear that he would answer truly such questions as should
+be asked him. At first he refused; but afterwards, being persuaded, "partly
+by fair words, and partly by great threats," he promised to do as they
+would have him; but in his heart he "meant nothing so to do." "So I laid my
+hand on the book," he goes on, "and one of them gave me my oath, and
+commanded me to kiss the book. They made great courtesy between them who
+should examine me; at last, the rankest Pharisee of them all took upon him
+to do it.
+
+"Then he asked me again, by my oath, where Master Garret was, and whither I
+had conveyed him. I said I had not conveyed him, nor yet wist where he was,
+nor whither he was gone, except he were gone to Woodstock, as I had before
+said. Surely, they said, I brought him some whither this morning, for they
+might well perceive by my foul shoes and dirty hosen that I had travelled
+with him the most part of the night. I answered plainly, that I lay at
+Alban's Hall with Sir Fitzjames, and that I had good witness thereof. They
+asked me where I was at evensong. I told them at Frideswide, and that I
+saw, first, Master Commissary, and then Master Doctor London, come thither
+to Master Dean. Doctor London and the Dean threatened me that if I would
+not tell the truth I should surely be sent to the Tower of London, and
+there be racked, and put into Little-ease.[517]
+
+"At last when they could get nothing out of me whereby to hurt or accuse
+any man, or to know anything of that which they sought, they all three
+together brought me up a long stairs, into a great chamber, over Master
+Commissary's chamber, wherein stood a great pair of very high stocks. Then
+Master Commissary asked me for my purse and girdle, and took away my money
+and my knives; and then they put my legs into the stocks, and so locked me
+fast in them, in which I sate, my feet being almost as high as my head; and
+so they departed, locking fast the door, and leaving me alone.
+
+"When they were all gone, then came into my remembrance the worthy
+forewarning and godly declaration of that most constant martyr of God,
+Master John Clark, who, well nigh two years before that, when I did
+earnestly desire him to grant me to be his scholar, said unto me after this
+sort: 'Dalaber, you desire you wot not what, and that which you are, I
+fear, unable to take upon you; for though now my preaching be sweet and
+pleasant to you, because there is no persecution laid on you for it, yet
+the time will come, and that, peradventure, shortly, if ye continue to live
+godly therein, that God will lay on you the cross of persecution, to try
+you whether you can as pure gold abide the fire. You shall be called and
+judged a heretic; you shall be abhorred of the world; your own friends and
+kinsfolk will forsake you, and also hate you; you shall be cast into
+prison, and none shall dare to help you; you shall be accused before
+bishops, to your reproach and shame, to the great sorrow of all your
+friends and kinsfolk. Then will ye wish ye had never known this doctrine;
+then will ye curse Clark, and wish that ye had never known him because he
+hath brought you to all these troubles.'
+
+"At which words, I was so grieved that I fell down on my knees at his feet,
+and with tears and sighs besought him that, for the tender mercy of God, he
+would not refuse me; saying that I trusted, verily, that he which had begun
+this in me would not forsake me, but would give me grace to continue
+therein to the end. When he heard me say so, he came to me, took me in his
+arms and kissed me, the tears trickling from his eyes; and said unto me:
+'The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do; and from henceforth for ever,
+take me for your father, and I will take you for my son in Christ.'"
+
+In these meditations the long Sunday morning wore away. A little before
+noon the commissary came again to see if his prisoner was more amenable;
+finding him, however, still obstinate, he offered him some dinner--a
+promise which we will hope he fulfilled, for here Dalaber's own narrative
+abruptly forsakes us,[518] leaving uncompleted, at this point, the most
+vivid picture which remains to us of a fraction of English life in the
+reign of Henry VIII. If the curtain fell finally on the little group of
+students, this narrative alone would furnish us with rare insight into the
+circumstances under which the Protestants fought their way. The story,
+however, can be carried something further, and the strangest incident
+connected with it remains to be told.
+
+Dalaber breaks off on Sunday at noon. The same day, or early the following
+morning, he was submitted once more to examination: this time, for the
+discovery of his own offences, and to induce him to give up his
+confederates. With respect to the latter he proved "marvellous obstinate."
+"All that was gotten of him was with much difficulty;" nor would he confess
+to any names as connected with heresy or heretics except that of Clark,
+which was already known. About himself he was more open. He wrote his "book
+of heresy," that is, his confession of faith, "with his own hand"--his
+evening's occupation, perhaps, in the stocks in the rector of Lincoln's
+house; and the next day he was transferred to prison.[519]
+
+This offender being thus disposed of, and strict secrecy being observed to
+prevent the spread of alarm, a rapid search was set on foot for books in
+all suspected quarters. The fear of the authorities was that "the infect
+persons would flee," and "convey" their poison "away with them."[520] The
+officials, once on the scent of heresy, were skilful in running down the
+game. No time was lost, and by Monday evening many of "the brethren" had
+been arrested, their rooms examined, and their forbidden treasures
+discovered and rifled. Dalaber's store was found "hid with marvellous
+secresy;" and in one student's desk a duplicate of Garret's list--the
+titles of the volumes with which the first "Religious Tract Society" set
+themselves to convert England.
+
+Information of all this was conveyed in haste by Dr. London to the Bishop
+of Lincoln, as the ordinary of the university; and the warden told his
+story with much self-congratulation. On one point, however, the news which
+he had to communicate was less satisfactory. Garret himself was
+gone--utterly gone. Dalaber was obstinate, and no clue to the track of the
+fugitive could be discovered. The police were at fault; neither bribes nor
+threats could elicit anything; and in these desperate circumstances, as he
+told the bishop, the three heads of houses conceived that they might strain
+a point of propriety for so good a purpose as to prevent the escape of a
+heretic. Accordingly, after a full report of the points of their success,
+Doctor London went on to relate the following remarkable proceeding:
+
+"After Master Garret escaped, _the commissary being in extreme pensiveness,
+knew no other remedy but this extraordinary, and caused a figure to be made
+by one expert in astronomy--and his judjment doth continually persist upon
+this, that he fled in a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of
+London, and will shortly to the sea side_. He was curate unto the parson of
+Honey Lane.[521] It is likely he is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as
+soon as I knew the judgment of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and
+my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises;
+that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of
+London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works,
+which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul,
+opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of the same."[522]
+
+We might much desire to know what the bishop's sensations were in reading
+this letter--to know whether it occurred to him that in this naive
+acknowledgment, the Oxford heresy hunters were themselves confessing to an
+act of heresy; and that by the law of the church, which they were so eager
+to administer, they were liable to the same death which they were so
+zealous to secure for the poor vendors of Testaments. So indeed they really
+were. Consulting the stars had been ruled from immemorial time to be
+dealing with the devil; the penalty of it was the same as for witchcraft;
+yet here was a reverend warden of a college considering it his duty to
+write eagerly of a discovery obtained by these forbidden means, to his own
+diocesan, begging him to communicate with the Cardinal of York and the
+Bishop of London, that three of the highest church authorities in England
+might become _participes criminis_, by acting on this diabolical
+information.
+
+Meanwhile, the commissary, not wholly relying on the astrologer, but
+resolving prudently to make use of the more earthly resources which were at
+his disposal, had sent information of Garret's escape to the corporations
+of Dover, Rye, Winchester, Southampton, and Bristol, with descriptions of
+the person of the fugitive; and this step was taken with so much
+expedition, that before the end of the week no vessel was allowed to leave
+either of those harbours without being strictly searched.
+
+The natural method proved more effectual than the supernatural, though
+again with the assistance of a singular accident. Garret had not gone to
+London; unfortunately for himself, he had not gone to Wales as he had
+intended. He left Oxford, as we saw, the evening of Saturday, February
+21st. That night he reached a village called Corkthrop,[523] where he lay
+concealed till Wednesday; and then, not in the astrologer's orange-tawny
+dress, but in "a courtier's coat and buttoned cap," which he had by some
+means contrived to procure, he set out again on his forlorn journey, making
+for the nearest sea-port, Bristol, where the police were looking out to
+receive him. His choice of Bristol was peculiarly unlucky. The "chapman" of
+the town was the step-father of Cole, the Oxford proctor: to this person,
+whose name was Master Wilkyns, the proctor had written a special letter, in
+addition to the commissary's circular; and the family connection acting as
+a spur to his natural activity, a coast guard had been set before Garret's
+arrival, to watch for him down the Avon banks, and along the Channel shore
+for fifteen miles. All the Friday night "the mayor, with the aldermen, and
+twenty of the council, had kept privy watch," and searched suspicious
+houses at Master Wilkyns's instance; the whole population were on the
+alert, and when the next afternoon, a week after his escape, the poor
+heretic, footsore and weary, dragged himself into the town, he found that
+he had walked into the lion's mouth.[524] He quickly learnt this danger to
+which he was exposed, and hurried off again with the best speed which he
+could command; but it was too late. The chapman, alert and indefatigable,
+had heard that a stranger had been seen in the street; the police were set
+upon his track, and he was taken at Bedminster, a suburb on the opposite
+bank of the Avon, and hurried before a magistrate, where he at once
+acknowledged his identity.
+
+With such happy success were the good chapman's efforts rewarded. Yet in
+this world there is no light without shadow; no pleasure without its alloy.
+In imagination, Master Wilkyns had thought of himself conducting the
+prisoner in triumph into the streets of Oxford, the hero of the hour. The
+sour formality of the law condemned him to ill-merited disappointment.
+Garret had been taken beyond the liberties of the city; it was necessary,
+therefore, to commit him to the county gaol, and he was sent to Ilchester.
+"Master Wilkyns offered himself to be bound to the said justice in three
+hundred pounds to discharge him of the said Garret, and to see him surely
+to Master Proctor's of Oxford; yet could he not have him, for the justice
+said that the order of the law would not so serve."[525] The fortunate
+captor had therefore to content himself with the consciousness of his
+exploit, and the favourable report of his conduct which was sent to the
+bishops; and Garret went first to Ilchester, and thence was taken by
+special writ, and surrendered to Wolsey.
+
+Thus unkind had fortune shown herself to the chief criminal, guilty of the
+unpardonable offence of selling Testaments at Oxford, and therefore hunted
+down as a mad dog, and a common enemy of mankind. He escaped for the
+present the heaviest consequences, for Wolsey persuaded him to abjure. A
+few years later we shall again meet him, when he had recovered his better
+nature, and would not abjure, and died as a brave man should die. In the
+meantime we return to the university, where the authorities were busy
+trampling out the remains of the conflagration.
+
+Two days after his letter respecting the astrologer, the Warden of New
+College wrote again to the Diocesan, with an account of his further
+proceedings. He was an efficient inquisitor, and the secrets of the poor
+undergraduates had been unravelled to the last thread. Some of "the
+brethren" had confessed; all were in prison; and the doctor desired
+instructions as to what should be done with them. It must be said for Dr.
+London, that he was anxious that they should be treated leniently. Dalaber
+described him as a roaring lion, and he was a bad man, and came at last to
+a bad end. But it is pleasant to find that even he, a mere blustering
+arrogant official, was not wholly without redeeming points of character;
+and as little good will be said for him hereafter, the following passage in
+his second letter may be placed to the credit side of his account. The tone
+in which he wrote was at least humane, and must pass for more than an
+expression of natural kindness, when it is remembered that he was
+addressing a person with whom tenderness for heresy was a crime.
+
+"These youths," he said, "have not been long conversant with Master Garret,
+nor have greatly perused his mischievous books; and long before Master
+Garret was taken, divers of them were weary of these works, and delivered
+them to Dalaber. I am marvellous sorry for the young men. If they be openly
+called upon, although they appear not greatly infect, yet they shall never
+avoid slander, because my Lord's Grace did send for Master Garret to be
+taken. I suppose his Grace will know of your good lordship everything.
+Nothing shall be hid, I assure your good lordship, an every one of them
+were my brother; and I do only make this moan for these youths, for surely
+they be of the most towardly young men in Oxford; and as far as I do yet
+perceive, not greatly infect, but much to blame for reading any part of
+these works."[526]
+
+Doctor London's intercession, if timid, was generous; he obviously wished
+to suggest that the matter should be hushed up, and that the offending
+parties should be dismissed with a reprimand. If the decision had rested
+with Wolsey, it is likely that this view would have been readily acted
+upon. But the Bishop of Lincoln was a person in whom the spirit of humanity
+had been long exorcised by the spirit of an ecclesiastic. He was staggering
+along the last years of a life against which his own register[527] bears
+dreadful witness, and he would not burden his conscience with mercy to
+heretics. He would not mar the completeness of his barbarous career. He
+singled out three of the prisoners--Garret, Clark, and Ferrars[528]--and
+especially entreated that they should be punished. "They be three perilous
+men," he wrote to Wolsey, "and have been the occasion of the corruption of
+youth. They have done much mischief, and for the love of God let them be
+handled thereafter."[529]
+
+Wolsey had Garret in his own keeping, and declined to surrender him.
+Ferrars had been taken at the Black Friars, in London,[530] and making his
+submission, was respited and escaped with abjuration. But Clark was at
+Oxford, in the bishop's power, and the wicked old man was allowed to work
+his will upon him. A bill of heresy was drawn, which the prisoner was
+required to sign. He refused, and must have been sent to the stake, had he
+not escaped by dying prematurely of the treatment which he had received in
+prison.[531] His last words only are recorded. He was refused the
+communion, not perhaps as a special act of cruelty, but because the laws of
+the church would not allow the holy thing to be profaned by the touch of a
+heretic. When he was told that it would not be suffered, he said "_crede et
+manducasti_"--"faith is the communion;" and so passed away; a very noble
+person, so far as the surviving features of his character will let us
+judge; one who, if his manhood had fulfilled the promise of his youth,
+would have taken no common part in the Reformation.
+
+The remaining brethren were then dispersed. Some were sent home to their
+friends--others, Anthony Dalaber among them, were placed on their trial,
+and being terrified at their position, recanted, and were sentenced to do
+penance. Ferrars was brought to Oxford for the occasion, and we discern
+indistinctly (for the mere fact is all which survives) a great fire at
+Carfax; a crowd of spectators, and a procession of students marching up
+High Street with fagots on their shoulders, the solemn beadles leading them
+with gowns and maces. The ceremony was repeated to which Dr. Barnes had
+been submitted at St. Paul's. They were taken three times round the fire,
+throwing in each first their fagot, and then some one of the offending
+books, in token that they repented and renounced their errors.
+
+Thus was Oxford purged of heresy. The state of innocence which Dr. London
+pathetically lamented[532] was restored, and the heads of houses had peace
+till their rest was broken by a ruder storm.
+
+In this single specimen we may see a complete image of Wolsey's
+persecution, as with varying details it was carried out in every town and
+village from the Tweed to the Land's End. I dwell on the stories of
+individual suffering, not to colour the narrative, or to re-awaken feelings
+of bitterness which may well rest now and sleep for ever; but because,
+through the years in which it was struggling for recognition, the history
+of Protestantism is the history of its martyrs. No rival theology, as I
+have said, had as yet shaped itself into formulas. We have not to trace any
+slow growing elaboration of opinion. Protestantism, before it became an
+establishment, was a refusal to live any longer in a lie. It was a falling
+back upon the undefined untheoretic rules of truth and piety which lay upon
+the surface of the Bible, and a determination rather to die than to mock
+with unreality any longer the Almighty Maker of the world. We do not look
+in the dawning manifestations of such a spirit for subtleties of intellect.
+Intellect, as it ever does, followed in the wake of the higher virtues of
+manly honesty and truthfulness. And the evidences which were to effect the
+world's conversion were so cunningly arranged syllogistic demonstrations,
+but once more those loftier evidences which lay in the calm endurance by
+heroic men of the extremities of suffering, and which touched--not the mind
+with conviction, but the heart with admiring reverence.
+
+In the concluding years of his administration Wolsey was embarrassed with
+the divorce. Difficulties were gathering round him, from the failure of his
+hopes abroad and the wreck of his popularity at home; and the activity of
+the persecution was something relaxed, as the guiding mind of the great
+minister ceased to have leisure to attend to it. The bishops, however,
+continued, each in his own diocese, to act with such vigour as they
+possessed. Their courts were unceasingly occupied with vexatious suits,
+commenced without reason, and conducted without justice. They summoned
+arbitrarily as suspected offenders whoever had the misfortune to have
+provoked their dislike; either compelling them to criminate themselves by
+questions on the intricacies of theology,[533] or allowing sentence to be
+passed against them on the evidence of abandoned persons, who would not
+have been admissible as witnesses before the secular tribunals.[534]
+
+It might have been thought that the clear perception which was shown by the
+House of Commons of the injustice with which the trials for heresy were
+conducted, the disregard, shameless and flagrant, of the provisions of the
+statutes under which the bishops were enabled to proceed, might have led
+them to reconsider the equity of persecution in itself; or, at least, to
+remove from the office of judges persons who had shown themselves so
+signally unfit to exercise that office. It would have been indecent,
+however, if not impossible, to transfer to a civil tribunal the cognisance
+of opinion; and, on the other hand, there was as yet among the upper
+classes of the laity no kind of disposition to be lenient towards those who
+were really unorthodox. The desire so far was only to check the reckless
+and random accusations of persons whose offence was to have criticised, not
+the doctrine but the moral conduct, of the church authorities. The
+Protestants, although from the date of the meeting of the parliament and
+Wolsey's fall their ultimate triumph was certain, gained nothing in its
+immediate consequences. They suffered rather from the eagerness of the
+political reformers to clear themselves from complicity with heterodoxy;
+and the bishops were even taunted with the spiritual dissensions of the
+realm as an evidence of their indolence and misconduct.[535] Language of
+this kind boded ill for the "Christian Brethren;" and the choice of
+Wolsey's successor for the office of chancellor soon confirmed their
+apprehensions; Wolsey had chastised them with whips; Sir Thomas More would
+chastise them with scorpions; and the philosopher of the _Utopia_, the
+friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty, whose genius was
+cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to the world
+that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the
+bigot, of the fanatic, but may co-exist with the fairest graces of the
+human character. The lives of remarkable men usually illustrate some
+emphatic truth. Sir Thomas More may be said to have lived to illustrate the
+necessary tendencies of Romanism in an honest mind convinced of its truth;
+to show that the test of sincerity in a man who professes to regard
+orthodoxy as an essential of salvation, is not the readiness to endure
+persecution, but the courage which will venture to inflict it.
+
+The seals were delivered to the new chancellor in November, 1529. By his
+oath on entering office he was bound to exert himself to the utmost for the
+suppression of heretics:[536] he was bound, however, equally to obey the
+conditions under which the law allowed them to be suppressed. Unfortunately
+for his reputation as a judge, he permitted the hatred of "that kind of
+men," which he did not conceal that he felt,[537] to obscure his conscience
+on this important feature of his duty, and tempt him to imitate the worst
+iniquities of the bishops. I do not intend in this place to relate the
+stories of his cruelties in his house at Chelsea,[538] which he himself
+partially denied, and which at least we may hope were exaggerated. Being
+obliged to confine myself to specific instances, I choose rather those on
+which the evidence is not open to question; and which prove against More,
+not the zealous execution of a cruel law, for which we may not fairly hold
+him responsible, but a disregard, in the highest degree censurable, of his
+obligations as a judge.
+
+The acts under which heretics were liable to punishment, were the 15th of
+the 2nd of Henry IV., and the 1st of the 2nd of Henry V.
+
+By the act of Henry IV., the bishops were bound to bring offenders to trial
+in open court, within three months of their arrest, if there were no lawful
+impediment. If conviction followed, they might imprison at their
+discretion. Except under these conditions, they were not at liberty to
+imprison.
+
+By the act of Henry V., a heretic, if he was first indicted before a
+secular judge, was to be delivered within ten days (or if possible, a
+shorter period) to the bishop, "to be acquit or convict" by a jury in the
+spiritual court, and to be dealt with accordingly.[539]
+
+The secular judge might detain a heretic for ten days before delivering him
+to the bishop. The bishop might detain him for three months before his
+trial. Neither the secular judge nor the bishop had power to inflict
+indefinite imprisonment at will while the trial was delayed; nor if on the
+trial the bishop failed in securing a conviction, was he at liberty to
+detain the accused person any longer on the same charge, because the result
+was not satisfactory to himself. These provisions were not preposterously
+lenient. Sir Thomas More should have found no difficulty in observing them
+himself, and in securing the observance of them by the bishops, at least in
+cases where he was himself responsible for the first committal. It is to be
+feared that he forgot that he was a judge in his eagerness to be a
+partisan, and permitted no punctilious legal scruples to interfere with the
+more important object of ensuring punishment to heretics.
+
+The first case which I shall mention is one in which the Bishop of London
+was principally guilty; not, however, without More's countenance, and, if
+Foxe is to be believed, his efficient support.
+
+In December, 1529, the month succeeding his appointment as chancellor,
+More, at the instance of the Bishop of London,[540] arrested a citizen of
+London, Thomas Philips by name, on a charge of heresy.
+
+The prisoner was surrendered in due form to his diocesan, and was brought
+to trial on the 4th of February; a series of articles being alleged against
+him by Foxford, the bishop's vicar-general. The articles were of the usual
+kind. The prisoner was accused of having used unorthodox expressions on
+transubstantiation, on purgatory, pilgrimages, and confession. It does not
+appear whether any witnesses were produced. The vicar-general brought his
+accusations on the ground of general rumour, and failed to maintain them.
+Whether there were witnesses or not, neither the particular offences, nor
+even the fact of the general rumour, could be proved to the satisfaction of
+the jury. Philips himself encountered each separate charge with a specific
+denial, declaring that he neither was, nor ever had been, other than
+orthodox; and the result of the trial was, that no conviction could be
+obtained. The prisoner "was found so clear from all manner of infamous
+slanders and suspicions, that all the people before the said bishop,
+shouting in judgment as with one voice, openly witnessed his good name and
+fame, to the great reproof and shame of the said bishop, if he had not been
+ashamed to be ashamed."[541] The case had broken down; the proceedings were
+over, and by law the accused person was free. But the law, except when it
+was on their own side, was of little importance to the church authorities.
+As they had failed to prove Philips guilty of heresy, they called upon him
+to confess his guilt by abjuring it; "as if," he says, "there were no
+difference between a nocent and an innocent, between a guilty and a not
+guilty."[542]
+
+He refused resolutely, and was remanded to prison, in open violation of the
+law. The bishop, in conjunction with Sir Thomas More,[543] sent for him
+from time to time, submitting him to private examinations, which again were
+illegal; and urged the required confession, in order, as Philips says, "to
+save the bishop's credit."
+
+The further they advanced, the more difficult it was to recede; and the
+bishop at length, irritated at his failure, concluded the process with an
+arbitrary sentence of excommunication. From this sentence, whether just or
+unjust, there was then no appeal, except to the pope. The wretched man, in
+virtue of it, was no longer under the protection of the law, and was
+committed to the Tower, where he languished for three years, protesting,
+but protesting fruitlessly, against the tyranny which had crushed him, and
+clamouring for justice in the deaf ears of pedants who knew not what
+justice meant.
+
+If this had occurred at the beginning of the century, the prisoner would
+have been left to die, as countless multitudes had already died, unheard,
+uncared for, unthought of; the victim not of deliberate cruelty, but of
+that frightfullest portent, folly armed with power. Happily the years of
+his imprisonment had been years of swift revolution. The House of Commons
+had become a tribunal where oppression would not any longer cry wholly
+unheard; Philips appealed to it for protection, and recovered his
+liberty.[544]
+
+The weight of guilt in this instance presses essentially on Stokesley; yet
+a portion of the blame must be borne also by the chancellor, who first
+placed Philips in Stokesley's hands; who took part in the illegal private
+examinations, and who could not have been ignorant of the prisoner's
+ultimate fate. If, however, it be thought unjust to charge a good man's
+memory with an offence in which his part was only secondary, the following
+iniquity was wholly and exclusively his own. I relate the story without
+comment in the address of the injured person to More's successor.[545]
+
+"_To the Right Hon. the Lord Chancellor of England. (Sir T. Audeley) and
+other of the King's Council._
+
+"In most humble wise showeth unto your goodness your poor bedeman John
+Field, how that the next morrow upon twelfth day,[546] in the twenty-first
+year of our sovereign lord the King's Highness, Sir Thomas More, Knight,
+then being Lord Chancellor of England, did send certain of his servants,
+and caused your said bedeman, with certain others, to be brought to his
+place at Chelsea, and there kept him (after what manner and fashion it were
+now long to tell), by the space of eighteen days;[547] and then set him at
+liberty, binding him to appear before him again the eighth day following in
+the Star Chamber, which was Candlemas eve; at which day your said bedeman
+appeared, and was then sent to the Fleet, where he continued until Palm
+Sunday two years after [in violation of both the statutes], kept so close
+the first quarter that his keeper only might visit him; and always after
+closed up with those that were handled most straitly; often searched,
+sometimes even at midnight; besides snares and traps laid to take him in.
+Betwixt Michaelmas and Allhalloween tide next after his coming to prison
+there was taken from your bedeman a Greek vocabulary, price five shillings;
+Saint Cyprian's works, with a book of the same Sir Thomas More's making,
+named the _Supplication of Souls_. For what cause it was done he committeth
+to the judgment of God, that seeth the souls of all persons. The said Palm
+Sunday, which was also our Lady's day, towards night there came two
+officers of the Fleet, named George Porter and John Butler, and took your
+bedeman into a ward alone, and there, after long searching, found his purse
+hanging at his girdle; which they took, and shook out the money to the sum
+of ten shillings, which was sent him to buy such necessaries as he lacked,
+and delivered him again his purse, well and truly keeping the money to
+themselves, as they said for their fees; and forthwith carried him from the
+Fleet (where he lost such poor bedding as he then had, and could never
+since get it), and delivered him to the Marshalsea, under our gracious
+sovereign's commandment and Sir Thomas More's. When the Sunday before the
+Rogation week following, your bedeman fell sick; and the Whitsun Monday was
+carried out on four men's backs, and delivered to his friends to be
+recovered if it so pleased God. At which time the keeper took for your
+bedeman's fees other ten shillings, when four shillings should have
+sufficed if he had been delivered in good health.
+
+"Within three weeks it pleased God to set your bedeman on his feet, so that
+he might walk abroad. Whereof when Sir Thomas More heard (who went out of
+his chancellorship about the time your bedeman was carried out of prison),
+although he had neither word nor deed which he could ever truly lay to your
+bedeman's charge, yet made he such means by the Bishops of Winchester and
+London, as your bedeman heard say, to the Hon. Lord Thomas Duke of Norfolk,
+that he gave new commandment to the keeper of the Marshalsea to attach
+again your said bedeman; which thing was speedily done the Sunday three
+weeks after his deliverance. And so he continued in prison again until
+Saint Lawrence tide following; at which time money was given to the keeper,
+and some things he took which were not given, and then was your bedeman
+re-delivered through the king's goodness, under sureties bound in a certain
+sum, that he should appear the first day of the next term following, and
+then day by day until his dismission. And so hath your bedeman been at
+liberty now twelve months waiting daily from term to term, and nothing laid
+to his charge as before.
+
+"Wherefore, the premises tenderly considered, and also your said bedeman's
+great poverty, he most humbly beseecheth your goodness that he may now be
+clearly discharged; and if books, money, or other things seem to be taken
+or kept from him otherwise than justice would, eftsoons he beseecheth you
+that ye will command it to be restored.
+
+"As for his long imprisonment, with other griefs thereto appertaining, he
+looketh not to have recompense of man; but committeth his whole cause to
+God, to whom your bedeman shall daily pray, according as he is bound, that
+ye may so order and govern the realm that it may be to the honour of God
+and your heavenly and everlasting reward."
+
+I do not find the result of this petition, but as it appeared that Henry
+had interested himself in the story, it is likely to have been successful.
+We can form but an imperfect judgment on the merits of the case, for we
+have only the sufferer's _ex parte_ complaint, and More might probably have
+been able to make some counter-statement. But the illegal imprisonment
+cannot be explained away, and cannot be palliated; and when a judge permits
+himself to commit an act of arbitrary tyranny, we argue from the known to
+the unknown, and refuse reasonably to give him credit for equity where he
+was so little careful of law.
+
+Yet a few years of misery in a prison was but an insignificant misfortune
+when compared with the fate under which so many other poor men were at this
+time overwhelmed. Under Wolsey's chancellorship the stake had been
+comparatively idle; he possessed a remarkable power of making recantation
+easy; and there is, I believe, no instance in which an accused heretic was
+brought under his immediate cognisance, where he failed to arrange some
+terms by which submission was made possible. With Wolsey heresy was an
+error--with More it was a crime. Soon after the seals changed hands the
+Smithfield fires recommenced; and, the chancellor acting in concert with
+them, the bishops resolved to obliterate, in these edifying spectacles, the
+recollection of their general infirmities. The crime of the offenders
+varied--sometimes it was a denial of the corporal presence, more often it
+was a reflection too loud to be endured on the character and habits of the
+clergy; but whatever it was, the alternative lay only between abjuration
+humiliating as ingenuity could make it, or a dreadful death. The hearts of
+many failed them in the trial, and of all the confessors those perhaps do
+not deserve the least compassion whose weakness betrayed them, who sank and
+died broken-hearted. Of these silent sufferers history knows nothing. A
+few, unable to endure the misery of having, as they supposed, denied their
+Saviour, returned to the danger from which they had fled, and washed out
+their fall in martyrdom. Latimer has told us the story of his friend
+Bilney--little Bilney, or Saint Bilney,[548] as he calls him, his companion
+at Cambridge, to whom he owed his own conversion. Bilney, after escaping
+through Wolsey's hands in 1527, was again cited in 1529 before the Bishop
+of London. Three times he refused to recant. He was offered a fourth and
+last chance. The temptation was too strong, and he fell. For two years he
+was hopelessly miserable; at length his braver nature prevailed. There was
+no pardon for a relapsed heretic, and if he was again in the bishop's hands
+he knew well the fate which awaited him.
+
+He told his friends, in language touchingly significant, that "he would go
+up to Jerusalem;" and began to preach in the fields. The journey which he
+had undertaken was not to be a long one. He was heard to say In a sermon,
+that of his personal knowledge certain things which had been offered in
+pilgrimage had been given to abandoned women. The priests, he affirmed,
+"take away the offerings, and hang them about their women's necks; and
+after that they take them off the women, if they please them not, and hang
+them again upon the images."[549] This was Bilney's heresy, or formed the
+ground of his arrest; he was orthodox on the mass, and also on the power of
+the keys; but the secrets of the sacred order were not to be betrayed with
+impunity. He was seized, and hurried before the Bishop of Norwich; and
+being found heterodox on the papacy and the mediation of the saints by the
+Bishop of Norwich he was sent to the stake.
+
+Another instance of recovered courage, and of martyrdom consequent upon it,
+is that of James Bainham, a barrister of the Middle Temple. This story is
+noticeable from a very curious circumstance connected with it.
+
+Bainham had challenged suspicion by marrying the widow of Simon Fish, the
+author of the famous _Beggars' Petition_, who had died in 1528; and, soon
+after his marriage, was challenged to give an account of his faith. He was
+charged with denying transubstantiation, with questioning the value of the
+confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative
+Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief.
+He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in
+God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,"[550]--a conception of
+Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to
+whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against him commenced with
+a demand that he should give up his books, and also the names of other
+barristers with whom he was suspected to have held intercourse. He refused;
+and in consequence his wife was imprisoned, and he himself was racked in
+the Tower by order of Sir Thomas More. Enfeebled by suffering, he was then
+brought before Stokesley, and terrified by the cold merciless eyes of his
+judge, he gave way, not about his friends, but about himself: he abjured,
+and was dismissed heartbroken. This was on the seventeenth of February. He
+was only able to endure his wretchedness for a month. At the end of it, he
+appeared at a secret meeting of the Christian Brothers, in "a warehouse in
+Bow Lane," where he asked forgiveness of God and all the world for what he
+had done; and then went out to take again upon his shoulders the heavy
+burden of the cross.
+
+The following Sunday, at the church of St. Augustine, he rose in his seat
+with the fatal English Testament in his hand, and "declared openly, before
+all the people, with weeping tears, that he had denied God," praying them
+all to forgive him, and beware of his weakness; "for if I should not return
+to the truth," he said, "this Word of God would damn me, body and soul, at
+the day of judgment." And then he prayed "everybody rather to die than to
+do as he did, for he would not feel such a hell again as he did feel for
+all the world's good."[551]
+
+Of course but one event was to be looked for; he knew it, and himself wrote
+to the bishop, telling him what he had done. No mercy was possible: he
+looked for none, and he found none.
+
+Yet perhaps he found what the wise authorities thought to be some act of
+mercy. They could not grant him pardon in this world upon any terms; but
+they would not kill him till they had made an effort for his soul. He was
+taken to the Bishop of London's coal cellar at Fulham, the favourite
+episcopal penance chamber, where he was ironed and put in the stocks; and
+there was left for many days, in the chill March weather, to bethink
+himself. This failing to work conviction, he was carried to Sir Thomas
+More's house at Chelsea, where for two nights he was chained to a post and
+whipped; thence, again, he was taken back to Fulham for another week of
+torture; and finally to the Tower, for a further fortnight, again with
+ineffectual whippings.
+
+The demands of charity were thus satisfied. The pious bishop and the
+learned chancellor had exhausted their means of conversion; they had
+discharged their consciences; and the law was allowed to take its course.
+The prisoner was brought to trial on the 20th of April, as a relapsed
+heretic. Sentence followed; and on the last of the month the drama closed
+in the usual manner at Smithfield. Before the fire was lighted Bainham made
+a farewell address to the people, laying his death expressly to More, whom
+he called his accuser and his judge.[552]
+
+It is unfortunately impossible to learn the feelings with which these
+dreadful scenes were witnessed by the people. There are stories which show
+that, in some instances, familiarity had produced the usual effect; that
+the martyrdom of saints was at times of no more moment to an English crowd
+than the execution of ordinary felons--that it was a mere spectacle to the
+idle, the hardened, and the curious. On the other hand, it is certain that
+the behaviour of the sufferers was the argument which at last converted the
+nation; and an effect which in the end was so powerful with the multitude,
+must have been visible long before in the braver and better natures. The
+increasing number of prosecutions in London shows, also, that the leaven
+was spreading. There were five executions in Smithfield between 1529 and
+1533, besides those in the provinces. The prisons were crowded with
+offenders who had abjured and were undergoing sentence; and the list of
+those who were "troubled" in various ways is so extensive, as to leave no
+doubt of the sympathy which, in London at least, must have been felt by
+many, very many, of the spectators of the martyrs' deaths. We are left, in
+this important point, mainly to conjecture; and if we were better furnished
+with evidence, the language of ordinary narrative would fail to convey any
+real notion of perplexed and various emotions. We have glimpses, however,
+into the inner world of men, here and there of strange interest; and we
+must regret that they are so few.
+
+A poor boy at Cambridge, John Randall, of Christ's College, a relation of
+Foxe the martyrologist, destroyed himself in these years in religious
+desperation; he was found in his study hanging by his girdle, before an
+open Bible, with his dead arm and finger stretched pitifully towards a
+passage on predestination.[553]
+
+A story even more remarkable is connected with Bainham's execution. Among
+the lay officials present at the stake, was "one Pavier," town clerk of
+London. This Pavier was a Catholic fanatic, and as the flames were about to
+be kindled he burst out into violent and abusive language. The fire blazed
+up, and the dying sufferer, as the red flickering tongues licked the flesh
+from off his bones, turned to him and said, "May God forgive thee, and shew
+more mercy than thou, angry reviler, shewest to me." The scene was soon
+over; the town clerk went home. A week after, one morning when his wife had
+gone to mass, he sent all his servants out of his house on one pretext or
+another, a single girl only being left, and he withdrew to a garret at the
+top of the house, which he used as an oratory. A large crucifix was on the
+wall, and the girl having some question to ask, went to the room, and found
+him standing before it "bitterly weeping." He told her to take his sword,
+which was rusty, and clean it. She went away, and left him; when she
+returned, a little time after, he was hanging from a beam, dead. He was a
+singular person. Edward Hall, the historian, knew him, and had heard him
+say, that "if the king put forth the New Testament in English, he would not
+live to bear it."[554] And yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What
+was it? Had the meaning of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross
+suddenly revealed itself? Had some inner voice asked him whether, in the
+prayer for his persecutors with which Christ had parted out of life, there
+might be some affinity with words which had lately sounded in his own ears?
+God, into whose hands he threw himself, self-condemned in his wretchedness,
+only knows the agony of that hour. Let the secret rest where it lies, and
+let us be thankful for ourselves that we live in a changed world.
+
+Thus, however, the struggle went forward; a forlorn hope of saints led the
+way up the breach, and paved with their bodies a broad road into the new
+era; and the nation the meanwhile was unconsciously waiting till the works
+of the enemy were won, and they could walk safely in and take possession.
+While men like Bilney and Bainham were teaching with words and writings,
+there were stout English hearts labouring also on the practical side of the
+same conflict, instilling the same lessons, and meeting for themselves the
+same consequences. Speculative superstition was to be met with speculative
+denial. Practical idolatry required a rougher method of disenchantment.
+
+Every monastery, every parish church, had in those days its special relics,
+its special images, its special something, to attract the interest of the
+people. The reverence for the remains of noble and pious men, the dresses
+which they had worn, or the bodies in which their spirits had lived, was in
+itself a natural and pious emotion; but it had been petrified into a dogma;
+and like every other imaginative feeling which is submitted to that bad
+process, it had become a falsehood, a mere superstition, a substitute for
+piety, not a stimulus to it, and a perpetual occasion of fraud. The people
+brought offerings to the shrines where it was supposed that the relics were
+of greatest potency. The clergy, to secure the offerings, invented the
+relics, and invented the stories of the wonders which had been worked by
+them. The greatest exposure of these things took place at the visitation of
+the religious houses. In the meantime, Bishop Shaxton's unsavoury inventory
+of what passed under the name of relics in the diocese of Salisbury, will
+furnish an adequate notion of these objects of popular veneration. There
+"be set forth and commended unto the ignorant people," he said, "as I
+myself of certain which be already come to my hands, have perfect
+knowledge, stinking boots, mucky combes, ragged rochettes, rotten girdles,
+pyl'd purses, great bullocks' horns, locks of hair, and filthy rags,
+gobbetts of wood, under the name of parcels of the holy cross, and such
+pelfry beyond estimation."[555] Besides matters of this kind, there were
+images of the Virgin or of the Saints; above all, roods or crucifixes, of
+especial potency, the virtues of which had begun to grow uncertain,
+however, to sceptical Protestants; and from doubt to denial, and from
+denial to passionate hatred, there were but a few brief steps. The most
+famous of the roods was that of Boxley in Kent, which used to smile and
+bow, or frown and shake its head, as its worshippers were generous or
+closehanded. The fortunes and misfortunes of this image I shall by and bye
+have to relate. There was another, however, at Dovercourt, in Suffolk, of
+scarcely inferior fame. This image was of such power that the door of the
+church in which it stood was open at all hours to all comers, and no human
+hand could close it. Dovercourt therefore became a place of great and
+lucrative pilgrimage, much resorted to by the neighbours on all occasions
+of difficulty.
+
+Now it happened that within the circuit of a few miles there lived four
+young men, to whom the virtues of the rood had become greatly questionable.
+If it could work miracles, it must be capable, so they thought, of
+protecting its own substance; and they agreed to apply a practical test
+which would determine the extent of its abilities. Accordingly (about the
+time of Bainham's first imprisonment), Robert King of Dedham, Robert
+Debenham of Eastbergholt, Nicholas Marsh of Dedham, and Robert Gardiner of
+Dedham, "their consciences being burdened to see the honour of Almighty God
+so blasphemed by such an idol," started off "on a wondrous goodly night" in
+February, with hard frost and a clear full moon, ten miles across the
+wolds, to the church.
+
+The door was open as the legend declared; but nothing daunted, they entered
+bravely, and lifting down the "idol" from its shrine, with its coat and
+shoes, and the store of tapers which were kept for the services, they
+carried it on their shoulders for a quarter of a mile from the place where
+it had stood, "without any resistance of the said idol." There setting it
+on the ground, they struck a light, fastened the tapers to the body, and
+with the help of them, sacrilegiously burnt the image down to a heap of
+ashes; the old dry wood "blazing so brimly," that it lighted them a full
+mile on their way home.[556]
+
+For this night's performance, which, if the devil is the father of lies,
+was a stroke of honest work against him and his family, the world rewarded
+these men after the usual fashion. One of them, Robert Gardiner, escaped
+the search which was made, and disappeared till better times; the remaining
+three were swinging in chains six months later on the scene of their
+exploit. Their fate was perhaps inevitable. Men who dare to be the first in
+great movements are ever self-immolated victims. But I suppose that it was
+better for them to be bleaching on their gibbets, than crawling at the feet
+of a wooden rood, and believing it to be God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These were the first Paladins of the Reformation; the knights who slew the
+dragons and the enchanters, and made the earth habitable for common flesh
+and blood. They were rarely, as we have said, men of great ability, still
+more rarely men of "wealth and station;" but men rather of clear senses and
+honest hearts. Tyndal was a remarkable person, and so Clark and Frith
+promised to become; but the two last were cut off before they had found
+scope to show themselves; and Tyndal remaining abroad, lay outside the
+battle which was being fought in England, doing noble work, indeed, and
+ending as the rest ended, with earning a martyr's crown; but taking no part
+in the actual struggle except with his pen. As yet but two men of the
+highest order of power were on the side of Protestantism--Latimer and
+Cromwell. Of them we have already said something; but the time was now fast
+coming when they were to step forward, pressed by circumstances which could
+no longer dispense with them, into scenes of far wider activity; and the
+present seems a fitting occasion to give some closer account of their
+history. When the breach with the pope was made irreparable, and the papal
+party at home had assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the
+fortunes of the Protestants entered into a new phase. The persecution
+ceased; and those who but lately were carrying fagots in the streets, or
+hiding for their lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the
+sunshine of political favour. The summer was but a brief one, followed soon
+by returning winter; but Cromwell and Latimer had together caught the
+moment as it went by; and before it was over, a work had been done in
+England which, when it was accomplished once, was accomplished for ever.
+The conservative party recovered their power, and abused it as before; but
+the chains of the nation were broken, and no craft of kings or priests or
+statesmen could weld the magic links again.
+
+It is a pity that of two persons to whom England owes so deep a debt, we
+can piece together such scanty biographies. I must attempt, however, to
+give some outline of the little which is known.
+
+The father of Latimer was a solid English yeoman, of Thurcaston, in
+Leicestershire. "He had no lands of his own," but he rented a farm "of four
+pounds by the year," on which "he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men;"
+"he had walk for a hundred sheep, and meadow ground for thirty cows."[557]
+The world prospered with him; he was able to save money for his son's
+education and his daughters' portions; but he was freehanded and
+hospitable; he kept open house for his poor neighbours; and he was a good
+citizen, too, for "he did find the king a harness with himself and his
+horse," ready to do battle for his country, if occasion called. His family
+were brought up "in godliness and the fear of the Lord;" and in all points
+the old Latimer seems to have been a worthy, sound, upright man, of the
+true English mettle.
+
+There were several children.[558] The Reformer was born about 1490, some
+five years after the usurper Richard had been killed at Bosworth. Bosworth
+being no great distance from Thurcaston, Latimer the father is likely to
+have been present in the battle, on one side or the other--the right side
+in those times it was no easy matter to choose--but he became a good
+servant of the new government--and the little Hugh, when a boy of seven
+years old, helped to buckle[559] on his armour for him, "when he went to
+Blackheath field."[560] Being a soldier himself, the old gentleman was
+careful to give his sons, whatever else he gave them, a sound soldier's
+training. "He was diligent," says Latimer, "to teach me to shoot with the
+bow: he taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in the bow--not to draw
+with strength of arm, as other nations do, but with the strength of the
+body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I
+increased in these, my bows were made bigger and bigger."[561] Under this
+education, and in the wholesome atmosphere of the farmhouse, the boy
+prospered well; and by and bye, showing signs of promise, he was sent to
+school. When he was fourteen, the promises so far having been fulfilled,
+his father transferred him to Cambridge.[562]
+
+He was soon known at the university as a sober, hard-working student. At
+nineteen, he was elected fellow of Clare Hall; at twenty, he took his
+degree, and became a student in divinity, when he accepted quietly, like a
+sensible man, the doctrines which he had been brought up to believe. At the
+time when Henry VIII. was writing against Luther, Latimer was fleshing his
+maiden sword in an attack upon Melancthon;[563] and he remained, he said,
+till he was thirty, "in darkness and the shadow of death." About this time
+he became acquainted with Bilney, whom he calls "the instrument whereby God
+called him to knowledge." In Bilney, doubtless, he found a sound
+instructor; but a careful reader of his sermons will see traces of a
+teaching for which he was indebted to no human master. His deepest
+knowledge was that which stole upon him unconsciously through the
+experience of life and the world. His words are like the clear impression
+of a seal; the account and the result of observations, taken first hand, on
+the condition of the English men and women of his time, in all ranks and
+classes, from the palace to the prison. He shows large acquaintance with
+books; with the Bible, most of all; with patristic divinity and school
+divinity; and history, sacred and profane: but if this had been all, he
+would not have been the Latimer of the Reformation, and the Church of
+England would not, perhaps, have been here to-day. Like the physician, to
+whom a year of practical experience in a hospital teaches more than a life
+of closest study, Latimer learnt the mental disorders of his age in the age
+itself; and the secret of that art no other man, however good, however
+wise, could have taught him. He was not an echo, but a voice; and he drew
+his thoughts fresh from the fountain--from the facts of the era in which
+God had placed him.
+
+He became early famous as a preacher at Cambridge, from the first, "a
+seditious fellow," as a noble lord called him in later life, highly
+troublesome to unjust persons in authority. "None, except the stiff-necked
+and uncircumcised, ever went away from his preaching, it was said, without
+being affected with high detestation of sin, and moved to all godliness and
+virtue."[564] And, in his audacious simplicity, he addressed himself always
+to his individual hearers, giving his words a personal application, and
+often addressing men by name. This habit brought him first into difficulty
+in 1525. He was preaching before the university, when the Bishop of Ely
+came into the church, being curious to hear him. He paused till the bishop
+was seated; and when he recommenced, he changed his subject, and drew an
+ideal picture of a prelate as a prelate ought to be; the features of which,
+though he did not say so, were strikingly unlike those of his auditor. The
+bishop complained to Wolsey, who sent for Latimer, and inquired what he had
+said. Latimer repeated the substance of his sermon; and other conversation
+then followed, which showed Wolsey very clearly the nature of the person
+with whom he was speaking. No eye saw more rapidly than the cardinal's the
+difference between a true man and an impostor; and he replied to the Bishop
+of Ely's accusations by granting the offender a licence to preach in any
+church in England. "If the Bishop of Ely cannot abide such doctrine as you
+have here repeated," he said, "you shall preach it to his beard, let him
+say what he will."[565]
+
+Thus fortified, Latimer pursued his way, careless of the university
+authorities, and probably defiant of them. He was still orthodox in points
+of theoretic belief. His mind was practical rather than speculative, and he
+was slow in arriving at conclusions which had no immediate bearing upon
+action. No charge could be fastened upon him, definitely criminal; and he
+was too strong to be crushed by that compendious tyranny which treated as
+an act of heresy the exposure of imposture or delinquency.
+
+On Wolsey's fall, however, he would have certainly been silenced: if he had
+fallen into the hands of Sir Thomas More, he would have perhaps been
+prematurely sacrificed. But, fortunately, he found a fresh protector in the
+king. Henry heard of him, sent for him, and, with instinctive recognition
+of his character, appointed him one of the royal chaplains. He now left
+Cambridge and removed to Windsor, but only to treat his royal patron as
+freely as he had treated the Cambridge doctors--not with any absence of
+respect, for he was most respectful, but with that highest respect which
+dares to speak unwelcome truth where the truth seems to be forgotten. He
+was made chaplain in 1530--during the new persecution, for which Henry was
+responsible by a more than tacit acquiescence. Latimer, with no authority
+but his own conscience, and the strong certainty that he was on God's side,
+threw himself between the spoilers and their prey, and wrote to the king,
+protesting against the injustice which was crushing the truest men in his
+dominions. The letter is too long to insert; the close of it may show how a
+poor priest could dare to address the imperious Henry VIII.:
+
+"I pray to God that your Grace may take heed of the worldly wisdom which is
+foolishness before God; that you may do that [which] God commandeth, and
+not that [which] seemeth good in your own sight, without the word of God;
+that your Grace may be found acceptable in his sight, and one of the
+members of his church; and according to the office that he hath called your
+Grace unto, you may be found a faithful minister of his gifts, and not a
+defender of his faith: for he will not have it defended by man or man's
+power, but by his word only, by the which he hath evermore defended it, and
+that by a way far above man's power or reason.
+
+"Wherefore, gracious king, remember yourself; have pity upon your soul; and
+think that the day is even at hand when you shall give account for your
+office, and of the blood that hath been shed by your sword. In which day,
+that your Grace may stand steadfastly, and not be ashamed, but be clear and
+ready in your reckoning, and have (as they say), your _quietus est_ sealed
+with the blood of our Saviour Christ, which only serveth at that day, is my
+daily prayer to Him that suffered death for our sins, which also prayeth to
+his Father for grace for us continually; to whom be all honour and praise
+for ever. Amen. The Spirit of God preserve your Grace."[566]
+
+These words, which conclude an address of almost unexampled grandeur, are
+unfortunately of no interest to us, except as illustrating the character of
+the priest who wrote them, and the king to whom they were written. The hand
+of the persecutor was not stayed. The rack and the lash and the stake
+continued to claim their victims. So far it was labour in vain. But the
+letter remains, to speak for ever for the courage of Latimer; and to speak
+something, too, for a prince that could respect the nobleness of the poor
+yeoman's son, who dared in such a cause to write to him as a man to a man.
+To have written at all in such a strain was as brave a step as was ever
+deliberately ventured. Like most brave acts, it did not go unrewarded; for
+Henry remained ever after, however widely divided from him in opinion, his
+unshaken friend.
+
+In 1531, the king gave him the living of West Kingston, in Wiltshire, where
+for a time he now retired. Yet it was but a partial rest. He had a special
+licence as a preacher from Cambridge, which continued to him (with the
+king's express sanction)[567] the powers which he had received from Wolsey.
+He might preach in any diocese to which he was invited; and the repose of a
+country parish could not be long allowed in such stormy times to Latimer.
+He had bad health, being troubled with headache, pleurisy, colic, stone;
+his bodily constitution meeting feebly the demands which he was forced to
+make upon it.[568] But he struggled on, travelling up and down to London,
+to Kent, to Bristol, wherever opportunity called him; marked for
+destruction by the bishops, if he was betrayed into an imprudent word, and
+himself living in constant expectation of death.[569]
+
+At length the Bishop of London believed that Latimer was in his power. He
+had preached at St. Abb's, in the city, "at the request of a company of
+merchants,"[570] in the beginning of the winter of 1531; and soon after his
+return to his living, he was informed that he was to be cited before
+Stokesley. His friends in the neighbourhood wrote to him, evidently in
+great alarm, and more anxious that he might clear himself, than expecting
+that he would be able to do so;[571] he himself, indeed, had almost made up
+his mind that the end was coming.[572]
+
+The citation was delayed for a few weeks. It was issued at last, on the
+10th of January, 1531-2,[573] and was served by Sir Walter Hungerford, of
+Farley.[574] The offences with which he was charged were certain "excesses
+and irregularities" not specially defined; and the practice of the bishops
+in such cases was not to confine the prosecution to the acts committed; but
+to draw up a series of articles, on which it was presumed that the
+orthodoxy of the accused person was open to suspicion, and to question him
+separately upon each. Latimer was first examined by Stokesley; subsequently
+at various times by the bishops collectively; and finally, when certain
+formulas had been submitted to him, which he refused to sign, his case was
+transferred to convocation. The convocation, as we know, were then in
+difficulty with their premunire; they had consoled themselves in their
+sorrow with burning the body of Tracy; and they would gladly have taken
+further comfort by burning Latimer.[575] He was submitted to the closest
+cross-questionings, in the hope that he would commit himself. They felt
+that he was the most dangerous person to them in the kingdom, and they
+laboured with unusual patience to ensure his conviction.[576] With a common
+person they would have rapidly succeeded. But Latimer was in no haste to be
+a martyr; he would be martyred patiently when the time was come for
+martyrdom; but he felt that no one ought "to consent to die," as long as he
+could honestly live;[577] and he baffled the episcopal inquisitors with
+their own weapons. He has left a most curious account of one of his
+interviews with them.
+
+"I was once in examination," he says,[578] "before five or six bishops,
+where I had much turmoiling. Every week, thrice, I came to examination, and
+many snares and traps were laid to get something. Now, God knoweth, I was
+ignorant of the law; but that God gave me answer and wisdom what I should
+speak. It was God indeed, for else I had never escaped them. At the last, I
+was brought forth to be examined into a chamber hanged with arras, where I
+was before wont to be examined, but now, at this time, the chamber was
+somewhat altered: for whereas before there was wont ever to be a fire in
+the chimney,[579] now the fire was taken away, and an arras hanging hanged
+over the chimney; and the table stood near the chimney's end, so that I
+stood between the table and the chimney's end. There was among these
+bishops that examined me one with whom I had been very familiar, and took
+him for my great friend, an aged man, and he sate next the table end. Then,
+among all other questions, he put forth one, a very subtle and crafty one,
+and such one indeed as I could not think so great danger in. And when I
+would make answer, 'I pray you, Master Latimer,' said he, 'speak out; I am
+very thick of hearing, and here be many that sit far off.' I marvelled at
+this, that I was bidden to speak out, and began to misdeem, and gave an ear
+to the chimney; and, sir, there I heard a pen walking in the chimney,
+behind the cloth. They had appointed one there to write all mine answers;
+for they made sure work that I should not start from them: there was no
+starting from them: God was my good Lord, and gave me answer; I could never
+else have escaped it. The question was this: 'Master Latimer, do you not
+think, on your conscience, that you have been suspected of heresy?'--a
+subtle question--a very subtle question. There was no holding of peace
+would serve. To hold my peace had been to grant myself faulty. To answer
+was every way full of danger. But God, which hath always given rile answer,
+helped me, or else I could never have escaped it. _Ostendite mihi numisma_
+_census_. Shew me, said he, a penny of the tribute money. They laid snares
+to destroy him, but he overturneth them in their own traps."[580]
+
+The bishops, however, were not men who were nice in their adherence to the
+laws; and it would have gone ill with Latimer, notwithstanding his
+dialectic ability. He was excommunicated and imprisoned, and would soon
+have fallen into worse extremities; but at the last moment he appealed to
+the king, and the king, who knew his value, would not allow him to be
+sacrificed. He had refused to subscribe the articles proposed to him.[581]
+Henry intimated to the convocation that it was not his pleasure that the
+matter should be pressed further; they were to content themselves with a
+general submission, which should be made to the archbishop, without
+exacting more special acknowledgments. This was the reward to Latimer for
+his noble letter. He was absolved, and returned to his parish, though
+snatched as a brand out of the fire.
+
+Soon after, the tide turned, and the Reformation entered into a new phase.
+
+Such is a brief sketch of the life of Hugh Latimer, to the time when it
+blended with the broad stream of English history. With respect to the other
+very great man whom the exigencies of the state called to power
+simultaneously with him, our information is far less satisfactory. Though
+our knowledge of Latimer's early story comes to us in fragments only, yet
+there are certain marks in it by which the outline can be determined with
+certainty. A cloud rests over the youth and early manhood of Thomas
+Cromwell, through which, only at intervals, we catch glimpses of authentic
+facts; and these few fragments of reality seem rather to belong to a
+romance than to the actual life of a man.
+
+Cromwell, the malleus monachorum, was of good English family, belonging to
+the Cromwells of Lincolnshire. One of these, probably a younger brother,
+moved up to London and conducted an ironfoundry, or other business of that
+description, at Putney. He married a lady of respectable connections, of
+whom we know only that she was sister of the wife of a gentleman in
+Derbyshire, but whose name does not appear.[582] The old Cromwell dying
+early, the widow was re-married to a cloth-merchant; and the child of the
+first husband, who made himself so great a name in English story, met with
+the reputed fortune of a stepson, and became a vagabond in the wide world.
+The chart of his course wholly fails us. One day in later life he shook by
+the hand an old bell-ringer at Sion House before a crowd of courtiers, and
+told them that "this man's father had given him many a dinner in his
+necessities." And a strange random account is given by Foxe of his having
+joined a party in an expedition to Rome to obtain a renewal from the pope
+of certain immunities and indulgences for the town of Boston; a story which
+derives some kind of credibility from its connection with Lincolnshire, but
+is full of incoherence and unlikelihood. Following still the popular
+legend, we find him in the autumn of 1515 a ragged stripling at the door of
+Frescobaldi's banking-house in Florence, begging for help. Frescobaldi had
+an establishment in London,[583] with a large connection there; and seeing
+an English face, and seemingly an honest one, he asked the boy who and what
+he was. "I am, sir," quoth he, "of England, and my name is Thomas Cromwell;
+my father is a poor man, and by occupation a cloth-shearer; I am strayed
+from my country, and am now come into Italy with the camp of Frenchmen that
+were overthrown at Garigliano, where I was page to a footman, carrying
+after him his pike and burganet." Something in the boy's manner was said to
+have attracted the banker's interest; he took him into his house, and after
+keeping him there as long as he desired to stay, he gave him a horse and
+sixteen ducats to help him home to England.[584] Foxe is the first English
+authority for the story; and Foxe took it from Bandello, the novelist; but
+it is confirmed by, or harmonises with, a sketch of Cromwell's early life
+in a letter of Chappuys, the imperial ambassador, to Chancellor Granvelle.
+"Master Cromwell," wrote Chappuys in 1535, "is the son of a poor
+blacksmith, who lived in a small village four miles from London, and is
+buried in a common grave in the parish churchyard. In his youth, for some
+offence, he was imprisoned, and had to leave the country. He went to
+Flanders, and thence to Rome and other places in Italy."[585]
+
+Returning to England, he married the daughter of a woollen-dealer, and
+became a partner in the business, where he amassed or inherited a
+considerable fortune.[586] Circumstances afterwards brought him, while
+still young, in contact with Wolsey, who discovered his merit, took him
+into service, and in 1525, employed him in the most important work of
+visiting and breaking up the small monasteries, which the pope had granted
+for the foundation of the new colleges. He was engaged with this business
+for two years, and was so efficient that he obtained an unpleasant
+notoriety, and complaints of his conduct found their way to the king.
+Nothing came of these complaints, however, and Cromwell remained with the
+cardinal till his fall.[587]
+
+It was then that the truly noble nature which was in him showed itself. He
+accompanied his master through his dreary confinement at Esher,[588] doing
+all that man could do to soften the outward wretchedness of it; and at the
+meeting of parliament, in which he obtained a seat, he rendered him a still
+more gallant service. The Lords had passed a bill of impeachment against
+Wolsey, violent, vindictive, and malevolent. It was to be submitted to the
+Commons, and Cromwell prepared to attempt an opposition. Cavendish has left
+a most characteristic description of his leaving Esher at this trying time.
+A cheerless November evening was closing in with rain and storm. Wolsey was
+broken down with sorrow and sickness; and had been unusually tried by
+parting with his retinue, whom he had sent home, as unwilling to keep them
+attached any longer to his fallen fortunes. When they were all gone, "My
+lord," says Cavendish, "returned to his chamber, lamenting the departure of
+his servants, making his moan unto Master Cromwell, who comforted him the
+best he could, and desired my lord to give him leave to go to London, where
+he would either make or mar before he came again, which was always his
+common saying. Then after long communication with my lord in secret, he
+departed, and took his horse and rode to London; at whose departing I was
+by, whom he bade farewell, and said, ye shall hear shortly of me, and if I
+speed well I will not fail to be here again within these two days."[589] He
+did speed well. "After two days he came again with a much pleasanter
+countenance, and meeting with me before he came to my lord, said unto me,
+that he had adventured to put in his foot where he trusted shortly to be
+better regarded or all were done." He had stopped the progress of the
+impeachment in the Lower House, and was answering the articles one by one.
+In the evening he rode down to Esher for instructions. In the morning he
+was again at his place in Parliament; and he conducted the defence so
+skilfully, that finally he threw out the bill, saved Wolsey, and himself
+"grew into such estimation in every man's opinion, for his honest behaviour
+in his master's cause, that he was esteemed the most faithfullest servant,
+[and] was of all men greatly commended."[590]
+
+Henry admired his chivalry, and perhaps his talent. The loss of Wolsey had
+left him without any very able man, unless we may consider Sir Thomas More
+such, upon his council, and he could not calculate on More for support in
+his anti-Roman policy; he was glad, therefore, to avail himself of the
+service of a man who had given so rare a proof of fidelity, and who had
+been trained by the ablest statesman of the age.[591]
+
+To Wolsey Cromwell could render no more service except as a friend, and his
+warm friend he remained to the last. He became the king's secretary,
+representing the government in the House of Commons, and was at once on the
+high road to power. I cannot call him ambitious; an ambitious man would
+scarcely have pursued so refined a policy, or have calculated on the
+admiration which he gained by adhering to a fallen minister. He did not
+seek greatness--greatness rather sought him as the man in England most fit
+to bear it. His business was to prepare the measures which were to be
+submitted to Parliament by the government. His influence, therefore, grew
+necessarily with the rapidity with which events were ripening; and when the
+conclusive step was taken, and the king was married, the virtual conduct of
+the Reformation passed into his hands. His Protestant tendencies were
+unknown as yet, perhaps, even to his own conscience; nor to the last could
+he arrive at any certain speculative convictions. He was drawn towards the
+Protestants as he rose into power by the integrity of his nature, which
+compelled him to trust only those who were honest like himself.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI
+
+WILL OF THOMAS CROMWELL--1529.
+
+In the name of God, Amen. The 12th day of July, in the year of our Lord God
+MCCCCCXXIX., and in the 21st year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord, King
+Henry VIII., I, Thomas Cromwell, of London, Gentleman, being whole in body
+and in good and perfect memory, lauded be the Holy Trinity, make, ordain,
+and declare this my present testament, containing my last will, in manner
+as following:--First I bequeath my soul to the great God of heaven, my
+Maker, Creator, and Redeemer, beseeching the most glorious Virgin and
+blessed Lady Saint Mary the Virgin and Mother, with all the holy company of
+heaven, to be mediators and intercessors for me to the Holy Trinity, so
+that I may be able, when it shall please Almighty God to call me out of
+this miserable world and transitory life, to inherit the kingdom of heaven
+amongst the number of good Christian people; and whensoever I shall depart
+this present life I bequeath my body to be buried where it shall please God
+to ordain me to die, and to be ordered after the discretion of mine
+executors undernamed. And for my goods which our Lord hath lent me in this
+world, I will shall be ordered and disposed in manner and form as hereafter
+shall ensue. First I give and bequeath unto my son Gregory Cromwell six
+hundred threescore six pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence, of lawful
+money of England, with the which six hundred threescore six pounds,
+thirteen shillings, and fourpence, I will mine executors undernamed
+immediately or as soon as they conveniently may after my decease, shall
+purchase lands, tenements, and hereditaments to the clear yearly value of
+L33 6s. 8d. by the year above all charges and reprises to the use of my
+said son Gregory, for term of his life; and after the decease of the said
+Gregory to the heirs male of his body lawfully to be begotten, and for lack
+of heirs male of the body of the said Gregory, lawfully begotten, to the
+heirs general of his body lawfully begotten. And for lack of such heirs to
+the right heirs of me the said Thomas Cromwell, in fee. I will also that
+immediately and as soon as the said lands, tenements, and hereditaments
+shall be so purchased after my death as is aforesaid by mine executors,
+that the yearly profits thereof shall be wholly spent and employed in and
+about the education and finding honestly of my said son Gregory, in virtue,
+good learning, and manners, until such time as he shall come to the full
+age of 24 years. During which time I heartily desire and require my said
+executors to be good unto my said you Gregory, and to see he do lose no
+time, but to see him virtuously ordered and brought up according to my
+trust.
+
+Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory, (when he shall come to
+his full age of 24 years), two hundred pounds of lawful English money to
+order them as our Lord shall give him grace and discretion, which L200 I
+will shall be put in surety to the intent the same may come to his hands at
+his said age of 24 years. Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory
+of such household stuff as God hath lent me, three of my best featherbeds
+with their bolsters; and, the best pair of blankets of fustian, my best
+coverlet of tapestry, and my quilt of yellow Turkey satin; one pair of my
+best sheets, four pillows of down, with four pair of the best pillowberes,
+four of my best table-cloths, four of my best towels, two dozen of my
+finest napkins, and two dozen of my other napkins, two garnish of my best
+vessel, three of my best brass pots, three of my best brass pans, two of my
+best kettles, two of my best spits, my best joined bed of Flanders work,
+with the best ---- and tester, and other the appurtenances thereto
+belonging; my best press, carven of Flanders work, and my best cupboard,
+carven of Flanders work, with also six joined stools of Flanders work, and
+six of my best cushions. Item. I give and bequeath to my said son Gregory a
+basin with an ewer parcel-gilt, my best salt gilt, my best cup gilt, three
+of my best goblets; three other of my goblets parcel-gilt, twelve of my
+best silver spoons, three of my best drinking ale-pots gilt; all the which
+parcels of plate and household stuff I will shall be safely kept to the use
+of my said you Gregory till he shall come to his said full age of 24. And
+all the which plate, household stuff, napery, and all other the premises, I
+will mine executors do put in safe keeping until my said son come to the
+said years or age of 24. And if he die before the age of 24, then I will
+all the said plate, vessel, and household stuff shall be sold by mine
+executors. And the money thereof coming to be given and equally divided
+amongst my poor kinsfolk, that is to say, amongst the children as well of
+mine own sisters Elizabeth and Katherine, as of my late wife's sister Joan,
+wife to John Williamson;[592] and if it happen that all the children of my
+said sisters and sister-in-law do die before the partition be made, and
+none of them be living, then I will that all the said plate, vessel, and
+household stuff shall be sold and given to other my poor kinsfolk then
+being in life, and other poor and indigent people, in deeds of charity for
+my soul, my father and mother their souls, and all Christian souls.
+
+[[593] Item. I give and bequeath to my daughter Anne an hundred marks of
+lawful money of England when she shall come to her lawful age or happen to
+be married, and L40 toward her finding until the time that she shall be of
+lawful age or be married, which L40 I will shall be delivered to my friend
+John Cook, one of the six Clerks of the King's Chancery, to the intent he
+may order the same and cause the same to be employed in the best wise he
+can devise about the virtuous education and bringing up of my said daughter
+till she shall come to her lawful age or marriage. Then I will that the
+said 100 marks, and so much of the said L40 as then shall be unspent and
+unemployed at the day of the death of my said daughter Anne, I will it
+shall remain to Gregory my son, if he then be in life; and if he be dead,
+the same hundred marks, and also so much of the said L40 as then shall be
+unspent, to be departed amongst my sisters' children, in manner and form
+aforesaid. And if it happen my said sisters' children then to be all dead,
+then I will the said 100 marks and so much of the said L40 as shall be
+unspent, shall be divided amongst my kinsfolk, such as then, shall be in
+life.] Item. I give and bequeath unto my sister Elizabeth Wellyfed L40,
+three goblets without a cover, a mazer, and a nut. Item. I give and
+bequeath to my nephew Richard Willyams [[594] servant with my Lord Marquess
+Dorset, L66 13s. 4d.], L40 sterling, my [[594] fourth] best gown, doublet,
+and jacket. Item. I give and bequeath to my nephew, Christopher Wellyfed
+L40, [[594] L20] my fifth gown, doublet, and jacket. Item. I give and
+bequeath to my nephew William Wellyfed the younger L20, [[594] L40]. Item.
+I give and bequeath to my niece Alice Wellyfed, to her marriage, L20. And
+if it happen her to die before marriage, then I will that the said L20
+shall remain to her brother Christopher. And if it happen him to die, the
+same L20 to remain to Wm. Wellyfed the younger, his brother. And if it
+happen them all to die before their lawful age or marriage, then I will
+that all their parts shall remain to Gregory my son. And if it happen him
+to die before them, then I will all the said parts shall remain [[594] to
+Anne and Grace, my daughters] to Richard Willyams and Walter Willyams, my
+nephews. And if it happen them to die, then I will that all the said parts
+shall be distributed in deeds of charity for my soul, my father's and
+mother's souls, and all Christian souls. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+mother-in-law Mercy Prior, L40 of lawful English money, and her chamber,
+with certain household stuff; that is to say, a featherbed, a bolster, two
+pillows with their beres, six pair of sheets, a pair of blankets, a garnish
+of vessel, two pots, two pans, two spits, with such other of my household
+stuff as shall be thought meet for her by the discretion of mine executors,
+and such as she will reasonably desire, not being bequeathed to other uses
+in this my present testament and last will. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+said mother-in-law a little salt of silver, a mazer, six silver spoons, and
+a drinking-pot of silver. And also I charge mine executors to be good unto
+her during her life. Item. I give and bequeath to my brother-in-law William
+Wellyfed, L20, my third gown, jacket, and doublet. Item. I give and
+bequeath to John Willyams my brother-in-law, 100 marks, a gown, a doublet,
+a jacket, a featherbed, a bolster, six pair of sheets, two table-cloths,
+two dozen napkins, two towels, two brass pots, two brass pans, a silver
+pot, a nut parcel-gilt; and to Joan, his wife, L40. Item. I give and
+bequeath to Joan Willyams, their daughter, to her marriage, L20, and to
+every other of their children, L12 13s. 4d. Item. I bequeath to Walter
+Willyams, my nephew, L20. item. I give and bequeath to Ralph Sadler, my
+servant, 200 marks of lawful English money, my second gown, jacket, and
+doublet, and all my books. Item. I give and bequeath to Hugh Whalley, my
+servant, L6 13s. 4d. Item. I give and bequeath to Stephen Vaughan, sometime
+my servant, 100 marks, a gown, jacket, and doublet. Item. I give and
+bequeath to Page, my servant, otherwise called John De Fount, L6 13s. 4d.
+[[594] Item. I give and bequeath to Elizabeth Gregory, sometime my servant,
+L20, six pair of sheets, a featherbed, a pair of blankets, a coverlet, two
+table-cloths, one dozen napkins, two brass pots, two pans, two spits.] And
+also to Thomas Averey, my servant, L6 13s. 4d. [[594] Item. I give and
+bequeath to John Cooke, one of the six Master Clerks of the Chancery, L10,
+my second gown, doublet, and jacket. Item. I give and bequeath to Roger
+More, servant of the King's bakehouse, L6 13s. 4d., three yards of satin;
+and to Maudelyn, his wife, L3 6s. 8d.] Item. I give and bequeath to John
+Horwood, L6 13s. 4d. [[594] Item. I give and bequeath to my little daughter
+Grace 100 marks of lawful English money when she shall come to her lawful
+age or marriage; and also L40 towards her exhibition and finding until such
+time she shall be of lawful age or be married, which L40 I will shall be
+delivered to my brother-in-law, John Willyams, to the intent he may order
+and cause the same to be employed in and about the virtuous education and
+bringing up of my said daughter, till she shall come to her lawful age of
+marriage. And if it happen my said daughter to die before she come to her
+lawful age or marriage, then I will that the said 100 marks, and so much of
+the said L40 as shall then be unspent and unemployed about the finding of
+my said daughter at the day of the death of my said daughter shall remain
+and be delivered to Gregory my son, if he then shall happen to be in life;
+and if he be dead, then the said 100 marks, and the said residue of the
+said L40, to be evenly departed among my grown kinsfolk--that is to say, my
+sisters' children aforesaid.] Item. That the rest of mine apparel before
+not given or bequeathed in this my testament and last will shall be given
+and equally departed amongst my servants after the order and discretion of
+mine executors. Item. I will also that mine executors shall take the yearly
+profits above the charges of my farm of Carberry, and all other things
+contained in my said lease of Carberry, in the county of Middlesex, and
+with the profits thereof shall yearly pay unto my brother-in-law William
+(Wellyfed) and Elizabeth his wife, mine only sister, twenty pounds; give
+and distribute for my soul quarterly 40 shillings during their lives and
+the longer of them; and after the decease of the said William and
+Elizabeth, the profits of the said farm over and above the yearly rent to
+be kept to the use of my son Gregory till he be come to the age of 24
+years. And at the years of 24 the said lease and farm of Carberry, I do
+give and bequeath to my son Gregory, to have the same to him, his executors
+and assigns. And if it fortune the said Gregory my son to die before, my
+said brother-in-law and sister being dead, he shall come to the age of 24
+years, then I will my said cousin Richard Willyams shall have the farm with
+the appurtenances to him and to his executors and assigns; and if it happen
+my said brother-in-law, my sister, my son Gregory, and my said cousin
+Richard, to die before the accomplishment of this my will touching the said
+farm, then I will mine executors shall sell the said farm, and the money
+thereof coming to employ in deeds of charity, to pray for my soul and all
+Christian souls. Item. I will mine executors shall conduct and hire a
+priest, being an honest person of continent and good living, to sing for my
+soul by the space of seven years next after my death, and to give him for
+the same L6 13s. 4d. for his stipend. Item. I give and bequeath towards the
+making of highways in this realm, where it shall be thought most necessary,
+L20 to be disposed by the discretion of mine executors. Item. I give and
+bequeath to every the five orders of Friars within the City of London, to
+pray for my soul, 20 shillings. Item. I give and bequeath to 60 poor
+maidens in marriage, L40, that is to say, 13s. 4d. to every of the said
+poor maidens, to be given and distributed by the discretion of mine
+executors. Item. I will that there shall be dealt and given after my
+decease amongst poor people householders, to pray for my soul, L20, such as
+by mine executors shall be thought most needful. Item. I give and bequeath
+to the poor parishioners of the parish where God shall ordain me to have my
+dwellingplace at the time of my death, L10, to be truly distributed amongst
+them by the discretion of mine executors. Item. I give and bequeath to my
+parish church for my tithes forgotten, 20 shillings. Item. To the poor
+prisoners of Newgate, Ludgate, King's Bench, and Marshalsea, to be equally
+distributed amongst them, L10. Willing, charging, and desiring mine
+executors underwritten, that they shall see this my will performed in every
+point according to my true meaning and intent as they will answer to God,
+and discharge their consciences. The residue of all my goods, chattels, and
+debts not bequeathed, my funeral and burial performed, which I will shall
+be done without any earthly pomp, and my debts paid, I will shall be sold,
+and the money thereof coming, to be distributed in works of charity and
+pity, after the good discretion of mine executors undernamed. Whom I make
+and ordain, Stephen Vaughan, Ralph Sadler, my servants, and John Willyams
+my brother-in-law. Praying and desiring the same mine executors to be good
+unto my son Gregory, and to all other my poor friends and kinsfolk and
+servants aforenamed in this my testament. And of this my present testament
+and last will I make Roger More mine overseer; unto whom and also to every
+of the other mine executors I give and bequeath L6 13s. 4d. for their pains
+to be taken in the execution of this my last will and testament, over and
+above such legacies as herebefore I have bequeathed them in this same
+testament and will. In witness whereof, to this my present testament and
+last will I have set to my hand in every leaf contained in this book, the
+day and year before limited.
+
+THOMAS CROMWELL.
+
+Item. I give and bequeath to William Brabazon, my servant, L20 8s., a gun,
+a doublet, a jacket, and my second gelding.
+
+It. to John Avery, Yeoman of the Bedchamber with the King's Highness, L6
+13s. 4d., and a doublet of satin.
+
+It. to Thurston, my cook. L6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to William Body, my servant, L6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to Peter Mewtas, my servant, L6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to Ric. Sleysh, my servant, L6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to George Wilkinson, my servant, L6 13s. 4d.
+
+It. to my friend, Thomas Alvard. L10, and my best gelding.
+
+It. to my friend, Thomas Rush, L10.
+
+It. to my servant, John Hynde, my horsekeeper, L3 6s. 8d.
+
+Item. I will that mine executors shall safely keep the patent of the manor
+of Romney to the use of my son Gregory, and the money growing thereof, till
+he shall come to his lawful age, to be yearly received to the use of my
+said son, and the whole revenue thereof coming to be truly paid unto him at
+such time as he shall come to the age of 24 years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE LAST EFFORTS OF DIPLOMACY
+
+I have now to resume the thread of the political history where it was
+dropped at the sentence of divorce pronounced by Cranmer, and the
+coronation of the new queen. The effect was about to be ascertained of
+these bold measures upon Europe; and of what their effect would be, only so
+much could be foretold with certainty, that the time for trifling was past,
+and the pope and Francis of France would be compelled to declare their true
+intentions. If these intentions were honest, the subordination of England
+to the papacy might be still preserved in a modified form. The papal
+jurisdiction was at end, but the spiritual supremacy of the Bishop of Rome,
+with a diminished but considerable revenue attached to it, remained
+unaffected; and it was for the pope to determine whether, by fulfilling at
+last his original engagements, he would preserve these remnants of his
+power and privileges, or boldly take up the gage, excommunicate his
+disobedient subjects, and attempt by force to bring them back to their
+allegiance.
+
+The news of what had been done did not take him wholly by surprise. It was
+known at Brussels at the end of April that the king had married. The queen
+regent[595] spoke of it to the ambassador sternly and significantly, not
+concealing her expectation of the mortal resentment which would be felt by
+her brothers;[596] and the information was forwarded with the least
+possible delay to the cardinals of the imperial faction at Rome. The true
+purposes which underlay the contradiction of Clement's language are
+undiscoverable. Perhaps in the past winter he had been acting out a deep
+intrigue--perhaps he was drifting between rival currents, and yielded in
+any or all directions as the alternate pressure varied; yet whatever had
+been the meaning of his language, whether it was a scheme to deceive Henry,
+or was the expression only of weakness and good-nature desiring to avoid a
+quarrel to the latest moment, the decisive step which had been taken in the
+marriage, even though it was nominally undivulged, obliged him to choose
+his course and openly adhere to it. After the experience of the past, there
+could be no doubt what that course would be.
+
+On the 12th of May a citation was issued against the King of England,
+summoning him to appear by person or proxy at a stated day. It had been
+understood that no step of such a kind was to be taken before the meeting
+of the pope and Francis; Bennet, therefore, Henry's faithful secretary,
+hastily inquired the meaning of this measure. The pope told him that it
+could not be avoided, and the language which he used revealed to the
+English agent the inevitable future. The king, he said, had defied the
+inhibitory brief which had been lately issued, and had incurred
+excommunication; the imperialists insisted that he should be proceeded
+against for contempt, and that the excommunication should at once be
+pronounced. However great might be his own personal reluctance, it was not
+possible for him to remain passive; and if he declined to resort at once to
+the more extreme exercise of his power, the hesitation was merely until the
+emperor was prepared to enforce the censures of the church with the strong
+hand. It stood not "with his honour to execute such censures," he said,
+"and the same not to be regarded."[597] But there was no wish to spare
+Henry; and if Francis could be detached from his ally, and if the condition
+of the rest of Christendom became such as to favour the enterprise, England
+might evidently look for the worst which the pope, with the Catholic
+powers, could execute. If the papal court was roused into so menacing a
+mood by the mere intimation of the secret marriage, it was easy to foresee
+what would ensue when the news arrived of the proceedings at Dunstable.
+Bennet entreated that the process should be delayed till the interview; but
+the pope answered coldly that he had done his best and could do no more;
+the imperialists were urgent, and he saw no reason to refuse their
+petition.[598] This was Clement's usual language, but there was something
+peculiar in his manner. He had been often violent, but he had never shown
+resolution, and the English agents were perplexed. The mystery was soon
+explained. He had secured himself on the side of France; and Francis, who
+at Calais had told Henry that his negotiations with the see of Rome were
+solely for the interests of England, that for Henry's sake he was marrying
+his son into a family beneath him in rank, that Henry's divorce was to form
+the especial subject of his conference with the pope, had consented to
+allow these dangerous questions to sink into a secondary place, and had
+relinquished his intention, if he had ever seriously entertained it, of
+becoming an active party in the English quarrel.
+
+The long-talked-of interview was still delayed. First it was to have taken
+place in the winter, then in the spring; June was the date last fixed for
+it, and now Bennet had to inform the king that it would not take place
+before September; and that, from the terms of a communication which had
+just passed between the parties who were to meet, the subjects discussed at
+the conference would not be those which he had been led to expect. Francis,
+in answer to a question from the pope, had specified three things which he
+proposed particularly to "intreat." The first concerned the defence of
+Christendom against the Turks, the second concerned the general council,
+and the third concerned "the extinction of the Lutheran sect."[599] These
+were the points which the Most Christian king was anxious to discuss with
+the pope. For the latter good object especially, "he would devise and treat
+for the provision of an army." In the King of England's cause, he trusted
+"some means might be found whereby it might be compounded;"[600] but if
+persuasion failed, there was no fear lest he should have recourse to any
+other method.
+
+It was this which had given back to the pope his courage. It was this which
+Bennet had now to report to Henry. The French alliance, it was too likely,
+would prove a broken reed, and pierce the hand that leant upon it.
+
+Henry knew the danger; but danger was not a very terrible thing either to
+him or to his people. If he had conquered his own reluctance to risk a
+schism in the church, he was not likely to yield to the fear of isolation;
+and if there was something to alarm in the aspect of affairs, there was
+also much to encourage. His parliament was united and resolute. His queen
+was pregnant. The Nun of Kent had assigned him but a month to live after
+his marriage; six months had passed, and he was alive and well; the
+supernatural powers had not declared against him; and while safe with
+respect to enmity from above, the earthly powers he could afford to defy.
+When he finally divorced Queen Catherine, he must have foreseen his present
+position at least as a possibility, and if not prepared for so swift an
+apostasy in Francis, and if not yet wholly believing it, we may satisfy
+ourselves he had never absolutely trusted a prince of metal so
+questionable.
+
+The Duke of Norfolk was waiting at the French court, with a magnificent
+embassy, to represent the English king at the interview. The arrival of the
+pope had been expected in May. It was now delayed till September; and if
+Clement came after all, it would be for objects in which England had but
+small concern. It was better for England that there should be no meeting at
+all, than a meeting to devise schemes for the massacre of Lutherans. Henry
+therefore wrote to the Duke, telling him generally what he had heard from
+Rome; he mentioned the three topics which he understood were to form the
+matter of discussion; but he skilfully affected to regard them as having
+originated with the imperialists, and not with the French king. In a long
+paper of instructions, in which earnestness and irony were strangely
+blended, he directed the ambassador to treat his good brother as if he were
+still exclusively devoted to the interests of England; and to urge upon
+him, on the ground of this fresh delay, that the interview should not take
+place at all.[601]
+
+"Our pleasure is," he wrote, "that ye shall say--that we be not a little
+moved in our heart to see our good brother and us, being such princes of
+Christendom, to be so handled with the pope, so much to our dishonour, and
+to the pope's and the emperor's advancement; seeming to be at the pope's
+commandment to come or tarry as he or his cardinals shall appoint; and to
+depend upon his pleasure when to meet--that is to say, when he list or
+never. If our good brother and we were either suitors to make request, the
+obtaining whereof we did much set by, or had any particular matter of
+advantage to entreat with him, these proceedings might be the better
+tolerated; but our good brother having no particular matter of his own, and
+being ... that [no] more glory nor surety could happen to the emperour than
+to obtain the effect of the three articles moved by the pope and his
+cardinals, we think it not convenient to attend the pleasure of the pope,
+to go or to abyde. We could have been content to have received and taken at
+the pope's hand, jointly with our good brother, pleasure and friendship in
+our great cause; [but] on the other part, we cannot esteem the pope's part
+so high, as to have our good brother an attendant suitor therefore ...
+desiring him, therefore, in anywise to disappoint for his part the said
+interview; and if he have already granted thereto--upon some new good
+occasion, which he now undoubtedly hath--to depart from the same.
+
+"For we, ye may say, having the justness of our cause for us, with such an
+entire and whole consent of our nobility and commons of our realm and
+subjects, and being all matters passed, and in such terms as they now be,
+do not find such lack and want of that the pope might do, with us or
+against us, as we would for the obtaining thereof be contented to have a
+French king our so perfect a friend, to be not only a mediator but a suitor
+therein, and a suitor attendant to have audience upon liking and after the
+advice of such cardinals as repute it among pastymes to play and dally with
+kings and princes; whose honour, ye may say, is above all things, and more
+dear to us in the person of our good brother, than is any piece of our
+cause at the pope's hands. And therefore, if there be none other thing but
+our cause, and the other causes whereof we be advertised, our advice,
+counsel, special desire also and request is, [that our good brother shall]
+break off the interview, unless the pope will make suit to him; and
+[unless] our said good brother hath such causes of his own as may
+particularly tend to his own benefit, honour, and profit--wherein he shall
+do great and singular pleasure unto us; _giving to understand to the pope,
+that me know ourselves and him both, and look to be esteemed accordingly._"
+
+Should it appear that on receipt of this communication, Francis was still
+resolved to persevere, and that he had other objects in view to which Henry
+had not been made privy, the ambassadors were then to remind him of the
+remaining obligations into which he had entered; and to ascertain to what
+degree his assistance might be calculated upon, should the pope pronounce
+Henry deposed, and the emperor attempt to enforce the sentence.
+
+After forwarding these instructions, the king's next step was to anticipate
+the pope by an appeal which would neutralise his judgment should he venture
+upon it; and which offered a fresh opportunity of restoring the peace of
+Christendom, if there was true anxiety to preserve that peace. The hinge of
+the great question, in the form which at last it assumed, was the validity
+or invalidity of the dispensation by which Henry had married his brother's
+widow. Being a matter which touched the limit of the pope's power, the pope
+was himself unable to determine it in his own favour; and the only
+authority by which the law could be ruled, was a general council. In the
+preceding winter, the pope had volunteered to submit the question to this
+tribunal; but Henry believing that it was on the point of immediate
+solution in another way, had then declined, on the ground that it would
+cause a needless delay. He was already married, and he had hoped that
+sentence might be given in his favour in time to anticipate the publication
+of the ceremony. But he was perfectly satisfied that justice was on his
+side; and was equally confident of obtaining the verdict of Europe, if it
+could be fairly pronounced. Now, therefore, under the altered
+circumstances, he accepted the offered alternative. He anticipated with
+tolerable certainty the effect which would be produced at Rome, when the
+news should arrive there of the Dunstable divorce; and on the 29th of June,
+he appealed formally, in the presence of the Archbishop of York, from the
+pope's impending sentence, to the next general council.[602]
+
+Of this curious document the substance was as follows:--It commenced with a
+declaration that the king had no intention of acting otherwise than became
+a good Catholic prince; or of injuring the church or attacking the
+privileges conceded by God to the Holy See. If his words could be lawfully
+shown to have such a tendency he would revoke, emend, and correct them in a
+Catholic spirit.
+
+The general features of the case were then recapitulated. His marriage with
+his brother's wife had been pronounced illegal by the principal
+universities of Europe, by the clergy of the two provinces of the Church of
+England, by the most learned theologians and canonists, and finally, by the
+public judgment of the church.[603] He therefore had felt himself free;
+and, "by the inspiration of the Host High, had lawfully married another
+woman." Furthermore, "for the common weal and tranquillity of the realm of
+England, and for the wholesome rule and government of the same, he had
+caused to be enacted certain statutes and ordinances, by authority of
+parliaments lawfully called for that purpose." "Now, however," he
+continued, "we fearing that his Holyness the Pope ... having in our said
+cause treated us far otherwise than either respect for our dignity and
+desert, or the duty of his own office required at his hands, and having
+done us many injuries which we now of design do suppress, but which
+hereafter we shall be ready, should circumstances so require, to divulge
+... may now proceed to acts of further injustice, and heaping wrong on
+wrong, may pronounce the censures and other penalties of the spiritual
+sword against ourselves, our realm, and subjects, seeking thereby to
+deprive us of the use of the sacraments, and to cut us off, in the sight of
+the world, from the unity of the church, to the no slight hurt and injury
+of our realm and subjects:
+
+"Fearing these things, and desiring to preserve from detriment not only
+ourselves, our own dignity and estimation, but also our subjects, committed
+to us by Almighty God; to keep them in the unity of the Christian faith,
+and in the wonted participation in the sacraments; that, when in truth they
+be not cut off from the integrity of the church, nor can nor will be so cut
+off in any manner, they may not appear to be so cut off in the estimation
+of men; [desiring further] to check and hold back our people whom God has
+given to us, lest, in the event of such injury, they refuse utterly to obey
+any longer the Roman Pontiff, as a hard and cruel pastor: [for these
+causes] and believing, from reasons probable, conjectures likely, and words
+used to our injury by his Holiness the Pope, which in divers manners have
+been brought to our ears, that some weighty act may be committed by him or
+others to the prejudice of ourselves and of our realm;--We, therefore, in
+behalf of all and every of our subjects, and of all persons adhering to us
+in this our cause, do make our appeal to the next general council, which
+shall be lawfully held, in place convenient, with the consent of the
+Christian princes, and of such others as it may concern--not in contempt of
+the Holy See, but for defence of the truth of the Gospel, and for the other
+causes afore rehearsed. And we do trust in God that it shall not be
+interpreted as a thing ill done on our part, if preferring the salvation of
+our soul and the relief of our conscience to any mundane respects or
+favours, we have in this cause regarded more the Divine law than the laws
+of man, and have thought it rather meet to obey God than to obey man."[604]
+
+By the appeal and the causes which were assigned for it, Henry pre-occupied
+the ground of the conflict; he entrenched himself in the "debateable land"
+of legal uncertainty; and until his position had been pronounced untenable
+by the general voice of Christendom, any sentence which the pope could
+issue would have but a doubtful validity. It was, perhaps, but a slight
+advantage; and the niceties of technical fencing might soon resolve
+themselves into a question of mere strength; yet, in the opening of great
+conflicts, it is well, even when a resort to force is inevitable, to throw
+on the opposing party the responsibility of violence; and Henry had been
+led, either by a refinement of policy, or by the plain straightforwardness
+of his intentions, into a situation where he could expect without alarm the
+unrolling of the future.
+
+The character of that future was likely soon to be decided. The appeal was
+published on the 29th of June; and as the pope must have heard, by the
+middle of the month at latest, of the trial and judgment at Dunstable, a
+few days would bring an account of the manner in which he had received the
+intelligence. Prior to the arrival of the couriers, Bennet, with the
+assistance of Cardinal Tournon, had somewhat soothed down his exasperation.
+Francis, also, having heard that immediate process was threatened, had
+written earnestly to deprecate such a measure;[605] and though he took the
+interference "very displeasantly,"[606] the pope could not afford to lose,
+by premature impatience; the fruit of all his labour and diplomacy, and had
+yielded so far as to promise that nothing of moment should be done. To this
+state of mind he had been brought one day in the second week of June. The
+morning after, Bennet found him "sore altered." The news of "my Lord of
+Canterbury's proceedings" had arrived the preceding night; and "his
+Holiness said that [such] doings were too sore for him to stand still at
+and do nothing."[607] It was "against his duty towards God and the world to
+tolerate them." The imperialist cardinals, impatient before, clamoured that
+the evil had been caused by the dilatory timidity with which the case had
+been handled from the first.[608] The consistory sate day after day with
+closed doors;[609] and even such members of it as had before inclined to
+the English side, joined in the common indignation. "Some extreme process"
+was instantly looked for, and the English agents, in their daily interviews
+with the pope, were forced to listen to language which it was hard to bear
+with equanimity. Bennet's well-bred courtesy carried him successfully
+through the difficulty; his companion Bonner was not so fortunate. Bonner's
+tongue was insolent, and under bad control. He replied to menace by
+impertinence; and on one occasion was so exasperating, that Clement
+threatened to burn him alive, or boil him in a caldron of lead.[610] When
+fairly roused, the old man was dangerous; and the future Bishop of London
+wrote to England in extremity of alarm. His letter has not been found, but
+the character of it may be perceived from the reassuring reply of the king.
+The agents, Henry said, were not to allow themselves to be frightened; they
+were to go on calmly, with their accustomed diligence and dexterity,
+disputing the ground from point to point, and trust to him. Their cause was
+good, and, with God's help, he would be able to defend them from the malice
+of their adversaries.[611]
+
+Fortunately for Bonner, the pope's passion was of brief duration, and the
+experiment whether Henry's arm could reach to the dungeons of the Vatican
+remained untried. The more moderate of the cardinals, also, something
+assuaged the storm; and angry as they all were, the majority still saw the
+necessity of prudence. In the heat of the irritation, final sentence was to
+have been pronounced upon the entire cause, backed by interdict,
+excommunication, and the full volume of the papal thunders. At the close of
+a month's deliberation they resolved to reserve judgement on the original
+question, and to confine themselves for the present to revenging the insult
+to the pope by "my Lord of Canterbury." Both the king and the archbishop
+had disobeyed a formal inhibition. On the 12th of July, the pope issued a
+brief, declaring Cranmer's judgment to have been illegal, the English
+process to have been null and void, and the king, by his disobedience, to
+have incurred, _ipso facto_, the threatened penalties of excommunication.
+Of his clemency he suspended these censures till the close of the following
+September, in order that time might be allowed to restore the respective
+parties to their old positions: if within that period the parties were not
+so restored, the censures would fall.[612] This brief was sent into
+Flanders, and fixed in the usual place against the door of a church in
+Dunkirk.
+
+Henry was prepared for a measure which was no more than natural. He had
+been prepared for it as a possibility when he married. Both he and Francis
+must have been prepared for it on their meeting at Calais, when the French
+king advised him to marry, and promised to support him through the
+consequences. His own measures had been arranged beforehand, and he had
+secured himself in technical entrenchments by his appeal. After the issue
+of the brief, however, he could allow no English embassy to compliment
+Clement by its presence on his visit to France. He "knew the pope," as he
+said. Long experience had shown him that nothing was to be gained by
+yielding in minor points; and the only chance which now remained of
+preserving the established order of Christendom, was to terrify the Vatican
+court into submission by the firmness of his attitude. For the present
+complications, the court of Rome, not he, was responsible. The pope, with a
+culpable complacency for the emperor, had shrunk from discharging a duty
+which his office imposed upon him; and the result had been, that the duty
+was discharged by another. Henry could not blame himself for the
+consequences of Clement's delinquency. He rather felt himself wronged in
+having been driven to so extreme a measure against his will. He resolved,
+therefore, to recall the embassy, and once more, though with no great hope
+that he would be successful, to invite Francis to fulfil his promise, and
+to unite with himself in expressing his resentment at the pope's conduct.
+
+His despatch to the Duke of Norfolk on this occasion was the natural sequel
+of what he had written a few weeks previously. That letter had failed
+wholly of its effect. The interview was resolved upon for quite other
+reasons than those which were acknowledged, and therefore was not to be
+given up. A promise, however, had been extracted, that it should be given
+up, if in the course of the summer the pope "innovated anything" against
+the King of England; and Henry now required, formally, that this engagement
+should be observed. "A notorious and notable innovation" had been made, and
+Francis must either deny his words, or adhere to them. It would be evident
+to all the world, if the interview took place under the present
+circumstances, that the alliance with England was no longer of the
+importance with him which it had been; that his place in the struggle, when
+the struggle came, would be found on the papal side.
+
+The language of Henry throughout this paper was very fine and noble. He
+reminded Francis that substantially the cause at issue was the cause of all
+princes; the pope claiming a right to summon them to plead in the courts of
+Rome, and refusing to admit their exemption as sovereign rulers. He had
+been required not only to undo his marriage, and cancel the sentence of
+divorce, but, as a condition of reconciliation with the Holy See, to undo
+also, the Act of Appeals, and to restore the papal jurisdiction. He desired
+it to be understood, with emphasis, that these points were all equally
+sacred, and the repeal of the act was as little to be thought of as the
+annulling the marriage. "The pope," he said, "did inforce us to excogitate
+some new thing, whereby we might be healed and relieved of that continual
+disease, to care for our cause at Rome, where such defence was taken from
+us, as by the laws of God, nature, and man, is due unto us. Hereupon
+depended the wealth of our realm; hereupon consisted the surety of our
+succession, which by no other means could be well assured." "And
+therefore," he went on, "you [the Duke] shall say to our good brother, that
+the pope persisting in the ways he hath entered, ye must needs despair in
+any meeting between the French king and the pope, to produce any such
+effect as to cause us to meet in concord with the pope; but we shall be
+even as far asunder as is between yea and nay. For to the pope's enterprise
+to revoke or put back anything that is done here, either in marriage,
+statute, sentence, or proclamation[613]--of which four members is knit and
+conjoined the surety of our matter, nor any can be removed from the other,
+lest thereby the whole edifice should be destroyed--we will and shall, by
+all ways and means say nay, and declare our nay in such sort as the world
+shall hear, and the pope feel it. Wherein ye may say our firm trust,
+perfect hope, and assured confidence is, that our good brother will agree
+with us; as well for that it should be partly dishonourable for him to see
+decay the thing that was of his own foundation and planting: as also that
+it should be too much dishonourable for us--having travelled so far in this
+matter, and brought it to this point, that all the storms of the year
+passed, it is now come to harvest, trusting to see shortly the fruit of our
+marriage, to the wealth, joy, and comfort of all our realm, and our own
+singular consolation--that anything should now be done by us to impair the
+same, and to put our issue either in peril of bastardy, or otherwise
+disturb that [which] is by the whole agreement of our realm established for
+their and our commodity, wealth, and benefit. And in this determination ye
+know us to be so fixed, and the contrary hereof to be so infeasible, either
+at our hands, or by the consent of the realm, that ye must needs despair of
+any order to be taken by the French king with the pope. For if any were by
+him taken wherein any of these four pieces should be touched--that is to
+say, the marriage of the queen our wife, the revocation of the Bishop of
+Canterbury's sentence, the statute of our realm, or our late proclamation,
+which be as it were one--and as walls, covering, the foundation make a
+house, so they knit together, establish, and make one matter--ye be well
+assured, and be so ascertained from us, that in no wise we will relent, but
+will, as we have before written, withstand the same. Whereof ye may say
+that ye have thought good to advertise him, to the intent he make no
+farther promise to the pope therein than may be performed."
+
+The ambassadors were the more emphatically to insist on the king's
+resolution, lest Francis, in his desire for conciliation, might hold out
+hopes to the pope which could not be realised. They were to say, however,
+that the King of England still trusted that the interview would not take
+place. The see of Rome was asserting a jurisdiction which, if conceded,
+would encourage an unlimited usurpation. If princes might be cited to the
+papal courts in a cause of matrimony, they might be cited equally in other
+causes at the pope's pleasure; and the free kingdoms of Europe would be
+converted into dependent provinces of the see of Rome. It concerned alike
+the interest and the honour of all sovereigns to resist encroachments which
+pointed to such an issue; and, therefore, Henry said he hoped that his good
+brother would use the pope as he had deserved, "doing him to understand his
+folly, and [that] unless he had first made amends, he could not find in his
+heart to have further amity with him."
+
+If notwithstanding, the instructions concluded, "all these persuasions
+cannot have place to let the said meeting, and the French king shall say it
+is expedient for him to have in his hands the duchess,[614] under pretence
+of marriage for his son, which he cannot obtain but by this means, ye shall
+say that ye remember ye heard him say once he would never conclude that
+marriage but to do us good, which is now infaisible; and now in the voice
+of the world shall do us both more hurt in the diminution of the reputation
+of our amity than it should do otherwise profit. Nevertheless, [if] ye
+cannot let his precise determination, [ye] can but lament and bewail your
+own chance to depart home in this sort; and that yet of the two
+inconvenients, it is to you more tolerable to return to us nothing done,
+than to be present at the interview and to be compelled to look patiently
+upon your master's enemy."
+
+After having entered thus their protest against the French king's conduct,
+the embassy was to return to England, leaving a parting intimation of the
+single condition under which Henry would consent to treat. If the pope
+would declare that "the matrimony with the Lady Catherine was and is
+nought, he should do somewhat not to be refused;" except with this
+preliminary, no offer whatever could be entertained.[615]
+
+This communication, as Henry anticipated, was not more effectual than the
+former in respect of its immediate object. At the meeting of Calais the
+interests of Francis had united him with England, and in pursuing the
+objects of Henry he was then pursuing his own. The pope and the emperor had
+dissolved the coalition by concessions on the least dangerous side. The
+interests of Francis lay now in the other direction, and there are few
+instances in history in which governments have adhered to obligations
+against their advantage from a spirit of honour, when the purposes with
+which they contracted those obligations have been otherwise obtained. The
+English embassy returned as they were ordered; the French court pursued
+their way to Marseilles; not quarrelling with England; intending to abide
+by the alliance, and to give all proofs of amity which did not involve
+inconvenient sacrifices; but producing on the world at large by their
+conduct the precise effect which Henry had foretold. The world at large,
+looking to acts rather than to words, regarded the interview as a
+contrivance to reconcile Francis and the emperor through the intervention
+of the pope, as a preliminary for a packed council, and for a holy war
+against the Lutherans[616]--a combination of ominous augury to Christendom,
+from the consequences of which, if Germany was to be the first sufferer,
+England would be inevitably the second.
+
+Meanwhile, as the French alliance threatened to fail, the English
+government found themselves driven at last to look for a connection among
+those powers from whom they had hitherto most anxiously disconnected
+themselves. At such a time. Protestant Germany, not Catholic France, was
+England's natural friend. The Reformation was essentially a Teutonic
+movement; the Germans, the English, the Scotch, the Swedes, the Hollanders,
+all were struggling on their various roads towards an end essentially the
+same. The same dangers threatened them, the same inspiration moved them;
+and in the eyes of the orthodox Catholics they were united in a black
+communion of heresy. Unhappily, though this identity was obvious to their
+enemies, it was far from obvious to themselves. The odium theologicum is
+ever hotter between sections of the same party which are divided by
+trifling differences, than between the open representatives of antagonist
+principles; and Anglicans and Lutherans, instead of joining hands across
+the Channel, endeavoured only to secure each a recognition of themselves at
+the expense of the other. The English plumed themselves on their orthodoxy.
+They were "not as those publicans," heretics, despisers of the keys,
+disobedient to authority; they desired only the independence of their
+national church, and they proved their zeal for the established faith with
+all the warmth of persecution. To the Germans national freedom was of
+wholly minor moment, in comparison with the freedom of the soul; the
+orthodoxy of England was as distasteful to the disciples of Luther as the
+orthodoxy of Rome--and the interests of Europe were sacrificed on both
+sides to this foolish and fatal disunion. Circumstances indeed would not
+permit the division to remain in its first intensity, and their common
+danger compelled the two nations into a partial understanding. Yet the
+reconciliation, imperfect to the last, was at the outset all but
+impossible. Their relations were already embittered by many reciprocal acts
+of hostility. Henry VIII. had won his spurs as a theologian by an attack on
+Luther. Luther had replied by a hailstorm of invectives. The Lutheran books
+had been proscribed, the Lutherans themselves had' been burnt by Henry's
+bishops. The Protestant divines in Germany had attempted to conciliate the
+emperor by supporting the cause of Catherine; and Luther himself had spoken
+loudly in condemnation of the king. The elements of disunion were so many
+and so powerful, that there was little hope of contending against them
+successfully. Nevertheless, as Henry saw, the coalition of Francis and the
+emperor, if the pope succeeded in cementing it, was a most serious danger,
+to which an opposite alliance would alone be an adequate counterpoise; and
+the experiment might at least be tried whether such an alliance was
+possible. At the beginning of August, therefore, Stephen Vaughan was sent
+on a tentative mission to the Elector of Saxe, John Frederick, at
+Weimar.[617] He was the bearer of letters containing a proposal for a
+resident English ambassador; and if the elector gave his consent, he was to
+proceed with similar offers to the courts of the Landgrave of Hesse and the
+Duke of Lunenberg.[618] Vaughan arrived in due time at the elector's court,
+was admitted to audience and delivered his letters. The prince read them,
+and in the evening of the same day returned for answer a polite but wholly
+absolute refusal. Being but a prince elector, he said, he might not aspire
+to so high an honour as to be favoured with the presence of an English
+ambassador. It was not the custom in Germany, and he feared that if he
+consented he should displease the emperor.[619] The meaning of such a reply
+delivered in a few hours was not to be mistaken, however disguised in
+courteous language. The English emissary saw that he was an unwelcome
+visitor, and that he must depart with the utmost celerity. "The elector,"
+he wrote,[620] "thirsted to have me gone from him, which I right well
+perceived by evident tokens which declared unto me the same." He had no
+anxiety to expose to hazard the toleration which the Protestant dukedoms as
+yet enjoyed from the emperor, by committing himself to a connection with a
+prince with whose present policy he had no sympathy, and whose conversion
+to the cause of the Reformation he had as yet no reason to believe
+sincere.[621]
+
+The reception which Vaughan met with at Weimar satisfied him that he need
+go no further; neither the Landgrave nor the Duke of Lunenberg would be
+likely to venture on a course which the elector so obviously feared. He,
+therefore, gave up his mission, and returned to England.
+
+The first overtures in this direction issued in complete failure, nor was
+the result wholly to be regretted. It taught Henry (or it was a first
+commencement of the lesson) that so long as he pursued a merely English
+policy he might not expect that other nations would embroil themselves in
+his defence. He must allow the Reformation a wider scope, he must permit it
+to comprehend within its possible consequences the breaking of the chains
+by which his subjects' minds were bound--not merely a change of jailors.
+Then perhaps the German princes might return some other answer.
+
+The disappointment, however, fell lightly; for before the account of the
+failure had reached England, an event had happened, which, poor as the king
+might be in foreign alliances, had added most material strength to his
+position in England. The full moment of that event he had no means of
+knowing. In its immediate bearing it was matter for most abundant
+satisfaction. On the seventh of September, between three and four in the
+afternoon, at the palace of Greenwich, was born a princess, named three
+days later in her baptism, after the king's mother, Elizabeth.[622] A son
+had been hoped for. The child was a daughter only; yet at least Providence
+had not pronounced against the marriage by a sentence of barrenness; at
+least there was now an heir whose legitimacy the nation had agreed to
+accept. Te Deums were sung in all the churches; again the river decked
+itself in splendour; again all London steeples were musical with bells. A
+font of gold was presented for the christening. Francis, in compensation
+for his backslidings, had consented to be godfather; and the infant, who
+was soon to find her country so rude a stepmother, was received with all
+the outward signs of exulting welcome. To Catherine's friends the offspring
+of the rival marriage was not welcome, but was an object rather of bitter
+hatred; and the black cloud of a sister's jealousy gathered over the cradle
+whose innocent occupant had robbed her of her title and her expectations.
+To the king, to the parliament, to the healthy heart of England, she was an
+object of eager hope and an occasion for thankful gratitude; but the seeds
+were sown with her birth of those misfortunes which were soon to overshadow
+her, and to form the school of the great nature which in its maturity would
+re-mould the world.
+
+Leaving Elizabeth for the present, we return to the continent, and to the
+long-promised interview, which was now at last approaching. Henry made no
+further attempt to remonstrate with Francis; and Francis assured him, and
+with all sincerity, that he would use his best efforts to move the pope to
+make the necessary concessions. The English embassy meanwhile was
+withdrawn. The excommunication had been received as an act of hostility, of
+which Henry would not even condescend to complain; and it was to be
+understood distinctly that in any exertions which might be made by the
+French king, the latter was acting without commission on his own
+responsibility. The intercession was to be the spontaneous act of a mutual
+friend, who, for the interests of Christendom, desired to heal a dangerous
+wound; but neither directly nor indirectly was it to be interpreted as an
+expression of a desire for a reconciliation on the English side.
+
+It was determined further, on the recal of the Duke of Norfolk, that the
+opportunity of the meeting should be taken to give a notice to the pope of
+the king's appeal to the council; and for this purpose, Bennet and Bonner
+were directed to follow the papal court from Rome. Bennet never
+accomplished this journey, dying on the route, worn out with much
+service.[623] His death delayed Bonner, and the conferences had opened for
+many days before his arrival. Clement had reached Marseilles by ship from
+Genoa, about the 20th of October. As if pointedly to irritate Henry, he had
+placed himself under the conduct of the Duke of Albany.[624] He was
+followed two days later by his fair niece, Catherine de Medici; and the
+preparations for the marriage were commenced with the utmost swiftness and
+secrecy. The conditions of the contract were not allowed to transpire, but
+they were concluded in three days; and on this 25th of October the pope
+bestowed his precious present on the Duke of Orleans, he himself performing
+the nuptial ceremony, and accompanying it with his paternal benediction on
+the young pair, and on the happy country which was to possess them for its
+king and queen. France being thus securely riveted to Rome, other matters
+could be talked of more easily. Francis made all decent overtures to the
+pope in behalf of Henry; if the pope was to be believed indeed, he was
+vehemently urgent.[625] Clement in turn made suggestions for terms of
+alliance between Francis and Charles, "to the advantage of the Most
+Christian king;"[626] and thus parried the remonstrances. The only point
+positively clear to the observers, was the perfect understanding which
+existed between the King of France and his spiritual father.[627] Unusual
+activity was remarked in the dockyards; Italian soldiers of fortune were
+about the court in unusual numbers, and apparently in favour.[628] An
+invasion of Lombardy was talked of among the palace retinue; and the
+emperor was said to distrust the intentions of the conference. Possibly
+experience had taught all parties to doubt each other's faith. Possibly
+they were all in some degree waiting upon events; and had not yet resolved
+upon their conduct.
+
+In the midst of this scene arrived Doctor Bonner, in the beginning of
+November, with Henry's appeal. He was a strange figure to appear in such a
+society. There was little probity, perhaps, either in the court of France,
+or in their Italian visitors: but of refinement, of culture, of those
+graces which enable men to dispense with the more austere excellences of
+character--which transform licentiousness into elegant frailty, and
+treachery and falsehood into pardonable finesse--of these there was very
+much: and when a rough, coarse, vulgar Englishman was plunged among these
+delicate ladies and gentlemen, he formed an element which contrasted
+strongly with the general environment. Yet Banner, perhaps, was not without
+qualifications which fitted him for his mission. He was not, indeed,
+virtuous; but he had a certain downright honesty about him, joined with an
+entire insensibility to those finer perceptions which would have interfered
+with plain speaking, where plain speaking was desirable; he had a broad,
+not ungenial humour, which showed him things and persons in their genuine
+light, and enabled him to picture them for us with a distinctness for which
+we owe him lasting thanks.
+
+He appeared at Marseilles on the 7th of November, and had much difficulty
+in procuring an interview. At length, weary of waiting, and regardless of
+the hot lead with which he had been lately threatened, he forced his way
+into the room where "the pope was standing, with the Cardinals De Lorraine
+and Medici, ready apparelled with his stole to go to the consistory."
+
+"Incontinently upon my coming thither," he wrote to Henry,[629] "the pope,
+whose sight is incredulous quick, eyed me, and that divers times; making a
+good pause in one place; at which time I desired the datary to advertise
+his Holiness that I would speak with him; and albeit the datary made no
+little difficulty therein, yet perceiving that upon refusal I would have
+gone forthwith to the pope, he advertised the pope of my said desire. His
+Holiness dismissing as then the said cardinals, and letting his vesture
+fall, went to a window in the said chamber, calling me unto him. At which
+time I showed unto his Holiness how that your Highness had given me express
+and strait commandment to intimate unto him how that your Grace had
+solemnly provoked and appealed unto the general council; submitting
+yourself to the tuition and defence thereof; which provocation and appeal I
+had under authentic writings then with me, to show for that purpose. And
+herewithal I drew out the said writing, showing his said Holiness that I
+brought the same in proof of the premises, and that his Holiness might see
+and perceive all the same. The pope having this for a breakfast, only
+pulled down his head to his shoulders, after the Italian fashion, and said
+that because he was as then fully ready to go into the consistory, he would
+not tarry to hear or see the said writings, but willed me to come at
+afternoon."
+
+The afternoon came, and Bonner returned, and was admitted. There was some
+conversation upon indifferent matters; the pope making good-natured
+inquiries about Bennet, and speaking warmly and kindly of him.
+
+"Presently," Bonner continues, "falling out of that, he said that he
+marvelled your Highness would use his Holiness after such sort as it
+appears ye did. I said that your Highness no less did marvel that his
+Holiness having found so much benevolence and kindness at your hands in all
+times past, would for acquittal show such unkindness as of late he did. And
+here we entered in communication upon two points: one was that his
+Holiness, having committed in times past, and in most ample form, the cause
+into the realm, promising not to revoke the said commission, and over that,
+to confirm the process and sentence of the commissaries, should not at the
+point of sentence have advoked the cause, retaining it at Rome--forasmuch
+as Rome was a place whither your Highness could not, ne yet ought,
+personally to come unto, and also was not bound to send thither your
+proctor. The second point was, that your Highness's cause being, in the
+opinion of the best learned men in Christendom, approved good and just, and
+so [in] many ways known unto his Holiness, the same should not so long have
+retained it in his hands without judgment.
+
+"His Holiness answering the same, as touching the first point, said that if
+the queen (meaning the late wife of Prince Arthur, calling her always in
+his conversation the queen) had not given an oath refusing the judges as
+suspect, he would not have advoked the matter at all, but been content that
+it should have been determined and ended in your realm. But seeing she gave
+that oath, appealing also to his court, he might and ought to hear her, his
+promise made to your Highness, which was qualified, notwithstanding. As
+touching the second point, his Holiness said that your Highness only was
+the default thereof, because ye would not send a proxy to the cause. These
+matters, however, he said, had been many times fully talked upon at Rome;
+and therefore [he] willed me to omit further communication thereupon, and
+to proceed to the doing of such things that I was specially sent for.
+
+"Whereupon making protestation of your Highness's mind and intent towards
+the see apostolic--not intending anything to do in contempt of the same--I
+exhibited unto his Holiness the commission which your Highness had sent
+unto me; and his Holiness delivering it to the datary, commanded him to
+read it; and hearing in the same the words (referring to the injuries which
+he had done to your Highness), he began to look up after a new sort, and
+said, 'O questo et multo vero! (this is much true!)' meaning that it was
+not true indeed. And verily, sure not only in this, but also in many parts
+of the said commission, he showed himself grievously offended; insomuch
+that, when those words, 'To the next general council which shall be
+lawfully held in place convenient,' were read, he fell in a marvellous
+great choler and rage, not only declaring the same by his gesture and
+manner, but also by words: speaking with great vehemence, and saying, 'Why
+did not the king, when I wrote to my nuncio this year past, to speak unto
+him for this general council, give no answer unto my said nuncio, but
+referred him for answer to the French king? at what time he might perceive
+by my doing, that I was very well disposed, and much spake for it.' 'The
+thing so standing, now to speak of a general council! Oh, good Lord! but
+well! his commission and all his other writings cannot be but welcome unto
+me;' which words methought he spake willing to hide his choler, and make me
+believe that he was nothing angry with their doings, when in vary deed I
+perceived, by many arguments, that it was otherwise. And one among others
+was taken here for infallible with them that knoweth the pope's conditions,
+that he was continually folding up and unwinding of his handkerchief, which
+he never doth but when he is tickled to the very heart with great choler."
+
+At length the appeal was read through; and at the close of it Francis
+entered, and talked to the pope for some time, but in so low a voice that
+Bonner could not hear what was passing. When he had gone, his Holiness said
+that he would deliberate upon the appeal with the consistory, and after
+hearing their judgments would return his answer.
+
+Three days passed, and then the English agent was informed that he might
+again present himself. The pope had recovered his calmness. When he had
+time to collect himself, Clement could speak well and with dignity; and if
+we could forget that his conduct was substantially unjust, and that in his
+conscience he knew it to be unjust, he would almost persuade us to believe
+him honest. "He said," wrote Bonner, "that his mind towards your Highness
+always had been to minister justice, and to do pleasure to you; albeit it
+hath not been so taken: and he never unjustly grieved your Grace that he
+knoweth, nor intendeth hereafter to do. As concerning the appeal, he said
+that, forasmuch as there was a constitution of Pope Pius, his predecessor,
+that did condemn and reprove all such appeals, he did therefore reject your
+Grace's appeal as frivolous, forbidden, and unlawful." As touching the
+council, he said generally, that he would do his best that it should meet;
+but it was to be understood that the calling a general council belonged to
+him, and not to the King of England.
+
+The audience ended, and Bonner left the pope convinced that he intended, on
+his return to Rome, to execute the censures and continue the process
+without delay. That the sentence which he would pronounce would be against
+the king appeared equally certain.
+
+It appeared certain, yet after all no certain conclusion is possible.
+Francis I., though not choosing to quarrel with the see of Rome to do a
+pleasure to Henry, was anxious to please his ally to the extent of his
+convenience; at any rate, he would not have gratuitously deceived him; and
+still less would he have been party to an act of deliberate treachery. When
+Bonner was gone he had a last interview with the pope, in which he urged
+upon him the necessity of complying with Henry's demands; and the pope on
+this occasion said that he was satisfied that the King of England was
+right; that his cause was good; and that he had only to acknowledge the
+papal jurisdiction by some formal act, to find sentence immediately
+pronounced in his favour. Except for his precipitation, and his refusal to
+depute a proxy to plead for him, his wishes would have been complied with
+long before. In the existing posture of affairs, and after the measures
+which had been passed in England with respect to the see of Rome, he
+himself, the pope said, could not make advances without some kind of
+submission; but a single act of acknowledgment was all which he
+required.[630]
+
+Extraordinary as it must seem, the pope certainly bound himself by this
+engagement: and who can tell with what intention? To believe him sincere
+and to believe him false seems equally impossible. If he was persuaded that
+Henry's cause _was_ good, why did he in the following year pronounce
+finally for Catherine? why had he imperilled so needlessly the interests of
+the papacy in England? why had his conduct from the beginning pointed
+steadily to the conclusion at which he at last arrived? and why throughout
+Europe were the ultramontane party, to a man, on Catherine's side? On the
+other hand, what object at such a time can be conceived for falsehood? Can
+we suppose that he designed to dupe Henry into submission by a promise
+which he had predetermined to break? It is hard to suppose even Clement
+capable of so elaborate an act of perfidy; and it is, perhaps, idle to
+waste conjectures on the motives of a weak, much-agitated man. He was,
+probably, but giving a fresh example of his disposition to say at each
+moment whatever would be most agreeable to his hearers. This was his
+unhappy habit, by which he earned for himself a character for dishonesty, I
+labour to think, but half deserved.
+
+If, however, Clement meant to deceive, he succeeded, undoubtedly, in
+deceiving the French king. Francis, in communicating to Henry the language
+which the pope had used, entreated him to reconsider his resolution. The
+objection to pleading at Rome might be overcome; for the pope would meet
+him in a middle course. Judges could be appointed, who should sit at
+Cambray, and pass a sentence in condemnation of the original marriage; with
+a definite promise that their sentence should not again be called in
+question. To this arrangement there could be no reasonable objection; and
+Francis implored that a proposal so liberal should not be rejected.
+Sufficient danger already threatened Christendom, from heretics within and
+from the Turks without; and although the English parliament were agreed to
+maintain the second marriage, it was unwise to provoke the displeasure of
+foreign princes. To allow time for the preliminary arrangements, the
+execution of the censures had been further postponed; and if Henry would
+make up the quarrel, the French monarch was commissioned to offer a league,
+offensive and defensive, between England, France, and the Papacy. He
+himself only desired to be faithful to his engagements to his good brother;
+and as a proof of his good faith, he said that he had been offered the
+Duchy of Milan, if he would look on while the emperor and the pope attacked
+England.[631]
+
+This language bears all the character of sincerity; and when we remember
+that it followed immediately upon a close and intimate communication of
+three weeks with Clement, it is not easy to believe that he could have
+mistaken the extent of the pope's promises. We may suppose Clement for the
+moment to have been honest, or wavering between honesty and falsehood; we
+may suppose further that Francis trusted him because it was undesirable to
+be suspicious, in the belief that he was discharging the duty of a friend
+to Henry, and of a friend to the church, in offering to mediate upon these
+terms.
+
+But Henry was far advanced beyond the point at which fair words could move
+him. He had trusted many times, and had been many times deceived. It was
+not easy to entangle him again. It mattered little whether Clement was weak
+or false; the result was the same--he could not be trusted. To an open
+English understanding there was something monstrous in the position of a
+person professing to be a judge, who admitted that a cause which lay before
+him was so clear that he could bind himself to a sentence upon it, and
+could yet refuse to pronounce that sentence, except upon conditions. It was
+scarcely for the interests of justice to leave the distribution of it in
+hands so questionable.
+
+Instead, therefore, of coming forward, as Francis hoped, instead of
+consenting to entangle himself again in the meshes of diplomatic intrigue,
+the king returned a peremptory refusal.
+
+The Duke of Norfolk, and such of the council as dreaded the completion of
+the schism, assured d'Inteville, the French ambassador, that for themselves
+they considered Francis was doing the best for England which could be done,
+and that they deprecated violent measures as much as possible; but in all
+this party there was a secret leaning to Queen Catherine, a dislike of
+Queen Anne and the whole Boleyn race, and a private hope and belief that
+the pope would after all be firm. Their tongues were therefore tied. They
+durst not speak except alone in whispers to each other; and the French
+ambassador, who did dare, only drew from Henry a more determined expression
+of his resolution.
+
+As to his measures in England, the king said, the pope had begun the
+quarrel by issuing censures and by refusing to admit his reasons for
+declining to plead at Rome. He was required to send a proctor, and was told
+that the cause should be decided in favour of whichever party was so
+represented there. For the sake of all other princes as well as himself, he
+would send no proctor, nor would he seem to acquiesce in the pretences of
+the papal see. The King of France told him that the pope admitted the
+justice of his cause. Let the pope do justice, then. The laws passed in
+parliament were for the benefit of the commonwealth, and he would never
+revoke them. He demanded no reparation, and could make no reparation. He
+asked only for his right, and if he could not obtain it, he had God and
+truth on his side, and that was enough. In vain d'Inteville answered
+feebly, that his master had done all that was in his power; the king
+replied that the French council wished to entangle him with the pope; but
+for his own part he would never more acknowledge the pope in his pretended
+capacity. He might be bishop of Rome, or pope also, if he preferred the
+name; but the see of Rome should have no more jurisdiction in England, and
+he thought he would be none the worse Christian on that account, but rather
+the better. Jesus Christ he would acknowledge, and him only, as the true
+Lord of Christian men, and Christ's word only should be preached in
+England. The Spaniards might invade him as they threatened. He did not fear
+them. They might come, but they might not find it so easy to return.[632]
+
+The King had taken his position and was prepared for the consequences. He
+had foreseen for more than a year the possibility of an attempted invasion;
+and since his marriage, he had been aware that the chances of success in
+the adventure had been discussed on the Continent by the papal and imperial
+party. The pope had spoken of his censures being enforced, and Francis had
+revealed to Henry the nature of the dangerous overtures which had been made
+to himself. The Lutheran princes had hurriedly declined to connect
+themselves in any kind of alliance with England; and on the 25th of
+September, Stephen Vaughan had reported that troops were being raised in
+Germany, which rumour destined for Catherine's service.[633] Ireland, too,
+as we shall hear in the next chapter, was on the verge of an insurrection,
+which had been fomented by papal agents.
+
+Nevertheless, there was no real danger from an invasion, unless it was
+accompanied with an insurrection at home, or with a simultaneous attack
+from Scotland; and while of the first there appeared upon the surface no
+probability, with Scotland a truce for a year had been concluded on the 1st
+of October.[634] The king, therefore, had felt himself reasonably secure.
+Parliament had seemed unanimous; the clergy were submissive; the nation
+acquiescent or openly approving;[635] and as late as the beginning of
+November, 1533, no suspicion seems to have been entertained of the spread
+of serious disaffection. A great internal revolution had been accomplished;
+a conflict of centuries between the civil and spiritual powers had been
+terminated without a life lost or a blow struck. Partial murmurs there had
+been, but murmurs were inevitable, and, so far as the government yet knew,
+were harmless. The Scotch war had threatened to be dangerous, but it had
+been extinguished. Impatient monks had denounced the king from the pulpits,
+and disloyal language had been reported from other quarters, which had
+roused vigilance, but had not created alarm. The Nun of Kent had forced
+herself into the royal presence with menacing prophecies; but she had
+appeared to be a harmless dreamer, who could only be made of importance by
+punishment. The surface of the nation was in profound repose. Cromwell,
+like Walsingham after him, may perhaps have known of the fire which was
+smouldering below, and have watched it silently till the moment came at
+which to trample it out; but no symptom of uneasiness appears either in the
+conduct of the government or in the official correspondence. The
+organisation of the friars, the secret communication of the Nun with
+Catherine and the Princess Mary, with the papal nuncio, or with noble lords
+and reverend bishops, was either unknown, or the character of those
+communications was not suspected. That a serious political conspiracy
+should have shaped itself round the ravings of a seeming lunatic, to all
+appearance had not occurred as a possibility to a single member of the
+council, except to those whose silence was ensured by their complicity.
+
+So far as we are able to trace the story (for the links of the chain which
+led to the discovery of the design's which were entertained, are something
+imperfect), the suspicions of the government were first roused in the
+following manner:
+
+Queen Catherine, as we have already seen, had been called upon, at the
+coronation of Anne Boleyn, to renounce her title, and she had refused. Mary
+had been similarly deprived of her rank as princess; but either her
+disgrace was held to be involved in that of her mother, or some other
+cause, perhaps the absence of immediate necessity, had postponed the demand
+for her own personal submission. As, however, on the publication of the
+second marriage, it had been urged on Catherine that there could not be two
+queens in England, so on the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, an analogous
+argument required the disinheritance of Mary. It was a hard thing; but her
+mother's conduct obliged the king to be peremptory. She might have been
+legitimatised by act of parliament, if Catherine would have submitted. The
+consequences of Catherine's refusal might be cruel, but they were
+unavoidable.
+
+Mary was not with her mother. It had been held desirable to remove her from
+an influence which would encourage her in a useless opposition; and she was
+residing at Beaulieu, afterwards New Hall, in Essex, under the care of Lord
+Hussey and the Countess of Salisbury. Lord Hussey was a dangerous guardian;
+he was subsequently executed for his complicity in the Pilgrimage of Grace,
+the avowed object of which was the restoration of Mary to her place as
+heir-apparent. We may believe, therefore, that while under his surveillance
+she experienced no severe restraint, nor received that advice with respect
+to her conduct which prudence would have dictated. Lord Hussey, however,
+for the present enjoyed the confidence of the king, and was directed to
+inform his charge, that for the future she was to consider herself not as
+princess, but as the king's natural daughter, the Lady Mary Tudor. The
+message was a painful one; painful, we will hope, more on her mother's
+account than on her own; but her answer implied that, as yet, Henry VIII.
+was no object of especial terror to his children.
+
+"Her Grace replied," wrote Lord Hussey to the council in communicating the
+result of his undertaking,[636] that "she could not a little marvel that I
+being alone, and not associate with some other the king's most honourable
+council, nor yet sufficiently authorised neither by commission not by any
+other writing from the King's Highness, would attempt to declare such a
+high enterprise and matter of no little weight and importance unto her
+Grace, in diminishing her said estate and name; her Grace not doubting that
+she is the king's true and legitimate daughter and heir procreate in good
+and lawful matrimony; [and] further adding, that unless she were advertised
+from his Highness by his writing that his Grace was so minded to diminish
+her estate, name, and dignity, which she trusteth his Highness will never
+do, she would not believe it."
+
+Inasmuch as Mary was but sixteen at this time, the resolution which she
+displayed in sending such a message was considerable. The early English
+held almost Roman notions on the nature of parental authority, and the tone
+of a child to a father was usually that of the most submissive reverence.
+Nor was she contented with replying indirectly through her guardian. She
+wrote herself to the king, saying that she neither could nor would in her
+conscience think the contrary, but that she was his lawful daughter born in
+true matrimony, and that she thought that he in his own conscience did
+judge the same.[637]
+
+Such an attitude in so young a girl was singular, yet not necessarily
+censurable. Henry was not her only parent, and if we suppose her to have
+been actuated by affection for her mother, her conduct may appear not
+pardonable only, but spirited and creditable. In insisting upon her
+legitimacy, nevertheless, she was not only asserting the good name and fame
+of Catherine of Arragon, but unhappily her own claim to the succession to
+the throne. It was natural that under the circumstances she should have
+felt her right to assert that claim; for the injury which she had suffered
+was patent not only to herself, but to Europe. Catherine might have been
+required to give way that the king might have a son, and that the
+succession might be established in a prince; but so long as the child of
+the second marriage was a daughter only, it seemed substantially monstrous
+to set aside the elder for the younger. Yet the measure was a harsh
+necessity; a link in the chain which could not be broken. The harassed
+nation insisted above all things that no doubt should hang over the future,
+and it was impossible in the existing complications to recognise the
+daughter of Catherine without excluding Elizabeth, and excluding the prince
+who was expected to follow her. By asserting her title, Mary was making
+herself the nucleus of sedition, which on her father's death would lead to
+a convulsion in the realm. She might not mean it, but the result would not
+be affected by a want of purpose in herself; and it was possible that her
+resolution might create immediate and far more painful complications. The
+king's excommunication was imminent, and if the censures were enforced by
+the emperor, she would be thrust into the unpermitted position of her
+father's rival.
+
+The political consequences of her conduct, notwithstanding, although
+evident to statesmen, might well be concealed from a headstrong, passionate
+girl. There was no suspicion that she herself was encouraging any of these
+dangerous thoughts, and Henry looked upon her answer to Lord Hussey and her
+letter to himself as expressions of petulant folly. Lord Oxford, the Earl
+of Essex, and the Earl of Sussex were directed to repair to Beaulieu, and
+explain to her the situation in which she had placed herself.
+
+"Considering," wrote the king to them, "how highly such contempt and
+rebellion done by our daughter and her servants doth touch not only us, and
+the surety of our honour and person, but also the tranquillity of our
+realm; and not minding to suffer the pernicious example hereof to spread
+far abroad, but to put remedy to the same in due time, we have given you
+commandment to declare to her the great folly, temerity, and indiscretion
+that she hath used herein, with the peril she hath incurred by reason of
+her so doing. By these her ungodly doings hitherto she hath most worthily
+deserved our high indignation and displeasure, and thereto no less pain and
+punition than by the order of the laws of our realm doth appertain in case
+of high treason, unless our mercy and clemency should be shewed in that
+behalf. [If, however, after] understanding our mind and pleasure, [she
+will] conform herself humbly and obediently to the observation of the same,
+according to the office and duty of a natural daughter, and of a true and
+faithful subject, she may give us cause hereafter to incline our fatherly
+pity to her reconciliation, her benefit and advancement."[638]
+
+The reply of Mary to this message is not discoverable; but it is certain
+that she persisted in her resolution, and clung either to her mother's
+"cause" or to her own rank and privilege, in sturdy defiance of her father.
+To punish her insubordination or to tolerate it was equally difficult; and
+the government might have been in serious embarrassment had not a series of
+discoveries, following rapidly one upon the other, explained the mystery of
+these proceedings, and opened a view with alarming clearness into the
+under-currents of the feeling of the country.
+
+Information from time to time had reached Henry from Rome, relating to the
+correspondence between Catherine and the pope. Perhaps, too, he knew how
+assiduously she had importuned the emperor to force Clement to a
+decision.[639] No effort, however, had been hitherto made to interfere with
+her hospitalities, or to oblige her visitors to submit to scrutiny before
+they could be admitted to her presence. She was the mistress of her own
+court and of her own actions; and confidential agents, both from Rome,
+Brussels, and Spain, had undoubtedly passed and repassed with reciprocal
+instructions and directions.
+
+The crisis which was clearly approaching had obliged Henry, in the course
+of this autumn, to be more watchful; and about the end of October, or the
+beginning of November,[640] two friars were reported as having been at
+Bugden, whose movements attracted suspicion from their anxiety to escape
+observation. Secret agents of the government, who had been "set" for the
+purpose, followed the friars to London, and notwithstanding "many wiles and
+cautells by them invented to escape," the suspected persons were arrested
+and brought before Cromwell. Cromwell, "upon examination" could gather
+nothing from them of any moment or great importance; but, "entering on
+further communication," he said, "he found one of them a very seditious
+person, and so committed them to ward." The king was absent from London,
+but had left directions that, in the event of any important occurrence of
+the kind, Archbishop Cranmer should be sent for; but Cranmer not being
+immediately at hand, Cromwell wrote to Henry for instructions; inasmuch as,
+he said, "it is undoubted that they (the monks) have intended, and would
+confess, some great matter, if they might be examined as they ought to
+be--that is to say, by pains."
+
+The curtain here falls over the two prisoners; we do not know whether they
+were tortured, whether they confessed, or what they confessed; but we may
+naturally connect this letter, directly or indirectly, with the events
+which immediately followed. In the middle of November we find a commission
+sitting at Lambeth, composed of Cromwell, Cranmer, and Latimer, ravelling
+out the threads of a story, from which, when the whole was disentangled, it
+appeared that by Queen Catherine, the Princess Mary, and a large and
+formidable party in the country, the king, on the faith of a pretended
+revelation, was supposed to have forfeited the crown; that his death,
+either by visitation of God or by visitation of man, was daily expected;
+and that whether his death took place or not, a revolution was immediately
+looked for, which would place the princess on the throne.
+
+The Nun of Kent, as we remember, had declared that if Henry persisted in
+his resolution of marrying Anne, she was commissioned by God to tell him
+that he should lose his power and authority. She had not specified the
+manner in which the sentence would be carried into effect against him. The
+form of her threats had been also varied occasionally; she said that he
+should die, but whether by the hands of his subjects, or by a providential
+judgment, she left to conjecture;[641] and the period within which his
+punishment was to fall upon him was stated variously at one month or at
+six.[642] She had attempted no secresy with these prophecies; she had
+confined herself in appearance to words; and the publicity which she
+courted having prevented suspicion of secret conspiracy, Henry quietly
+accepted the issue, and left the truth of the prophecy to be confuted by
+the event. He married. The one month passed; the six months passed;
+eight--nine months. His child was born and was baptised, and no divine
+thunder had interposed; only a mere harmless verbal thunder, from a poor
+old man at Rome. The illusion, as he imagined, had been lived down, and had
+expired of its own vanity.
+
+But the Nun and her friar advisers were counting on other methods of
+securing the fulfilment of the prophecy than supernatural assistance. It is
+remarkable that hypocrites and impostors as they knew themselves to be,
+they were not without a half belief that some supernatural intervention was
+imminent; but the career on which they had entered was too fascinating to
+allow them to forsake it when their expectation failed them. They were
+swept into the stream which was swelling to resist the Reformation, and
+allowed themselves to be hurried forward either to victory or to
+destruction.
+
+The first revelation being apparently confuted by facts, a second was
+produced as an interpretation of it; which, however, was not published like
+the other, but whispered in secret to persons whose dispositions were
+known.[643]
+
+"When the King's Grace," says the report of the commissioners, "had
+continued in good health, honour, and prosperity more than a month, Dr.
+Bocking shewed the said Nun, that as King Saul, abjected from his kingdom
+by God, yet continued king in the sight of the world, so her said
+revelations might be taken. And therefore the said Nun, upon this
+information, forged another revelation, that her words should be
+understanded to mean that the King's Grace should not be king in the
+reputation or acceptation of God, not one month or one hour after that he
+married the Queen's Grace that now is. The first revelation had moved a
+great number of the king's subjects, both high and low, to grudge against
+the said marriage before it was concluded and perfected; and also induced
+such as were stiffly bent against that marriage, daily to look for the
+destruction of the King's Grace within a month after he married the Queen's
+Grace that now is. And when they were deluded in that expectation, the
+second revelation was devised not only as an interpretation of the former,
+but to the intent to induce the king's subjects to believe that God took
+the King's Grace for no king of this realm, and that they should likewise
+take him for no righteous king, and themselves not bounden to be his
+subjects; which might have put the King and the Queen's Grace in jeopardy
+of their crown and of their issue, and the people of this realm in great
+danger of destruction."[644]
+
+It was no light matter to pronounce the king to be in the position of Saul
+after his rejection; and read by the light of the impending
+excommunication, the Nun's words could mean nothing but treason. The
+speaker herself was in correspondence with the pope; she had attested her
+divine commission by miracles, and had been recognised as a saint by an
+Archbishop of Canterbury; the regular orders of the clergy throughout the
+realm were known to regard her as inspired; and when the commission
+recollected that the king was threatened further with dying "a villain's
+death;" and that these and similar prophecies were carefully written out,
+and were in private circulation through the country, the matter assumed a
+dangerous complexion: it became at once essential to ascertain how far, and
+among what classes of the state, these things had penetrated. The Friars
+Mendicant were discovered to be in league with her, and these itinerants
+were ready-made missionaries of sedition. They had privilege of vagrancy
+without check or limit; and owing to their universal distribution and the
+freemasonry among themselves, the secret disposition of every family in
+England was intimately known to them. No movement, therefore, could be
+securely over-looked in which these orders had a share; the country might
+be undermined in secret; and the government might only learn their danger
+at the moment of explosion.
+
+No sooner, therefore, were the commissioners in possession of the general
+facts, than the principal parties--that is to say, the Nun herself and five
+of the monks of Christ Church at Canterbury--with whom her intercourse was
+most constant, were sent to the Tower to be "examined"--the monks it is
+likely by "torture," if they could not otherwise be brought to confession.
+The Nun was certainly not tortured. On her first arrest, she was obstinate
+in maintaining her prophetic character; and she was detected in sending
+messages to her friends, "to animate them to adhere to her and to her
+prophecies."[645] But her courage ebbed away under the hard reality of her
+position. She soon made a full confession, in which her accomplices joined
+her; and the half-completed web of conspiracy was ravelled out. They did
+not attempt to conceal that they had intended, if possible, to create an
+insurrection. The five monks--Father Bocking, Father Rich, Father Rysby,
+Father Dering, and Father Goold--had assisted the Nun in inventing her
+"Revelations;" and as apostles, they had travelled about the country to
+communicate them in whatever quarters they were likely to be welcome. When
+we remember that Archbishop Warham had been a dupe of this woman, and that
+even Wolsey's experience and ability had not prevented him from believing
+in her power, we are not surprised to find high names among those who were
+implicated. Vast numbers of abbots and priors, and of regular and secular
+clergy, had listened eagerly; country gentlemen also, and London merchants.
+The Bishop of Rochester had "wept for joy" at the first utterances of the
+inspired prophetess; and Sir Thomas More, "who at first did little regard
+the said revelations, afterwards did greatly rejoice to hear of them."[646]
+We learn, also, that the Nun had continued to _communicate with "the Lady
+Princess Dowager" and "the Lady Mary, her daughter."_[647]
+
+These were names which might have furnished cause for regret, but little
+for surprise or alarm. The commissioners must have found occasion for other
+feelings, however, when among the persons implicated were found the
+Countess of Salisbury and the Marchioness of Exeter, with their chaplains,
+households, and servants; Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir George Carew, and "many
+of the nobles of England."[648] A combination headed by the Countess of
+Salisbury, if she were supported even by a small section of the nobility,
+would under any circumstances have been dangerous; and if such a
+combination was formed in support of an invasion, and was backed by the
+blessings of the pope and the fanaticism of the clergy, the result might be
+serious indeed. So careful a silence is observed in the official papers on
+this feature of the Nun's conspiracy, that it is uncertain how far the
+countess had committed herself; but she had listened certainly to avowals
+of treasonable intentions without revealing them, which of itself was no
+slight evidence of disloyalty; and that the government were really alarmed
+may be gathered from the simultaneous arrest of Sir William and Sir George
+Neville, the brothers of Lord Latimer. The connection and significance of
+these names I shall explain presently; in the meantime I return to the
+preparations which had been made by the Nun.
+
+As the final judgment drew near--which, unless the king submitted, would be
+accompanied, with excommunication, and a declaration that the English
+nation was absolved from allegiance,--"the said false Nun," says the
+report, "surmised herself to have made a petition to God to know, when
+fearful war should come, whether any man should take my Lady Mary's part or
+no; and she feigned herself to have answer by revelation that no man should
+fear but that she should have succour and help enough; and that no man
+should put her from her right that she was born unto. And petitioning next
+to know when it was the pleasure of God that her revelations should be put
+forth to the world, she had answer that knowledge should be given to her
+ghostly father when it should be time."[649]
+
+With this information Father Goold had hastened down to Bugden, encouraging
+Catherine to persevere in her resistance;[650] and while the imperialists
+at Rome were pressing the pope for sentence (we cannot doubt at Catherine's
+instance), the Nun had placed herself in readiness to seize the opportunity
+when it offered, and to blow the trumpet of insurrection in the panic which
+might be surely looked for when that sentence should be published.
+
+For this purpose she had organised, with considerable skill, a corps of
+fanatical friars, who, when the signal was given, were simultaneously to
+throw themselves into the midst of the people, and call upon them to rise
+in the name of God. "To the intent," says the report, "to set forth this
+matter, certain spiritual and religious persons were appointed, as they had
+been chosen of God, to preach the false revelations of the said Nun, when
+the time should require, if warning were given them; and some of these
+preachers have confessed openly, and subscribed their names to their
+confessions, that if the Nun had so sent them word, they would have
+preached to the king's subjects that the pleasure of God was that they
+should take him no longer for their king; and some of these preachers were
+such as gave themselves to great fasting, watching, long prayers, wearing
+of shirts of hair and great chains of iron about their middle, whereby the
+people had them in high estimation of their great holiness,--and this
+strait life they took on them by the counsel and exhortation of the said
+Nun."[651]
+
+Here, then, was the explanation of the attitude of Catherine and Mary.
+Smarting under injustice, and most naturally blending their private quarrel
+with the cause of the church, they had listened to these disordered visions
+as to a message from heaven, and they had lent themselves to the first of
+those religious conspiracies which held England in chronic agitation for
+three quarters of a century. The innocent Saint at Bugden was the
+forerunner of the prisoner at Fotheringay; and the Observant friars, with
+their chain girdles and shirts of hair, were the antitypes of Parsons and
+Campion. How critical the situation of England really was, appears from the
+following letter of the French ambassador. The project for the marriage of
+the Princess Mary with the Dauphin had been revived by the Catholic party;
+and a private arrangement, of which this marriage was to form the
+connecting link, was contemplated between the Ultramontanes in France, the
+pope, and the emperor.
+
+_D'Inteville to Cardinal Tournon._[652]
+
+"MY LORD,--You will be so good as to tell the Most Christian king that the
+emperor's ambassador has communicated with the old queen. The emperor sends
+a message to her and to her daughter, that he will not return to Spain till
+he has seen them restored to their rights.
+
+"The people are so much attached to the said ladies that they will rise in
+rebellion, and join any prince who will undertake their quarrel. You
+probably know from other quarters the intensity of this feeling. It is
+shared by all classes, high and low, and penetrates even into the royal
+household.
+
+"The nation is in marvellous discontent. Every one but the relations of the
+present queen, is indignant on the ladies' account. Some fear the overthrow
+of religion; others fear war and injury to trade. Up to this time, the
+cloth, hides, wool, lead, and other merchandise of England have found
+markets in Flanders, Spain, and Italy; now it is thought navigation will be
+so dangerous that English merchants must equip their ships for war if they
+trade to foreign countries; and besides the risk of losing all to the
+enemy, the expense of the armament will swallow the profits of the voyage.
+In like manner, the emperor's subjects and the pope's subjects will not be
+able to trade with England. The coasts will be blockaded by the ships of
+the emperor and his allies; and at this moment men's fears are aggravated
+by the unseasonable weather throughout the summer, and the failure of the
+crops. There is not corn enough for half the ordinary consumption.
+
+"The common people, foreseeing these inconveniences, are so violent against
+the queen, that they say a thousand shameful things of her, and of all who
+have supported her in her intrigues. On them is cast the odium of all the
+calamities anticipated from the war.
+
+"When the war comes, no one doubts that the people will rebel as much from
+fear of the dangers which I have mentioned, as from the love which is felt
+for the two ladies, and especially for the Princess. She is so entirely
+beloved that, notwithstanding the law made at the last Parliament, and the
+menace of death contained in it, they persist in regarding her as Princess.
+No Parliament, they say, can make her anything but the king's daughter,
+born in marriage; and so the king and every one else regarded her before
+that Parliament.
+
+"Lately, when she was removed from Greenwich, a vast crowd of women, wives
+of citizens and others, walked before her at their husbands' desire,
+weeping and crying that notwithstanding all she was Princess. Some of them
+were sent to the Tower, but they would not retract.
+
+"Things are now so critical, and the fear of war is so general, that many
+of the greatest merchants in London have placed themselves in communication
+with the emperor's ambassador, telling him, that if the emperor will
+declare war, the English nation will join him for the love they bear the
+Lady Mary.
+
+"You, my Lord, will remember that when you were here, it was said you were
+come to tell the king that he was excommunicated, and to demand the hand of
+the Princess for the Dauphin. The people were so delighted that they have
+never ceased to pray for you. We too, when we arrived in London, were told
+that the people were praying for us. They thought our embassy was to the
+Princess. They imagined her marriage with the Dauphin had been determined
+on by the two kings, and the satisfaction was intense and universal.
+
+"They believe that, except by this marriage, they cannot possibly escape
+war; whereas, can it be brought about, they will have peace with the
+emperor and all other Christian princes. They are now so disturbed and so
+desperate that, although at one time they would have preferred a husband
+for her from among themselves, that they might not have a foreign king,
+there now is nothing which they desire more. Unless the Dauphin will take
+her, they say she will continue disinherited; or, if she come to her
+rights, it can only be by battle, to the great incommodity of the country.
+The Princess herself says publicly that the Dauphin is her husband, and
+that she has no hope but in him. I have been told this by persons who have
+heard it from her own lips.
+
+"The emperor's ambassador inquired, after you came, whether we had seen
+her. He said he knew she was most anxious to speak with us; she thought we
+had permission to visit her, and she looked for good news. He told us,
+among other things, that she had been more strictly guarded of late, by the
+orders of the queen that now is, who, knowing her feeling for the Dauphin,
+feared there might be some practice with her, or some attempt to carry her
+off.
+
+"The Princess's ladies say that she calls herself the Dauphin's wife. A
+time will come, she says, when God will see that she has suffered pain and
+tribulation sufficient; the Dauphin will then demand her of the king her
+father, and the king her father will not be able to refuse.
+
+"The lady who was my informant heard, also, from the Princess, that her
+governess, and the other attendants whom the queen had set to watch her,
+had assured her that the Dauphin was married to the daughter of the
+emperor; but she, the Princess, had answered it was not true--the Dauphin
+could not have two wives, and they well knew that she was his wife: they
+told her that story, she said, to make her despair, and agree to give up
+her rights; but she would never part with her hopes.
+
+"You may have heard of the storm that broke out between her and her
+governess when we went to visit her little sister. She was carried off by
+force to her room, that she might not speak with us; and they could neither
+pacify her nor keep her still, till the gentleman who escorted us told her
+he had the king's commands that she was not to show herself while we were
+in the house. You remember the message the same gentleman brought to you
+from her, and the charge which was given by the queen.
+
+"Could the king be brought to consent to the marriage, it could be a fair
+union of two realms, and to annex Britain to the crown of France would be a
+great honour to our Sovereign; the English party desire nothing better; the
+pope will be glad of it; the pope fears that, if war break out again,
+France will draw closer to England on the terms which the King of England
+desires; and he may thus lose the French tribute as he has lost the
+English. He therefore will urge the emperor to agree, and the emperor will
+assist gladly for the love which he bears to his cousin.
+
+"If the emperor be willing, the King of England can then be informed; and
+he can be made to feel that, if he will avoid war, he must not refuse his
+consent. The king, in fact, has no wish to disown the Princess, and he
+knows well that the marriage with the Dauphin was once agreed on.
+
+"Should he be unwilling, and should his wife's persuasions stil have
+influence with him, he will hesitate before he will defy, for her sake, the
+King of France and the emperor united. His regard for the queen is less
+than it was, and diminishes every day. He has a new fancy,[653] as you are
+aware."
+
+The actual conspiracy, in the form which it had so far assumed, was rather
+an appeal to fanaticism than a plot which could have laid hold of the
+deeper mind of the country; but as an indication of the unrest which was
+stealing over the minds of men, it assumed an importance which it would not
+have received from its intrinsic character.
+
+The guilt of the principal offenders admitted of no doubt. As soon as the
+commissioners were satisfied that there was nothing further to be
+discovered, the Nun, with the monks, was brought to trial before the Star
+Chamber; and conviction followed as a matter of course.[654]
+
+The unhappy girl finding herself at this conclusion, after seven years of
+vanity, in which she had played with popes, and queens, and princesses, and
+archbishops, now, when the dream was thus rudely broken, in the revulsion
+of feeling could see nothing in herself but a convicted impostor. We need
+not refuse to pity her. The misfortunes of her sickness had exposed her to
+temptations far beyond the strength of an ordinary woman: and the guilt
+which she passionately claimed for herself rested far more truly with the
+knavery of the Christ Church monks and the incredible folly of Archbishop
+Warham.[655] But the times were too stern to admit of nice distinctions. No
+immediate sentence was pronounced, but it was thought desirable for the
+satisfaction of the people that a confession should be made in public by
+the Nun and her companions. The Sunday following their trial they were
+placed on a raised platform at Paul's Cross by the side of the pulpit, and
+when the sermon was over they one by one delivered their "bills" to the
+preacher, which by him were read to the crowd.[656]
+
+After an acknowledgment of their imposture the prisoners were remanded to
+the Tower, and their ultimate fate reserved for the consideration of
+parliament, which was to meet in the middle of January.
+
+The chief offenders being thus disposed of, the council resolved next that
+peremptory measures should be taken with respect to the Princess Mary.[657]
+Her establishment was broken up, and she was sent to reside as the Lady
+Mary in the household of the Princess Elizabeth--a hard but not unwholesome
+discipline.[658] As soon as this was done, being satisfied that the leading
+shoot of the conspiracy was broken, and that no immediate danger was now to
+be feared, they proceeded leisurely to follow the clue of the Nun's
+confession, and to extend their inquiries. The Countess of Salisbury was
+mentioned as one of the persons with whom the woman had been in
+correspondence. This lady was the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, brother
+of Edward IV. Her mother was a Neville, a child of Richard the Kingmaker,
+the famous Earl of Warwick, and her only brother had been murdered to
+secure the shaking throne of Henry VII. Margaret Plantagenet, in recompense
+for the lost honours of the house, was made Countess of Salisbury in her
+own right. The title descended from her grandfather, who was Earl of
+Salisbury and Warwick; but the prouder title had been dropped as suggestive
+of dangerous associations. The Earldom of Warwick remained in abeyance, and
+the castle and the estates attached to it were forfeited to the Crown. The
+countess was married after her brother's death to a Sir Richard Pole, a
+supporter and relation[659] of the king; and when left a widow she received
+from Henry VIII. the respectful honour which was due to the most nobly born
+of his subjects, the only remaining Plantagenet of unblemished descent. In
+his kindness to her children the king had attempted to obliterate the
+recollection of her brother's wrongs, and she had been herself selected to
+preside over the household of the Princess Mary. During the first twenty
+years of Henry's reign the countess seems to have acknowledged his
+attentions with loyal regard, and if she had not forgotten her birth and
+her childhood, she never connected herself with the attempts which during
+that time were made to revive the feuds of the houses. Richard de la Pole,
+nephew of Edward IV.,[660] and called while he lived "the White Rose," had
+more than once endeavoured to excite an insurrection in the eastern
+counties; but Lady Salisbury was never suspected of holding intercourse
+with him; she remained aloof from political disputes, and in lofty
+retirement she was contented to forget her greatness for the sake of the
+Princess Mary, to whom she and her family were deeply attached. Her
+relations with the king had thus continued undisturbed until his second
+marriage. As the representative of the House of York she was the object of
+the hopes and affections of the remnants of their party, but she had
+betrayed no disposition to abuse her influence, or to disturb the quiet of
+the nation for personal ambition of her own.
+
+If it be lawful to interpret symptoms in themselves trifling by the light
+of later events, it would seem as if her attitude now underwent a material
+change. Her son Reginald had already quarrelled with the king upon the
+divorce. He was in suspicious connection with the pope, and having been
+required to return home upon his allegiance, had refused obedience. His
+mother, and his mother's attached friend, the Marchioness of Exeter, we now
+find among those to whom the Nun of Kent communicated her prophecies and
+her plans. It does not seem that the countess thought at any time of
+reviving her own pretensions; it does seem that she was ready to build a
+throne for the Princess Mary out of the ruined supporters of her father's
+family. The power which she could wield might at any moment become
+formidable. She had two sons in England, Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey
+Pole. Her cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, a grandson himself of Edward
+IV.,[661] was, with the exception of the Duke of Norfolk, the most powerful
+nobleman in the realm; and he, to judge by events, was beginning to look
+coldly on the king.[662] We find her surrounded also by the representatives
+of her mother's family--Lord Abergavenny, who had been under suspicion when
+the Duke of Buckingham was executed, Sir Edward Neville, afterwards
+executed, Lord Latimer, Sir George and Sir William Neville, all of them
+were her near connections, all collateral heirs of the King-maker,
+inheriting the pride of their birth, and resentfully conscious of their
+fallen fortunes. The support of a party so composed would have added
+formidable strength to the preaching friars of the Nun of Kent; and as I
+cannot doubt that the Nun was endeavouring to press her intrigues in a
+quarter where disaffection if created would be most dangerous, so the lady
+who ruled this party with a patriarchal authority had listened to her
+suggestions; and the repeated interviews with her which were sought by the
+Marchioness of Exeter were rendered more than suspicious by the secresy
+with which these interviews were conducted.[663]
+
+These circumstances explain the arrest, to which I alluded above, of Sir
+William and Sir George Neville, brothers of Lord Latimer. They were not
+among "the many noblemen" to whom the commissioners referred; for their
+confessions remain, and contain no allusion to the Nun; but they were
+examined at this particular time on general suspicion; and the arrest,
+under such circumstances, of two near relatives of Lady Salisbury,
+indicates clearly an alarm in the council, lest she might be contemplating
+some serious movements. At any rate, either on her account or on their own,
+the Nevilles fell under suspicion, and while they had no crimes to reveal,
+their depositions, especially that of Sir William Neville, furnish singular
+evidence of the temper of the times.
+
+The confession of the latter begins with an account of the loss of certain
+silver spoons, for the recovery of which Sir William sent to a wizard who
+resided in Cirencester. The wizard took the opportunity of telling Sir
+William's fortune: his wife was to die, and he himself was to marry an
+heiress, and be made a baron; with other prospective splendours. The wizard
+concluded, however, with recommending him to pay a visit to another dealer
+in the dark art more learned than himself, whose name was Jones, at Oxford.
+
+"So after that," said Sir William [Midsummer, 1532], "I went to Oxford,
+intending that my brother George and I should kill a buck with Sir Simon
+Harcourt, which he had promised me; and there at Oxford, in the said
+Jones's chamber, I did see certain stillatories, alembics, and other
+instruments of glass, and also a sceptre and other things, which he said
+did appertain to the conjuration of the four kings; and also an image of
+white metal; and in a box, a serpent's skin, as he said, and divers books
+and things, whereof one was a book which he said was my Lord Cardinal's,
+having pictures in it like angels. He told me he could make rings of gold,
+to obtain favour of great men; and said that my Lord Cardinal had such; and
+promised my said brother and me, either of us, one of them; and also he
+showed me a round thing like a ball of crystal.
+
+"He said that if the King's Grace went over to France [the Calais visit of
+October, 1532], his Grace should marry my Lady Marchioness of Pembroke
+before that his Highness returned again; and that it would be dangerous to
+his Grace, and to the most part of the noblemen that should go with him;
+saying also that he had written to one of the king's council to advise his
+Highness not to go over, for if he did, it should not be for his Grace's
+profit."
+
+The wizard next pretended that he had seen a vision of a certain room in a
+tower, in which a spirit had appeared with a coat of arms in his hand, and
+had "delivered the same to Sir William Neville." The arms being described
+as those of the Warwick family, Sir William, his brother, and Jones rode
+down from Oxford to Warwick, where they went over the castle. The wizard
+professed to recognise in a turret chamber the room in which he had seen
+the spirit, and he prophesied that Sir William should recover the earldom,
+the long-coveted prize of all the Neville family.
+
+On their return to Oxford, Jones, continues Sir William, said further,
+"That there should be a field in the north about a se'n-night before
+Christmas, in which my Lord my brother [Lord Latimer] should be slain; the
+realm should be long without a king; and much robbery would be within the
+realm, specially of abbeys and religious houses, and of rich men, as
+merchants, graziers, and others; so that, if I would, he at that time would
+advise me to find the means to enter into the said castle for mine own
+safeguard, and divers persons would resort unto me. _None of Cadwallader's
+blood_, he told me, _should reign more than twenty-four years;_ and also
+that Prince Edward [son of Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou, killed at
+Tewkesbury], had issue a son which was conveyed over sea; and there had
+issue a son which was yet alive, either in Saxony or Almayne; and that
+either he or the King of Scots should reign next after the King's Grace
+that now is. To all which I answered," Sir William concluded, "that there
+is nothing which the will of God is that a man shall obtain, but that he of
+his goodness will put in his mind the way whereby he shall come by it; and
+that surely I had no mind to follow any such fashion; and that, also, the
+late Duke of Buckingham and others had cast themselves away by too much
+trust in prophecies, and other jeoparding of themselves, and therefore I
+would in no wise follow any such way. He answered, if I would not, it would
+be long ere I obtained it. Then I said I believed that well, and if it
+never came, I trusted to God to live well enough."[664]
+
+Sir George Neville confirmed generally his brother's story, protesting that
+they had never intended treason, and that "at no time had he been of
+counsel" when any treason was thought of.[665]
+
+The wizard himself was next sent for. The prophecies about the king he
+denied wholly. He admitted that he had seen an angel in a dream giving Sir
+William Neville the shield of the earldom in Warwick Castle, and that he
+had accompanied the two brothers to Warwick, to examine the tower. Beyond
+that, he said that he knew nothing either of them or of their intentions.
+He declared himself a good subject, and he would "jeopard his life" to make
+the philosopher's stone for the king in twelve months if the king pleased
+to command him. He desired "no longer space than twelve months upon silver
+and twelve and a half upon gold;" to be kept in prison till he had done it;
+and it would be "better to the King's Grace than a thousand men."[666]
+
+The result of these examinations does not appear, except it be that the
+Nevilles were dismissed without punishment; and the story itself may be
+thought too trifling to have deserved a grave notice. I see in it, however,
+an illustration very noticeworthy of the temper which was working in the
+country. The suspicion of treason in the Neville family may not have been
+confirmed, although we see them casting longing looks on the lost
+inheritance of Warwick; but their confessions betray the visions of
+impending change, anarchy, and confusion, which were haunting the popular
+imagination. A craving after prophecies, a restless eagerness to search
+into the future by abnormal means, had infected all ranks from the highest
+to the lowest; and such symptoms, when they appear, are a sure evidence of
+approaching disorder, for they are an evidence of a present madness which
+has brought down wisdom to a common level with folly. At such times, the
+idlest fancy is more potent with the mind than the soundest arguments of
+reason. The understanding abdicates its functions; and men are given over,
+as if by magic, to the enchantments of insanity.
+
+Phenomena of this eccentric kind always accompany periods of intellectual
+change. Most men live and think by habit; and when habit fails them, they
+are like unskilful sailors who have lost the landmarks of their course, and
+have no compass and no celestial charts by which to steer. In the years
+which preceded the French Revolution, Cagliostro was the companion of
+princes--at the dissolution of paganism the practicers of curious arts, the
+watches and the necromancers, were the sole objects of reverence in the
+Roman world;--and so, before the Reformation, archbishops and cardinals saw
+an inspired prophetess in a Kentish servant girl; Oxford heads of colleges
+sought out heretics with the help of astrology; Anne Boleyn blessed a basin
+of rings, her royal fingers pouring such virtue into the metal that no
+disorder could resist it;[667] Wolsey had a magic crystal; and Cromwell,
+while in Wolsey's household, "did haunt to the company of a wizard."[668]
+These things were the counterpart of a religion which taught that slips of
+paper, duly paid for, could secure indemnity for sin. It was well for
+England that the chief captain at least was proof against the epidemic--no
+random scandal seems ever to have whispered that such delusions had touched
+the mind of the king.[669]
+
+While the government were prosecuting these inquiries at home, the law at
+the Vatican had run its course; November passed, and as no submission had
+arrived, the sentence of the 12th of July came into force, and the king,
+the queen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury were declared to have incurred
+the threatened censures.
+
+The privy council met on the 2nd of December, and it was determined in
+consequence that copies of the "Act of Appeals," and of the king's
+"provocation" to a general council, should be fixed without delay on every
+church door in England. Protests were at the same time to be drawn up and
+sent into Flanders, and to the other courts in Europe, "to the intent the
+falsehood and injustice of the Bishop of Rome might appear to all the
+world." The defences of the country were to be looked to; and "spies" to be
+sent into Scotland to see "what they intended there," "and whether they
+would confeder themselves with any outward princes." Finally, it was
+proposed that the attempt to form an alliance with the Lutheran powers
+should be renewed on a larger scale; that certain discreet and grave
+persons should be appointed to conclude "some league or amity with the
+princes of Germany"--"that is to say, the King of Poland, the King of
+Hungary,[670] the Duke of Saxony, the Duke of Bavaria, the Duke of
+Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse, and other potentates."[671] Vaughan's
+mission had been merely tentative, and had failed. Yet the offer of a
+league, offensive and defensive, the immediate and avowed object of which
+was a general council at which the Protestants should be represented, might
+easily succeed where vague offers of amity had come to nothing. The
+formation of a Protestant alliance, however, would have been equivalent to
+a declaration of war against Catholic Europe; and it was a step which could
+not be taken, consistently with the Treaty of Calais,--without first
+communicating with Francis.
+
+Henry, therefore, by the advice of the council, wrote a despatch to Sir
+John Wallop, the ambassador at Paris, which was to be laid before the
+French court. He explained the circumstances in which he was placed, with
+the suggestion which the council had made to him. He gave a list of the
+princes with whom he had been desired by his ministers to connect
+himself--and the object was nothing less than a coalition of Northern
+Europe. He recapitulated the injuries which he had received from the pope,
+who at length was studying "to subvert the rest and peace of the realm;"
+"yea, and so much as in him was, utterly to destroy the same." The nobles
+and council, he said, for their own sake as well as for the sake of the
+kingdom, had entreated him to put an end, once for all, to the pope's
+usurpation; and to invite the Protestant princes, for the universal weal of
+Christendom, to unite in a common alliance. In his present situation he was
+inclined to act upon this advice. "As concerning his own realm, he had
+already taken such order with his nobles and subjects, as he would shortly
+be able to give to the pope such a buffet as he never had heretofore;" but
+as a German alliance was a matter of great weight and importance,
+"although," he concluded, "we consider it to be right expedient to set
+forth the same with all diligence, yet we intend nothing to do therein
+without making our good brother first privy thereunto. And for this cause
+and consideration only, you may say that we have at this time addressed
+these letters unto you, commanding you to declare our said purpose unto our
+good brother, and to require of him on our behalf his good address and best
+advice. Of his answer we require you to advertise us with all diligence,
+for according thereunto we intend to attemper our proceedings. We have
+lately had advertisements how that our said good brother should, by the
+labour of divers affectionate Papists, be minded to set forth something
+with his clergy in advancement of the pope and his desires. This we cannot
+believe that he will do."[672]
+
+The meaning of this letter lies upon the surface. If the European powers
+were determined to leave him no alternative, the king was prepared to ally
+himself with the Lutherans. But however he might profess to desire that
+alliance, it was evident that he would prefer, if possible, a less extreme
+resource. The pope had ceased to be an object of concern to him; but he
+could not contemplate, without extreme unwillingness, a separation from the
+orderly governments who professed the Catholic faith. The pope had injured
+him; Francis had deceived him; they had tempted his patience because they
+knew his disposition. The limit of endurance had been reached at length;
+yet, on the verge of the concluding rupture, he turned once more, as if to
+offer a last opportunity of peace.
+
+The reply of Francis was an immediate mission of the Bishop of Bayonne (now
+Bishop of Paris), first into England, and from England to Rome, where he
+was to endeavour, to the best of his ability, to seam together the already
+gaping rent in the church with fair words--a hopeless task--the results of
+which, however, were unexpectedly considerable, as will be presently seen.
+
+Meanwhile, on the side of Flanders, the atmosphere was dubious and
+menacing. The refugee friars, who were reported to be well supplied with
+money from England, were labouring to exasperate the people, Father Peto
+especially distinguishing himself upon this service.[673] The English
+ambassador, Sir John Hacket, still remained at Brussels, and the two
+governments were formally at peace; but when Hacket required the
+queen-regent to forbid the publication of the brief of July in the
+Netherlands, he was met with a positive refusal. "M. Ambassador," she said,
+"the Emperor, the King of Hungary, the Queen of France, the King of
+Portugal, and I, understand what are the rights of our aunt--our duty is to
+her--and such letters of the pope as come hither in her favour we shall
+obey. Your master has no right to complain either of the emperor or of
+myself, if we support our aunt in a just cause."[674] At the same time,
+formal complaints were made by Charles of the personal treatment of Queen
+Catherine, and the clouds appeared to be gathering for a storm. Yet here,
+too, there was an evident shrinking from extremities. A Welsh gentleman had
+been at Brussels to offer his services against Henry, and had met with
+apparent coldness. Sir John Hacket wrote, on the 15th of December, that he
+was assured by well-informed persons, that so long as Charles lived, he
+would never be the first to begin a war with England, "which would rebound
+to the destruction of the Low Countries."[675] A week later, when the
+queen-regent was suffering from an alarming illness, he said it was
+reported that, should she die, Catherine or Mary, if either of them was
+allowed to leave England, would be held "meet to have governance of the Low
+Countries."[676] This was a generous step, if the emperor seriously
+contemplated it. The failure of the Nun of Kent had perhaps taught him that
+there was no present prospect of a successful insurrection. In his conduct
+towards England, he was seemingly governing himself by the prospect which
+might open for a successful attack upon it. If occasion offered to strike
+the government in connection with an efficient Catholic party in the nation
+itself, he would not fail to avail himself of it.[677] Otherwise, he would
+perhaps content himself with an attitude of inactive menace; unless menaced
+himself by a Protestant confederation.
+
+Amidst these uneasy symptoms at home and abroad, parliament re-assembled on
+the 15th of January. It was a changed England since these men first came
+together on the fall of Wolsey. Session after session had been spent in
+clipping the roots of the old tree which had overshadowed them for
+centuries. On their present meeting they were to finish their work, and lay
+it prostrate for ever. Negotiations were still pending with the See of
+Rome, and this momentous session had closed before the final catastrophe.
+The measures which were passed in the course of it are not, therefore, to
+be looked upon as adopted hastily, in a spirit of retaliation, but as the
+consistent accomplishment of a course which had been deliberately adopted,
+to reverse the positions of the civil and spiritual authority within the
+realm, and to withdraw the realm itself from all dependence on a foreign
+power.
+
+The Annates and Firstfruits' Bill had not yet received the royal assent;
+but the pope had refused to grant the bulls for bishops recently appointed,
+and he was no longer to receive payment for services which he refused to
+render. Peter's pence were still paid, and might continue to be paid, if
+the pope would recollect himself; but, like the Sibyl of Cuma, Henry
+destroyed some fresh privilege with each delay of justice, demanding the
+same price for the preservation of what remained. The secondary streams of
+tribute now only remained to the Roman See; and communion with the English
+church, which it was for Clement to accept or refuse.
+
+The circumstances under which the session opened were, however, grave and
+saddening. Simultaneously with the concluding legislation on the church,
+the succession to the throne was to be determined in terms which might,
+perhaps, be accepted as a declaration of war by the emperor; and the affair
+of the Nun of Kent had rendered necessary an inquiry into the conduct of
+honoured members of the two Houses, who were lying under the shadow of high
+treason. The conditions were for the first time to be plainly seen under
+which the Reformation was to fight its way. The road which lay before it
+was beset not merely with external obstacles, which a strong will and a
+strong hand could crush, but with the phantoms of dying faiths, which
+haunted the hearts of all living men; the superstitions, the prejudices,
+the hopes, the fears, the passions, which swayed stormily and fitfully
+through the minds of every actor in the great drama.
+
+The uniformity of action in the parliament of 1529, during the seven years
+which it continued, is due to the one man who saw his way distinctly,
+Thomas Cromwell. The nation was substantially united in the divorce
+question, could the divorce be secured without a rupture with the European
+powers. It was united also on the necessity of limiting the jurisdiction of
+the clergy, and cutting short the powers of the consistory courts. But in
+questions of "opinion" there was the most sensitive jealousy; and from the
+combined instincts of prejudice and conservatism, the majority of the
+country in a count of heads would undoubtedly have been against a
+separation from Rome.
+
+The clergy professed to approve the acts of the government, but it was for
+the most part with the unwilling acquiescence of men who were without
+courage to refuse. The king was divided against himself. Nine days in ten
+he was the clear-headed, energetic, powerful statesman; on the tenth he was
+looking wistfully to the superstition which he had left, and the clear
+sunshine was darkened with theological clouds, which broke in lightning and
+persecution. Thus there was danger at any moment of a reaction, unless
+opportunity was taken at the flood, unless the work was executed too
+completely to admit of reconsideration, and the nation committed to a
+course from which it was impossible to recede. The action of the
+conservatives was paralysed for the time by the want of a fixed purpose.
+The various parts of the movement were so skilfully linked together, that
+partial opposition to it was impossible; and so long as the people had to
+choose between the pope and the king, their loyalty would not allow them to
+hesitate. But very few men actively adhered to Cromwell. Cromwell had
+struck the line on which the forces of nature were truly moving--the
+resultant, not of the victory of either of the extreme parties, but of the
+joint action of their opposing forces. To him belonged the rare privilege
+of genius, to see what other men could not see; and therefore he was
+condemned to rule a generation which hated him, to do the will of God, and
+to perish in his success. He had no party. By the nobles he was regarded
+with the same mixed contempt and fear which had been felt for Wolsey. The
+Protestants, perhaps, knew what he was, but he could only purchase their
+toleration by himself checking their extravagance. Latimer was the only
+person of real power on whose friendship he could calculate, and Latimer
+was too plain spoken on dangerous questions to be useful as a political
+supporter.
+
+The session commenced on the 15th of January.
+
+The first step was to receive the final submission of convocation. The
+undignified resistance was at last over, and the clergy had promised to
+abstain for the future from unlicensed legislation. To secure their
+adherence to their engagements, an act[678] was passed to make the breach
+of that engagement penal; and a commission of thirty-two persons, half of
+whom were to be laymen, was designed for the revision of the Canon
+law.[679]
+
+The next most important movement was to assimilate the trials for heresy
+with the trials for other criminal offences. I have already explained at
+length the manner in which the bishops abused their judicial powers. These
+powers were not absolutely taken away, but ecclesiastics were no longer
+permitted to arrest _ex officio_ and examine at their pleasure. Where a
+charge of heresy was to be brought against a man, presentments were to be
+made by lawful witnesses before justices of the peace; and then, and not
+otherwise, he might fall under the authority of the "ordinary." Secret
+examinations were declared illegal. The offender was to be tried in open
+court, and, previous to his trial, had a right to be admitted to bail,
+unless the bishop could show cause to the contrary to the satisfaction of
+two magistrates.[680]
+
+This was but a slight instalment of lenity; but it was an indication of the
+turning tide. Limited as it was, the act operated as an effective check
+upon persecution till the passing of the Six Articles Bill.
+
+Turning next to the relations between England and Rome, the parliament
+reviewed the Annates Act,[681] which had been left unratified in the hope
+that the pope might have consented to a compromise, and that "by some
+gentle ways the said exaction might have been redressed and reformed." The
+expectation had been disappointed. The pope had not condescended to reply
+to the communication which had been made to him, and the act had in
+consequence received the royal assent. An alteration had thus become
+necessary in the manner of presentation to vacant bishoprics. The anomalies
+of the existing practice have been already described. By the Great Charter
+the chapters had acquired the right of free election. A _conge d'elire_ was
+granted by the king on the occurrence of a vacancy, with no attempt at a
+nomination. The chapters were supposed to make their choice freely, and the
+name of the bishop-elect was forwarded to the pope, who returned the
+Pallium and the Bulls, receiving the Annates in exchange. The pope's part
+in the matter was now terminated. No Annates would be sent any longer to
+Rome, and no Bulls would be returned from Rome. The appointments lay
+between the chapters and the crown; and it might have seemed, at first
+sight, as if it would have been sufficient to omit the reference to the
+papacy, and as if the remaining forms might continue as they were. The
+chapters, however, had virtually long ceased to elect freely; the crown had
+absorbed the entire functions of presentation, sometimes appointing
+foreigners,[682] sometimes allowing the great ecclesiastical ministers to
+nominate themselves;[683] while the rights of the chapters, though existing
+in theory, were not officially recognised either by the pope or by the
+crown. The king affected to accept the names of the prelates-elect, when
+returned to him from Rome, as nominations by the pope; and the pope, in
+communicating with the chapters, presented them with their bishops as from
+himself.[684] The papal share in the matter was a shadow, but it was
+acknowledged under the forms of courtesy; the share of the chapters was
+wholly and absolutely ignored. The crisis of a revolution was not the
+moment at which their legal privileges could be safely restored to them.
+The problem of re-arrangement was a difficult one, and it was met in a
+manner peculiarly English. The practice of granting the _conge d'elire_ to
+the chapters on the occurrence of a vacancy, which had fallen into
+desuetude, was again adopted, and the church resumed the forms of liberty:
+but the licence to elect a bishop was to be accompanied with the name of
+the person whom the chapter was required to elect; and if within twelve
+days the person so named had not been chosen, the nomination of the crown
+was to become absolute, and the chapter would incur a Premunire.[685]
+
+This act, which I conceive to have been more arbitrary in form than in
+intention, was followed by a closing attack upon the remaining "exactions"
+of the Bishop of Rome. The Annates were gone. There were yet to go,
+"Pensions, Censes, Peter's Pence, Procurations, Fruits, Suits for
+Provision, Delegacies and Rescripts in causes of Contention and Appeals,
+Jurisdictions legatine--also Dispensations, Licenses, Faculties, Grants,
+Relaxations, Writs called Perinde valere, Rehabilitations, Abolitions,"
+with other unnamed (the parliament being wearied of naming them) "infinite
+sorts of Rules, Briefs, and instruments of sundry natures, names, and
+kinds." All these were perennially open sluices, which had drained England
+of its wealth for centuries, returning only in showers of paper, and the
+Commons were determined that streams so unremunerative should flow no
+longer. They conceived that they had been all along imposed upon, and that
+the "Bishop of Rome was to be blamed for having allured and beguiled the
+English nation, persuading them that he had power to dispense with human
+laws, uses, and customs, contrary to right and conscience." If the king so
+pleased, therefore, they would not be so beguiled any more. These and all
+similar exactions should cease; and all powers claimed by the Bishop of
+Rome within the realm should cease, and should be transferred to the crown.
+At the same time they would not press upon the pope too hardly; they would
+repeat the same conditions which they had offered with the Annates. He had
+received these revenues as the supreme judge in the highest court in
+Europe, and he might retain his revenues or receive compensation for them,
+if he dared to be just. It was for himself to resolve, and three months
+were allowed for a final decision.
+
+In conclusion, the Commons thought it well to assert that they were
+separating, not from the church of Christ, but only from the papacy. A
+judge who allowed himself to be overawed against his conscience by a
+secular power, could not any longer be recognised; but no thing or things
+contained in the act should be afterwards "interpreted or expounded, that
+his Grace (the king), his nobles and subjects, intended by the same to
+decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's church in anything
+concerning the articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom, or in any
+other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary
+for salvation; but only to make an ordinance, by policies necessary and
+convenient, to repress vice, and for the good conservation of the realm in
+peace, unity, and tranquillity, from ravin and spoil--ensuing much the old
+antient customs of the realm in that behalf."[686]
+
+The most arduous business was thus finished--the most painful remained. The
+Nun of Kent and her accomplices were to be proceeded against by act of
+parliament; and the bill of their attainder was presented for the first
+time in the House of Lords, on the 18th of February. The offence of the
+principal conspirators was plainly high treason; their own confessions
+removed uncertainty; the guilt was clear--the sentence was inevitable. But
+the fault of those who had been listeners only was less easy of
+measurement, and might vary from comparative innocence to a definite breach
+of allegiance.
+
+The government were unwilling to press with severity on the noble lords and
+ladies whose names had been unexpectedly brought to light; and there were
+two men of high rank only, whose complicity it was thought necessary to
+notice. The Bishop of Rochester's connection with the Nun had been culpably
+encouraging; and the responsibility of Sir Thomas More was held also to be
+very great in having countenanced, however lightly, such perilous schemers.
+
+In the bill, therefore, as it was first read, More and Fisher found
+themselves declared guilty of misprision of treason. But the object of this
+measure was rather to warn than to punish, nor was there any real intention
+of continuing their prosecution. Cromwell, under instructions from the
+king, had communicated privately with both of them. He had sent a message
+to Fisher through his brother, telling him that he had only to ask for
+forgiveness to receive it;[687] and he had begged More through his
+son-in-law, Mr. Roper, to furnish him with an explicit account of what had
+passed at any time between himself and the Nun,[688] with an intimation
+that, if honestly made, it would be accepted in his favour.
+
+These advances were met by More in the spirit in which they were offered.
+He heartily thanked Cromwell, "reckoning himself right deeply beholden to
+him;"[689] and replied with a long, minute, and evidently veracious story,
+detailing an interview which he had held with the woman in the chapel of
+Sion Monastery. He sent at the same time a copy of a letter which he had
+written to her, and described various conversations with the friars who
+were concerned in the forgery. He did not deny that he had believed the Nun
+to have been inspired, or that he had heard of the language which she was
+in the habit of using respecting the king. He protested, however, that he
+had himself never entertained a treasonable thought. He told Cromwell that
+"he had done a very meritorious deed in bringing forth to light such
+detestable hypocrisy, whereby every other wretch might take warning, and be
+feared to set forth their devilish dissembled falsehoods under the manner
+and colour of the wonderful work of God."[690] More's offence had not been
+great. His acknowledgments were open and unreserved; and Cromwell laid his
+letter before the king, adding his own intercession that the matter might
+be passed over. Henry consented, expressing only his grief and concern that
+Sir Thomas More should have acted so unwisely.[691] He required,
+nevertheless, as Cromwell suggested, that a formal letter should be
+written, with a confession of fault, and a request for forgiveness. More
+obeyed; he wrote, gracefully reminding the king of a promise when he
+resigned the chancellorship, that in any suit which he might afterwards
+have to his Grace, either touching his honour or his profit, he should find
+his Highness his good and gracious lord.[692] Henry acknowledged his claim;
+his name was struck out of the bill, and the prosecution against him was
+dropped.
+
+Fisher's conduct was very different; his fault had been far greater than
+More's, and promises more explicit had been held out to him of forgiveness.
+He replied to these promises by an elaborate and ridiculous defence--not
+writing to the king, as Cromwell desired him, but vindicating himself as
+having committed no fault; although he had listened eagerly to language
+which was only pardonable on the assumption that it was inspired, and had
+encouraged a nest of fanatics by his childish credulity. The Nun "had
+showed him not," he said, "that any prince or temporal lord should put the
+king in danger of his crown." He knew nothing of the intended insurrection.
+He believed the woman to have been a saint; he supposed that she had
+herself told the king all which she had told to him; and therefore he said
+that he had nothing for which to reproach himself.[693] He was unable to
+see that the exposure of the imposture had imparted a fresh character to
+his conduct, which he was bound to regret. Knowingly or unknowingly, he had
+lent his countenance to a conspiracy; and so long as he refused to
+acknowledge his indiscretion, the government necessarily would interpret
+his actions in the manner least to his advantage.
+
+If he desired that his conduct should be forgotten, it was indispensable
+that he should change his attitude, and so Cromwell warned him. "Ye
+desire," the latter wrote, "for the passion of Christ, that ye be no more
+quickened in this matter; for if ye be put to that strait ye will not lose
+your soul, but ye will speak as your conscience leadeth you; with many more
+words of great courage. My Lord, if ye had taken my counsel sent unto you
+by your brother, and followed the same, submitting yourself by your letter
+to the King's Grace for your offences in this behalf, I would have trusted
+that ye should never be quickened in the matter more. But now where ye take
+upon you to defy the whole matter as ye were in no default, I cannot so far
+promise you. Wherefore, my Lord, I would eftsoons advise you that, laying
+apart all such excuses as ye have alleged in your letters, which in my
+opinion be of small effect, ye beseech the King's Grace to be your gracious
+lord and to remit unto you your negligence, oversight, and offence
+committed against his Highness in this behalf; and I dare undertake that
+his Highness shall benignly accept you into his gracious favour, all matter
+of displeasure past afore this time forgotten and forgiven."[694]
+
+Fisher must have been a hopelessly impracticable person. Instead of
+following More's example, and accepting well-meant advice, he persisted in
+the same tone, and drew up an address to the House of Lords, in which he
+repeated the defence which he had made to Cromwell. He expressed no sorrow
+that he had been engaged in a criminal intrigue, no pleasure that the
+intrigue had been discovered; and he doggedly adhered to his assertions of
+his own innocence.[695]
+
+There was nothing to be done except to proceed with his attainder. The bill
+passed three readings, and the various prisoners were summoned to the Star
+Chamber to be heard in arrest of judgment. The Bishop of Rochester's
+attendance was dispensed with on the ground of illness, and because he had
+made his defence in writing.[696] Nothing of consequence was urged by
+either of the accused. The bill was most explicit in its details, going
+carefully through the history of the imposture, and dwelling on the
+separate acts of each offender. They were able to disprove no one of its
+clauses, and on the 12th of March it was read a last time. On the 21st it
+received the royal assent, and there remained only to execute the sentence.
+The Nun herself, Richard Masters, and the five friars being found guilty of
+high treason, were to die; the Bishop of Rochester, Father Abel, Queen
+Catherine's confessor, and four more, were sentenced for misprision of
+treason to forfeiture of goods and imprisonment. All other persons
+implicated whose names did not appear, were declared pardoned at the
+intercession of Queen Anne.[697]
+
+The chief offenders suffered at Tyburn on the 21st of April, meeting death
+calmly, as it appears; receiving a fate most necessary and most
+deserved,[698] yet claiming from us that partial respect which is due to
+all persons who will risk their lives in an unselfish cause. For the Nun
+herself, we may feel even a less qualified regret. Before her death she was
+permitted to speak a few words to the people, which at the distance of
+three centuries will not be read without emotion.
+
+"Hither am I come to die," she said, "and I have not been the only cause of
+mine own death, which most justly I have deserved; but also I am the cause
+of the death of all these persons which at this time here suffer. And yet I
+am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known unto these
+learned men that I was a poor wench without learning; and therefore they
+might have easily perceived that the things which were done by me could not
+proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning could right well
+judge that they were altogether feigned. But because the things which I
+feigned were profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me, and bare
+me in hand that it was the Holy Ghost and not I that did them. And I being
+puffed up with their praises, fell into a pride and foolish fantasye with
+myself, and thought I might feign what I would, which thing hath brought me
+to this case, and for the which I now cry God and the King's Highness most
+heartily mercy, and desire all you good people to pray to God to have mercy
+on me, and on all them that here suffer with me."[699]
+
+And now the closing seal was to be affixed to the agitation of the great
+question of the preceding years. I have said that throughout these years
+the uncertainty of the succession had been the continual anxiety of the
+nation. The birth of a prince or princess could alone provide an absolute
+security; and to beget a prince appeared to be the single feat which Henry
+was unable to accomplish. The marriage so dearly bought had been followed
+as yet only by a girl; and if the king were to die, leaving two daughters
+circumstanced as Mary and Elizabeth were circumstanced, a dispute would
+open which the sword only could decide. To escape the certainty of civil
+war, therefore, it was necessary to lay down the line of inheritance by a
+peremptory order; to cut off resolutely all rival claims; and in
+legislating upon a matter so vital, and hitherto so uncertain and
+indeterminate, to enforce the decision with the most stringent and exacting
+penalties. From the Heptarchy downwards English history furnished no fixed
+rule of inheritance, but only a series of precedents of uncertainty; and
+while at no previous time had the circumstances of the succession been of a
+nature so legitimately embarrassing, the relations of England with the pope
+and with foreign powers doubly enhanced the danger. But I will not use my
+own language on so important a subject. The preamble of the Act of
+Succession is the best interpreter of the provisions of that act.
+
+"In their most humble wise show unto your Majesty your most humble and
+obedient subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons, in
+this present parliament assembled; that since it is the natural inclination
+of every man gladly and willingly to provide for the safety of both his
+title and succession, although it touch only his private cause; we
+therefore, most rightful and dreadful Sovereign Lord, reckon ourselves much
+more bounden to beseech and intreat your Highness (although we doubt not of
+your princely heart and wisdom, mixed with a natural affection to the same)
+to foresee and provide for the most perfect surety of both you and of your
+most lawful successors and heirs, upon which dependeth all our joy and
+wealth; in whom also is united and knit the only mere true inheritance and
+title of this realm without any contradiction. We, your said most humble
+and obedient servants, call to our remembrance the great divisions which in
+times past hath been in this realm by reason of several titles pretended to
+the imperial crown of the same; which some time and for the most part
+ensued by occasion of ambiguity, and [by] doubts then not so perfectly
+declared but that men might upon froward intents expound them to every
+man's sinister appetite and affection after their senses; whereof hath
+ensued great destruction and effusion of man's blood, as well of a great
+number of the nobles as of other the subjects and specialty inheritors in
+the same. The greatest occasion thereof hath been because no perfect and
+substantial provision by law hath been made within this realm itself when
+doubts and questions have been moved; by reason whereof the Bishops of Rome
+and See Apostolic have presumed in times past to invest who should please
+them to inherit in other men's kingdoms and dominions, which thing we your
+most humble subjects, both spiritual and temporal, do much abhor and
+detest. And sometimes other foreign princes and potentates of sundry
+degrees, minding rather dissension and discord to continue in the realm
+than charity, equity, or unity, have many times supported wrong titles,
+whereby they might the more easily and facilly aspire to the superiority of
+the same.
+
+"The continuance and sufferance of these things, deeply considered and
+pondered, is too dangerous and perilous to be suffered any longer; and too
+much contrary to unity, peace, and tranquillity, being greatly reproachable
+and dishonourable to the whole realm. And in consideration thereof, your
+said subjects, calling further to their remembrance, that the good unity,
+peace, and wealth of the realm, specially and principally, above all
+worldly things, consisteth in the surety and certainty of the procreation
+and posterity of your Highness, in whose most Royal person at this time is
+no manner of doubt, do therefore most humbly beseech your Highness that it
+may be enacted, with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and
+the Commons in this present parliament assembled--
+
+"1. That the marriage between your Highness and the Lady Catherine, widow
+of the late Prince Arthur, be declared to have been from the beginning,
+null, the issue of it illegitimate, and the separation pronounced by the
+Archbishop of Canterbury good and valid.
+
+"2. That the marriage between your Highness and your most dear and entirely
+beloved wife, Queen Anne, be established and held good, and taken for
+undoubtful, true, sincere, and perfect, ever hereafter."[701]
+
+The act then assumed a general character, laying down a table of prohibited
+degrees, within which marriage might not under any pretence be in future
+contracted; and demanding that any marriage which might already exist
+within those degrees should be at once dissolved. After this provision, it
+again returned to the king, and fixed the order in which his children by
+Queen Anne were to succeed. The details of the regulations were minute and
+elaborate, and the rule to be observed was the same as that which exists at
+present. First, the sons were to succeed with their heirs. If sons failed,
+then the daughters, with their heirs; and, in conclusion, it was resolved
+that any person who should maliciously do anything by writing, printing, or
+other external act or deed to the peril of the king, or to the prejudice of
+his marriage with Queen Anne, or to the derogation of the issue of that
+marriage, should be held guilty of high treason; and whoever should speak
+against that marriage, should be held guilty of misprision of
+treason--severe enactments, such as could not be justified at ordinary
+times, and such as, if the times had been ordinary, would not have been
+thought necessary--but the exigencies of the country could not tolerate an
+uncertainty of title in the heir to the crown; and the title could only be
+secured by prohibiting absolutely the discussion of dangerous questions.
+
+The mere enactment of a statute, whatever penalties were attached to the
+violation of it, was still, however, an insufficient safeguard. The recent
+investigation had revealed a spirit of disloyalty, where such a spirit had
+not been expected. The deeper the inquiry had penetrated, the more clearly
+appeared tokens, if not of conspiracy, yet of excitement, of doubt, of
+agitation, of alienated feeling, if not of alienated act. All the symptoms
+were abroad which provide disaffection with its opportunity; and in the
+natural confusion which attended the revolt from the papacy, the
+obligations of duty, both political and religious, had become indefinite
+and contradictory, pointing in all directions, like the magnetic needle in
+a thunderstorm.
+
+It was thought well, therefore, to vest a power in the crown, of trying the
+tempers of suspected persons, and examining them upon oath, as to their
+willingness to maintain the decision of parliament. This measure was a
+natural corollary of the statute, and depended for its justification on the
+extent of the danger to which the state was exposed. If a difference of
+opinion on the legitimacy of the king's children, or of the pope's power in
+England, was not dangerous, it was unjust to interfere with the natural
+liberty of speech or thought. If it was dangerous, and if the state had
+cause for supposing that opinions of the kind might spread in secret so
+long as no opportunity was offered for detecting their progress, to require
+the oath was a measure of reasonable self-defence, not permissible only,
+but in a high degree necessary and right.
+
+Under the impression, then, that the circumstances of the country demanded
+extraordinary precautions, a commission was appointed, consisting of the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, and the
+Duke of Suffolk; and these four, or any three of them, were empowered to
+administer, at the pleasure of the king, "to all and singular liege
+subjects of the realm," the following oath:--
+
+"Ye shall swear to bear your faith, truth, and obedience only to the King's
+Majesty, and to the heirs of his body, according to the limitation and
+rehearsal within the statute of succession; and not to any other within
+this realm, or foreign authority, prince, or potentate: and in case any
+oath be made or hath been made by you to any other person or persons, that
+then you do repute the same as vain and annihilate: and that to your
+cunning, wit, and utmost of your power, without guile, fraud, or other
+undue means, ye shall observe, keep, maintain, and defend this act above
+specified, and all the whole contents and effects thereof; and all other
+acts and statutes made since the beginning of this present parliament, in
+confirmation or for due execution of the same, or of anything therein
+contained. And thus ye shall do against all manner of persons, of what
+estate, dignity, degree, or condition soever they be; and in no wise do or
+attempt, or to your power suffer to be done or attempted, directly or
+indirectly, any thing or things, privily or apertly, to the let, hindrance,
+damage, or derogation thereof, by any manner of means, or for any pretence
+or cause, so help you God and all saints."[702]
+
+With this last resolution the House rose, having sat seventy-five days, and
+despatched their business swiftly. A week later, the news arrived from Rome
+that there too all was at length over; that the cause was decided, and
+decided against the king. The history of the closing catastrophe is as
+obscure as it is strange, and the account of the manner in which it was
+brought about is unfortunately incomplete in many important particulars.
+The outline only can be apprehended, and that very imperfectly.
+
+On the receipt in Paris of the letter in which Henry threatened to organise
+a Protestant confederacy, Du Bellay, in genuine anxiety for the welfare of
+Christendom, had volunteered his services for a final effort. Not a moment
+was to be lost, for the courts of Rome were already busy with the great
+cause; but the king's evident reluctance to break with the Catholic powers,
+gave room for hope that something might still be done; and going in person
+to England, the bishop had induced Henry, at the last extremity, either to
+entrust him with representative powers, or else to allow him after all to
+make some kind of concession. I am unable to learn the extent to which
+Henry yielded, but that an offer was made of some kind is evident from the
+form of the story.[703] The winter was very cold, but the bishop made his
+way to Rome with the haste of good will, and arrived in time to stay
+judgment, which was on the point of being pronounced. It seemed, for the
+moment, as if he would succeed. He was permitted to make engagements on the
+part of Henry; and that time might be allowed for communication with
+England, the pope agreed to delay sentence till the 23rd of March. This
+bishop's terms were approved by the king, and a courier was sent off with
+letters of confirmation; Sir Edward Karne and Dr. Revett following
+leisurely, with a more ample commission. The stone which had been
+laboriously rolled to the summit of the hill was trembling on the brink,
+and in a moment might rebound into the plain.
+
+But this was not to be the end. Some accidental cause delayed the courier;
+the 23rd of March came, and he had not arrived. Du Bellay implored a
+further respite. The King of England, he said, had waited six years; it was
+not a great thing for the papal council to wait six days. The cardinals
+were divided; but the Spanish party were the strongest, and when the votes
+were taken carried the day. The die was cast, and the pope, in spite of
+himself, his promises, and his conscience, drove at length upon the rocks
+to which he had been so long drifting.[704] In deference to the opinion of
+the majority of the cardinals, he pronounced the original marriage to have
+been valid, the dispensation by which it was permitted to have been legal;
+and, as a natural consequence, Henry, King of England, should he fail in
+obedience to this judgment, was declared to be excommunicate from the
+fellowship of the church, and to have forfeited the allegiance of his
+subjects.
+
+Lest the censures should be discredited by a blank discharge, engagements
+were entered into, that within four months of the promulgation of the
+sentence, the emperor would invade England, and Henry should be
+deposed.[705] The imperialists illuminated Rome; cannon were fired;
+bonfires blazed; and great bodies of men paraded the streets with shouts of
+"the Empire and Spain."[706] Already, in their eager expectation, England
+was a second Netherlands, a captured province under the regency of
+Catherine or Mary.
+
+Two days later, the courier arrived. The pope, at the entreaties of the
+Bishop of Paris, re-assembled the consistory, to consider whether the steps
+which had been taken should be undone. They sat debating all night, and the
+result was nothing. No dependence could be placed on the cardinals, Du
+Bellay said, for they spoke one way, and voted another.[707]
+
+Thus all was over. In a scene of general helplessness the long drama
+closed, and, what we call accident, for want of some better word, cut the
+knot at last over which human incapacity had so vainly laboured. The Bishop
+of Paris retired from Rome in despair. On his way back, he met the English
+commissioners at Bologna, and told them that their errand was hopeless, and
+that they need not proceed. "When we asked him," wrote Sir Edward Karne to
+the king, "the cause of such hasty process, he made answer that the
+imperialists at Rome had strengthened themselves in such a manner, that
+they coacted the said Bishop of Rome to give sentence contrary to his own
+mind, and the expectation of himself and of the French king. He showed us
+also that the Lady Princess Dowager sent lately, in the month of March
+past, letters to the Bishop of Rome, and also to her proctors, whereby the
+Bishop of Rome was much moved for her part. The imperials, before the
+sentence was given, promised, in the emperor's behalf, that he would be the
+executor of the sentence."[708]
+
+This is all which we are able to say of the immediate catastrophe which
+decided the fate of England, and through England, of the world. The deep
+impenetrable falsehood of the Roman ecclesiastics prevents us from
+discovering with what intentions the game of the last few weeks or months
+had been played; it is sufficient for Englishmen to remember that, whatever
+may have been the explanation of his conduct, the pope, in the concluding
+passage of his connection with this country, furnished the most signal
+justification which was ever given for the revolt from an abused authority.
+The supreme judge in Christendom had for six years trifled with justice,
+out of fear of an earthly prince; he concluded these years with uniting the
+extreme of folly with the extreme of improbity, and pronounced a sentence,
+willingly or unwillingly, which he had acknowledged to be unjust.
+
+Charity may possibly acquit Clement of conscious duplicity. He was one of
+those men who waited upon fortune, and waited always without success; who
+gave his word as the interest of the moment suggested, trusting that it
+might be convenient to observe it; and who was too long accustomed to break
+his promises to look with any particular alarm on that contingency. It is
+possible, also,--for of this Clement was capable--that he knew from the
+beginning the conclusion to which he would at last be driven; that he had
+engaged himself with Charles to decide in Catherine's favour as distinctly
+as he had engaged himself with Francis to decide against her; and that all
+his tortuous scheming was intended either to weary out the patience of the
+King of England, or to entangle him in acknowledgments from which he would
+not be able to extricate himself.
+
+He was mistaken, certainly, in the temper of the English nation; he
+believed what the friars told him; and trusting to the promises of
+disaffection, insurrection, invasion--those _ignes fatui_ which for sixty
+years floated so delusively before the Italian imagination, he imagined,
+perhaps, that he might trifle with Henry with impunity. This only is
+impossible, that, if he had seriously intended to fulfil the promises which
+he had made to the French king, the accidental delay of a courier could
+have made so large a difference in his determination. It is not possible
+that, if he had assured himself, as he pretended, that justice was on the
+side against which he had declared, he would not have availed himself of
+any pretext to retreat from a position which ought to have been intolerable
+to him.
+
+The question, however, had ended, "as all things in this world do have
+their end." The news of the sentence arrived in England at the beginning of
+April, with an intimation of the engagements which had been entered upon by
+the imperial ambassador for an invasion. Du Bellay returned to Paris at the
+same time, to report the failure of his undertaking; and Francis,
+disappointed, angry, and alarmed, sent the Duke of Guise to London with
+promises of support if an attempt to invade was really made, and with a
+warning at the same time to Henry to prepare for danger. Troops were
+gathering in Flanders; detachments were on their way out of Italy, Germany,
+and Bohemia, to be followed by three thousand Spaniards, and perhaps many
+more; and the object avowed for these preparations was wholly
+incommensurate with their magnitude.[709] For his own sake Francis could
+not permit a successful invasion of England, unless, indeed, he himself was
+to take part in it; and therefore, with entire sincerity, he offered his
+services. The cordial understanding for which Henry had hoped was at an
+end; but the political confederacy remained, which the interests of the two
+countries combined for the present to preserve unbroken.
+
+Guise proposed another interview at Calais between the sovereigns. The king
+for the moment was afraid to leave England,[710] lest the opportunity
+should be made use of for an insurrection; but prudence taught him, though
+disappointed in Francis, to make the best of a connection too convenient to
+be sacrificed. The German league was left in abeyance till the immediate
+danger was passed, and till the effect of the shock in England itself had
+been first experienced. He gladly accepted, in lieu of it, an offer that
+the French fleet should guard the Channel through the summer; and
+meanwhile, he collected himself resolutely, to abide the issue, whatever
+the issue was to be.
+
+The Tudor spirit was at length awake in the English sovereign. He had
+exhausted the resources of patience; he had stooped even to indignity to
+avoid the conclusion which had come at last. There was nothing left but to
+meet defiance by defiance, and accept the position to which the pope had
+driven him. In quiet times occasionally wayward and capricious, Henry, like
+Elizabeth after him, reserved his noblest nature for the moment of danger,
+and was ever greatest when peril was most immediate. Woe to those who
+crossed him now, for the time was grown stern, and to trifle further was to
+be lost. The suspended act of parliament was made law on the day (it would
+seem) of the arrival of the sentence. Convocation, which was still sitting,
+hurried through a declaration that the pope had no more power in England
+than any other bishop.[711] Five years before, if a heretic had ventured so
+desperate an opinion, the clergy would have shut their ears and run upon
+him: now they only contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness.
+The houses of the Observants at Canterbury and Greenwich, which had been
+implicated with the Nun of Kent, were suppressed, and the brethren were
+scattered among monasteries where they could be under surveillance. The Nun
+and her friends were sent to execution.[712] The ordnance stores were
+examined, the repairs of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were
+strengthened along the coast. Everywhere the realm armed itself for the
+struggle, looking well to the joints of its harness and to the temper of
+its weapons.
+
+The commission appointed under the Statute of Succession opened its
+sittings to receive the oaths of allegiance. Now, more than ever, was it
+necessary to try men's dispositions, when the pope had challenged their
+obedience. In words all went well: the peers swore; bishops, abbots,
+priors, heads of colleges swore[713] with scarcely an exception,--the
+nation seemed to unite in an unanimous declaration of freedom. In one
+quarter only, and that a very painful one, was there refusal. It was found
+solely among the persons who had been implicated in the late conspiracy.
+Neither Sir Thomas More nor the Bishop of Rochester could expect that their
+recent conduct would exempt them from an obligation which the people
+generally accepted with good will. They had connected themselves, perhaps
+unintentionally, with a body of confessed traitors. An opportunity was
+offered them of giving evidence of their loyalty, and escaping from the
+shadow of distrust. More had been treated leniently; Fisher had been
+treated far more than leniently. It was both fair and natural that they
+should be called upon to give proof that their lesson had not been learnt
+in vain; and, in fact, no other persons, if they had been passed over,
+could have been called upon to swear, for no other persons had laid
+themselves open to so just suspicion.
+
+Their conduct so exactly tallied, that they must have agreed beforehand on
+the course which they would adopt; and in following the details, we need
+concern ourselves only with the nobler figure.
+
+The commissioners sate at the archbishop's palace at Lambeth; and at the
+end of April, Sir Thomas More received a summons to appear before
+them.[714] He was at his house at Chelsea, where for the last two years he
+had lived in deep retirement, making ready for evil times. Those times at
+length were come. On the morning on which he was to present himself, he
+confessed and received the sacrament in Chelsea church; and "whereas," says
+his great-grandson, "at other times, before he parted from his wife and
+children, they used to bring him to his boat, and he there kissing them
+bade them farewell, at this time he suffered none of them to follow him
+forth of his gate, but pulled the wicket after him, and with a heavy heart
+he took boat with his son Roper."[715] He was leaving his home for the last
+time, and he knew it. He sat silent for some minutes, and then, with a
+sudden start, said, "I thank our Lord, the field is won." Lambeth Palace
+was crowded with people who had come on the same errand with himself. More
+was called in early, and found Cromwell present with the four
+commissioners, and also the Abbot of Westminster. The oath was read to him.
+It implied that he should keep the statute of succession in all its parts,
+and he desired to see the statute itself. He read it through, and at once
+replied that others might do as they pleased; he would blame no one for
+taking the oath; but for himself it was impossible. He would swear
+willingly to the part of it which secured the succession to the children of
+Queen Anne.[716] That was a matter on which parliament was competent to
+decide, and he had no right to make objections. If he might be allowed to
+take an oath to this portion of the statute in language of his own, he
+would do it; but as the words stood, he would "peril his soul" by using
+them. The Lord Chancellor desired him to re-consider his answer. He retired
+to the garden, and in his absence others were called in; among them the
+Bishop of Rochester, who refused in the same terms. More was then recalled.
+He was asked if he persisted in his resolution; and when he replied that he
+did, he was requested to state his reasons. He said that he was afraid of
+increasing the king's displeasure, but if he could be assured that he might
+explain himself safely he was ready to do so. If his objection could then
+be answered to his satisfaction, he would swear; in the meantime, he
+repeated, very explicitly, that he judged no one--he spoke only for
+himself.
+
+An opening seemed to be offered in these expressions which was caught at by
+Cranmer's kind-hearted casuistry. If Sir Thomas More could not condemn
+others for taking the oath, the archbishop said, Sir Thomas More could not
+be sure that it was sin to take it; while his duty to his king and to the
+parliament was open and unquestioned.
+
+More hesitated for an instant, but he speedily recovered his firmness. He
+had considered what he ought to do, he said; his conscience was clear about
+it, and he could say no more than he had said already. They continued to
+argue with him, but without effect; he had made up his mind; the victory,
+as he said, had been won.
+
+Cromwell was deeply affected. In his passionate regret, he exclaimed, that
+he had rather his only son had lost his head than that More should have
+refused the oath. No one knew better than Cromwell that intercession would
+be of no further use; that he could not himself advise the king to give
+way. The parliament, after grave consideration, had passed a law which they
+held necessary to secure the peace of the country; and two persons of high
+rank refused obedience to it, whose example would tell in every English
+household. Either, therefore, the act was not worth the parchment on which
+it was written, or the penalties of it must be enforced: no middle way, no
+compromise, no acquiescent reservations, could in such a case be admitted.
+The law must have its way.
+
+The recusants were committed for four days to the keeping of the Abbot of
+Westminster; and the council met to determine on the course to be pursued.
+Their offence, by the act, was misprision of treason. On the other hand,
+they had both offered to acknowledge the Princess Elizabeth as the lawful
+heir to the throne; and the question was raised whether this offer should
+be accepted. It was equivalent to a demand that the form should be altered,
+not for them only, but for every man. If persons of their rank and
+notoriety were permitted to swear with a qualification, the same privilege
+must be conceded to all. But there was so much anxiety to avoid
+extremities, and so warm a regard was personally felt for Sir Thomas More,
+that this objection was not allowed to be fatal. It was thought that
+possibly an exception might be made, yet kept a secret from the world; and
+the fact that they had sworn under any form might go far to silence
+objectors and reconcile the better class of the disaffected.[717] This view
+was particularly urged by Cranmer, always gentle, hoping, and
+illogical.[718] But, in fact, secresy was impossible. If More's discretion
+could have been relied upon, Fisher's babbling tongue would have trumpeted
+his victory to all the winds. Nor would the government consent to pass
+censure on its own conduct by evading the question whether the act was or
+was not just. If it was not just, it ought not to be: maintained at all; if
+it was just, there must be no respect of persons.
+
+The clauses to which the bishop and the ex-chancellor declined to bind
+themselves were those which declared illegal the marriage of the king with
+Catherine, and the marriage legal between the king and Queen Anne. To
+refuse these was to declare Mary legitimate, to declare Elizabeth
+illegitimate, and would do more to strengthen Mary's claims than could be
+undone by a thousand oaths. However large might be More's estimate of the
+power of parliament, he could have given no clear answer--and far less
+could Fisher have given a clear answer--if they had been required to say
+the part which they would take, should the emperor invade the kingdom under
+the pope's sanction. The emperor would come to execute a sentence which in
+their consciences they believed to be just; how could they retain their
+allegiance to Henry, when their convictions must be with the invading army?
+
+What ought to have been done let those say who disapprove of what was
+actually done. The high character of the prisoners, while it increased the
+desire, increased the difficulty of sparing them; and to have given way
+would have been a confession of a doubtful cause, which at such a time
+would not have been dangerous, but would have been fatal. Anne Boleyn is
+said to have urged the king to remain peremptory;[719] but the following
+letter of Cromwell's explains the ultimate resolution of the council in a
+very reasonable manner. It was written to Cranmer in reply to his
+arguments for concession.
+
+"My Lord, after mine humble commendation, it may please your Grace to be
+advertised that I have received your letter, and showed the same to the
+King's Highness; who, perceiving that your mind and opinion is, that it
+were good that the Bishop of Rochester and Master More should be sworn to
+the act of the king's succession, and not to the preamble of the same,
+thinketh that if their oaths should be taken, it were an occasion to all
+men to refuse the whole, or at least the like. For, in case they be sworn
+to the succession, and not to the preamble, it is to be thought that it
+might be taken not only as a confirmation of the Bishop of Rome's
+authority, but also as a reprobation of the king's second marriage.
+Wherefore, to the intent that no such things should be brought into the
+heads of the people, by the example of the said Bishop of Rochester and
+Master More, the King's Highness in no wise willeth but that they shall be
+sworn as well to the preamble as to the act. Wherefore his Grace specially
+trusteth that ye will in no wise attempt to move him to the contrary; for
+as his Grace supposeth, that manner of swearing, if it shall be suffered,
+may be an utter destruction to his whole cause, and also to the effect of
+the law made for the same."[720]
+
+Thus, therefore, with much regret the council decided--and, in fact, why
+should they have decided otherwise? They were satisfied that they were
+right in requiring the oath; and their duty to the English nation obliged
+them to persevere. They must go their way; and those who thought them wrong
+must go theirs; and the great God would judge between them. It was a hard
+thing to suffer for an opinion; but there are times when opinions are as
+dangerous as acts; and liberty of conscience was a plea which could be
+urged with a bad grace for men who, while in power, had fed the stake with
+heretics. They were summoned for a last time, to return the same answer as
+they had returned before; and nothing remained but to pronounce against
+them the penalties of the statute, imprisonment at the king's pleasure, and
+forfeiture. The latter part of the sentence was not enforced. More's family
+were left in the enjoyment of his property. Fisher's bishoprick was not
+taken from him. They were sent to the Tower, where for the present we leave
+them.
+
+Meanwhile, in accordance with the resolution taken in council on the and of
+December,[721] but which seems to have been suspended till the issue of the
+trial at Rome was decided, the bishops, who had been examined severally on
+the nature of the papal authority, and whose answers had been embodied in
+the last act of parliament, were now required to instruct the clergy
+throughout their dioceses--and the clergy in turn to instruct the
+people--in the nature of the changes which had taken place. A bishop was to
+preach each Sunday at Paul's Cross, on the pope's usurpation. Every secular
+priest was directed to preach on the same subject week after week, in his
+parish church. Abbots and priors were to teach their convents; noblemen and
+gentlemen their families and servants; mayors and aldermen the boroughs. In
+town and country, in all houses, at all dinner-tables, the conduct of the
+pope and the causes of the separation from Rome were to be the one subject
+of conversation; that the whole nation might be informed accurately and
+faithfully of the grounds on which the government had acted. No wiser
+method could have been adopted. The imperial agents would be busy under the
+surface; and the mendicant friars, and all the missionaries of
+insurrection. The machinery of order was set in force to counteract the
+machinery of sedition.
+
+Further, every bishop, in addition to the oath of allegiance, had sworn
+obedience to the king as Supreme Head of the Church;[722] and this was the
+title under which he was to be spoken of in all churches of the realm. A
+royal order had been issued, "that all manner of prayers, rubrics, canons
+of Mass books, and all other books in the churches wherein the Bishop of
+Rome was named, or his presumptuous and proud pomp and authority preferred,
+should utterly be abolished, eradicated, and rased out, and his name and
+memory should be never more, except to his contumely and reproach,
+remembered; but perpetually be suppressed and obscured."[723]
+
+Nor were these mere idle sounds, like the bellow of unshotted cannon; but
+words with a sharp, prompt meaning, which the king intended to be obeyed.
+He had addressed his orders to the clergy, because the clergy were the
+officials who had possession of the pulpits from which the people were to
+be taught; but he knew their nature too well to trust them. They were too
+well schooled in the tricks of reservation; and, for the nonce, it was
+necessary to reverse the posture of the priest and of his flock, and to set
+the honest laymen to overlook their pastors.
+
+With the instructions to the bishops circulars went round to the sheriffs
+of the counties, containing a full account of these instructions, and an
+appeal to their loyalty to see that the royal orders were obeyed. "We," the
+king wrote to them, "seeing, esteeming, and reputing you to be of such
+singular and vehement zeal and affection towards the glory of Almighty God,
+and of so faithful, loving, and obedient heart towards us, as you will
+accomplish, with all power, diligence, and labour, whatsoever shall be to
+the preferment and setting forth of God's word, have thought good, not only
+to signify unto you by these our letters, the particulars of the charge
+given by us to the bishops, but also to require and straitly charge you,
+upon pain of your allegiance, and as ye shall avoid our high indignation
+and displeasure, [that] at your uttermost peril, laying aside all vain
+affections, respects, and other carnal considerations, and setting only
+before your eyes the mirrour of the truth, the glory of God, the dignity of
+your Sovereign Lord and King, and the great concord and unity, and
+inestimable profit and utility, that shall by the due execution of the
+premises ensue to yourselves and to all other faithful and loving subjects,
+ye make or cause to be made diligent search and wait, whether the said
+bishops do truly and sincerely, without all manner of cloke, colour, or
+dissimulation, execute and accomplish our will and commandment, as is
+aforesaid. And in case ye shall hear that the said bishops, or any other
+ecclesiastical person, do omit and leave undone any part or parcel of the
+premises, or else in the execution and setting forth of the same, do coldly
+and feignedly use any manner of sinister addition, wrong interpretation, or
+painted colour, then we straitly charge and command you that you do make,
+undelayedly, and with all speed and diligence, declaration and
+advertisement to us and to our council of the said default.
+
+"And forasmuch as we upon the singular trust which we have in you, and for
+the special love which we suppose you bear towards us, and the weal and
+tranquillity of this our realm, have specially elected and chosen you among
+so many for this purpose, and have reputed you such men as unto whose
+wisdom and fidelity we might commit a matter of such great weight and
+importance: if ye should, contrary to our expectation and trust which we
+have in you, and against your duty and allegiance towards us, neglect, or
+omit to do with all your diligence, whatsoever shall be in your power for
+the due performance of our pleasure to you declared, or halt or stumble at
+any part or specialty of the same; Be ye assured that we, like a prince of
+justice, will so extremely punish you for the same, that all the world
+beside shall take by you example, and beware contrary to their allegiance
+to disobey the lawful commandment of their Sovereign Lord and Prince.
+
+"Given under our signet, at our Palace of Westminster, the 9th day of June,
+1534."[724]
+
+So Henry spoke at last. There was no place any more for nice distinctions
+and care of tender consciences. The general, when the shot is flying,
+cannot qualify his orders with dainty periods. Swift command and swift
+obedience can alone be tolerated; and martial law for those who hesitate.
+
+This chapter has brought many things to a close. Before ending it we will
+leap over three months, to the termination of the career of the pope who
+has been so far our companion. Not any more was the distracted Clement to
+twist his handkerchief, or weep, or flatter, or wildly wave his arms in
+angry impotence; he was to lie down in his long rest, and vex the world no
+more. He had lived to set England free--an exploit which, in the face of so
+persevering an anxiety to escape a separation, required a rare genius and a
+combination of singular qualities. He had finished his work, and now he was
+allowed to depart.
+
+In him, infinite insincerity was accompanied with a grace of manner which
+regained confidence as rapidly as it was forfeited. Desiring sincerely, so
+far as he could be sincere in anything, to please every one by turns, and
+reckless of truth to a degree in which he was without a rival in the world,
+he sought only to escape his difficulties by inactivity, and he trusted to
+provide himself with a refuge against all contingencies by waiting upon
+time. Even when at length he was compelled to act, and to act in a distinct
+direction, his plausibility long enabled him to explain away his conduct;
+and, honest in the excess of his dishonesty, he wore his falsehood with so
+easy a grace that it assumed the character of truth. He was false,
+deceitful, treacherous; yet he had the virtue of not pretending to be
+virtuous. He was a real man, though but an indifferent one; and we can
+refuse to no one, however grave his faults, a certain ambiguous sympathy,
+when in his perplexities he shows us features so truly human in their
+weakness as those of Clement VII.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTES.
+
+[1] Printed in FOXE, vol. iv. p. 659, Townsend's edition.
+
+[2] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 4.
+
+[3] Bishop Latimer, in a sermon at Paul's Cross, suggested another purpose
+which this act might answer. One of his audience, writing to the Mayor of
+Plymouth, after describing the exceedingly disrespectful language in which
+he spoke of the high church dignitaries, continues, "The king," quoth he,
+"made a marvellous good act of parliament that certain men should sow every
+of them two acres of hemp; but it were all too little were it so much more
+to hang the thieves that be in England."--_Suppression of the Monasteries_,
+Camden Society's publications, p. 38.
+
+[4] 32 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.
+
+[5] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.
+
+[6] _Antiquities of Hengrave_, by Sir T. GAGE.
+
+[7] See especially 2 Hen. VII. capp. 16 and 19.
+
+[8] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[9] See especially the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth.
+
+[10] 10 Ed. III. cap. 3.
+
+[11] Statutes of the Realm, vol. i. (edit. 1817), pp. 227-8.
+
+[12] "The artificers and husbandmen make most account of such meat as they
+may soonest come by and have it quickliest ready. Their food consisteth
+principally in beef, and such meat as the butcher selleth, that is to say,
+mutton, veal, lamb, pork, whereof the one findeth great store in the
+markets adjoining; besides souse, brawn, bacon, fruit, pies of fruit, fowls
+of sundry sorts, as the other wanteth it not at home by his own provision,
+which is at the best hand and commonly least charge. In feasting, this
+latter sort--I mean the husbandmen--do exceed after their manner,
+especially at bridals and such odd meetings, where it is incredible to tell
+what meat is consumed and spent."--HARRISON'S _Description of England_, p.
+282.
+
+The Spanish nobles who came into England with Philip were astonished at the
+diet which they found among the poor.
+
+"These English," said one of them, "have their houses made of sticks and
+dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king."--Ibid. p. 313.
+
+[13] _State Papers_, Hen. VIII. vol. ii. p. 10.
+
+[14] HALL, p. 646.
+
+[15] 25 Ed. III. cap. I.
+
+[16] _Statutes of the Realm_, vol. i. p. 199.
+
+[17] 3 Ed. IV. cap. 2.
+
+[18] 10 Hen. VI. cap. 2.
+
+[19] STOW'S _Chronicle._
+
+[20] _Statutes of Philip and Mary._
+
+[21] From 1565 to 1575 there was a rapid and violent rise in the prices of
+all kinds of grain. Wheat stood at four and five times its earlier rates;
+and in 1576, when Harrison wrote, was entirely beyond the reach of the
+labouring classes. "The poor in some shires," he says, "are enforced to
+content themselves with rye or barley, yea, and in time of dearth many with
+bread made either of peas, beans, or oats, or of all together and some
+acorns among, of which scourge the poorest do soonest taste, sith they are
+least able to provide themselves of better. I will not say that this
+extremity is oft so well seen in time of plenty as of dearth, but if I
+should I could easily bring my trial. For, albeit that there be much more
+ground eared now almost in every place than hath been of late years, yet
+such a price of corn continues in each town and market, that the artificer
+and poor labouring man is not able to reach to it, but is driven to content
+himself with beans, peas, oats, tares, and lentils."--HARRISON, p. 283. The
+condition of the labourer was at this period deteriorating rapidly. The
+causes will be described in the progress of this history.
+
+[22] _Chronicle_, p.568.
+
+[23] 33 Hen. VIII. cap. II. The change in the prices of such articles
+commenced in the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., and continued till
+the close of the century. A discussion upon the subject, written in 1581 by
+Mr. Edward Stafford, and containing the clearest detailed account of the
+alteration, is printed in the _Harleian Miscellany_, vol. ix. p.139, etc.
+
+[24] Leland, _Itin._, vol. vi. p.17. In large households beef used to be
+salted in great quantities for winter consumption. The art of fatting
+cattle in the stall was imperfectly understood, and the loss of substance
+in the destruction of fibre by salt was less than in the falling off of
+flesh on the failure of fresh grass. The Northumberland Household Book
+describes the storing of salted provision for the earl's establishment at
+Michaelmas; and men now living can remember the array of salting tubs in
+old-fashioned country houses. So long as pigs, poultry, and other articles
+of food, however, remained cheap and abundant, the salt diet could not, as
+Hume imagines, have been carried to an extent injurious to health; and
+fresh meat, beef as well as mutton, was undoubtedly sold in all markets the
+whole year round in the reign of Henry VIII., and sold at a uniform price,
+which it could not have been if there had been so much difficulty in
+procuring it. Latimer (_Letters_, p.412), writing to Cromwell on Christmas
+Eve, 1538, speaks of his winter stock of "beeves" and muttons as a thing of
+course.
+
+[25] STAFFORD'S _Discourse on the State of the Realm_. It is to be
+understood, however, that these rates applied only to articles of ordinary
+consumption. Capons fatted for the dinners of the London companies were
+sometimes provided at a shilling apiece. Fresh fish was also extravagantly
+dear, and when two days a week were observed strictly as fasting days, it
+becomes a curious question to know how the supply was kept up. The inland
+counties were dependent entirely on ponds and rivers. London was provided
+either from the Thames or from the coast of Sussex. An officer of the
+Fishmongers' Company resided at each of the Cinque Ports whose business it
+was to buy the fish wholesale from the boats and to forward it on
+horseback. Three hundred horses were kept for this service at Rye alone.
+And when an adventurous fisherman, taking advantage of a fair wind, sailed
+up the Thames with his catch and sold it first hand at London Bridge, the
+innovation was considered dangerous, and the Mayor of Rye petitioned
+against it.
+
+Salmon, sturgeon, porpoise, roach, dace, flounders, eels, etc., were caught
+in considerable quantities in the Thames, below London Bridge, and further
+up, pike and trout. The fishermen had great nets that stretched all across
+Limehouse-reach four fathoms deep.
+
+Fresh fish, however, remained the luxury of the rich, and the poor were
+left to the salt cod, ling, and herring brought in annually by the Iceland
+fleet.
+
+Fresh herrings sold for five or six a penny in the time of Henry VIII., and
+were never cheaper. Fresh salmon five and six shillings apiece. Roach,
+dace, and flounders from two to four shillings a hundred. Pike and barbel
+varied with their length. The barbel a foot long sold for five-pence, and
+twopence was added for each additional inch: a pike a foot long sold for
+sixteen pence, and increased a penny an inch.--_Guildhall MSS. Journals_
+12, 13, 14, 15.
+
+[26] "When the brewer buyeth a quarter of malt for two shillings, then he
+shall sell a gallon of the best ale for two farthings; when he buyeth a
+quarter malt for four shillings, the gallon shall be four farthings, and so
+forth... and that he sell a quart of ale upon his table for a farthing."--
+Assize of Brewers: from a MS. in Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+By an order of the Lord Mayor and Council of the City of London, in
+September, 1529, the price of a kilderkin of single beer was fixed at a
+shilling, the kilderkin of double beer at two shillings; but this included
+the cask; and the London brewers replied with a remonstrance, saying that
+the casks were often destroyed or made away with, and that an allowance had
+to be made for bad debts. "Your beseechers," they said, "have many city
+debtors, for many of them which have taken much beer into their houses
+suddenly goeth to the sanctuary, some keep their houses--some purchase the
+king's protection, and some, when they die, be reckoned poor, and of no
+value, and many of your said beseechers be for the most part against such
+debtors remediless and suffer great losses."
+
+They offered to supply then: customers with sixteen gallon casks of single
+beer for eleven pence, and the same quantity of double beer for a shilling,
+the cask included. And this offer was accepted.
+
+The corporation, however, returned two years after to their original order.
+_Guildhall Records_, MS. Journal 13, pp. 210, 236.
+
+[27] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 14.
+
+The prices assessed, being a maximum, applied to the best wines of each
+class. In 1531, the mayor and corporation "did straitly charge and command
+that all such persons as sold wines by retail within the city and liberties
+of the same, should from henceforth sell two gallons of the best red wine
+for eightpence, and not above; the gallon of the best white wine for
+eightpence, and not above; the pottle, quart, and pint after the same rate,
+upon pain of imprisonment."
+
+The quality of the wine sold was looked into from time to time, and when
+found tainted, or unwholesome, "according to the antient customs of the
+city," the heads of the vessels were broken up, and the wines in them put
+forth open into the kennels, in example of all other offenders. _Guildhall
+MS._ Journals 12 and 13.
+
+[28] _Sermons_, p.101.
+
+[29] See HARRISON, p. 318. At the beginning of the century farms let for
+four pounds a year, which in 1576 had been raised to forty, fifty, or a
+hundred. The price of produce kept pace with the rent. The large farmers
+prospered; the poor forfeited their tenures.
+
+[30] The wages were fixed at a maximum, showing that labour was scarce, and
+that its natural tendency was towards a higher rate of remuneration.
+Persons not possessed of other means of subsistence were punishable if they
+refused to work at the statutable rate of payment; and a clause in the act
+of Hen. VIII. directed that where the practice had been to give lower
+wages, lower wages should be taken. This provision was owing to a
+difference in the value of money in different parts of England. The price
+of bread at Stratford, for instance, was permanently twenty-five per cent.
+below the price in London. (Assize of Bread in England: _Balliol MS_.) The
+statute, therefore, may be taken as a guide sufficiently conclusive as to
+the practical scale. It is of course uncertain how far work was constant.
+The ascending tendency of wages is an evidence, so far as it goes, in the
+labourer's favour; and the proportion between the wages of the household
+farm servant and those of the day labourer, which furnishes a further
+guide, was much the same as at present. By the same statute of Henry VIII.
+the common servant of husbandry, who was boarded and lodged at his master's
+house, received 16s. 8d. a year in money, with 4s. for his clothes; while
+the wages of the out-door labourer, supposing his work constant, would have
+been L5 a year. Among ourselves, on an average of different counties, the
+labourer's wages are L25 to L30 a year, supposing his work constant. The
+farm servant, unless in the neighbourhood of large towns, receives about
+L6, or from that to L8.
+
+Where meat and drink was allowed it was calculated at 2d. a day, or 1s. 2d.
+a week. In the household of the Earl of Northumberland the allowance was
+2-1/2d. Here, again, we observe an approach to modern proportions. The
+estimated cost of the board and lodging of a man servant in an English
+gentleman's family is now about L25 a year.
+
+[31] Mowers, for instance, were paid 8d. a day.--_Privy Purse Expenses of
+Henry VIII._
+
+[32] In 1581 the agricultural labourer, as he now exists, was only
+beginning to appear. "There be such in the realm," says Stafford, "as live
+only by the labour of their hands and the profit which they can make upon
+the commons."--STAFFORD'S _Discourse_. This novel class had been called
+into being by the general raising of rents, and the wholesale evictions of
+the smaller tenantry which followed the Reformation. The progress of the
+causes which led to the change can be traced from the beginning of the
+century. Harrison says he knew old men who, comparing things present with
+things past, spoke of two things grown to be very grievous--to wit, "the
+enhancing of rents, and the daily oppression of copyholders, whose lords
+seek to bring their poor tenants almost into plain servitude and misery,
+daily devising new means, and seeking up all the old, how to cut them
+shorter and shorter; doubling, trebling, and now and then seven times
+increasing their fines; driving them also for every trifle to lose and
+forfeit their tenures, by whom the greatest part of the realm doth stand
+and is maintained, to the end they may fleece them yet more: which is a
+lamentable hearing."--_Description of England_, p.318.
+
+[33] HALL, p. 581. Nor was the act in fact observed even in London itself,
+or towards workmen employed by the Government. In 1538, the Corporation of
+London, "for certain reasonable and necessary considerations," assessed the
+wages of common labourers at 7d. and 8d. the day, classing them with
+carpenters and masons.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 14, fol. 10. Labourers
+employed on Government works in the reign of Hen. VIII. never received less
+than 6d. a day, and frequently more.--_Chronicle of Calais_, p. 197, etc.
+Sixpence a day is the usual sum entered as the wages of a day's labour in
+the innumerable lists of accounts in the Record Office. And 6d. a day again
+was the lowest pay of the common soldier, not only on exceptional service
+in the field, but when regularly employed in garrison duty. Those who doubt
+whether this was really the practice, may easily satisfy themselves by
+referring to the accounts of the expenses of Berwick, or of Dover, Deal, or
+Walmer Castles, to be found in the Record Office in great numbers. The
+daily wages of the soldier are among the very best criteria for determining
+the average value of the unskilled labourer's work. No government gives
+higher wages than it is compelled to give by the market rate.
+
+[34] The wages of the day labourer in London, under this act of Elizabeth,
+were fixed at 9d. the day, and this, after the restoration of the
+depreciated currency.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 18, fol. 157, etc.
+
+[35] 4 Hen. VII. cap. 16. By the same parliament these provisions were
+extended to the rest of England. 4 Hen. VII. cap. 19.
+
+[36] HALL, p. 863.
+
+[37] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 22.
+
+[38] There is a cause of difficulty "peculiar to England, the increase of
+pasture, by which sheep may be now said to devour men and unpeople not only
+villages but towns. For wherever it is found that the sheep yield a softer
+and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even
+those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old rents which their
+farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do
+no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the
+course of agriculture.... One shepherd can look after a flock which will
+stock an extent of ground that would require many hands if it were ploughed
+and reaped. And this likewise in many places raises the price of corn. The
+price of wool is also risen ... since, though sheep cannot be called a
+monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person; yet they are in so
+few hands, and these are so rich, that as they are not prest to sell them
+sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it till they have
+raised the price as high as possible."--Sir THOMAS MORE'S _Utopia_,
+Burnet's Translation, pp. 17-19.
+
+[39] I find scattered among the _State Papers_ many loose memoranda,
+apparently of privy councillors, written on the backs of letters, or on
+such loose scraps as might be at hand. The following fragment on the
+present subject is curious. I do not recognise the hand:--
+
+"Mem. That an act may be made that merchants shall employ their goods
+continually in the traffic of merchandise, and not in the purchasing of
+lands; and that craftsmen, also, shall continually use their crafts in
+cities and towns, and not leave the same and take farms in the country; and
+that no merchant shall hereafter purchase above L40 lands by the
+year."--_Cotton MS._ Titus, b. i. 160.
+
+[40] When the enclosing system was carried on with greatest activity and
+provoked insurrection. In expressing a sympathy with the social policy of
+the Tudor government, I have exposed myself to a charge of opposing the
+received and ascertained conclusions of political economy. I disclaim
+entirely an intention so foolish; but I believe that the science of
+political economy came into being with the state of things to which alone
+it is applicable. It ought to be evident that principles which answer
+admirably when a manufacturing system capable of indefinite expansion
+multiplies employment at home--when the soil of England is but a fraction
+of its empire, and the sea is a highway to emigration--would have produced
+far different effects, in a condition of things which habit had petrified
+into form, when manufactures could not provide work for one additional
+hand, when the first colony was yet unthought of, and where those who were
+thrown out of the occupation to which they had been bred could find no
+other. The tenants evicted, the labourers thrown out of employ, when the
+tillage lands were converted into pastures, had scarcely an alternative
+offered them except to beg, to rob, or to starve.
+
+[41] _Lansdowne MS._ No. I. fol. 26.
+
+[42] GIUSTINIANI'S _Letters from the Court of Henry VIII_.
+
+[43] Ibid.
+
+[44] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.
+
+[45] Under Hen. VI. the household expenses were L23,000 a year--Cf.
+_Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council_, vol. vi. p. 35. The
+particulars of the expenses of the household of Hen. VIII. are in an MS. in
+the Rolls House. They cover the entire outlay except the personal
+expenditure of the king, and the sum total amounts to L14,365 10s. 7d. This
+would leave above L5000 a year for the privy purse, not, perhaps,
+sufficient to cover Henry's gambling extravagances in his early life.
+Curious particulars of his excesses in this matter will be found in a
+publication wrongly called _The Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the Eighth_.
+It is a diary of general payments, as much for purposes of state as for the
+king himself. The high play was confined for the most part to Christmas or
+other times of festivity, when the statutes against unlawful games were
+dispensed with for all classes.
+
+[46] 18 Hen. VI. cap. 11.
+
+[47] 4 Hen. VII. cap. 12.
+
+[48] During the quarter sessions time they were allowed 4s. a day.--Ric.
+II. xii. 10.
+
+[49] The rudeness of the furniture in English country houses has been dwelt
+upon with much emphasis by Hume and others. An authentic inventory of the
+goods and chattels in a parsonage in Kent proves that there has been much
+exaggeration in this matter. It is from an MS. in the Rolls House.
+
+_The Inventory of the Goods and Catales of Richd. Master, Clerk, Parson of
+Aldington, being in his Parsonage on the 20th Day of April, in the 25th
+Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King Henry VIII._
+
+  _Plate_
+  Silver spoons, twelve.
+
+  _In the Hall_
+  Two tables and two forms.
+  Item, a painted cloth hanging at the upper part of the hall.
+  Item, a green banker hung on the bench in the hall.
+  Item, a laver of laten.
+
+  _In the Parlour_
+  A hanging of old red and green saye.
+  Item, a banker of woven carpet of divers colours.
+  Item, two cushions.
+  Item, one table, two forms, one cupboard, one chair.
+  Item, two painted pictures and a picture of the names of kings of England
+      pinned on the said hanging.
+
+  _In the Chamber on the North Side of the said Parlour_
+  A painted hanging.
+  Item, a bedstedyll with a feather bed, one bolster, two pillows, one
+      blanket,
+      one roulett of rough tapestry, a testner of green and red saye.
+  Item, two forms.
+  Item, one jack to set a basin on.
+
+  _In the Chamber over the Parlour_
+  Two bedsteads.
+  Item, another testner of painted cloth.
+  Item, a painted cloth.
+  Item, two forms.
+
+  _At the Stairs' Hed beside the Parson's Bedchamber_
+  One table, two trestylls, four beehives.
+
+  _In the Parson's Lodging-chamber_
+  A bedstedyll and a feather bed, two blankets, one payr of sheets, one
+      coverlet of tapestry lined with canvas, one bolster, one pillow with
+      a pillocote.
+  Item, one gown of violet cloth lined with red saye.
+  Item, a gown of black cloth, furred with lamb.
+  Item, two hoods of violet cloth, whereof one is lined with green
+      sarsenet.
+  Item, one jerkyn of tawny camlet.
+  Item, a jerkyn of cloth furred with white.
+  Item, a jacket of cloth furred.
+  Item, a sheet to put in cloth.
+  Item, one press.
+  Item, a leather mail.
+  Item, one table, two forms, four chairs, two trestylls.
+  Item, a tester of painted cloth.
+  Item, a pair of hangings of green saye, with two pictures thereupon.
+  Item, one cupboard, two chests.
+  Item, a little flock bed, with a bolster and a coverlet.
+  Item, one cushion, one mantell, one towel, and, by estimation, a pound
+      of wax candles.
+  Item, Greek books covered with boards, 42.
+  Item, small books covered with boards, 33.
+  Item, books covered with leather and parchment, 38.
+
+  _In the said Chest in the said Chamber_
+  Three pieces of red saye and green.
+  Item, one tyke for a bolster, two tykes for pillows.
+  Item, a typpett of cloth.
+  Item, diaper napkins, 4, diaper towels, 2.
+  Item, four pairs of sheets, and one shete, two tablecloths.
+
+  _In the other Chest in the same Chamber_
+  One typpett of sarsenett.
+  Item, two cotes belonging to the crosse of Underbill, whereupon hang
+      thirty-three pieces of money, rings, and other things, and three
+      crystal stones closed in silver.
+
+  _In the Study_
+  Two old boxes, a wicker hamper full of papers.
+
+  _In the Chamber behind the Chimney_
+  One seam and a half of old malt.
+  Item, a trap for rats.
+  Item, a board of three yards length.
+
+  _In the Chamber next adjoining westwards_
+  One bedstedyll, one flock bed, one bolster.
+  One form, two shelf boards, one little table, two trestylls, two awgyes,
+      one
+      nett, called a stalker, a well rope, five quarters of hemp.
+
+  _In the Buttery_
+  Three basins of pewter, five candlesticks, one ewer of lateen, one
+      chafing
+      dish, two platters, one dish, one salter, three podingers [?
+          porringer],
+      a saltseller of pewter, seven kilderkyns, three keelers, one form,
+          five
+      shelves, one byn, one table, one glasse bottell.
+
+  _In the Priest's Chamber_
+  One bedstedyll, one feather bed, two forms, one press.
+
+  _In the Woman's Keeping_
+  Two tablecloths, two pairs of sheets.
+
+  _In the Servant's Chamber_
+  One painted hanging, a bedstedyll, one feather bed, a press, and a shelf.
+
+  _In the Kitchen_
+  Eight bacon flitches, a little brewing lead, three brass pots, three
+      kettles,
+      one posnett, one frying-pan, a dripping-pan, a great pan, two
+          trivetts,
+      a chopping knife, a skimmer, one fire rake, a pothanger, one
+          pothooke,
+      one andiron, three spits, one gridiron, one firepan, a coal rake of
+          iron,
+      two bolts [? butts], three wooden platters, six boldishes, three
+          forms,
+      two stools, seven platters, two pewter dishes, four saucers, a
+          covering
+      of a saltseller, a podynger, seven tubbs, a caldron, two syffs, a
+          capon
+      cope, a mustard quern, a ladder, two pails, one beehive.
+
+  _In the Mill-house_
+  Seven butts, two cheeses, an old sheet, an old brass pan, three
+      podyngers,
+      a pewter dish.
+
+  _In the Boulting-house_
+  One brass pan, one quern, a boulting hutch, a boulting tub, three little
+      tubbys, two keelers, a tolvett, two boulters, one tonnell.
+
+  _In the Larder_
+  One sieve, one bacon trough, a cheese press, one little tub, eight
+      shelves,
+      one graper for a well.
+
+  _Wood_
+  Of tall wood ten load, of ash wood a load and a half.
+
+  _Poultry_
+  Nine hens, eight capons, one cock, sixteen young chickens, three old
+      geese, seventeen goslings, four ducks.
+
+  _Cattle_
+  Five young hoggs, two red kyne, one red heifer two years old, one bay
+      gelding lame of spavins, one old grey mare having a mare colt.
+
+  _In the Entries_
+  Two tubbs, one trough, one ring to bear water and towel, a chest to keep
+  cornes.
+
+  _In the same House_
+  Five seams of lime.
+
+  _In the Woman's Chamber_
+  One bedstedyll of hempen yarn, by estimation 20 lbs.
+
+  _Without the House_
+  Of tyles, ----, of bricks, ----, seven planks, three rafters, one ladder.
+
+  _In the Gate-house_
+  One form, a leather sack, three bushels of wheat.
+
+  _In the Still beside the Gate_
+  Two old road saddles, one bridle, a horse-cloth.
+
+  _In the Barn next the Gate_
+  Of wheat unthrashed, by estimation, thirty quarters, of barley
+      unthrashed,
+      by estimation, five quarters.
+
+  _In the Cartlage_
+  One weene with two whyles, one dung-cart without whyles, two shod-whyles,
+      two yokes, one sledge.
+
+  _In the Barn next the Church_
+  Of oats unthrashed, by estimation, one quarter.
+
+  _In the Garden-house_
+  Of oats, by estimation, three seams four bushels.
+
+  _In the Court_
+      Two racks, one ladder.
+
+[50] Two hundred poor were fed daily at the house of Tomas Cromwell. This
+fact is perfectly authenticated. Stowe the historian, who did not like
+Cromwell, lived in an adjoining house, and reports it as an eye
+witness.--_See_ STOWE'S _Survey of London._
+
+[51] HARRISON'S _Description of Britain_.
+
+[52] The Earl and Countess of Northumberland breakfasted together alone at
+seven. The meal consisted of a quart of ale, a quart of wine, and a chine
+of beef: a loaf of bread is not mentioned, but we hope it may be presumed.
+On fast days the beef was exchanged for a dish of sprats or herrings, fresh
+or salt.--_Northumberland Household Book_, quoted by Hume.
+
+[53] Some notice of the style of living sometimes witnessed in England in
+the old times may be gathered from the details of a feast given at the
+installation of George Neville, brother of Warwick the King Maker, when
+made Archbishop of York.
+
+The number of persons present including servants was about 3500.
+
+The provisions were as follow--
+
+  Wheat, 300 quarters.
+  Ale, 300 tuns.
+  Wine, 104 tuns.
+  Ipocras, 1 pipe.
+  Oxen, 80.
+  Wild bulls, 6.
+  Muttons, 1004.
+  Veal, 300.
+  Porkers, 300.
+  Geese, 3000.
+  Capons, 2300.
+  Pigs, 2000.
+  Peacocks, 100.
+  Cranes, 200.
+  Kids, 200.
+  Chickens, 2000.
+  Pigeons, 4000.
+  Conies, 4000.
+  Bitterns, 204.
+  Mallards and teals, 4000.
+  Heronshaws, 4000.
+  Fesants, 200.
+  Partridges, 500.
+  Woodcocks, 400.
+  Plovers, 400.
+  Curlews, 100.
+  Quails, 100.
+  Egrets, 1000
+  Rees, 200.
+  Harts, bucks, and roes, 400 and odd.
+  Pasties of venison, cold, 4000.
+  Pasties of venison, hot, 1506.
+  Dishes of jelly, pasted, 1000.
+  Plain dishes of jelly, 4000.
+  Cold tarts, baken, 4000.
+  Cold custards, 4000.
+  Custards, hot, 2000.
+  Pikes, 300.
+  Breams, 300.
+  Seals, 8.
+  Porpoises, 4.
+
+[54] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 64.
+
+[55] _Statutes of the Realm_, 1 Ed. VI. cap. 12.
+
+[56] HOOKER'S _Life of Sir Peter Carew_.
+
+[57] In a subsequent letter he is described as learning French, etymology,
+casting of accounts, playing at weapons, and other such exercises.--ELLIS,
+third series, vol. i. p. 342-3.
+
+[58] It has been objected that inasmuch as the Statute Book gives evidence
+of extensive practices of adulteration, the guild system was useless, nay,
+it has been even said that it was the cause of the evil. Cessante causa
+cessat effectus;--when the companies lost their authority, the adulteration
+ought to have ceased, which in the face of recent exposures will be
+scarcely maintained. It would be as reasonable to say that the police are
+useless because we have still burglars and pickpockets among us.
+
+[59] Throughout the old legislation, morality went along with politics and
+economics, and formed the life and spirit of them. The fruiterers in the
+streets were prohibited from selling plums and apples, because the
+apprentices played dice with them for their wares, or because the
+temptation induced children and servants to steal money to buy. When
+Parliament came to be held regularly in London, an order of Council fixed
+the rates which the hotel-keeper might charge for dinners. Messes were
+served for four at twopence per head; the bill of fare providing bread,
+fish, salt and fresh, two courses of meat, ale, with fire and candles. And
+the care of the Government did not cease with their meals, and in an
+anxiety that neither the burgesses nor their servants should be led into
+sin, stringent orders were issued against street-walkers coming near their
+quarters.--_Guildhall MSS. Journals_ 12 and 15.
+
+The sanitary regulations for the city are peculiarly interesting. The
+scavengers, constables and officers of the wards were ordered, "on pain of
+death," to see all streets and yards kept clear of dung and rubbish and all
+other filthy and corrupt things. Carts went round every Monday, Wednesday,
+and Saturday, to carry off the litter from the houses, and on each of those
+days twelve buckets of water were drawn for "every person," and used in
+cleaning their rooms and passages.
+
+Particular pains were taken to keep the Thames clean, and at the mouth of
+every sewer or watercourse there was a strong iron grating two feet
+deep.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 15.
+
+[60] And not in England alone, but throughout Europe.
+
+[61] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
+
+[62] Ibid.
+
+[63] Ibid.
+
+[64] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 4; 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 5.
+
+[65] _Statut. Winton._ 13 Edw. I. cap. 6.
+
+[66] 12 Rich. II. cap. 6: 11 Hen. IV. cap. 4.
+
+[67] ELLIS'S _Original Letters_, first series, vol. i. p. 226.
+
+[68] It has been stated again and again that the policy of Henry the Eighth
+was to make the crown despotic by destroying the remnants of the feudal
+power of the nobility. How is such a theory to be reconciled with statutes
+the only object of which was the arming and training of the country
+population, whose natural leaders were the peers, knights, and gentlemen?
+We have heard too much of this random declamation.
+
+[69] 33 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[70] From my experience of modern archery I found difficulty in believing
+that these figures were accurately given. Few living men could send the
+lightest arrow 220 yards, even with the greatest elevation, and for
+effective use it must be delivered nearly point blank. A passage in
+HOLINSHED'S _Description of Britain_, however, prevents me from doubting
+that the words of the statute are correct. In his own time, he says that
+the strength of the English archers had so notoriously declined that the
+French soldiers were in the habit of disrespectfully turning their backs,
+at long range, "bidding them shoot," whereas, says Holinshed, "had the
+archers been what they were wont to be, these fellows would have had their
+breeches nailed unto their buttocks." In an order for bowstaves, in the
+reign of Henry the Eighth, I find this direction: "Each bowstave ought to
+be _three fingers thick_ and squared, and _seven feet long_: to be got up
+well polished and without knots."--Butler to Bullinger: _Zurich Letters_.
+
+[71] Page 735, quarto edition.
+
+[72] The Personages, Dresses, and Properties of a Mystery Play, acted at
+Greenwich, by command of Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[73] Hall says "collar of the _garter_ of St. Michael," which, however, I
+venture to correct.
+
+[74] Rich. II. 12, cap. 7, 8, 9; Rich. II. 15, cap. 6.
+
+[75] _Lansdowne MSS._ 1, fol. 26.
+
+[76] Injunctions to the Monasteries: BURNET'S _Collect._ pp. 77-8.
+
+[77] Letter of Thomas Dorset to the Mayor of Plymouth: _Suppression of the
+Monasteries_, p. 36.
+
+[78] "Divers of your noble predecessors, kings of this realm, have given
+lands to monasteries, to give a certain sum of money yearly to the poor
+people, whereof for the ancienty of the time they never give one penny.
+Wherefore, if your Grace will build to your poor bedemen a sure hospital
+that shall never fail, take from them these things.... Tie the holy idle
+thieves to the cart to be whipped, naked, till they fall to labour, that
+they, by their importunate begging take not away the alms that the good
+charitable people would give unto us sore, impotent, miserable people, your
+bedemen."--FISH'S _Supplication_: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 664.
+
+[79] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
+
+[80] Roads, harbours, embankments, fortifications at Dover and at Berwick,
+etc.--STRYPE's _Memorials_, vol. 1. p. 326 and 419.
+
+[81] It is to be remembered that the criminal law was checked on one side
+by the sanctuary system, on the other by the practice of benefit of clergy.
+Habit was too strong for legislation, and these privileges continued to
+protect criminals long after they were abolished by statute. There is
+abundant evidence that the execution of justice was as lax in practice as
+it was severe in theory.
+
+[82] 27 Ed. III. stat. 1; 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 16 Rich. cap. 5.
+
+[83] 25 Ed. III. stat. 4; stat. 5, cap. 22; 13 Rich. II. stat. 2, cap. 2; 2
+Hen. IV. cap. 3; 9 Hen. IV. cap. 8.
+
+[84] See p. 42.
+
+[85] _Lansdowne MS._ 1, fol. 26; STOW'S _Chron._ ed. 1630, p. 338.
+
+[86] 2 Hen. IV. cap. 3; 9 Hen. IV. cap. 8.
+
+[87] 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.
+
+[88] Hen. VII. cap. 4. Among the miscellaneous publications of the Record
+Commission, there is a complaint presented during this reign, by the
+gentlemen and the farmers of Carnarvonshire, accusing the clergy of
+systematic seduction of their wives and daughters.
+
+[89] Hen. IV. cap. 15.
+
+[90] MORTON'S _Register_, MS. Lambeth. See vol. ii. cap. 10, of the second
+edition of this work for the results of Morton's investigation.
+
+[91] MORTON'S _Register_; and see WILKINS'S _Concilia_, vol. iii. pp.
+618-621.
+
+[92] Quibus Dominus intimavit qualis infamia super illos in dicta civitate
+crescit quod complures eorundem tabernas pandoxatorias, sive caupones
+indies exerceant ibidem expectando fere per totum diem. Quare Dominus
+consuluit et monuit eosdem quod in posterum talia dimittant, et quod
+dimittant suos longos crines et induantur togis non per totum apertis.
+
+[93] The expression is remarkable. They were not to dwell on the offences
+of their brethren coram laicis qui semper clericis sunt infesti.--WILKINS,
+vol. iii. p. 618.
+
+[94] Johannes permissione divina Cantuar. episcop. totius Angliae primas
+cum in praesenti convocatione pie et salubriter consideratum fuit quod
+nonnulli sacerdotes et alii clerici ejusdem nostrae provinciae in sacris
+ordinibus constituti honestatem clericalem in tantum abjecerint ac in coma
+tonsuraque et superindumentis suis quae in anteriori sui parte totaliter
+aperta existere dignoscuntur, sic sunt dissoluti et adeo insolescant quod
+inter eos et alios laicos et saeculares viros nulla vel modica comae vel
+habituum sive vestimentorum distinctio esse videatur quo fiet in brevi ut a
+multis verisimiliter formidatur quod sicut populus ita et sacerdos erit, et
+nisi celeriori remedio tantae lasciviae ecclesiasticarum personarum quanto
+ocyus obviemus et clericorum mores hujusmodi maturius compescamus,
+_Ecclesia Anglicana quae superioribus diebus vita fama et compositis
+moribus floruisse dignoscitur nostris temporibus quod Deus avertat,
+praecipitanter ruet_;
+
+Desiring, therefore, to find some remedy for these disorders, lest the
+blood of those committed to him should be required at his hands, the
+archbishop decrees and ordains,--
+
+Ne aliquis sacerdos vel clericus in sacris ordinibus constitutus togam
+gerat nisi clausam a parte anteriori et non totaliter apertam neque utatur
+ense nec sica nec zona aut marcipio deaurato vel auri ornatum habente.
+Incedent etiam omnes et singuli presbyteri et clerici ejusdem nostrae
+provinciae coronas et tonsuras gerentes aures patentes ostendendo juxta
+canonicas sanctiones.--WILKINS, vol. iii. p. 619.
+
+[95] See WARHAM'S _Register_, MS. Lambeth.
+
+[96] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.
+
+[97] ROY'S _Satire against the Clergy_, written about 1528, is so
+plain-spoken, and goes so directly to the point of the matter, that it is
+difficult to find a presentable extract. The following lines on the bishops
+are among the most moderate in the poem:--
+
+  "What are the bishops divines--
+  Yea, they can best skill of wines
+  Better than of divinity;
+  Lawyers are they of experience,
+  And in cases against conscience
+  They are parfet by practice.
+  To forge excommunications,
+  For tythes and decimations
+  Is their continual exercise.
+  As for preaching they take no care,
+  They would rather see a course at a hare;
+  Rather than to make a sermon
+  To follow the chase of wild deer,
+  Passing the time with jolly cheer.
+  Among them all is common
+  To play at the cards and dice;
+  Some of them are nothing nice
+  Both at hazard and momchance;
+  They drink in golden bowls
+  The blood of poor simple souls
+  Perishing for lack of sustenance.
+  Their hungry cures they never teach,
+  Nor will suffer none other to preach," etc.
+
+[98] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, pp. 70, 71.
+
+[99] A peculiarly hateful form of clerical impost, the priests claiming the
+last dress worn in life by persons brought to them for burial.
+
+[100] Fitz James to Wolsey, FOXE, vol. iv. p. 196.
+
+[101] _Supplication of the Beggars_; FOXE, vol. iv. p. 661. The glimpses
+into the condition of the monasteries which had been obtained in the
+imperfect visitation of Morton, bear out the pamphleteer too completely.
+See chapter x. of this work, second edition.
+
+[102] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 658.
+
+[103] 13 Ric. II. stat. ii. c. 2; 2 Hen. IV. c. 3; 9 Hen. IV. c. 8. Lingard
+is mistaken in saying that the Crown had power to dispense with these
+statutes. A dispensing power was indeed granted by the 12th of the 7th of
+Ric. II. But by the 2nd of the 13th of the same reign, the king is
+expressly and by name placed under the same prohibitions as all other
+persons.
+
+[104] HALL, p. 784.
+
+[105] 25 Hen. VIII. c. 22.
+
+[106] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24. Speech of Sir Ralph Sadler in parliament,
+_Sadler Papers_, vol. iii. p. 323.
+
+[107] Nor was the theory distinctly admitted, or the claim of the house of
+York would have been unquestionable.
+
+[108] 25 Hen. VIII. c. 22, Draft of the Dispensation to be granted to Henry
+VIII. _Rolls House MS._ It has been asserted by a writer in the _Tablet_
+that there is no instance in the whole of English history where the
+ambiguity of the marriage law led to a dispute of title. This was not the
+opinion of those who remembered the wars of the fifteenth century. "Recens
+in quorundam vestrorum animis adhuc est illius cruenti temporis memoria,"
+said Henry VIII. in a speech in council, "quod a Ricardo tertio cum avi
+nostri materni Edwardi quarti statum in controversiam vocasset ejusque
+heredes regno atque vita privasset illatum est."-WILKINS'S _Concilia_, vol.
+iii. p. 714. Richard claimed the crown on the ground that a precontract
+rendered his brother's marriage invalid, and Henry VII. tacitly allowed the
+same doubt to continue. The language of the 22nd of the 25th of Hen. VIII.
+is so clear as to require no additional elucidation; but another distinct
+evidence of the belief of the time upon the subject is in one of the papers
+laid before Pope Clement.
+
+"Constat, in ipso regno quam plurima gravissima bella saepe exorta,
+confingentes ex justis et legitimis nuptiis quorundam Angliae regum
+procreatos illegitimos fore propter aliquod consangunitatis vel affinitatis
+confictum impedimentum et propterea inhabiles esse ad regni
+successionem."--_Rolls House MS._; WILKINS'S _Concilia_, vol. iii. p. 707.
+
+[109] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.
+
+[110] _Appendix 2 to the Third Report of the Deputy-Keeper of the Public
+Records_, p. 241.
+
+[111] _Sadler Papers_, vol. iii. p. 323.
+
+[112] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.
+
+[113] _Four Years at the Court of Henry the Eighth_, vol. ii. pp. 315-16.
+
+[114] Sir Charles Brandon, created Duke of Suffolk, and married to Mary
+Tudor, widow of Louis XII.
+
+[115] 28 Hen. VIII. c. 24.
+
+[116] The treaty was in progress from Dec. 24, 1526, to March 2, 1527 [LORD
+HERBERT, pp. 80, 81], and during this time the difficulty was raised. The
+earliest intimation which I find of an intended divorce was in June, 1527,
+at which time Wolsey was privately consulting the bishops.--_State Papers_
+vol. i. p. 189.
+
+[117] It was for some time delayed; and the papal agent was instructed to
+inform Ferdinand that a marriage which was at variance a jure et
+laudabilibus moribus could not be permitted nisi maturo consilio et
+necessitatis causa.--Minute of a brief of Julius the Second, dated March
+13, 1504, _Rolls House MS_.
+
+[118] LORD HERBERT, p. 114.
+
+[119] LORD HERBERT, p. 117, Kennett's edition. The act itself is printed in
+BURNET'S _Collectanea_, vol. iv. (Nares' edition) pp. 5, 6. It is dated
+June 27, 1505. Dr. Lingard endeavours to explain away the renunciation as a
+form. The language of Moryson, however, leaves no doubt either of its
+causes or its meaning. "Non multo post sponsalia contrahuntur," he says,
+"Henrico plus minus tredecim annos jam nato. Sed rerum non recte inceptarum
+successus infelicior homines non prorsus oscitantes plerumque docet quid
+recte gestum quid perperam, quid factum superi volunt quid infectum.
+Nimirum Henricus Septimus nulla aegritudinis prospecta causa repente in
+deteriorem valetudinem prolapsus est, nec unquam potuit affectum corpus
+pristinum statum recuperare. Uxor in aliud ex alio malum regina omnium
+laudatissimia non multo post morbo periit. Quid mirum si Rex tot irati
+numinis indiciis admonitus coeperit cogitare rem male illis succedere qui
+vellent hoc nomine cum Dei legibus litem instituere ut diutius cum homine
+amicitiam gerere possent. Quid deinceps egit? Quid aliud quam quod decuit
+Christianissimum regem? Filium ad se accersiri jubet, accersitur. Adest,
+adsunt et multi nobilissimi homines. Rex filium regno natum hortatur ut
+secum una cum doctissimis ac optimis viris cogitavit nefarium esse putare
+leges Dei leges Dei non esse cum papa volet. Non ita longa oratione usus
+filium patri obsequentissimum a sententia nullo negotio abduxit. Sponsalia
+contracta infirmantur, pontificiaeque auctoritatis beneficio palam
+renunciatum est. Adest publicus tabellio--fit instrumentum. Rerum gestarum
+testes rogati sigilla apponunt. Postremo filius patri fidem se illam uxorem
+nunquam ducturum."--_Apomaxis_ RICARDI MORYSINI. Printed by Berthelet,
+1537.
+
+[120] See LINGARD, sixth edition, vol. iv. p. 164.
+
+[121] HALL, p. 507.
+
+[122] He married Catherine, June 3, 1509. Early in the spring of 1510 she
+miscarried.--_Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII._ vol. i. p. 83.
+
+Jan. 1, 1511. A prince was born, who died Feb. 22.--HALL.
+
+Nov. 1513. Another prince was born, who died immediately.--LINGARD, vol.
+iv, p. 290.
+
+Dec. 1514. Badoer, the Venetian ambassador, wrote that the queen had been
+delivered of a still-born male child, to the great grief of the whole
+nation.
+
+May 3, 1515. The queen was supposed to be pregnant. If the supposition was
+right, she must have miscarried.--_Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII._
+vol. i. p. 81.
+
+Feb. 18, 1516. The Princess Mary was born.
+
+July 3, 1518. "The Queen declared herself quick with child." (Pace to
+Wolsey: _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 2,) and again miscarried.
+
+These misfortunes we are able to trace accidentally through casual letters,
+and it is probable that these were not all. Henry's own words upon the
+subject are very striking:--
+
+"All such issue male as I have received of the queen died incontinent after
+they were born, so that I doubt the punishment of God in that behalf. Thus
+being troubled in waves of a scrupulous conscience, and partly in despair
+of any issue male by her, it drove me at last to consider the estate of
+this realm, and the danger it stood in for lack of issue male to succeed me
+in this imperial dignity."--CAVENDISH, p. 220.
+
+[123] "If a man shall take his brother's wife it is an unclean
+thing. He hath uncovered his brother's nakedness. They shall be
+childless."--_Leviticus_ xx. 21. It ought to be remembered, that if the
+present law of England be right, the party in favour of the divorce was
+right.
+
+[124] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[125] Legates to the Pope, printed in BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 40.
+
+[126] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 117.
+
+[127] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.; HALL, 669.
+
+[128] They were shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo.
+
+[129] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 18, 19.
+
+[130] The fullest account of Wolsey's intentions on church reform will be
+found in a letter addressed to him by Fox, the old blind Bishop of
+Winchester, in 1528. The letter is printed in STRYPE'S _Memorials Eccles._
+vol. i. Appendix 10.
+
+[131] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii. It is not
+uncommon to find splendid imaginations of this kind haunting statesmen of
+the 16th century; and the recapture of Constantinople always formed a
+feature in the picture. _A Plan for the Reformation of Ireland_, drawn up
+in 1515, contains the following curious passage: "The prophecy is, that the
+King of England shall put this land of Ireland into such order that the
+wars of the land, whereof groweth the vices of the same, shall cease for
+ever; and after that God shall give such grace and fortune to the same king
+that he shall with the army of England and of Ireland subdue the realm of
+France to his obeysance for ever, and shall rescue the Greeks, and recover
+the great city of Constantinople, and shall vanquish the Turks and win the
+Holy Cross and the Holy Land, and shall die Emperor of Rome, and eternal
+blisse shall be his end."--_State Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 30, 31.
+
+[132] Knight to Henry: _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 2, 3.
+
+[133] Wolsey to Cassalis: Ibid. p. 26.
+
+[134] The dispensing power of the popes was not formally limited. According
+to the Roman lawyers, a faculty lay with them of granting extraordinary
+dispensations in cases where dispensations would not be usually
+admissible--which faculty was to be used, however, dummodo causa cogat
+urgentissima ne regnum aliquod funditus pereat; the pope's business being
+to decide on the question of urgency.--Sir Gregory Cassalis to Henry VIII.,
+Dec. 26, 1532. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[135] Knight and Cassalis to Wolsey: BURNET'S _Collect._ p. 12.
+
+[136] STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i., Appendix p. 66.
+
+[137] Sir F. Bryan and Peter Vannes to Henry; _State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+144.
+
+[138] STRYPE'S _Memorials_, Appendix, vol. i. p. 100.
+
+[139] Ibid. Appendix, vol. i. pp. 105-6; BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 13.
+
+[140] Wolsey to the Pope, BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 16: Vereor quod tamen
+nequeo tacere, ne Regia Majestas, humano divinoque jure quod habet ex omni
+Christianitate suis his actionibus adjunctum freta, postquam viderit sedis
+Apostolicae gratiam et Christi in terris Vicarii clementiam desperatam
+Caesaris intuitu, in cujus manu neutiquam est tam sanctos conatus
+reprimere, ea tunc moliatur, ea suae causae perquirat remedia, quae non
+solum huic Regno sed etiam aliis Christianis principibus occasionem
+subministrarent sedis Apostolicae auctoritatem et jurisdictionem imminuendi
+et vilipendendi.
+
+[141] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 20. Wolsey to John Cassalis: "If his
+Holyness, which God forbid, shall shew himself unwilling to listen to the
+king's demands, to me assuredly it will be but grief to live longer, for
+the innumerable evils which I foresee will then follow. One only sure
+remedy remains to prevent the worst calamities. If that be neglected, there
+is nothing before us but universal and inevitable ruin."
+
+[142] Gardiner and Fox to Wolsey; STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i. Appendix,
+p. 92.
+
+[143] His Holiness being yet in captivity, as he esteemed himself to be, so
+long as the Almayns and Spaniards continue in Italy, he thought if he
+should grant this commission that he should have the emperour his perpetual
+enemy without any hope of reconciliation. Notwithstanding he was content
+rather to put himself in evident ruin, and utter undoing, than the king or
+your Grace shall suspect any point of ingratitude in him; heartily desiring
+with sighs and tears that the king and your Grace which have been always
+fast and good to him, will not now suddenly precipitate him for ever: which
+should be done if immediately on receiving the commission your Grace should
+begin process. He intendeth to save all upright thus. If M. de Lautrec
+would set forwards, which he saith daily that he will do, but yet he doth
+not, at his coming the Pope's Holiness may have good colour to say, "He was
+required of the commission by the ambassador of England, and denying the
+same, he was, eftsoons, required by M. de Lautrec to grant the said
+commission, inasmuch as it was but a letter of justice." And by this colour
+he would cover the matter so that it might appear unto the emperour that
+the pope did it not as he that would gladly do displeasure unto the
+emperour, but as an indifferent judge, that could not nor might deny
+justice, specially being required by such personages; and immediately he
+would despatch a commission bearing date after the time that M. de Lautrec
+had been with him or was nigh unto him. The pope most instantly beseecheth
+your Grace to be a mean that the King's Highness may accept this in a good
+part, and that he will take patience for this little time, which, as it is
+supposed, will be but short.--Knight to Wolsey and the King, Jan. 1,
+1527-8: BURNET _Collections_, 12, 13.
+
+[144] Such at least was the ultimate conclusion of a curious discussion.
+When the French herald declared war, the English herald accompanied him
+into the emperor's presence, and when his companion had concluded, followed
+up his words with an intimation that unless the French demands were
+complied with, England would unite to enforce them. The Emperor replied to
+Francis with defiance. To the English herald he expressed a hope that peace
+on that side would still be maintained. For the moment the two countries
+were uncertain whether they were at war or not. The Spanish ambassador in
+London did not know, and the court could not tell him. The English
+ambassador in Spain did not leave his post, but he was placed under
+surveillance. An embargo on Spanish and English property was laid
+respectively in the ports of the two kingdoms; and the merchants and
+residents were placed under arrest. Alarmed by the outcry in London, the
+king hastily concluded a truce with the Regent of the Netherlands, the
+language of which implied a state of war; but when peace was concluded
+between France and Spain, England appeared only as a contracting party, not
+as a principal, and in 1542 it was decided that the antecedent treaties
+between England and the empire continued in force.--See LORD HERBERT;
+HOLINSHED; _State Papers_, vols. vii. viii. and ix.; with the treaties in
+RYMER, vol. vi. part 2.
+
+[145] Gardiner to the King: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 426.
+
+[146] Duke of Suffolk to Henry the Eighth: _State Papers_, vol. vii, p.
+183.
+
+[147] Duke of Suffolk to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 183.
+
+[148] HALL, p. 744.
+
+[149] When the clothiers of Essex, Kent, Wiltshire, Suffolk, and other
+shires which are clothmaking, brought cloths to London to be sold, as they
+were wont, few merchants or none bought any cloth at all. When the
+clothiers lacked sale, then they put from them their spinners, carders,
+tuckers, and such others that lived by clothworking, which caused the
+people greatly to murmur, and specially in Suffolk, for if the Duke of
+Norfolk had not wisely appeased them, no doubt but they had fallen to some
+rioting. When the king's council was advertised of the inconvenience, the
+cardinal sent for a great number of the merchants of London, and to them
+said, "Sirs, the king is informed that you use not yourselves like
+merchants, but like graziers and artificers; for where the clothiers do
+daily bring cloths to the market for your ease, to their great cost, and
+then be ready to sell them, you of your wilfulness will not buy them, as
+you have been accustomed to do. What manner of men be you?" said the
+cardinal. "I tell you that the king straitly commandeth you to buy their
+cloths as beforetime you have been accustomed to do, upon pain of his high
+displeasure."--HALL, p. 746.
+
+[150] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 157. By manners and customs he was referring
+clearly to his intended reformation of the church. See the letter of Fox,
+Bishop of Winchester (STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. ii. p. 25), in which
+Wolsey's intentions are dwelt upon at length.
+
+[151] Ibid. pp. 136, 7.
+
+[152] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 96, 7.
+
+[153] Wolsey to Cassalis: Ibid. p. 100.
+
+[154] State Papers, vol. vii. pp. 106, 7
+
+[155] Ibid. p. 113.
+
+[156] Ibid. vii. p. 113.
+
+[157] Take the veil.
+
+[158] Instruction to the Ambassadours at Rome: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+136.
+
+[159] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayanne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[160] LEGRAND, vol. iii. 231.
+
+[161] Instrucion para Gonzalo Fernandez que se envoie a Ireland al Conde de
+Desmond, 1529.--MS. Archives at Brussels.--_The Pilgrim_, note 1, p. 169.
+
+[162] Henrici regis octavi de repudianda domina Catherina oratio Idibus
+Novembris habita 1528.
+
+Veneranda et chara nobis praesulum procerum atque consiliariorum cohors
+quos communis reipublicae atque regni nostri administrandi cura conjunxit.
+Haud vos latet divina nos Providentia viginti jam ferme annis hanc nostram
+patriam tanta felicitate rexisse ut in illa ab hostilibus incursionibus
+tuta semper interea fuerit et nos in his bellis quae suscepimus victores
+semper evasimus; et quanquam in eo gloriari jure possumus majorem
+tranquillitatem opes et honores prioribus huc usque ductis socculis,
+nunquam subditis a majoribus parentibusque nostris Anglia regibus quam a
+nobis provenisse, tamen quando cum hac gloria in mentem una venit ac
+concurrit mortis cogitatio, veremur ne nobis sine prole legitima
+decedentibus majorem ex morte nostra patiamini calamitatem quam ex vita
+fructum ac emolumentum percepistis. Recens enim in quorundam vestrorum
+animis adhuc est illius cruenti temporis memoria quod a Ricardo tertio cum
+avi nostri materni Edwardi Quarti statum in controversiam vocasset ejusque
+heredes regno atque vita privasset illatum est. Tum ex historiis notae sunt
+illae dirae strages quae a clarissimis Angliae gentibus Eboracensi atque
+Lancastrensi, dum inter se de regno et imperio multis aevis contenderent,
+populo evenerunt. Ac illae ex justis nuptiis inter Henricum Septimum et
+dominam Elizabetham clarissimos nostros parentes contractis in nobis inde
+legitima nata sobole sopitae tandem desierunt. Si vero quod absit, regalis
+ex nostris nuptiis stirps quae jure deinceps regnare possit non nascatur,
+hoc regnum civilibus atque intestinis se versabit tumultibus aut in
+exterorum dominationem atque potestatem veniet. Nam quanquam forma atque
+venustate singulari, quae magno nobis solatio fuit filiam Dominam Mariam ex
+nobilissima foemina Domina Catherina procreavimus, tamen a piis atque
+eruditis theologis nuper accepimus quia eam quae Arturi fratris nostri
+conjux ante fuerat uxorem duximus nostras nuptias jure divino esse vetitas,
+partumque inde editum non posse censeri legitimum. Id quod eo vehementius
+nos angit et excruciat, quod cum superiori anno legatos ad conciliandas
+inter Aureliensem ducem et filiam nostram Mariam nuptias ad Franciscum
+Gallorum regem misissemus a quodam ejus consiliario responsum est,
+"antequam de hujusmodi nuptiis agatum inquirendum esse prius an Maria
+fuerit filia nostra legitima; constat enim 'inquit,' quod exdomina
+Catherina fratris sui vidua cujusmodi nuptiae jure divino interdictae sunt
+suscepta est." Quae oratio quanto metu ac horrore animum nostrum turbaverit
+quia res ipsa aeternae tam animi quam corporis salutis periculum in se
+continet, et quam perplexis cogitationibus conscientiam occupat, vos quibus
+et capitis aut fortunae ac multo magis animarum jactura immineret, remedium
+nisi adhibere velitis, ignorare non posse arbitror. Haec una res--quod Deo
+teste et in Regis oraculo affirmamus--nos impulit ut per legatos
+doctissimorum per totum orbem Christianum theologorum sententias
+exquireremus et Romani Pontificis legatum verum atque aequum judicium de
+tanta causa laturum ut tranquilla deinceps et interga conscientia in
+conjugio licito vivere possimus accerseremus. In quo si ex sacris litteris
+hoc quo viginti jam fere annis gavisi sumus matrimonium jure divino
+permissum esse manifeste liquidoque constabit, non modo ob conscientiae
+tranquillitatem, verum etiam ob amabiles mores virtutesque quibus regina
+praedita et ornata est, nihil optatius nihilque jucundius accidere nobis
+potest. Nam praeterquam quod regali atque nobili genere prognata est, tanta
+praeterea comitate et obsequio conjugali tum caeteris animi morumque
+ornamentis quae nobilitatem illustrant omnes foeminas his viginti annis sic
+mihi anteire visa est ut si a conjugio liber essem ac solutus, si jure
+divino liceret, hanc solam prae caeteris foeminis stabili mihi jure ac
+foedere matrimoniali conjungerem. Si vero in hoc judicio matrimonium
+nostrum jure divino prohibitum, ideoque ab initio nullum irritumque fuisse
+pronuncietur, infelix hic meus casus multis lacrimis lugendus ac
+deplorandus erit. Non modo quod a tam illustris et amabilis mulieris
+consuetudine et consortio divertendum sit, sed multo magis quod specie ad
+similitudinem veri conjugii decepti in amplexibus plusquam fornicariis tam
+multos annos trivimus nulla legitima prognata nobis sobole quae nobis
+mortuis hujus inclyti regni hereditatem capessat.
+
+Hae nostrae curae istaeque solicitudines sunt quae mentem atque
+conscientiam nostram dies noctesque torquent et excurciant, quibus
+auferendis et profligandis remedium ex hac legatione et judicio opportunum
+quaerimus. Ideoque vos quorum virtuti atque fidei multum attribuimus
+rogamus ut certum atque genuinum nostrum de hac re sensum quem ex nostro
+sermone percepistis populo declaretis: eumque excitetis ut nobiscum una
+oraret ut ad conscientiae nostrae pacem atque tranquillitatem in hoc
+judicio veritas multis jam annis tenebris involuta tandem patefiat.
+--WILKINS'S _Concilia_, vol. iii. p. 714.
+
+[163] HALL, _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[164] LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[165] Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 232, 3.
+
+[166] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 120; Ibid. p. 186.
+
+[167] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 41.
+
+[168] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 193.
+
+[169] The Emperor could as little trust Clement as the English, and to the
+last moment could not tell how he would act.
+
+"Il me semble," wrote Inigo di Mendoza to Charles on the 17th of June,
+1529,--"il me semble que Sa Saintete differe autant qu'il peut ce qu'
+auparavant il avoit promis, et je crains qu'il n'ait ordonne aux legatz ce
+qui jusques a present avoit reste en suspens qu'ils procedent par la
+premiere commission. Ce qui faisant votre Majeste peut tenir la Reine
+autant que condamne."--_MS. Archives at Brussels._
+
+The sort of influence to which the See of Rome was amenable appears in
+another letter to the Emperor, written from Rome itself on the 4th of
+October. The Pope and cardinals, it is to be remembered, were claiming to
+be considered the supreme court of appeal in Christendom.
+
+"Si je ne m'abuse tous ou la pluspart du Saint College sont plus
+affectionnez a vostre dite Majeste que a autre Prince Chrestien: de vous
+escrire, Sire, particulierement toutes leurs responses seroit chose trop
+longue. Tant y a que elles sont telles que votre Majeste a raison doubt
+grandement se contenter d'icelles.
+
+"... Seulement diray derechief a vostre Majeste, et me souvient l'avoir
+dict plusieurs fois, qu'il est en vostre Majeste gaigner et entretenir
+perpetuellement ce college en vostre devotion en distribuant seulement
+entre les principaulx d'eulx en pensions et benefices la somme de vingt
+mille ducas, l'ung mille, l'autre deulx ou trois mille. Et est cecy chose,
+Sire, que plus vous touche que a autre Prince Chrestien pour les affaires
+que vostre Majeste a journellement a despescher en ceste court."--M. de
+Praet to Charles V. August 5th, 1529. MS. Ibid.
+
+[170] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 377.
+
+[171] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 374.
+
+[172] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 355.
+
+[173] Ibid.
+
+[174] Memorandum relating to the Society of Christian Brethren. _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[175] DALABER'S _Narrative_, printed in FOXE, vol. iv. Seeley's Ed.
+
+[176] All authorities agree in the early account of Henry, and his letters
+provide abundant proof that it is not exaggerated. The following
+description of him in the despatches of the Venetian ambassador shows the
+effect which he produced on strangers in 1515:--
+
+"Assuredly, most serene prince, from what we have seen of him, and in
+conformity, moreover, with the report made to us by others, this most
+serene king is not only very expert in arms and of great valour and most
+excellent in his personal endowments, but is likewise so gifted and adorned
+with mental accomplishments of every sort, that we believe him to have few
+equals in the world. He speaks English, French, Latin, understands Italian
+well; plays almost on every instrument; sings and composes fairly; is
+prudent, and sage, and free from every vice."--_Four Years at the Court of
+Henry VIII._ vol. i. p. 76.
+
+Four years later, the same writer adds,--
+
+"The king speaks good French, Latin, and Spanish; is very religious; hears
+three masses a day when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days; he
+hears the office every day in the queen's chamber--that is to say, vespers
+and complins."--Ibid. vol. ii. p. 312. William Thomas, who must have seen
+him, says,
+
+"Of personage he was one of the goodliest men that lived in his time; being
+high of stature, in manner more than a man, and proportionable in all his
+members unto that height; of countenance he was most amiable; courteous and
+benign in gesture unto all persons and specially unto strangers; seldom or
+never offended with anything; and of so constant a nature in himself that I
+believe few can say that ever he changed his cheer for any novelty how
+contrary or sudden so ever it were. Prudent he was in council and
+forecasting; most liberal in rewarding his faithful servants, and even unto
+his enemies, as it behoveth a prince to be. He was learned in all sciences,
+and had the gift of many tongues. He was a perfect theologian, a good
+philosopher, and a strong man at arms, a jeweller, a perfect builder as
+well of fortresses as of pleasant palaces, and from one to another there
+was no necessary kind of knowledge, from a king's degree to a carter's, but
+he had an honest sight in it."--_The Pilgrim_ p. 78.
+
+[177] Exposition of the Commandments, set forth by Royal authority, 1536.
+This treatise was drawn up by the bishops, and submitted to, and revised
+by, the king.
+
+[178] SAGUDINO'S _Summary. Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII._ vol. ii.
+P. 75.
+
+[179] "The truth is, when I married my wife, I had but fifty pounds to live
+on for me and my wife so long as my father lived, and yet she brought me
+forth every year a child."--Earl of Wiltshire to Cromwell: ELLIS, third
+series, vol. iii. pp. 22, 3.
+
+[180] BURNET, vol. i. p. 69.
+
+[181] Thomas Allen to the Earl of Shrewsbury: LODGE'S _Illustrations_, vol.
+i. p. 20.
+
+[182] Earl of Northumberland to Cromwell: printed by LORD HERBERT and by
+BURNET.
+
+[183] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 7.
+
+[184] Since these words were written, I have discovered among the Archives
+of Simancas what may perhaps be some clue to the mystery, in an epitome of
+a letter written to Charles V. from London in May, 1536:---
+
+"His Majesty has letters from England of the 11th of May, with certain news
+that the paramour of the King of England, who called herself queen, has
+been thrown into the Tower of London for adultery. The partner of her guilt
+was an organist of the Privy Chamber, who is in the Tower as well. An
+officer of the King's wardrobe has been arrested also for the same offence
+with her, and one of her brothers for having been privy to her offences
+without revealing them. They say, too, that if the adultery had not been
+discovered, the King was determined to put her away, having been informed
+by competent witnesses that she was married and had consummated her
+marriage nine years before, with the Earl of Northumberland."
+
+[185] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 131.
+
+[186] Wyatt's Memorials, printed in Singer's CAVENDISH, p. 420.
+
+[187] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 132.
+
+[188] ELLIS, first series, vol. i. p. 135. "My Lord, in my most humblest
+wise that my poor heart can think, I do thank your Grace for your kind
+letter, and for your rich and goodly present; the which I shall never be
+able to deserve without your great help; of the which I have hitherto had
+so great plenty, that all the days of my life I am most bound of all
+creatures, next to the King's Grace, to love and serve your Grace. Of the
+which I beseech you never to doubt that ever I shall vary from this thought
+as long as any breath is in my body."
+
+[189] CAVENDISH _Life of Wolsey,_ p. 316. Singer's edition.
+
+[190] CAVENDISH, pp. 364, 5.
+
+[191] _Letters of the Bishop of Bayonne_, LEGRAND, vol. iii. pp. 368, 378,
+etc.
+
+[192] See HALE'S _Criminal Causes from the Records of the Consistory Court
+of London._
+
+[193] Petition of the Commons, infra, p. 191, etc.
+
+[194] Reply of the Ordinaries to the petition of the Commons, infra, p.
+202, etc.
+
+[195] Petition of the Commons. 23 Hen. VIII. c. 9.
+
+[196] HALE'S _Criminal Causes,_ p.4.
+
+[197] An Act that no person committing murder, felony, or treason should be
+admitted to his clergy under the degree of sub-deacon.
+
+[198] In May, 1528, the evil had become so intolerable, that Wolsey drew
+the pope's attention to it. Priests, he said, both secular and regular,
+were in the habit of committing atrocious crimes, for which, if not in
+orders, they would have been promptly executed; and the laity were
+scandalised to see such persons not only not degraded, but escaping with
+complete impunity. Clement something altered the law of degradation in
+consequence of this representation, but quite inadequately.--RYMER, vol.
+vi. part 2, p. 96.
+
+[199] Thomas Cowper et ejus uxor Margarita pronubae horribiles, et
+instigant mulieres ad fornicandum cum quibuscunque laicis, religiosis,
+fratribus minoribus, et nisi fornicant in domo sua ipsi diffamabunt nisi
+voluerint dare eis ad voluntatem eorum; et vir est pronuba uxori, et vult
+relinquere eam apud fratres minores pro peccatis habendis.--HALE,
+_Criminal Causes,_ p. 9.
+
+Joanna Cutting communis pronuba at praesertim inter presbyteros fratres
+monachos et canonicos et etiam inter Thomam Peise et quandam Agnetam,
+etc.--HALE, _Criminal Causes,_ p. 28.
+
+See also Ibid. pp. 15, 22, 23, 39, etc.
+
+In the first instance the parties accused "made their purgation" and were
+dismissed. The exquisite corruption of the courts, instead of inviting
+evidence and sifting accusations, allowed accused persons to support their
+own pleas of not guilty by producing four witnesses, not to disprove the
+charges, but to swear that they believed the charges untrue. This was
+called "purgation."
+
+Clergy, it seems, were sometimes allowed to purge themselves simply on
+their own word.--HALE, p. 22; and see the Preamble of the 1st of the 23rd
+of Henry VIII.
+
+[200] Complaints of iniquities arising from confession were laid before
+Parliament as early as 1394.
+
+"Auricularis confessio quae dicitur tam necessaria ad salvationem hominis,
+cum ficta potestate absolutionis exaltat superbiam sacerdotum, et dat illis
+opportunitatem secretarum sermocinationum quas nos nolumus dicere, quia
+domini et dominae attestantur quod pro timore confessorum suorum non audent
+dicere veritatem; et in tempore confessionis est opportunum tempus
+procationis id est of wowing et aliarum secretarum conventionum ad
+peccata mortalia. Ipsi dicunt quod sunt commissarii Dei ad judicandum de
+omni peccato perdonandum et mundandum quemcunque eis placuerint. Dicunt
+quod habent claves coeli et inferni et possunt excommunicare et benedicere
+ligare et solvere in voluntatem eorum; in tantum quod pro bussello vel 12
+denariis volunt vendere benedictionem coeli per chartam et clausulam de
+warrantia sigillita sigillo communi. Ista conclusio sic est in usu quod non
+eget probatione aliqua."--Extract from a Petition presented to Parliament:
+WILKINS, vol. iii. p. 221.
+
+This remarkable paper ends with the following lines:--
+
+  "Plangunt Anglorum gentes crimen Sodomorum
+  Paulus fert horum sunt idola causa malorum
+  Surgunt ingrati Giezitae Simone nati
+  Nomine praelati hoc defensare parati
+  Qui reges estis populis quicunque praestis
+  Qualiter his gestis gladios prohibere potestis."
+
+See also HALE, p. 42, where an abominable instance is mentioned, and a
+still worse in the _Suppression of the Monasteries,_ pp. 45-50.
+
+[201] HALE, p. 12.
+
+[202] Ibid. pp. 75, 83; _Suppression of the Monasteries,_ p. 47.
+
+[203] Ibid. p. 80.
+
+[204] Ibid. p. 83.
+
+[205] I have been taunted with my inability to produce more evidence. For
+the present I will mention two additional instances only, and perhaps I
+shall not be invited to swell the list further.
+
+1. In the State Paper Office is a report to Cromwell by Adam Bekenshaw, one
+of his diocesan visitors, in which I find this passage:--
+
+"There be knights and divers gentlemen in the diocese of Chester who do
+keep concubines and do yearly compound with the officials for a small sum
+without monition to leave their naughty living."
+
+2. In another report I find also the following:--
+
+"The names of such persons as be permitted to live in adultery and
+fornication for money:--
+
+  "The Vicar of Ledbury.
+  The Vicar of Brasmyll.
+  The Vicar of Stow.
+  The Vicar of Cloune.
+  The Parson of Wentnor.
+  The Parson of Rusbury.
+  The Parson of Plowden.
+  The Dean of Pountsbury.
+  The Parson of Stratton.
+  Sir Matthew of Montgomery.
+  Sir ---- of Lauvange.
+  Sir John Brayle.
+  Sir Morris of Clone.
+  Sir Adam of Clone.
+  Sir Pierce of Norbury.
+  Sir Gryffon ap Egmond.
+  Sir John Orkeley.
+  Sir John of Mynton.
+  Sir John Reynolds.
+  Sir Morris of Knighton, priest.
+  Hugh Davis.
+  Cadwallader ap Gern.
+  Edward ap Meyrick.
+  With many others of the diocese of Hereford."
+
+The originals of both these documents are in the State Paper Office. There
+are copies in the Bodleian Library.--_MS. Tanner,_ 105.
+
+[206] Skelton gives us a specimen of the popular criticisms:--
+
+  "Thus I, Colin Clout,
+  As I go about,
+  And wondering as I walk,
+  I hear the people talk:
+  Men say for silver and gold
+  Mitres are bought and sold:
+  A straw for Goddys curse,
+  What are they the worse?
+
+  "What care the clergy though Gill sweat,
+  Or Jack of the Noke?
+  The poor people they yoke
+  With sumners and citacions,
+  And excommunications.
+  About churches and markets
+  The bishop on his carpets
+  At home soft doth sit.
+  This is a fearful fit,
+  To hear the people jangle.
+  How wearily they wrangle!
+  But Doctor Bullatus
+
+  "Parum litteratus,
+  Dominus Doctoratus
+  At the broad gate-house.
+  Doctor Daupatus
+  And Bachelor Bacheleratus,
+  Drunken as a mouse
+  At the ale-house,
+  Taketh his pillion and his cap
+  At the good ale-tap,
+  For lack of good wine.
+  As wise as Robin Swine,
+  Under a notary's sign,
+  Was made a divine;
+  As wise as Waltham's calf,
+  Must preach in Goddys half;
+  In the pulpit solemnly;
+  More meet in a pillory;
+  For by St. Hilary
+  He can nothing smatter
+  Of logic nor school matter.
+
+  "Such temporal war and bate
+  As now is made of late
+  Against holy church estate,
+  Or to mountain good quarrels;
+  The laymen call them barrels
+  Full of gluttony and of hypocrisy,
+  That counterfeits and paints
+  As they were very saints.
+
+  "By sweet St. Marke,
+  This is a wondrous warke,
+  That the people talk this.
+  Somewhat there is amiss.
+  The devil cannot stop their mouths,
+  But they will talk of such uncouths
+  All that ever they ken
+  Against spiritual men."
+
+I am unable to quote more than a few lines from ROY'S _Satire_. At the
+close of a long paragraph of details an advocate of the clergy ventures to
+say that the bad among them are a minority. His friend answers:--
+
+  "Make the company great or small,
+  Among a thousand find thou shall
+  Scant one chaste of body or mind."
+
+[207] Answer of the Bishops to the Commons' Petition: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[208] Joanna Leman notatur officio quod non venit ad ecclesiam parochialem;
+et dicit se nolle accipere panem benedictum a manibus rectoris; et vocavit
+eum "horsyn preste."--HALE, p. 99.
+
+[209] HALE, p. 63.
+
+[210] Ibid. p. 98.
+
+[211] Ibid. p. 38.
+
+[212] Ibid. p. 67.
+
+[213] Ibid. p. 100.
+
+[214] CAVENDISH, _Life of Wolsey_, p. 251.
+
+[215] HALL, p. 764.
+
+[216] Ibid. p. 764.
+
+[217] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 361.
+
+[218] 6 Hen. VIII. cap. 16.
+
+[219] The session lasted six weeks only, and several of the subjects of the
+petition were disposed of in the course of it, as we shall see.
+
+[220] The MS. from which I have transcribed this copy is itself imperfect,
+as will be seen in the "reply of the Bishops," which supplies several
+omitted articles. See p. 137, et seq. It is in the Rolls House.
+
+[221] The penny, as I have shown, equalled, in terms of a poor man's
+necessities, a shilling. See chap. i.
+
+[222] See instance's in HALE: p, 62, _Omnium Sanctorum in muro_.--M.
+Gulielmus Edward curatus notatur officio quod recusat ministrare sacramenta
+ecelesiastica aegrotantibus nisi prius habitis pecuniis pro suo labore: p.
+64, _St. Mary Magdalen_.--Curatus notatur officio prbpter quod recusavit
+solemnizare matrrimonium quousque habet pro hujusmodi solemnizatione, _3s.
+8d._; and see pp. 52, 75.
+
+[223] I give many instances of this practice in my sixth chapter. It was a
+direct breach of the statute of Henry IV., which insists on all
+examinations for heresy being conducted in open court. "The diocesan and
+his commissaries," says that act, "shall openly and judicially proceed
+against persons arrested."--2 Hen. IV. c. 15.
+
+[224] Again breaking the statute of Hen. IV., which limited the period of
+imprisonment previous to public trial to three months.--2 Hen. IV. c. 15.
+
+[225] To be disposed of at Smithfield. Abjuration was allowed once. For a
+second offence there was no forgiveness.
+
+[226] Petition of the Commons. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[227] See STRYPE, _Eccles. Memorials_, vol. i. p. 191-2,--who is very
+eloquent in his outcries upon his subject.
+
+[228] _Answer of the Bishops_, p. 204, etc.
+
+[229] Explanations are not easy; but the following passage may suggest the
+meaning of the House of Commons:--"The holy Father Prior of Maiden Bradley
+hath but six children, and but one daughter married yet of the goods of the
+monastery; trusting shortly to marry the rest."--Dr. Leyton to Cromwell:
+_Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 58.
+
+[230] Reply of the Bishops, infra.
+
+[231] CAVENDISH, _Life of Wolsey_, p. 390. MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 109.
+
+[232] Populus diu oblatrans. Fox to Wolsey. STRYPE, _Eccl. Mem._ vol. i.
+Appendix, p. 27.
+
+[233] RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 119.
+
+[234] The answer of the Ordinaries to the supplication of the worshipful
+the Commons of the Lower House of Parliament offered to our Sovereign Lord
+the King's most noble Grace.--_Rolls House MS._
+
+[235] The terms of the several articles of complaint are repeated verbally
+from the petition. I condense them to spare recapitulation.
+
+[236] 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15; 2 Hen. V. cap. 7.
+
+[237] An Act that no person shall be cited out of the diocese in which he
+dwells, except in certain cases. It received the Royal assent two years
+later. See 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[238] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 5. An Act concerning fines and sums of money to be
+taken by the ministers of bishops and other ordinaries of holy church for
+the probate of testaments.
+
+[239] HALE, _Precedents_, p. 86.
+
+[240] Ibid.
+
+[241] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 6. An Act concerning the taking of mortuaries, or
+demanding, receiving, or claiming the same.
+
+In Scotland the usual mortuary was, a cow and the uppermost cloth or
+counterpane on the bed in which the death took place. A bishop reprimanding
+a suspected clergyman for his leaning toward the Reformation, said to
+him:--
+
+"My joy, Dean Thomas, I am informed that ye preach the epistle and gospel
+every Sunday to your parishioners, and that ye take not the cow nor the
+upmost cloth from your parishioners; which thing is very prejudicial to the
+churchmen. And therefore, Dean Thomas, I would ye took your cow and upmost
+cloth, or else it is too much to preach every Sunday, for in so doing ye
+may make the people think we should preach likewise."--CALDERWOOD, vol. i.
+p. 126.
+
+The bishop had to burn Dean Thomas at last, being unable to work conviction
+into him in these matters.
+
+[242] 21 Hen. VIII. cap. 13. An Act that no spiritual person shall take
+farms; or buy and sell for lucre and profit; or keep tan-houses or
+breweries. And for pluralities of benefices and for residence.
+
+[243] HALL, p. 767.
+
+[244] Ibid. 766
+
+[245] Ibid. 767.
+
+[246] Ibid. 766.
+
+[247] Ibid. 768.
+
+[248] So reluctant was he, that at one time he had resolved, rather than
+compromise the unity of Christendom, to give way. When the disposition of
+the court of Rome was no longer doubtful, "his difficultatibus permotus,
+cum in hoc statu res essent, dixerunt qui ejus verba exceperunt, post
+profundam secum de universo negotio deliberationem et mentis agitationem,
+tandem in haec verba prorupisse, se primum tentasse illud divortium
+persuasum ecclesiam Romanam hoc idem probaturum--quod si ita ilia
+abhorreret ab illa sententia ut nullo modo permittendum censeret se nolle
+cum ea contendere neque amplius in illo negotio progredi."
+
+Pole, on whose authority we receive these words, says that they were heard
+with almost unanimous satisfaction at the council board. The moment of
+hesitation was, it is almost certain, at the crisis which preceded or
+attended Wolsey's fall. It endured but for three days, and was dispelled by
+the influence of Cromwell, who tempted both the king and parliament into
+their fatal revolt.--POLI _Apologia ad Carolum Quintum_.
+
+[249] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 446. The censures were threatened in the first
+brief, but the menace was withdrawn under the impression that it was not
+needed.
+
+[250] Ibid. The second brief is dated March 7, and declares that the king,
+if he proceeds, shall incur ipso facto the greater excommunication; that
+the kingdom will fall under an interdict.
+
+[251] Cranmer was born in 1489, and was thus forty years old when he first
+emerged into eminence.
+
+[252] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 226.
+
+[253] Je croy qu'il ne feist en sa vie ceremonie qui luy touchast si pres
+du coeur, ne dont je pense qu'il luy doive advenir moins du bien. Car
+aucunes fois qu'il pensoit qu'on ne le regardast, il faisoit de si grands
+soupirs que pour pesante que fust sa chappe, il la faisoit bransler a bon
+escient.--_Lettre de M. de Gramont, Eveque de Tarbes._ LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+p. 386.
+
+[254] ELLIS, _Third Series_, vol. ii. p. 98. "In the letters showed us by
+M. de Buclans from the emperor, of the which mention was made in ciphers,
+it was written in terms that the French king would offer unto your Grace
+the papalite of France vel Patriarchate, for the French men would no more
+obey the Church of Rome."--Lee to Wolsey.
+
+[255] A ce qu'il m'en a declare des fois plus de trois en secret, il seroit
+content que le dit mariage fust ja faict, ou par dispense du Legat
+d'Angleterre ou autrement; mais que ce ne fust par son autorite, in aussi
+diminuant sa puissance, quant aux dispenses, et limitation de droict
+divin.--_Dechiffrement de Lettres de M. de Tarbes._--LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+408.
+
+[256] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 408.
+
+[257] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 230.
+
+[258] The Bishop of Tarbes to the King of France. LEGRAND, vol. iii. p.
+401.
+
+[259] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 234.
+
+[260] Ibid. p. 235.
+
+[261] We demand a service of you which it is your duty to concede; and your
+first thought is lest you should offend the emperor. We do not blame _him_.
+That in such a matter he should be influenced by natural affection is
+intelligible and laudable. But for that very reason we decline to submit to
+so partial a judgment.--Henry VIII. to the Pope: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p.
+431.
+
+[262] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 394.
+
+[263] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 317.
+
+[264] For Croke's Mission, see BURNET, vol. i. p. 144 e.
+
+[265] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 241.
+
+[266] Friar Pallavicino to the Bishop of Bath. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[267] Croke and Omnibow to the King. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[268] Generalis magister nostri ordinis mandavit omnibus suae religionis
+professoribus, ut nullus audeat de auctoritate Pontificis quicquam loqui.
+Denique Orator Caesareus in talia verba prorupit, quibus facile cognovi ut
+me a Pontifice vocari studeat et tunc timendum esset saluti meae. Father
+Omnibow to Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[269] BURNET'S _Collect._ p. 50. Burnet labours to prove that on Henry's
+side there was no bribery, and that the emperor was the only offender; an
+examination of many MS. letters from Croke and other agents in Italy leads
+me to believe that, although the emperor only had recourse to intimidation,
+because he alone was able to practise it, the bribery was equally shared
+between both parties.
+
+[270] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 458. The Grand Master to the King of
+France:--De l'autre part, adventure il n'est moins a craindre, que le Roy
+d'Angleterre, irrite de trop longues dissimulations, trouvast moyen de
+parvenir a ses intentions du consentement de l'Empereur, et que par
+l'advenement d'un tiers _se fissent ami, Herode et Pilate_.
+
+[271] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 467, etc.
+
+[272] Letter from the King of France to the President of the Parliament of
+Paris. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[273] Letter from Reginald Pole to Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[274] Pole to Henry VIII. _Rolls House MS._
+
+[275] BURNET, _Collectanea_, p. 429.
+
+[276] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 377.
+
+[277] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 436; _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 378.
+
+[278] It is not good to stir a hornet's nest.
+
+[279] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 431.
+
+[280] Ibid. p. 48.
+
+[281] Preface to LATIMER'S _Sermons_. Parker Society's edition, p. 3.
+
+[282] "King Harry loved a man," was an English proverb to the close of the
+century. See SIR ROBERT NAUNTON'S _Fragmenta Regalia_, London, 1641, p. 14.
+
+[283] Sir George Throgmorton, who distinguished himself by his opposition
+to the Reformation in the House of Commons.
+
+[284] BURNET'S _Collect_, p. 429.
+
+[285] _A Glasse of Truth._
+
+[286] Ibid. p. 144.
+
+[287] 35 Ed. I.; 25 Ed. III. stat. 4; stat. 5, cap. 22; 27 Ed. III. stat.
+1; 13 Ric. II. stat. 2, cap. 2; 16 Ric. II. cap. 5; 9 Hen. IV. cap. 8.
+
+[288] CAVENDISH, p. 276.
+
+Gardiner has left some noticeable remarks on this subject.
+
+"Whether," he says, "a king may command against a common law or an act of
+parliament, there is never a judge or other man in the realm ought to know
+more by experience of that the laws have said than I.
+
+"First, my Lord Cardinal, that obtained his legacy by our late Sovereign
+Lord's requirements at Rome, yet, because it was against the laws of the
+realm, the judges concluded the offence of Premunire, which matter I bare
+away, and took it for a law of the realm, because the lawyers said so, but
+my reason digested it not. The lawyers, for confirmation of their doings,
+brought in the case of Lord Tiptoft. An earl he was, and learned in the
+civil laws, who being chancellor, because in execution of the king's
+commandment he offended the laws of the realm, suffered on Tower Hill. They
+brought in examples of many judges that had fines set on their heads in
+like cases for transgression of laws by the king's commandment, and this I
+learned in that case.
+
+"Since that time being of the council, when many proclamations were devised
+against the carriers out of corn, when it came to punish the offender, the
+judges would answer it might not be by the law, because the Act of
+Parliament gave liberty, wheat being under a price. Whereupon at last
+followed the Act of Proclamations, in the passing whereof were many large
+words spoken."
+
+After mentioning other cases, he goes on:--
+
+"I reasoned once in the parliament house, where there was free speech
+without danger, and the Lord Audely, to satisfy me, because I was in some
+secret estimation, as he knew, 'Thou art a good fellow, Bishop,' quoth he;
+'look at the Act of Supremacy, and there the king's doings be restrained to
+spiritual jurisdiction; and in another act no spiritual law shall have
+place contrary to a common law, or an act of parliament. And this were
+not,' quoth he, 'you bishops would enter in with the king, and by means of
+his supremacy order the laws as ye listed. But we will provide,' quoth he,
+'that the premunire shall never go off your heads.' This I bare away then,
+and held my peace."--Gardiner to the Protector Somerset: _MS. Harleian_,
+417.
+
+[289] 13 Ric. II. stat. 2, cap. 2. Et si le Roi envoie par lettre on en
+autre maniere a la Courte du Rome al excitacion dascune person, parount que
+la contrarie de cest estatut soit fait touchant ascune dignite de Sainte
+Eglise, si celuy qui fait tiel excitacion soit Prelate de Sainte Eglise,
+paie au Roy le value de ses temporalitees dun an. The petition of
+parliament which occasioned the statute is even more emphatic: Perveuz tout
+foitz que par nulle traite ou composition a faire entre le Seint Pere le
+Pape et notre Seigneur le Roy que riens soit fait a contraire en prejudice
+de cest Estatute a faire. Et si ascune Seigneur Espirituel ou Temporel ou
+ascune persone quiconque de qu'elle condition q'il soit, enforme, ensence
+ou excite le Roi ou ses heirs, l'anientiser, adnuller ou repeller cest
+Estatut a faire, et de ceo soit atteint par due proces du loy que le
+Seigneur Espirituel eit la peyne sus dite, etc.--_Rolls of Parliament_,
+Ric. II. 13.
+
+[290] Even further, as chancellor the particular duty had been assigned to
+him of watching over the observance of the act.
+
+Et le chancellor que pur le temps serra a quelle heure que pleint a luy ou
+a conseill le Roy soit fait d'ascunes des articles sus ditz par ascune
+persone que pleindre soy voudra granta briefs sur le cas ou commissions a
+faire au covenables persones, d'oier et terminer les ditz articles sur
+peyne de perdre son office et jamais estre mys en office le Roy et perdre
+mille livres a lever a l'oeps le Roy si de ce soit atteint par du
+proces.--_Rolls of Parliament_, Ric. II. 13.
+
+[291] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 77. See a summary of the acts of this
+Convocation in a sermon of Latimer's preached before the two Houses in
+1536. LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 45.
+
+[292] The king, considering what good might come of reading of the New
+Testament and following the same; and what evil might come of the reading
+of the same if it were evil translated, and not followed; came into the
+Star Chamber the five-and-twentieth day of May; and then communed with his
+council and the prelates concerning the cause. And after long debating, it
+was alleged that the translations of Tyndal and Joy were not truly
+translated, and also that in them were prologues and prefaces that sounded
+unto heresy, and railed against the bishops uncharitably. Wherefore all
+such books were prohibited, and commandment given by the king to the
+bishops, that they, calling to them the best learned men of the
+universities, should cause a new translation to be made, so that the people
+should not be ignorant of the law of God.--HALL, p. 771. And see WARHAM'S
+_Register_ for the years 1529-1531. MS. Lambeth.
+
+[293] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 15.
+
+[294] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 78.
+
+[295] _State Papers_, vol. vii. 457.
+
+[296] Memoranda relating to the Clergy: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[297] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 80.
+
+[298] The King's Highness, having always tender eyes with mercy and pity
+and compassion towards his spiritual subjects, minding of his high goodness
+and great benignity so always to impart the same unto them, as justice
+being duly administered, all rigour be excluded; and the great benevolent
+minds of his said subjects [having been] largely and many times approved
+towards his Highness, and specially in their Convocation and Synod now
+presently being in the Chapter House of Westminster, his Highness, of his
+said benignity and high liberality, in consideration that the said
+Convocation has given and granted unto him a subsidy of one hundred
+thousand pounds, is content to grant his general pardon to the clergy and
+the province of Canterbury, for all offences against the statute and
+premunire.--22 Hen. VIII. cap. 15.
+
+[299] BURNET, vol. 1. p. 185.
+
+[300] An instance is reported in the Chronicle of the Grey Friars ten years
+previously. The punishment was the same as that which was statutably
+enacted in the case of Rouse.
+
+[301] HALL, p. 781.
+
+[302] Most shocking when the _wrong persons_ were made the victims; and
+because clerical officials were altogether incapable of detecting the
+_right persons_, the memory of the practice has become abhorrent to all
+just men. I suppose, however, that, if the _right persons_ could have been
+detected, even the stake itself would not have been too tremendous a
+penalty for the destroying of human souls.
+
+[303] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 10.
+
+[304] See a very curious pamphlet on this subject, by SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE.
+It is called _The Confessions of Richard Bishop, Robert Seymour, and Sir
+Edward Neville, before the Privy Council, touching Prophecie, Necromancy,
+and Treasure-trove_.
+
+[305] Miscellaneous Depositions on the State Of the Country: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[306] See the Preamble of the Bill against conjurations, witchcraft,
+sorceries, and enchantments.--33 Hen. VIII. cap. 8.
+
+Also "the Bill touching Prophecies upon Arms and Badges."--33 Hen. VIII.
+cap. 14.
+
+A similar edict expelled the gipsies from Germany. At the Diet of Spires,
+June 10, 1544.
+
+Statutum est ne vagabundum hominum genus quos vulgo Saracenos vocant per
+Germaniam oberrare sinatur _usu enim compertum est eos exploratores et
+proditores esse.--State Papers_, vol. ix. p. 705.
+
+[307] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 101.
+
+[308] Bulla pro Johanne Scot, qui sine cibo et potu per centum et sex dies
+vixerat.--RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 176.
+
+[309] BUCHANAN, _History of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 156.
+
+[310] _Letter of Archbishop Cranmer._--ELLIS, second series, vol. ii. p.
+314.
+
+[311] _Statutes of the Realm._ 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[312] Extracts from a Narrative containing an Account of Elizabeth Barton:
+_Rolls House MS._
+
+[313] _Statutes of the Realm._
+
+[314] _Rolls House MS._
+
+[315] Ibid.
+
+[316] _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 19.
+
+[317] Ibid.
+
+[318] Proceedings connected with Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[319] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[320] Ibid.
+
+[321] Ibid.
+
+[322] _Cranmer's Letter._ ELLIS, third series, vol. iii. p. 315.
+
+[323] More to Cromwell: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 350.
+
+[324] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[325] Confessions of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._ Sir Thomas More
+gave her a double ducat to pray for him and his. BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p.
+352. Moryson, in his _Apomaxis_, declares that she had a regular
+understanding with the confessors at the Priory. When penitents came to
+confess, they were detained while a priest conveyed what they had
+acknowledged to the Nun; and when afterwards they were admitted to her
+presence, she amazed them with repeating their own confessions.
+
+[326] The said Elizabeth subtilly and craftily conceiving the opinion and
+mind of the said Edward Bocking, willing to please him, revealed and showed
+unto the said Edward that God was highly displeased with our said sovereign
+lord the king for this matter; and in case he desisted not from his
+proceeding in the said divorce and separation, but pursued the same and
+married again, that then within one month after such marriage, he should no
+longer be king of this realm; and in the reputation of Almighty God he
+should not be a king one day nor one hour, and that he should die a
+villain's death. Saying further, that there was a root with three branches,
+and till they were plucked up it should never be merry in England:
+interpreting the root to be the late lord cardinal, and the first branch to
+be the king our sovereign lord, the second the Duke of Norfolk, and the
+third the Duke of Suffolk.--25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[327] Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._ In the epitome of
+the book of her Revelations it is stated that there was a story in it "of
+an angel that appeared, and bade the Nun go unto the king, that infidel
+prince of England, and say that I command him to amend his life, and that
+he leave three things which he loveth and pondereth upon, _i.e._, that he
+take none of the pope's right nor patrimony from him; the second that he
+destroy all these new folks of opinion and the works of their new learning;
+the third, that if he married and took Anne to wife, the vengeance of God
+should plague him; and as she sayth she shewed this unto the king."--Paper
+on the Nun of Kent: _MS. Cotton, Cleopatra_, E 4.
+
+[328] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 137. Warham had promised to marry
+Henry to Anne Boleyn. The Nun frightened him into a refusal by a pretended
+message from an angel.--_MS._ ibid.
+
+[329] The Nun hath practised with two of the pope's ambassadors within this
+realm, and hath sent to the pope that if he did not do his duty in
+reformation of kings, God would destroy him at a certain day which he had
+appointed. By reason whereof it is supposed that the pope hath showed
+himself so double and so deceivable to the King's Grace in his great cause
+of marriage as he hath done, contrary to all truth, justice, and equity. As
+likewise the late cardinal of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury,
+being very well-minded to further and set at an end the marriage which the
+King's Grace now enjoyeth, according to their spiritual duty, were
+prevented by the false revelations of the said Nun. And that the said
+Bishop of Canterbury was so minded may be proved by divers which knew then
+his towardness.--Narrative of the Proceedings of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[330] Note of the Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[331] HALL, p. 780.
+
+[332] RYMER, vol. vi. p. 160. We are left to collateral evidence to fix the
+place of this petition, the official transcriber having contented himself
+with the substance, and omitted the date. The original, as appears from the
+pope's reply (LORD HERBERT, p. 145), bore the date of July 13; and unless a
+mistake was made in transcribing the papal brief, this was July, 1530. I
+have ventured to assume a mistake, and to place the petition in the
+following year, because the judgment of the universities, to which it
+refers, was not completed till the winter of 1530; they were not read in
+parliament till March 30, 1531; and it seems unlikely that a petition of so
+great moment would have been presented on an incomplete case, or before the
+additional support of the House of Commons had been secured. I am far from
+satisfied, however, that I am right in making the change. The petition must
+have been drawn up (though it need not have been presented) in 1530; since
+it bears the signature of Wolsey, who died in the November of that year.
+
+[333] Mademoiselle de Boleyn est venue; et l'a le Roy logee en fort beau
+logis; et qu'il a faict bien accoustrer tout aupres du sien. Et luy est la
+cour faicte ordinairement tous les jours plus grosse que de long temps elle
+ne fut faicte a la Royne. Je crois bien qu'on veult accoutumer par les
+petie ce peuple a l'endurer, afin que quand ivendra a donner les grands
+coups, il ne les trouve si estrange. Toutefois il demeure tous jours
+endurcy, et croy bien qu'il feroit plus qu'il ne faict si plus il avoit de
+puissance; mais grand ordre se donne par tout.--Bishop of Bayonne to the
+Grand Master: LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 231.
+
+[334] HALL, p. 781.
+
+[335] It seems to have been his favourite place of retirement. The gardens
+and fishponds were peculiarly elaborate and beautiful.--Sir John Russell to
+Cromwell: _MS. State Paper Office._
+
+[336] Also it is a proverb of old date--"The pride of France, the treason
+of England, and the war of Ireland, shall never have end." _State Papers_,
+vol. ii. p. 11
+
+[337] There was a secret ambassador with the Scots king from the emperour,
+who had long communicated with the king alone in his privy chamber. And
+after the ambassador's departure the king, coming out into his outer
+chamber, said to his chancellor and the Earl Bothwell, "My lords, how much
+are we bounden unto the emperour that in the matter concerning our style,
+which so long he hath set about for our honour, that shall be by him
+discussed on Easter day, and that we may lawfully write ourself Prince of
+England and Duke of York." To which the chancellor said, "I pray God the
+pope confirm the same." The Scots king answered, "Let the emperour
+alone."--Earl of Northumberland to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. iv. p.
+599.
+
+[338] HALL, p. 783.
+
+[339] "The bishop was brought in desperation of his life."--_Rolls House
+MS._, second series, 532. This paper confirms Hall's account in every
+point.
+
+[340] HALL, p. 796.
+
+[341] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 115.
+
+[342] Warham was however fined L300 for it.--HALL, 796. A letter of Richard
+Tracy, son of the dead man, is in the _MS. State Paper Office_, first
+series, vol. iv. He says the King's Majesty had committed the investigation
+of the matter to Cromwell.
+
+[343] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 46.
+
+[344] Cap. iii.
+
+[345] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 1.
+
+[346] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[347] Be it further enacted that no archbishop or bishop, official,
+commissary, or any other minister, having spiritual jurisdiction, shall
+ask, demand, or receive of any of the king's subjects any sum or sums of
+money for the seal of any citizen, but only threepence sterling.--23 Hen.
+VIII. cap. 9.
+
+[348] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 10.--By a separate clause all covenants to defraud
+the purposes of this act were declared void, and the act itself was to be
+interpreted "as beneficially as might be, to the destruction and utter
+avoiding of such uses, intents, and purposes."
+
+[349] Annates or firstfruits were first suffered to be taken within the
+realm for the only defence of Christian people against infidels; and now
+they be claimed and demanded as mere duty only for lucre, against all right
+and conscience.--23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[350] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[351] It hath happened many times by occasion of death unto archbishops or
+bishops newly promoted within two or three years after their consecration,
+that their friends by whom they have been holpen to make payment have been
+utterly undone and impoverished.--23 Henry VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[352] _M. de la Pomeroy to Cardinal Tournon._
+
+"London, March 23, 1531-2.
+
+"My Lord,--I sent two letters to your lordship on the 20th of this month.
+Since that day Parliament has been prorogued, and will not meet again till
+after Easter.
+
+"It has been determined that the Pope's Holiness shall receive no more
+annates, and the collectors' office is to be abolished. Everything is
+turning against the Holy See, but the King has shown no little skill; the
+Lords and Commons have left the final decision of the question at his
+personal pleasure, and the Pope is to understand that, if he will do
+nothing for the King, the King has the means of making him suffer. The
+clergy in convocation have consented to nothing, nor will they, till they
+know the pleasure of their master the Holy Father; but the other estates
+being agreed, the refusal of the clergy is treated as of no consequence.
+
+"Many other rights and privileges of the Church are abolished also, too
+numerous to mention."--MS. Bibliot. Imper. Paris.
+
+[353] STRYPE, _Eccles. Mem._, vol. i. part 2, p. 158.
+
+[354] Ibid.
+
+[355] Sir George Throgmorton, Sir William Essex, Sir John Giffard, Sir
+Marmaduke Constable, with many others, spoke and voted in opposition to the
+government. They had a sort of club at the Queen's Head by Temple Bar,
+where they held discussions in secret, "and when we did commence," said
+Throgmorton, "we did bid the servants of the house go out, and likewise our
+own servants, because we thought it not convenient that they should hear us
+speak of such matters."--Throgmorton to the King: _MS. State Paper Office._
+
+[356] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[357] Printed in STRYPE, _Eccles. Mem._, vol. i. p. 201. Strype, knowing
+nothing of the first answer, and perceiving in the second an allusion to
+one preceding, has supposed that this answer followed the third and last,
+and was in fact a retractation of it. All obscurity is removed when the
+three replies are arranged in their legitimate order.
+
+[358] STRYPE, _Eccles. Mem._, vol. i. p. 199, etc.
+
+[359] 23 Hen. VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[360] STOW, p. 562.
+
+[361] "In connection with the Annates Act, the question of appeals to Rome
+had been discussed in the present session. Sir George Throgmorton had
+spoken on the papal side, and in his subsequent confession he mentioned a
+remarkable interview which he had had with More.
+
+"After I had reasoned to the Bill of Appeals," he said, "Sir Thomas More,
+then being chancellor, sent for me to come and speak with him in the
+parliament chamber. And when I came to him he was in a little chamber
+within the parliament chamber, where, as I remember, stood an altar, or a
+thing like unto an altar, whereupon he did lean and, as I do think, the
+same time the Bishop of Bath was talking with him. And then he said this to
+me, I am very glad to hear the good report that goeth of you, and that ye
+be so good a Catholic man as ye be. And if ye do continue in the same way
+that ye begin, and be not afraid to say your conscience, ye shall deserve
+great reward of God, and thanks of the King's Grace at length, and much
+worship to yourself."--Throgmorton to the King: _MS. State Paper Office_.
+
+[362] In part of it he speaks in his own person. Vide supra, cap. 3.
+
+[363] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 435.
+
+[364] Note of the Revelations of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[365] It has been thought that the Tudor princes and their ministers
+carried out the spy system to an iniquitous extent,--that it was the great
+instrument of their Machiavellian policy, introduced by Cromwell, and
+afterwards developed by Cecil and Walsingham. That both Cromwell and
+Walsingham availed themselves of secret information, is unquestionable,--as
+I think it is also unquestionable that they would have betrayed the
+interests of their country if they had neglected to do so. Nothing, in
+fact, except their skill in fighting treason with its own weapons, saved
+England from a repetition of the wars of the Roses, envenomed with the
+additional fury of religious fanaticism. But the agents of Cromwell, at
+least, were all volunteers;--their services were rather checked than
+encouraged; and when I am told, by high authority, that in those times an
+accusation was equivalent to a sentence of death, I am compelled to lay so
+sweeping a charge of injustice by the side of a document which forces me to
+demur to it. "In the reign of the Tudors," says a very eminent writer, "the
+committal, arraignment, conviction, and execution of any state prisoner,
+accused or _suspected, or under suspicion of being suspected_ of high
+treason, were only the regular terms in the series of judicial
+proceedings." This is scarcely to be reconciled with the 10th of the 37th
+of Hen. VIII., which shows no desire to welcome accusations, or exaggerated
+readiness to listen to them.
+
+"Whereas," says that Act, "divers malicious and evil disposed persons of
+their perverse, cruel, and malicious intents, minding the utter undoing of
+some persons to whom they have and do bear malice, hatred, and evil will,
+have of late most devilishly practised and devised divers writings, wherein
+hath been comprised that the same persons to whom they bear malice should
+speak traitorous words against the King's Majesty, his crown and dignity,
+or commit divers heinous and detestable treasons against the King's
+Highness, where, in very deed, the persons so accused never spake nor
+committed any such offence; by reason whereof divers of the king's true,
+faithful, and loving subjects have been put in fear and dread of their
+lives and of the loss and forfeiture of their lands and chattels--for
+reformation hereof, be it enacted, that if any person or persons, of what
+estate, degree, or condition he or they shall be, shall at any time
+hereafter devise, make, or write, or cause to be made any manner of writing
+comprising that any person has spoken, committed, or done any offence or
+offences which now by the laws of this realm be made treason, or that
+hereafter shall be made treason, and do not subscribe, or cause to be
+subscribed, his true name to the said writing, and within twelve days next
+after ensuing do not personally come before the king or his council, and
+affirm the contents of the said writings to be true, and do as much as in
+him shall be for the approvement of the same, that then all and every
+person or persons offending as aforesaid, shall be deemed and adjudged a
+felon or felons; and being lawfully convicted of such offence, after the
+laws of the realm, shall suffer pains of death and loss and forfeiture of
+lands, goods, and chattels, without benefit of clergy or privilege of
+sanctuary to be admitted or allowed in that behalf."
+
+[366] Accusation brought by Robert Wodehouse, Prior of Whitby, against the
+Abbot, for slanderous words against Anne Boleyn: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[367] Deposition of Robert Legate concerning the Language of the Monks of
+Furness: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[368] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 254.
+
+[369] Father Forest hath laboured divers manner of ways to expulse Father
+Laurence out of the convent, and his chief cause is, because he knoweth
+that Father Laurence will preach the king's matter whensoever it shall
+please his Grace to command him.--Ibid. p. 250.
+
+[370] Ibid. p. 251.
+
+[371] Lyst to Cromwell. Ibid. p. 255. STRYPE, _Eccles. Memor._, vol. i.
+Appendix, No. 47.
+
+[372] STOW'S _Annals_, p. 562. This expression passed into a proverb,
+although the words were first spoken by a poor friar; they were the last
+which the good Sir Humfrey Gilbert was heard to utter before his ship went
+down.
+
+[373] Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers,_ vol. vii. p. 489-90. "I learn
+that this book was first drawn by the Bishop of Rochester, and so being
+drawn, was by the said bishop afterwards delivered in England to two
+Spaniards, being secular and laymen. They receiving his first draught,
+either by themselves or some other Spaniards, altered and perfinished the
+same into the form that it now is; Peto and one Friar Elstowe of
+Canterbury, being the only men that have and do take upon themselves to be
+conveyers of the same books into England, and conveyers of all other things
+into and out of England. If privy search be made, and shortly, peradventure
+in the house of the same bishop shall be found his first copy. Master More
+hath sent oftentimes and lately books unto Peto, in Antwerp--as his book of
+the confutation of Tyndal, and of Frith's opinion of the sacrament, with
+divers other books. I can no further learn of More's practices, but if you
+consider this well, you may perchance espy his craft. Peto laboureth
+busylier than a bee in the setting forth of this book. He never ceaseth
+running to and from the court here. The king never had in his realm
+traitors like his friars--[Vaughan wrote "clergy." The word in the original
+is dashed through, and "friars" is substituted, whether by Cromwell or by
+himself in an afterthought, I do not know]--and so I have always said, and
+yet do. Let his Grace look well about him, for they seek to devour him.
+They have blinded his Grace."
+
+[374] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 262, etc.
+
+[375] The wishes of the French Court had been expressed emphatically to
+Clement in the preceding January. Original copies of the two following
+letters are in the Bibliotheque Imperial at Paris:--
+
+_The Cardinal of Lorraine to Cardinal ---- at Rome._
+
+"Paris, Jan. 8, 1531-2.
+
+"RIGHT REVEREND FATHER AND LORD IN CHRIST.--After our most humble
+commendations--The King of England complains loudly that his cause is not
+remanded into his own country; he says that it cannot be equitably dealt
+with at Rome, where he cannot be present. He himself, the Queen, and the
+other witnesses, are not to be dragged into Italy to give their evidence;
+and the suits of the Sovereigns of England and France have always hitherto
+been determined in their respective countries.
+
+"Nevertheless, by no entreaty can we prevail on the Pope to nominate
+impartial judges who will decide the question in England.
+
+"The King's personal indignation is not the only evil which has to be
+feared. When these proceedings are known among the people, there will,
+perhaps, be a revolt, and the Apostolic See may receive an injury which
+will not afterwards be easily remedied.
+
+"I have explained these things more at length to his Holiness, as my duty
+requires. Your affection towards him, my lord, I am assured is no less than
+mine. I beseech you, therefore, use your best endeavours with his Holiness,
+that the King of England may no longer have occasion to exclaim against
+him. In so doing you will gratify the Most Christian King, and you will
+follow the course most honourable to yourself and most favourable to the
+quiet of Christendom.
+
+"From Abbeville."
+
+_Francis the First to Pope Clement the Seventh._
+
+"Paris, Jan. 10, 1531-2.
+
+"MOST HOLY FATHER,--You are not ignorant what our good brother and ally the
+King of England demands at your hands. He requires that the cognisance of
+his marriage be remanded to his own realm, and that he be no further
+pressed to pursue the process at Rome. The place is inconvenient from its
+distance, and there are other good and reasonable objections which he
+assures us that he has urged upon your Holiness's consideration.
+
+"Most Holy Father, we have written several times to you, especially of late
+from St. Cloud, and afterwards from Chantilly, in our good brother's
+behalf; and we have further entreated you, through our ambassador residing
+at your Court, to put an end to this business as nearly according to the
+wishes of our said good brother as is compatible with the honour of
+Almighty God. We have made this request of you as well for the affection
+and close alliance which exist between ourselves and our brother, as for
+the filial love and duty with which we both in common regard your Holiness.
+
+"Seeing, nevertheless, Most Holy Father, that the affair in question is
+still far from settlement, and knowing our good brother to be displeased
+and dissatisfied, we fear that some great scandal and inconvenience may
+arise at last which may cause the diminution of your Holiness's authority.
+There is no longer that ready obedience to the Holy See in England which
+was offered to your predecessors; and yet your Holiness persists in citing
+my good brother the King of England to plead his cause before you in Rome.
+Surely it is not without cause that he calls such treatment of him
+unreasonable. We have ourselves examined into the law in this matter, and
+we are assured that your Holiness's claim is unjust and contrary to the
+privilege of kings. For a sovereign to leave his realm and plead as a
+suitor in Rome, is a thing wholly impossible,[377] and therefore, Holy
+Father, we have thought good to address you once more in this matter. Bear
+with us, we entreat you. Consider our words, and recall to your memory what
+by letter and through our ministers we have urged upon you. Look promptly
+to our brother's matter, and so act that your Holiness may be seen to value
+and esteem our friendship. What you do for him, or what you do against him,
+we shall take it as done to ourselves.
+
+"Holy Father, we will pray the Son of God to pardon and long preserve your
+Holiness to rule and govern our Holy Mother the Church.--FRANCIS."
+
+[376] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 428. LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[377] Chose beaucoup plus impossible que possible.
+
+[378] LORD HERBERT, p. 160. RYMER, vol. vi. part ii. p. 171.
+
+[379] Francis seems to have desired that the intention of the interview
+should be kept secret. Henry found this impossible. "Monseigneur," wrote
+the Bishop of Paris to the Grand Master, "quant a tenir la chose secrette
+comme vous le demandez, il est mal aise; combien que ce Roy fust bien de
+cest advis, sinon qu'il le treuve impossible; car a cause de ces provisions
+et choses, qu'il fault faire en ce Royaulme, incontinent sera sceu a
+Londres, et de la par tout le monde. Pourquoy ne faictes vostre compte
+qu'on le puisse tenir secret.
+
+"Monseigneur, je scay veritablement et de bon lieu que le plus grant
+plaisir que le Roy pourroit faire au Roy son frere et a Madame Anne, c'est
+que le dit seigneur m'escripre que je requiere le Roy son dit frere qu'il
+veuille mener la dicte Dame Anne avec luy a Callais pour la veoir et pour
+la festoyer, afin qu'ils ne demeurrent ensembles sans compagnie de dames,
+pour ce que les bonnes cheres en sont tous jours meilleures: mais il
+fauldroit que en pareil le Roy menast la Royne de Navarre a Boulogne, pour
+festoyer le Roy d'Angleterre.
+
+"Quant a la Royne pour rien ce Roy ne vouldroit qu'elle vint: Il haeit cest
+habillement a l'Espagnolle, tant qu'il luy semble veoir un diable. Il
+desireroit qu'il pleust au Roy mener a Boulogne, messeigneurs ses enfans
+pour les veoir.
+
+"Surtout je vous prie que vous ostez de la court deux sortes de gens, ceulx
+qui sont imperiaulx, s'aucuns en y a, et ceux qui ont la reputation d'estre
+mocqueurs et gaudisseurs, car c'est bien la chose en ce monde autant haeie
+de ceste nation."--Bishop of Paris to the Grand Master: LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+pp. 555, 556.
+
+[380] Sir Gregory Cassalis to Henry VIII.: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 433.
+Valde existimabam necessarium cum hoc Principe (_i.e._, Francis) agere ut
+duobus Cardinalibus daret in mandatis ut ante omnes Cardinalis de Monte
+meminissent, eique pensionem annuam saltem trium millium aureorum ex
+quadraginta millibus quae mihi dixerat velle in Cardinales distribuere,
+assignaret. Et Rex quidem haec etiam scribi ad duos Cardinales jussit
+secretario Vitandri. Quicum ego postmodo super iis pensionibus sermonem
+habui, cognovique sic in animo Regem habere ut duo Cardinales cum Romae
+fuerint, videant, qui potissimum digni hac Regia sint liberalitate; in
+eosque quum quid in Regno Galliae ecclesiasticum vacare contigerit ex
+meritis uniuscujusque pensiones conferantur. Tunc autem nihil in promptu
+haberi quod Cardinali de Monte dari possit--verum Regio nomine illi de
+futuro esse promittendum quod mihi certe summopere displicuit; et
+secretario Vitandri non reticui ostendens pollicitationes hujusmodi centies
+jam Cardinali de Monte factas fuisse; et modo si iterum fiant nihil
+effecturas nisi ut illius viri quasi ulcera pertractent; id quod Vitandris
+verum esse fatebatur pollicitusque est se, quum Rex a venatu rediisset
+velle ei suadere ut Cardinalem de Monte aliqua presenti pensione
+prosequatur; qua quidem tibi nihil conducibilius aut opportunius fieri
+possit.
+
+[381] _State Papers_, vol. iv. p. 612.
+
+[382] Ibid, p. 616.
+
+[383] The _State Papers_ contain a piteous picture of this business, the
+hereditary feuds of centuries bursting out on the first symptoms of
+ill-will between the two governments, with fire and devastation.--_State
+Papers_, vol. iv. p. 620-644.
+
+[384] If the said Earl of Angus do make unto us oath of allegiance, and
+recognises us as Supreme Lord of Scotland, and as his prince and sovereign,
+we then, the said earl doing the premises, by these presents bind ourself
+to pay yearly to the said earl the sum of one thousand pounds
+sterling.--Henry VIII. to the Earl of Angus: _State Papers_, vol. iv. p.
+613.
+
+[385] A letter of Queen Catherine to the Emperor, written on the occasion
+of this visit, will be read with interest:--
+
+"HIGH AND MIGHTY LORD,--Although your Majesty is occupied with your own
+affairs and with your preparations against the Turk, I cannot,
+nevertheless, refrain from troubling you with mine, which perhaps in
+substance and in the sight of God are of equal importance. Your Majesty
+knows well, that God hears those who do him service, and no greater service
+can be done than to procure an end in this business. It does not concern
+only ourselves--it concerns equally all who fear God. None can measure the
+woes which will fall on Christendom, if his Holiness will not act in it and
+act promptly. The signs are all around us in new printed books full of lies
+and dishonesty--in the resolution to proceed with the cause here in
+England--in the interview of these two princes, where the king, my lord, is
+covering himself with infamy through the companion which he takes with him.
+The country is full of terror and scandal; and evil may be looked for if
+nothing be done, and inasmuch as our only hope is in God's mercy, and in
+the favour of your Majesty, for the discharge of my conscience, I must let
+you know the strait in which I am placed.
+
+"I implore your Highness for the service of God, that you urge his Holiness
+to be prompt in bringing the cause to a conclusion. The longer the delay
+the harder the remedy will be.
+
+"The particulars of what is passing here are so shocking, so outrageous
+against Almighty God, they touch so nearly the honour of my Lord and
+husband, that for the love I bear him, and for the good that I desire for
+him, I would not have your Highness know of them from me. Your ambassador
+will inform you of all."--Queen Catherine to Charles V. September 18.--MS.
+Simancas.
+
+The Emperor, who was at Mantua, was disturbed at the meeting at Boulogne,
+on political grounds as well as personal. On the 24th of October he wrote
+to his sister, at Brussels.
+
+_Charles the Fifth to the Regent Mary._
+
+Mantua, October 16, 1532.
+
+I found your packets on arriving here, with the ambassadors' letters from
+France and England. The ambassadors will themselves have informed you of
+the intended conference of the Kings. The results will make themselves felt
+ere long. We must be on our guard, and I highly approve of your precautions
+for the protection of the frontiers.
+
+As to the report that the King of England means to take the opportunity of
+the meeting to marry Anne Boleyn, I can hardly believe that he will be so
+blind as to do so, or that the King of France will lend himself to the
+other's sensuality. At all events, however, I have written to my ministers
+at Rome, and I have instructed them to lay a complaint before the Pope,
+that, while the process is yet pending, in contempt of the authority of the
+Church, the King of England is scandalously bringing over the said Anne
+with him, as if she were his wife.
+
+His Holiness and the Apostolic See will be the more inclined to do us
+justice, and to provide as the case shall require.
+
+Should the King indeed venture the marriage--as I cannot think he will--I
+have desired his Holiness not only not to sanction such conduct openly, but
+not to pass it by in silence. I have demanded that severe and fitting
+sentence be passed at once on an act so wicked and so derogatory to the
+Apostolic See.--_The Pilgrim_, p. 89.
+
+[386] There can be little doubt of this. He was the child of the only
+intrigue of Henry VIII. of which any credible evidence exists. His mother
+was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Blunt, an accomplished and most
+interesting person; and the offspring of the connection, one boy only, was
+brought up with the care and the state of a prince. Henry FitzRoy, as he
+was called, was born in 1519, and when six years old was created Earl of
+Nottingham and Duke of Richmond and Somerset, the title of the king's
+father.
+
+In 1527, before the commencement of the disturbance on the divorce, Henry
+endeavoured to negotiate a marriage for him with a princess of the imperial
+blood; and in the first overtures gave an intimation which could not be
+mistaken, of his intention, if possible, to place him in the line of the
+succession. After speaking of the desire which was felt by the King of
+England for some connection in marriage of the Houses of England and Spain,
+the ambassadors charged with the negotiation were to say to Charles, that--
+
+"His Highness can be content to bestow the Duke of Richmond and Somerset
+(who is near of his blood, and of excellent qualities, and is already
+furnished to keep the state of a great prince, _and yet may be easily by
+the king's means exalted to higher things_) to some noble princess of his
+near blood."--ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 121.
+
+He was a gallant, high-spirited boy. A letter is extant from him to Wolsey,
+written when he was nine years old, begging the cardinal to intercede with
+the king, "for an harness to exercise myself in arms according to my
+erudition in the Commentaries of Caesar."--Ibid. p. 119.
+
+He was brought up with Lord Surrey, who has left a beautiful account of
+their boyhood at Windsor--their tournaments, their hunts, their young
+loves, and passionate friendship. Richmond married Surrey's sister, but
+died the year after, when only seventeen; and Surrey revisiting Windsor,
+recalls his image among the scenes which they had enjoyed together, in the
+most interesting of all his poems. He speaks of
+
+  The secret grove, which oft we made resound
+  Of pleasant plaint and of our ladies' praise;
+  Recording oft what grace each one had found,
+  What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.
+  The wild forest; the clothed holts with green;
+  With reins availed, and swift y-breathed horse,
+  With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,
+  Where we did chase the fearful hart of force.
+  The void walls eke that harboured us each night,
+  Wherewith, alas! reviveth in my breast
+  The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight
+  The pleasant dream, the quiet bed of rest;
+  The secret thought imparted with such trust.
+  The wanton talk, the divers change of play,
+  The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,
+  Wherewith we past the winter nights away.
+
+[387] Compare LORD HERBERT with A Paper of Instructions to Lord Rochfort on
+his Mission to Paris: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 427, etc.; and A
+Remonstrance of Francis I. to Henry VIII.: LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 571, etc.
+It would be curious to know whether Francis ever actually wrote to the pope
+a letter of which Henry sent him a draft. If he did, there are expressions
+contained in it which amount to a threat of separation. In case the pope
+was obstinate Francis was to say, "Lors force seroit de pourvoir audict
+affaire, par autres voyes et facons, qui peut etre, ne vous seroint gueres
+agreable."--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 436.
+
+[388] A nostre derniere entrevue sur la fraternelle et familiere
+communication que nous eusmes ensemble de noz affaires venant aux nostres,
+Luy declarasmes comme a tord et injustment nous estions affligez, dilayez,
+et fort ingratemeut manniez et troublez, en nostre dicte grande et pesante
+matiere de marriage par la particuliere affection de l'empereur et du pape.
+Lesquelz sembloient par leurs longues retardations de nostre dicte matiere
+ne sercher autre chose, sinon par longue attente et laps de temps, nous
+frustrer malicieusement du propoz, qui plus nous induict a poursuivir et
+mettre avant la dicte matiere; c'est davoir masculine succession et
+posterite en laquelle nous etablirons (Dieu voulant) le quiet repoz et
+tranquillite de notre royaulme et dominion. Son fraternel, plain, et entier
+advis (et a bref dire le meilleur qui pourroit estre) fut tel; il nous
+conseilla de ne dilayer ne protractor le temps plus longuement, mais en
+toute celerite proceder effectuellement a laccomplisment et consummation de
+nostre marriage.--Henry VIII. to Rochfort: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+428-9.
+
+[389] The extent of Francis's engagements, as Henry represents them, was
+this:--He had promised qu'en icelle nostre dicte cause jamais ne nous
+abandonneroit quelque chose que sen ensuyst; ainsi de tout son pouvoir
+l'establiroit, supporteroit, aideroit et maintiendroit notre bon droict, et
+le droict de la posterite et succession qui sen pourroit ensuyr; et a tous
+ceulz qui y vouldroyent mettre trouble, empeschement, encombrance, ou y
+procurer deshonneur, vitupere, ou infraction, il seroit enemy et adversaire
+de tout son pouvoir, de quelconque estat qu'il soit, fust pape ou
+empereur,--avecque plusieurs autres consolatives paroles. This he wished
+Francis to commit to paper. Car autant de fois, que les verrions, he says,
+qui seroit tous les jours, nous ne pourrions, si non les liscent, imaginer
+et reduire a notre souvenance la bonne grace facunde et geste, dont il les
+nous prononcait, et estimer estre comme face a face, parlans avecque
+luy.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 437. Evidently language of so wide a
+kind might admit of many interpretations.
+
+[390] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 571, etc.
+
+[391] Note of the Revelations of Eliz. Barton: _Rolls House MS. Suppression
+of the Monasteries_, p. 17.
+
+The intention was really perhaps what the nun said. An agent of the
+government at Brussels, who was watching the conference, reported on the
+12th of November:--"The King of England did really cross with the intention
+of marrying; but, happily for the emperor, the ceremony is postponed. Of
+other secrets, my informant has learned thus much. They have resolved to
+demand as the portion of the Queen of France, Artois, Tournay, and part of
+Burgundy. They have also sent two cardinals to Rome to require the Pope to
+relinquish the tenths, which they have begun to levy for themselves. If his
+Holiness refuse, the King of England will simply appropriate them
+throughout his dominions. Captain ---- heard this from the king's proctor
+at Rome, who has been with him at Calais, and from an Italian named
+Jeronymo, whom the Lady Anne has roughly handled for managing her business
+badly. She trusted that she would have been married in September.
+
+"The proctor told her the Pope delayed sentence for fear of the Emperor.
+The two kings, when they heard this, despatched the cardinals to quicken
+his movements; and the demand for the tenths is thought to have been
+invented to frighten him.
+
+"They are afraid that the Emperor may force his Holiness into giving
+sentence before the cardinals arrive. Jeronymo has been therefore sent
+forward by post to give him notice of their approach, and to require him to
+make no decision till they have spoken with him."--_The Pilgrim_, p. 89.
+
+[392] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[393] Revelations of Eliz. Barton: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[394] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 435, 468.
+
+[395] Letter from ----, containing an account of an interview with his
+Holiness: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[396] This proposal was originally the king's (see chapter 2), but it had
+been dropped because one of the conditions of it had been Catherine's
+"entrance into religion." The pope, however, had not lost sight of the
+alternative, as one of which, in case of extremity, he might avail himself;
+and, in 1530, in a short interval of relaxation, he had definitely offered
+the king a dispensation to have two wives, at the instigation, curiously,
+of the imperialists. The following letter was written on that occasion to
+the king by Sir Gregory Cassalis:--
+
+Serenissime et potentissime domine rex, domine mi supreme humillima
+commendatione premissa, salutem et felicitatem. Superioribus diebus
+Pontifex secreto, veluti rem quam magni faceret, mihi proposuit conditionem
+hujusmodi; concedi posse vestrae majestati, ut duas uxores habeat; cui dixi
+nolle me provinciam suscipere ea de re scribendi, ob eam causam quod
+ignorarem an inde vestrae conscientiae satisfieri posset quam vestra
+majestas imprimis exonerare cupit. Cur autem sic responderem, illud in
+causa fuit, quod ex certo loco, unde quae Caesariani moliantur aucupari
+soleo exploratum certumque habebam Caesarianos illud ipsum quaerere et
+procurare. Quem vero ad finem id quaerant pro certo exprimere non ausim. Id
+certe totum vestrae prudentiae considerandum relinquo. Et quamvis dixerim
+Pontifici, nihil me de eo scripturum, nolui tamen majestati vestrae hoc
+reticere; quae sciat omni me industria laborasse in iis quae nobis mandat
+exequendis et cum Anconitano qui me familiariter uti solet, omnia sum
+conatus. De omnibus autem me ad communes literas rejicio. Optime valeat
+vestra majestas.--Romae die xviii. Septembris, 1530.
+
+Clarissimi vestrai Majestatis, Humillimus servus,
+
+GREGORIUS CASSALIS,
+
+--LORD HERBERT, p. 140.
+
+[397] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 394, etc.
+
+[398] The obtaining the opinion in writing of the late Cardinal of Ancona,
+and submitting it to the emperor. This minister, the most aged as well as
+the most influential member of the conclave, had latterly been supposed to
+be inclined to advise a conciliatory policy towards England; and his
+judgment was of so much weight that it was thought likely that the emperor
+would have been unable to resist the publication of it, if it was given
+against him. At the critical moment of the Bologna interview this cardinal
+unfortunately died: he had left his sentiments, however, in the hands of
+his nephew, the Cardinal of Ravenna, who, knowing the value of his legacy,
+was disposed to make a market of it. It was a knavish piece of business.
+The English ambassadors offered 3000 ducats; Charles bid them out of the
+field with a promise of church benefices to the extent of 6000 ducats; he
+did not know precisely the terms of the judgment, or even on which side it
+inclined, but in either case the purchase was of equal importance to him,
+either to produce it or to suppress it. The French and English ambassadors
+then combined, and bid again with church benefices in the two countries, of
+equal value with those offered by Charles, with a promise of the next
+English bishopric which fell vacant, and the original 3000 ducats as an
+initiatory fee. There was a difficulty in the transaction, for the cardinal
+would not part with the paper till he had received the ducats, and the
+ambassadors would not pay the ducats till they had possession of the paper.
+The Italian, however, proved an overmatch for his antagonists. He got his
+money, and the judgment was not produced after all.--_State Papers_, vol.
+vii. pp. 397-8, 464. BURNET, vol. iii. p. 108.
+
+[399] Bennet to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 402.
+
+[400] Sir Gregory Cassalis to the King: _Rolls House M.S._, endorsed by
+Henry, Litterae in Pontificis dicta declaratoriae quae maxime causam
+nostram probant.
+
+[401] There was a tradition (it cannot be called more), that no Englishman
+could be compelled against his will to plead at a foreign tribunal. "Ne
+Angli extra Angliam litigare cogantur."
+
+[402] Henry VIII. to the Ambassadors with the Pope: _Rolls House M.S._
+
+[403] Ibid.
+
+[404] So at least the English government was at last convinced, as appears
+in the circular to the clergy, printed in BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 447,
+etc. I try to believe, however, that the pope's conduct was rather weak
+than treacherous.
+
+[405] So at least Cranmer says; but he was not present, nor was he at the
+time informed that it was to take place.--ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p.
+32. The belief, however, generally was, that the marriage took place in
+November; and though Cranmer's evidence is very strong, his language is too
+vague to be decisive.
+
+[406] Individual interests have to yield necessarily and justly to the
+interests of a nation, provided the conduct or the sacrifice which the
+nation requires is not sinful. That there would have been any sin on Queen
+Catherine's part if she had consented to a separation from the king, was
+never pretended; and although it is a difficult and delicate matter to
+decide how far unwilling persons may be compelled to do what they ought to
+have done without compulsion, yet the will of a single man or woman cannot
+be allowed to constitute itself an irremovable obstacle to a great national
+good.
+
+[407] It is printed by LORD HERBERT, and in LEGRAND, vol. iii.
+
+[408] LEGRAND, vol. iii. p. 558, etc.
+
+[409] Ye may show unto his Holiness that ye have heard from a friend of
+yours in Flanders lately, that there hath been set up certain writings from
+the See Apostolic, in derogation both of justice and of the affection
+lately showed by his Holiness unto us; which thing ye may say ye can hardly
+believe to be true, but that ye reckon them rather to be counterfeited. For
+if it should be true, it is a thing too far out of the way, specially
+considering that you and other our ambassadors be there, and have heard
+nothing of the matter. We send a copy of these writings unto you, which
+copy we will in no wise that ye shall show to any person which might think
+that ye had any knowledge from us nor any of our council, marvelling
+greatly if the same hath proceeded indeed from the pope; [and] willing you
+expressly not to show that ye had it of us.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p.
+421.
+
+[410] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 454.
+
+[411] Sir John Wallop to Henry: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 422.
+
+[412] Francis represented himself to Henry as having refused with a species
+of bravado. "He told me," says Sir John Wallop, "that he had announced
+previously that he would consent to no such interview, unless your Highness
+were also comprised in the same; and if it were so condescended that your
+Highness and he should be then together, yet you two should go after such a
+sort and with such power that you would not care whether the pope and
+emperor would have peace or else _coups de baston_."--Wallop to Henry, from
+Paris, Feb. 22. But this was scarcely a complete account of the
+transaction; it was an account only of so much of it as the French king was
+pleased to communicate. The emperor was urgent for a council. The pope,
+feeling the difficulty either of excluding or admitting the Protestant
+representatives, was afraid of consenting to it, and equally afraid of
+refusing. The meeting proposed to Francis was for the discussion of this
+difficulty; and Francis, in return, proposed that the great Powers, Henry
+included, should hold an interview, and arrange beforehand the conclusions
+at which the council should arrive. This naive suggestion was waived by
+Charles, apparently on grounds of religion. LORD HERBERT, Kennet's Edit. p.
+167.
+
+[413] The emperor's answer touching this interview is come, and is, in
+effect, that if the pope shall judge the said interview to be for the
+wealth and quietness of Christendom, he will not be seen to dissuade his
+Holiness from the same; but he desired him to remember what he showed to
+his Holiness when he was with the same, at what time his Holiness offered
+himself for the commonwealth to go to any place to speak with the French
+king.--Bennet to Henry VIII.; _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 464.
+
+[414] The estrapade was an infernal machine introduced by Francis into
+Paris for the better correction of heresy. The offender was slung by a
+chain over a fire, and by means of a crane was dipped up and down into the
+flame, the torture being thus prolonged for an indefinite time. Francis was
+occasionally present in person at these exhibitions, the executioner
+waiting his arrival before commencing the spectacle.
+
+[415] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 13.
+
+[416] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 12
+
+[417] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 441.
+
+[418] D'Inteville to Francis the First: MS. Bibliotheque Imperial,
+Paris--_Pilgrim_, p. 92.
+
+[419] 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[420] He had been selected as Warham's successor; and had been consecrated
+on the 30th of March, 1533. On the occasion of the ceremony when the usual
+oath to the Pope was presented to him, he took it with a declaration that
+his first duty and first obedience was to the crown and laws of his own
+country. It is idle trifling, to build up, as too many writers have
+attempted to do, a charge of insincerity upon an action which was forced
+upon him by the existing relation between England and Rome. The Act of
+Appeals was the law of the land. The separation from communion with the
+papacy was a contingency which there was still a hope might be avoided.
+Such a protest as Cranmer made was therefore the easiest solution of the
+difficulty. See it in STRYPE'S _Cranmer_, Appendix, p. 683.
+
+[421] BURNET, Vol. iii. pp. 122-3
+
+[422] Bennet to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 402. Sir Gregory
+Cassalis to the same: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[423] BURNET, vol. iii. p. 123.
+
+[424] Ibid. vol. i. p. 210.
+
+[425] See _State Papers_, vol. i. pp. 415, 420, etc.
+
+[426] BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 22. It is very singular that in the
+original Bull of Julius, the expression is "forsan consummavissetis;" while
+in the brief, which, if it was genuine, was written the same day, and
+which, if forged, was forged by Catherine's friends, there is no forsan.
+The fact is stated absolutely.
+
+[427] LORD HERBERT, p. 163. BURNET. vol. iii. p. 123.
+
+[428] _State Papers_, vol. i. pp. 390. 391.
+
+[429] Ye therefore duly recognising that it becometh you not, being our
+subject, to enterprise any part of your said office in so weighty and great
+a cause pertaining to us being your prince and sovereign, without our
+licence obtained so to do; and therefore in your most humble wise ye
+supplicate us to grant unto you our licence to proceed.--_State Papers_,
+vol. i. p. 392.
+
+[430] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 392.
+
+[431] Cromwell to the King on his Committal to the Tower: BURNET,
+_Collectanea_, p. 500.
+
+[432] So at least she called him a few days later.--_State Papers_, vol. i.
+p. 420. We have no details of her words when she was summoned; but only a
+general account of them.--_State Papers_, vol. i. p. 394-5.
+
+[433] The words of the sentence may be interesting:--"In the name of God,
+Amen. We, Thomas, by Divine permission Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of
+all England, and Legate of the Apostolic See, in a certain cause of inquiry
+of and concerning the validity of the marriage contracted and consummated
+between the most potent and most illustrious Prince, our Sovereign Lord,
+Henry VIII., by the grace of God King of England and France, Defender of
+the Faith, and Lord of Ireland, and the most serene Princess, Catherine,
+daughter of his Most Catholic Majesty, Ferdinand, King of Spain, of
+glorious memory, we proceeding according to law and justice in the said
+cause which has been brought judicially before us in virtue of our office,
+and which for some time has lain under examination, as it still is, being
+not yet finally determined and decided; having first seen all the articles
+and pleas which have been exhibited and set forth of her part, together
+with the answers made thereto on the part of the most illustrious and
+powerful Prince, Henry VIII.; having likewise seen and diligently inspected
+the informations and depositions of many noblemen and other witnesses of
+unsuspected veracity exhibited in the said cause; having also seen and in
+like manner carefully considered not only the censures and decrees of the
+most famous universities of almost the whole Christian world, but likewise
+the opinions and determinations both of the most eminent divines and
+civilians, as also the resolutions and conclusions of the clergy of both
+Provinces of England in Convocation assembled, and many other wholesome
+instructions and doctrines which have been given in and laid before us
+concerning the said marriage; having further seen and in like manner
+inspected all the treaties and leagues of peace and amity on this account
+entered upon and concluded between Henry VII., of immortal fame, late King
+of England, and the said Ferdinand, of glorious memory, late King of Spain;
+having besides seen and most carefully weighed all and every of the acts,
+debates, letters, processes, instruments, writs, arguments, and all other
+things which have passed and been transacted in the said cause at any time;
+in all which thus seen and inspected, our most exact care in examining, and
+our most mature deliberation in weighing them hath by us been used, and all
+other things have been observed by us, which of right in this matter were
+to be observed; furthermore, the said most illustrious Prince, Henry VIII.,
+in the forementioned cause, by his proper Proctor having appeared before
+us, but the said most serene Lady Catherine in contempt absenting herself
+(whose absence we pray that the divine presence may compensate) [cujus
+absentia Divina repleatur praesentia. Lord Herbert translates it, "whose
+absence may the Divine presence attend," missing, I think, the point of the
+Archbishop's parenthesis] by and with the advice of the most learned in the
+law, and of persons of most eminent skill in divinity whom we have
+consulted in the premises, we have found it our duty to proceed to give our
+final decree and sentence in the said cause, which, accordingly, we do in
+this manner.
+
+"Because by acts, warrants, deductions, propositions, exhibitions,
+allegations, proofs and confessions, articles drawn up, answers of
+witnesses, depositions, informations, instruments, arguments, letters,
+writs, censures, determinations of professors, opinions, councils,
+assertions, affirmations, treaties, and leagues of peace, processes, and
+other matters in the said cause, as is above mentioned, before us laid,
+had, done, exhibited, and respectively produced, as also from the same and
+sundry other reasons, causes, and considerations, manifold arguments, and
+various kinds of proof of the greatest evidence, strength, and validity, of
+which in the said cause we have fully and clearly informed ourselves, we
+find, and with undeniable evidence and plainness see that the marriage
+contracted and consummated, as is aforesaid, between the said most
+illustrious Prince, Henry VIII., and the most serene Lady Catherine, was
+and is null and invalid, and that it was contracted and consummated
+contrary to the law of God: therefore, we, Thomas, Archbishop, Primate, and
+Legate aforesaid, having first called upon the name of Christ for direction
+herein, and having God altogether before our eyes, do pronounce sentence,
+and declare for the invalidity of the said marriage, decreeing that the
+said pretended marriage always was and still is null and invalid; that it
+was contracted and consummated contrary to the will and law of God, that it
+is of no force or obligation, but that it always wanted, and still wants,
+the strength and sanction of law; and therefore we sentence that it is not
+lawful for the said most illustrious Prince, Henry VIII., and the said most
+serene Lady Catherine, to remain in the said pretended marriage; and we do
+separate and divorce them one from the other, inasmuch as they contracted
+and consummated the said pretended marriage de facto, and not de jure; and
+that they so separated and divorced are absolutely free from all marriage
+bond with regard to the foresaid pretended marriage, we pronounce, and
+declare by this our definitive sentence and final decree, which we now
+give, and by the tenour of these present writings do publish. May 23rd,
+1533."--BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 68, and LORD HERBERT.
+
+[434] HALL.
+
+[435] Ibid.
+
+[436] Ibid. p. 801. Hall was most likely an eye-witness, and may be
+thoroughly trusted in these descriptions. Whenever we are able to test him,
+which sometimes happens, by independent contemporary accounts, he proves
+faithful in the most minute particulars.
+
+[437] FOXE, vol. v. p. III.
+
+[438] Northumberland to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. iv. pp. 598-9.
+
+[439] Hawkins to Henry VIII.: Ibid. vol. vii. p. 488.
+
+[440] BURNET. vol. iii. p. 115.
+
+[441] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 398.
+
+[442] Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[443] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 43.
+
+[444] _Cotton M.S._ Otho X, p. 199. _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 397.
+
+[445] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 403.
+
+[446] Cromwell had endeavoured to save Frith, or at least had been
+interested for him. Sir Edmund Walsingham, writing to him about the
+prisoners in the Tower, says:--"Two of them wear irons, and Frith weareth
+none. Although he lacketh irons, he lacketh not wit nor pleasant tongue.
+His learning passeth my judgment. Sir, as ye said, it were great pity to
+lose him if he may be reconciled."--Walsingham to Cromwell: _M.S. State
+Paper Office_, second series, vol. xlvi.
+
+[447] ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 40.
+
+[448] "The natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and
+not here, it being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one
+time in more places than one." The argument and the words in which it is
+expressed were Frith's.--See FOXE, vol. v. p. 6.
+
+[449] The origin of the word Lollards has been always a disputed question.
+I conceive it to be from Lolium. They were the "tares" in the corn of
+Catholicism.
+
+[450] 35 Ed. I.; Statutes of Carlisle, cap. 1-4.
+
+[451] Ibid.
+
+[452] 25 Ed. III. stat. 4. A clause in the preamble of this act bears a
+significantly Erastian complexion: _come seinte Eglise estoit founde en
+estat de prelacie deins le royaulme Dengleterre par le dit Roi et ses
+progenitours, et countes, barons, et nobles de ce Royaulme et lours
+ancestres, pour eux et le poeple enfourmer de la lei Dieu._ If the Church
+of England was held to have been, founded not by the successors of the
+Apostles, but by the king and the nobles, the claim of Henry VIII. to the
+supremacy was precisely in the spirit of the constitution.
+
+[453] 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3 Ric. II. cap. 3; 12 Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric.
+II. stat. 2. The first of these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the
+blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The
+statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult
+sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions,
+et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces
+choses enfournee. I had regarded this passage as a fiction of courtesy like
+that of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The
+suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the
+statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an
+interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.
+
+[454] The abbots and bishops decently protested. Their protest was read in
+parliament, and entered on the Rolls. _Rot. Parl._ iii. [264] quoted by
+Lingard, who has given a full account of these transactions.
+
+[455] 13 Ric. II. stat. 2.
+
+[456] See 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.
+
+[457] This it will be remembered was the course which was afterwards
+followed by the parliament under Henry VIII. before abolishing the payment
+of first-fruits.
+
+[458] Lingard says, that "there were rumours that if the prelates executed
+the decree of the king's courts, they would be excommunicated."--Vol. iii.
+p. 172. The language of the act of parliament, 16 Ric. II. cap. 5, is
+explicit that the sentence was pronounced.
+
+[459] 16 Ric. II. cap. 5.
+
+[460] Ibid.
+
+[461] Ibid.
+
+[462] LEWIS, _Life of Wycliffe_.
+
+[463] If such _scientia media_ might be allowed to man, which is beneath
+certainty and above conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he
+was born in Durham.--FULLER'S _Worthies_, vol. i. p. 479.
+
+[464] _The Last Age of the Church_ was written in 1356. See LEWIS, p. 3.
+
+[465] LELAND.
+
+[466] LEWIS, p. 287.
+
+[467] 1 Ric. II. cap. 13.
+
+[468] WALSINGHAM, 206-7, apud LINGARD. It is to be observed, however, that
+Wycliffe himself limited his arguments strictly to the property of the
+clergy. See MILMAN'S _History of Latin Christianity_, vol. v. p. 508.
+
+[469] WALSINGHAM, p. 275, apud LINGARD.
+
+[470] 5 Ric. II. cap. 5.
+
+[471] WILKINS, _Concilia_, iii. 160-167.
+
+[472] _De Heretico comburendo._ 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.
+
+[473] STOW, 330, 338.
+
+[474] _Rot. Parl._ iv. 24, 108, apud LINGARD; RYMER, ix. 89, 119, 129, 170,
+193; MILMAN, Vol. v. p. 520-535.
+
+[475] 2 Hen. V. stat. 1, cap. 7.
+
+[476] There is no better test of the popular opinion of a man than the
+character assigned to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth
+century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English
+comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am
+unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French
+wars, served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker
+shade than they deserved: but it is almost certain that Shakspeare, though
+not intending Falstaff as a portrait of Oldcastle, thought of him as he was
+designing the character; and it is altogether certain that by the London
+public Falstaff was supposed to represent Oldcastle. We can hardly suppose
+that such an expression as "my old lad of the castle," should be
+accidental; and in the epilogue to the Second Part of _Henry the Fourth_,
+when promising to reintroduce Falstaff once more, Shakspeare says, "where
+for anything I know he shall die of the sweat, for Oldcastle died a martyr,
+and this is not the man." He had, therefore, certainly been supposed to _be
+the man_, and Falstaff represented the English conception of the character
+of the Lollard hero. I should add, however, that Dean Milman, who has
+examined the records which remain to throw light on the character of this
+remarkable person with elaborate care and ability, concludes emphatically
+in his favour.
+
+[477] Two curious letters of Henry VI. upon the Lollards, written in 1431,
+are printed in the _Archaeologia_, vol. xxiii. p. 339, etc. "As God
+knoweth," he says of them, "never would they be subject to his laws nor to
+man's, but would be loose and free to rob, reve, and dispoil, slay and
+destroy all men of thrift and worship, as they proposed to have done in our
+father's days; and of lads and lurdains would make lords."
+
+[478] Proceedings of an organised Society in London called the Christian
+Brethren, supported by voluntary contributions, for the dispersion of
+tracts against the doctrines of the Church: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[479] HALE'S _Precedents_. The London and Lincoln Registers, in FOXE, vol.
+iv.; and the MS. Registers of Archbishops Morton and Warham, at Lambeth.
+
+[480] KNOX'S _History of the Reformation in Scotland_.
+
+[481] Also we object to you that divers times, and specially in Robert
+Durdant's house, of Iver Court, near unto Staines, you erroneously and
+damnably read in a great book of heresy, all [one] night, certain chapters
+of the Evangelists, in English, containing in them divers erroneous and
+damnable opinions and conclusions of heresy, in the presence of divers
+suspected persons.--Articles objected against Richard Butler--London
+Register: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 178.
+
+[482] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 176.
+
+[483] MICHELET, _Life of Luther_, p. 71.
+
+[484] Ibid.
+
+[485] Ibid. p. 41.
+
+[486] WOOD'S _Athenae Oxonienses_.
+
+[487] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 618.
+
+[488] The suspicious eyes of the Bishops discovered Tyndal's visit, and the
+result which was to be expected from it.
+
+On Dec. 2nd, 1525, Edward Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York, then king's
+almoner, and on a mission into Spain, wrote from Bordeaux to warn Henry.
+The letter is instructive:
+
+"Please your Highness to understand that I am certainly informed as I
+passed in this country, that an Englishman, your subject, at the
+solicitation and instance of Luther, with whom he is, hath translated the
+New Testament into English; and within few days intendeth to return with
+the same imprinted into England. I need not to advertise your Grace what
+infection and danger may ensue hereby if it be not withstanded. This is the
+next way to fulfil your realm with Lutherians. For all Luther's perverse
+opinions be grounded upon bare words of Scripture, not well taken, ne
+understanded, which your Grace hath opened in sundry places of your royal
+book. All our forefathers, governors of the Church of England, hath with
+all diligence forbid and eschewed publication of English Bibles, as
+appeareth in constitutions provincial of the Church of England. Nowe, sure,
+as God hath endued your Grace with Christian courage to sett forth the
+standard against these Philistines and to vanquish them, so I doubt not but
+that he will assist your Grace to prosecute and perform the same--that is,
+to undertread them that they shall not now lift up their heads; which they
+endeavour by means of English Bibles. They know what hurt such books hath
+done in your realm in times past."--Edward Lee to Henry VIII.: ELLIS, third
+series, vol. ii. p. 71.
+
+[489] Answer of the Bishops: _Rolls House MS._ See cap. 3.
+
+[490] Answer of the Bishops, vol. i. cap. 3.
+
+[491] See, particularly, _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 302.
+
+[492] Proceedings of the Christian Brethren: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[493] See the letter of Bishop Fox to Wolsey: STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i.
+Appendix.
+
+[494] Particulars of Persons who had dispersed Anabaptist and Lutheran
+Tracts: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[495] Dr. Taylor to Wolsey: _Rolls House MS._ Clark to Wolsey: _State
+Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 80, 81.
+
+[496] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 189.
+
+[497] Memoirs of Latimer prefixed to _Sermons_, pp. 3, 4; and see STRYPE'S
+_Memorials_, vol. i.
+
+[498] FOXE, vol. v. p. 416.
+
+[499] Tunstall, Bishop of London, has had the credit hitherto of this
+ingenious folly, the effect of which, as Sir Thomas More warned him, could
+only be to supply Tyndal with money.--HALL, 762, 763. The following letter
+from the Bishop of Norwich to Warham shows that Tunstall was only acting in
+canonical obedience to the resolution of his metropolitan:--
+
+"In right humble manner I commend me unto your good Lordship, doing the
+same to understand that I lately received your letters, dated at your manor
+of Lambeth, the 26th day of the month of May, by the which I do perceive
+that your Grace hath lately gotten into your hands all the books of the New
+Testament, translated into English, and printed beyond the sea; as well
+those with the glosses joined unto them as those without the glosses.
+
+"Surely, in myn opinion, you have done therein a gracious and a blessed
+deed; and God, I doubt not, shall highly reward you therefore. And when, in
+your said letters, ye write that, insomuch as this matter and the danger
+thereof, if remedy had not been provided, should not only have touched you,
+but all the bishops within your province; and that it is no reason that the
+holle charge and cost thereof should rest only in you; but that they and
+every of them, for their part, should advance and contribute certain sums
+of money towards the same: I for my part will be contented to advance in
+this behalf, and to make payment thereof unto your servant, Master William
+Potkyn.
+
+"Pleaseth it you to understand, I am well contented to give and advance in
+this behalf ten marks, and shall cause the same to be delivered shortly;
+the which sum I think sufficient for my part, if every bishop within your
+province make like contribution, after the rate and substance of their
+benefices. Nevertheless, if your Grace think this sum not sufficient for my
+part in this matter, your further pleasure known, I shall be as glad to
+conform myself thereunto in this, or any other matter concerning the
+church, as any your subject within your province; as knows Almighty God,
+who long preserve you. At Hoxne in Suffolk, the 14th day of June, 1527.
+Your humble obedience and bedeman,
+
+"R. NORWICEN."
+
+[500] FOXE, vol. iv.
+
+[501] The papal bull, and the king's licence to proceed upon it, are
+printed in _Rymer_, vol. vi. part ii. pp. 8 and 17. The latter is explicit
+on Wolsey's personal liberality in establishing this foundation. Ultro et
+ex propria liberalitate et munificentia, nec sine gravissimo suo sumptu et
+impensis, collegium fundare conatur.
+
+[502] Would God my Lord his Grace had never been motioned to call any
+Cambridge man to his most towardly college. It were a gracious deed if they
+were tried and purged and restored unto their mother from whence they came,
+if they be worthy to come thither again. We were clear without blot or
+suspicion till they came, and some of them, as Master Dean hath known a
+long time, hath had a shrewd name.--Dr. London to Archbishop Warham: _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[503] Dr. London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[504] DALABER'S _Narrative._
+
+[505] Clark seems to have taken pupils in the long vacation. Dalaber at
+least read with him all one summer in the country.--Dr. London to Warham:
+_Rolls House MS._
+
+[506] The Vicar of Bristol to the Master of Lincoln College, Oxford: _Rolls
+House MS._
+
+[507] Dr. London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[508] Radley himself was one of the singers at Christchurch: London to
+Warham. _MS._
+
+[509] Dr. London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[510] On the site of the present Worcester College. It lay beyond the walls
+of the town, and was then some distance from it across the fields.
+
+[511] Christchurch, where Dalaber occasionally sung in the quire. Vide
+infra.
+
+[512] Some part of which let us read with him. "I send you forth as sheep
+in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as
+doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and
+they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before
+governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the
+gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye
+shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall
+speak; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which
+speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death; and
+the father the child; and the children shall rise up against their parents,
+and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my
+name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Whosoever
+shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which
+is in heaven. Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny
+before my Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace
+on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man
+at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and
+the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be
+they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is
+not worthy of me. He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy
+of me. He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of
+me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for
+my sake shall find it."
+
+[513] Rector of Lincoln.
+
+[514] Warden of New College.
+
+[515] The last prayer.
+
+[516] Dr. Maitland, who has an indifferent opinion of the early
+Protestants, especially on the point of veracity, brings forward this
+assertion of Dalaber as an illustration of what he considers their
+recklessness. It seems obvious, however, that a falsehood of this kind is
+something different in kind from what we commonly mean by unveracity, and
+has no affinity with it. I do not see my way to a conclusion; but I am
+satisfied that Dr. Maitland's strictures are unjust. If Garret was taken,
+he was in danger of a cruel death, and his escape could only be made
+possible by throwing the bloodhounds off the scent. A refusal to answer
+would not have been sufficient; and the general laws by which our conduct
+is ordinarily to be directed, cannot be made so universal in their
+application as to meet all contingencies. It is a law that we may not
+strike or kill other men, but occasions rise in which we may innocently do
+both. I may kill a man in defence of my own life or my friend's life, or
+even of my friend's property; and surely the circumstances which dispense
+with obedience to one law may dispense equally with obedience to another.
+_If_ I may kill a man to prevent him from robbing my friend, why may I not
+deceive a man to save my friend from being barbarously murdered? It is
+possible that the highest morality would forbid me to do either. I am
+unable to see why, if the first be permissible, the second should be a
+crime. Rahab of Jericho did the same thing which Dalaber did, and on that
+very ground was placed in the catalogue of saints.
+
+[517] A cell in the Tower, the nature of which we need not inquire into.
+
+[518] FOXE, vol. v. p. 421.
+
+[519] Dr. London to the Bishop of Lincoln: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[520] Ibid.
+
+[521] Dr. Forman, rector of All Hallows, who had himself been in trouble
+for heterodoxy.
+
+[522] Dr. London to the Bishop of Lincoln, Feb. 20, 1528: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[523] Now Cokethorpe Park, three miles from Stanton Harcourt, and about
+twelve from Oxford. The village has disappeared.
+
+[524] Vicar of All Saints, Bristol, to the Rector of Lincoln: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[525] The Vicar of All Saints to the Rector of Lincoln: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[526] Dr. London to the Bishop of Lincoln: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[527] Long extracts from it are printed in FOXE, vol. iv.
+
+[528] Another of the brethren, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, and one of
+the Marian victims.
+
+[529] Bishop of Lincoln to Wolsey, March 5, 1527-8: _Rolls House MS._: and
+see ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 77.
+
+[530] ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 77.
+
+[531] With some others he "was cast into a prison where the saltfish lay,
+through the stink whereof the most part of them were infected; and the said
+Clark, being a tender young man, died in the same prison."--FOXE, vol. iv.
+p. 615.
+
+[532] London to Warham: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[533] Petition of the Commons, vol. i. cap. 3.
+
+[534] Ibid. And, as we saw in the bishops' reply, they considered their
+practice in these respects wholly defensible.--See _Reply of the Bishops_,
+cap. 3.
+
+[535] Petition of the Commons, cap. 3.
+
+[536] Hen. V. stat. 1.
+
+[537] He had been "troublesome to heretics," he said, and he had "done it
+with a little ambition;" for "he so hated this kind of men, that he would
+fie the sorest enemy that they could have, if they would not
+repent."--MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 211.
+
+[538] See FOXE:, vol. iv. pp. 689, 698, 705.
+
+[539] 2 Hen. V. stat. 1.
+
+[540] John Stokesley.
+
+[541] Petition of Thomas Philips to the House of Commons: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[542] Ibid.
+
+[543] FOXE, vol. v. pp. 29, 30.
+
+[544] The circumstances are curious. Philips begged that he might have the
+benefit of the king's writ of corpus cum causa, and be brought to the bar
+of the House of Commons, where the Bishop of London should be subpoenaed to
+meet him. [Petition of Thomas Philips: _Rolls House MS._] The Commons did
+not venture on so strong a measure; but a digest of the petition was sent
+to the Upper House, that the bishop might have an opportunity of reply. The
+Lords refused to receive or consider the case: they replied that it was too
+"frivolous an affair" for so grave an assembly, and that they could not
+discuss it. [_Lords' Journals_, vol. i. p. 66.] A deputation of the Commons
+then waited privately upon the bishop, and being of course anxious to
+ascertain whether Philips had given a true version of what had passed, they
+begged him to give some written explanation of his conduct, which might be
+read in the Commons' House. [_Lords' Journals_, vol. i. p. 71.] The request
+was reasonable, and we cannot doubt that, if explanation had been possible,
+the bishop would not have failed to offer it; but he preferred to shield
+himself behind the judgment of the Lords. The Lords, he said, had decided
+that the matter was too frivolous for their own consideration; and without
+their permission, he might not set a precedent of responsibility to the
+Commons by answering their questions.
+
+This conduct met with the unanimous approval of the Peers. [_Lords'
+Journals_, vol. i. p. 71. Omnes proceres tam spirituales quam temporales
+una, voce dicebant, quod non consentaneum fuit aliquem procerum
+praedictorum alicui in eo loco responsurum.] The demand for explanation
+was treated as a breach of privilege, and the bishop was allowed to remain
+silent. But the time was passed for conduct of this kind to be allowed to
+triumph. If the bishop could not or would not justify himself, his victim
+might at least be released from unjust imprisonment. The case was referred
+to the king: and by the king and the House of Commons Philips was set at
+liberty.
+
+[545] Petition of John Field: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[546] Jan. 1529-30.
+
+[547] Illegal. See 2 Hen. V. stat. 1.
+
+[548] Seventh Sermon before King Edward. First Sermon before the Duchess of
+Suffolk.
+
+[549] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 649.
+
+[550] Articles against James Bainham: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 703.
+
+[551] FOXE, vol. iv. p. 702.
+
+[552] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 705.
+
+[553] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 694.
+
+[554] HALL, p. 806; and see FOXE, vol iv. p. 705.
+
+[555] Instructions given by the Bishop of Salisbury: BURNET'S
+_Collectanea_, p. 493.
+
+[556] From a Letter of Robert Gardiner: FOXE, vol. iv. p. 706.
+
+[557] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 101.
+
+[558] Latimer speaks of sons and daughters.--Ibid. p. 101.
+
+[559] Ibid.
+
+[560] Where the Cornish rebels came to an end in 1497.--BACON'S _History of
+Henry the Seventh_.
+
+[561] LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 197.
+
+[562] On which occasion, old relations perhaps shook their heads, and made
+objection to the expense. Some such feeling is indicated in the following
+glimpse behind the veil of Latimer's private history:--
+
+"I was once called to one of my kinsfolk," he says ("it was at that time
+when I had taken my degree at Cambridge); I was called, I say, to one of my
+kinsfolk which was very sick, and died immediately after my coming. Now,
+there was an old cousin of mine, which, after the man was dead, gave me a
+wax candle in my hand, and commanded me to make certain crosses over him
+that was dead; for she thought the devil should run away by and bye. Now, I
+took the candle, but I could not cross him as she would have me to do; for
+I had never seen it before. She, perceiving I could not do it, with great
+anger took the candle out of my hand, saying, 'It is pity that thy father
+spendeth so much money upon thee;' and so she took the candle, and crossed
+and blessed him; so that he was sure enough."--LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 499.
+
+[563] "I was as obstinate a papist as any was in England, insomuch that,
+when I should be made Bachelor of Divinity, my whole oration went against
+Philip Melancthon and his opinions."--LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 334.
+
+[564] _Jewel of Joy_, p. 224, et seq.: Parker Society's edition. LATIMER'S
+_Sermons_, p. 3.
+
+[565] LATIMER'S _Remains_, pp. 27-31.
+
+[566] Ibid. pp. 308-9.
+
+[567] LATIMER to Sir Edward Baynton: _Letters_, p. 329.
+
+[568] _Letters_, p. 323.
+
+[569] He thought of going abroad. "I have trust that God will help me," he
+wrote to a friend; "if I had not, I think the ocean sea should have divided
+my Lord of London and me by this day."--_Remains_, p. 334.
+
+[570] Latimer to Sir Edward Baynton.
+
+[571] See Latimer's two letters to Sir Edward Baynton: _Remains_, pp.
+322-351.
+
+[572] "As ye say, the matter is weighty, and ought substantially to be
+looked upon, even as weighty as my life is worth; but how to look
+substantially upon it otherwise know not I, than to pray my Lord God, day
+and night, that, as he hath emboldened me to preach his truth, so he will
+strengthen me to suffer for it.
+
+"I pray you pardon me that I write no more distinctly, for my head is [so]
+out of frame, that it would be too painful for me to write it again. If I
+be not prevented shortly, I intend to make merry with my parishioners, this
+Christmas, for all the sorrow, _lest perchance I never return to them
+again_; and I have heard say that a doe is as good in winter as a buck in
+summer."--Latimer to Sir Edward Baynton, p. 334.
+
+[573] LATIMER'S _Remains_, p. 334.
+
+[574] Ibid. p. 350.
+
+[575] "I pray you, in God's name, what did you, so great fathers, so many,
+so long season, so oft assembled together? What went you about? What would
+ye have brought to pass? Two things taken away--the one that ye (which I
+heard) burned a dead man,--the other, that ye (which I felt) went about to
+burn one being alive. Take away these two noble acts, and there is nothing
+else left that ye went about that I know," etc., etc.--Sermon preached
+before the Convocation: LATIMER'S _Sermons_, p. 46.
+
+[576] "My affair had some bounds assigned to it by him who sent for me up,
+but is now protracted by intricate and wily examinations, as if it would
+never find a period; while sometimes one person, sometimes another, ask me
+questions, without limit and without end."--Latimer to the Archbishop of
+Canterbury: _Remains_, p. 352.
+
+[577] _Remains_, p. 222.
+
+[578] _Sermons_, p. 294.
+
+[579] The process lasted through January, February, and March.
+
+[580] _Sermons_, p. 294.
+
+[581] He subscribed all except two--one apparently on the power of the
+pope, the other I am unable to conjecture. Compare the Articles
+themselves--printed in LATIMER'S _Remains_, p. 466--with the Sermon before
+the Convocation.--_Sermons_, p. 46; and BURNET, vol. iii. p. 116.
+
+[582] Nicholas Glossop to Cromwell: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 237.
+
+[583] Where he was known among the English of the day as Master Frisky-all.
+
+[584] See FOXE. vol. v. p. 392.
+
+[585] Eustace Chappuys to Chancellor Granvelle: _MS. Archiv. Brussels:
+Pilgrim_, p. 106.
+
+[586] See Cromwell's will in an appendix to this chapter. This document,
+lately found in the Rolls House, furnishes a clue at last to the
+connections of the Cromwell family.
+
+[587] Are we to believe Foxe's story that Cromwell was with the Duke of
+Bourbon at the storming of Rome in May, 1527? See FOXE, vol. v. p. 365. He
+was with Wolsey in January, 1527. See ELLIS, third series, vol. ii. p. 117.
+And he was again with him early in 1528. Is it likely that he was in Italy
+on such an occasion in the interval? Foxe speaks of it as one of the random
+exploits of Cromwell's youth, which is obviously untrue; and the natural
+impression which we gather is, that he was confusing the expedition of the
+Duke of Bourbon with some earlier campaign. On the other hand Foxe's
+authority was Cranmer, who was likely to know the truth; and it is not
+impossible that, in the critical state of Italian politics, the English
+government might have desired to have some confidential agent in the Duke
+of Bourbon's camp. Cromwell, with his knowledge of Italy and Italian, and
+his adventurous ability, was a likely man to have been sent on such an
+employment; and the story gains additional probability from another legend
+about him, that he once saved the life of Sir John Russell, in some secret
+affair at Bologna. See FOXE, vol. v. p. 367. Now, although Sir John Russell
+had been in Italy several times before (he was at the Battle of Pavia, and
+had been employed in various diplomatic missions), and Cromwell might thus
+have rendered him the service in question on an earlier occasion, yet he
+certainly was in the Papal States, on a most secret and dangerous mission,
+in the months preceding the capture of Rome. _State Papers_, vol. vi. p.
+560, etc. The probabilities may pass for what they are worth till further
+discovery.
+
+[588] A damp, unfurnished house belonging to Wolsey, where he was ordered
+to remain till the government had determined upon their course towards him.
+See CAVENDISH.
+
+[589] CAVENDISH, pp. 269-70.
+
+[590] Ibid. p. 276.
+
+[591] Chappuys says, that a quarrel with Sir John Wallop first introduced
+Cromwell to Henry. Cromwell, "not knowing how else to defend himself,
+contrived with presents and entreaties to obtain an audience of the king,
+whom he promised to make the richest sovereign that ever reigned in
+England."--Chappuys to Granvelle: _The Pilgrim_, p. 107.
+
+[592] Or Willyams. The words are used indifferently.
+
+[593] The clause enclosed between brackets is struck through.
+
+[594] Struck through.
+
+[595] Mary, widow of Louis of Hungary, sister of the emperor, and Regent of
+the Netherlands.
+
+[596] She was much affected when the first intimation of the marriage
+reached her. "I am informed of a secret friend of mine," wrote Sir John
+Hacket, "that when the queen here had read the letters which she received
+of late out of England, the tears came to her eyes with very sad
+countenance. But indeed this day when I spake to her she showed me not such
+countenance, but told me that she was not well pleased.
+
+"At her setting forward to ride at hunting, her Grace asked me if I had
+heard of late any tidings out of England. I told her Grace, as it is true,
+that I had none. She gave me a look as that she should marvel thereof, and
+said to me, 'Jay des nouvelles qui ne me semblent point trop bonnes,' and
+told me touching the King's Highness's marriage. To the which I answered
+her Grace and said, 'Madame, je ne me doute point syl est faict, et quand
+le veult prendre et entendre de bonne part et au sain chemyn, sans porter
+faveur parentelle que ung le trouvera tout lente et bien raysonnable par
+layde de Dieu et de bonne conscience.' Her Grace said to me again,
+'Monsieur l'ambassadeur, c'est Dieu qui le scait que je vouldroye que le
+tout allysse bien, mais ne scaye comment l'empereur et le roy mon frere
+entendront l'affaire car il touche a eulx tant que a moy.' I answered and
+said, 'Madame, il me semble estre assuree que l'empereur et le roy vostre
+frere qui sont deux Prinssys tres prudens et sayges, quant ilz auront
+considere indifferentement tout l'affaire qu ilz ne le deveroyent
+prendre que de bonne part.' And hereunto her Grace made me answer,
+saying, 'Da quant de le prendre de bonne part ce la, ne sayge M.
+l'ambassadeur.'"--Hacket to the Duke of Norfolk: _State Papers_, vol. vii.
+p. 452.
+
+[597] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 457.
+
+[598] Sir Gregory Cassalis to the Duke of Norfolk. Ad pontificem accessi et
+mei sermonis illa summa fuit, vellet id praestare ut serenissimum regem
+nostrum certiorem facere possemus, in sua causa nihil innovatum iri. Hic
+ille, sicut solet, respondit, nescire se quo pacto possit Caesarianis
+obsistere,--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 461.
+
+[599] Bennet to Henry: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 462.
+
+[600] Ibid.
+
+[601] Letter undated, but written about the middle of June: _State Papers_,
+vol. vii. p. 474
+
+[602] Of the Archbishop of York, not of Canterbury: which provokes a
+question. Conjectures are of little value in history, but inasmuch as there
+must have been some grave reason for the substitution, a suggestion of a
+possible reason may not be wholly out of place. The appeal in itself was
+strictly legal; and it was of the highest importance to avoid any
+illegality of form. Cranmer, by transgressing the inhibition which Clement
+had issued in the winter, might be construed by the papal party to have
+virtually incurred the censures threatened, and an escape might thus have
+been furnished from the difficulty in which the appeal placed them.
+
+[603] Publico ecclesiae judicio.
+
+[604] RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 188.
+
+[605] The French king did write unto Cardinal Tournon (not, however, of his
+own will, but under pressure from the Duke of Norfolk), very instantly,
+that he should desire the pope, in the said French king's name, that his
+Holyness would not innovate anything against your Highness any wise till
+the congress: adding, withal, that if his Holyness, notwithstanding his
+said desire, would proceed, he could not less do, considering the great and
+indissoluble amity betwixt your Highnesses, notorious to all the world, but
+take and recognise such proceeding for a fresh injury.--Bennet to Henry
+VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 468.
+
+[606] Ibid. p. 469.
+
+[607] Ibid. p. 469.
+
+[608] Ibid. p. 470.
+
+[609] Ibid. p. 467, note, and p. 470.
+
+[610] BURNET, vol. i. p. 221.
+
+[611] We only desire and pray you to endeavour yourselves in the execution
+of that your charge--easting utterly away and banishing from you such fear
+and timorousness, or rather despair, as by your said letters we perceive ye
+have conceived--reducing to your memories in the lieu and stead thereof, as
+a thing continually lying before your eyes and incessantly sounded in your
+ears, the justice of our cause, which cannot at length be shadowed, but
+shall shine and shew itself to the confusion of our adversaries. And we
+having, as is said, truth for us, with the help and assistance of God,
+author of the same, shall at all times be able to maintain you.--Henry
+VIII. to Bonner: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 485.
+
+[612] Bonner to Cromwell: Ibid. vol. vii. p. 481.
+
+[613] The proclamation ordering that Catherine should be called not queen,
+but Princess Dowager.
+
+[614] Catherine de Medici.
+
+[615] Henry VIII. to the Duke of Norfolk: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 493.
+
+[616] Sir John Racket, writing from Ghent on the 6th of September,
+describes as the general impression that the Pope's "trust was to assure
+his alliance on both sides." "He trusts to bring about that his Majesty the
+French king and he shall become and remain in good, fast, and sure alliance
+together; and so ensuring that they three (the Pope, Francis, and Charles
+V.) shall be able to reform and set good order in the rest of Christendom.
+But whether his Unhappiness's--I mean his Holiness's--intention, is set for
+the welfare and utility of Christendom, or for his own insincerity and
+singular purpose, I remit that to God and to them that know more of the
+world than I do."--Hacket to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 506.
+
+[617] John the Magnanimous, son of John the Steadfast, and nephew of the
+Elector Frederick, Luther's first protector.
+
+[618] _State Papers_, vol. vii. pp. 499-501.
+
+[619] Princeps Elector ducit se imparem ut Regiae Celsitudinis vel aliorum
+regum oratores ea lege in aula sua degerent; vereturque ne ob id apud
+Caesaream majestatem unicum ejus Dominum et alios male audiret, possetque
+sinistre tale institutum interpretari.--Reply of the Elector: _State
+Papers_, vol. vii. p. 503.
+
+[620] Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol vii. p. 509.
+
+[621] I consider the man, with other two--that is to say, the Landgrave von
+Hesse and the Duke of Lunenberg--to be the chief and principal defenders
+and maintainers of the Lutheran sect: who considering the same with no
+small difficulty to be defended, as well against the emperor and the
+bishops of Germany, his nigh and shrewd neighbours, as against the most
+opinion of all Christian men, feareth to raise any other new matter whereby
+they should take a larger and peradventure a better occasion to revenge the
+same. The King's Highness seeketh to have intelligence with them, as they
+conjecture to have them confederate with him; yea, and that against the
+emperor, if he would anything pretend against the king.--Here is the thing
+which I think feareth the duke.--Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol.
+vii. pp. 509-10.
+
+[622] HALL, p. 805.
+
+[623] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 512.
+
+[624] The Duke of Albany, during the minority of James V., had headed the
+party in Scotland most opposed to the English. He expelled the
+queen-mother, Margaret, sister of Henry; he seized the persons of the two
+young princes, whom he shut up in Stirling, where the younger brother died
+under suspicion of foul play (_Despatches of_ GIUSTINIANI, vol. i. p. 157);
+and subsequently, in his genius for intrigue, he gained over the queen
+dowager herself in a manner which touched her honour.--Lord Thomas Dacre to
+Queen Margaret: ELLIS, second series, vol. i. p. 279.
+
+[625] Ex his tamen, qui haec a Pontifice, audierunt, intelligo regem
+vehementissime instare, ut vestrae majestatis expectatione satisfiat
+Pontifex.--Peter Vannes to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 518.
+
+[626] _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 520.
+
+[627] Hoc dico quod video inter regem et pontificem conjunctissime et
+amicissime hic agi.--Vannes to Cromwell: Ibid.
+
+[628] Vannes to Cromwell: Ibid. pp. 522-3.
+
+[629] BURNET, _Collectanea_, p. 436.
+
+[630] Letter of the King of France: LEGRAND, vol. iii. Reply of Henry:
+FOXE, vol. v. p. 110.
+
+[631] Commission of the Bishop of Paris: LEGRAND, vol. iii; BURNET, vol.
+iii. p. 128; FOXE, vol. v. p. 106-111. The commission of the Bishop of
+Bayonne is not explicit on the extent to which the pope had bound himself
+with respect to the sentence. Yet either in some other despatch, or
+verbally through the Bishop, Francis certainly informed Henry that the Pope
+had promised that sentence should be given in his favour. We shall find
+Henry assuming this in his reply; and the Archbishop of York declared to
+Catherine that the pope "said at Marseilles, that if his Grace would send a
+proxy thither he would give sentence for his Highness against her, because
+that he knew his cause to be good and just."--_State Papers_, vol. i. p.
+421.
+
+[632] MS. Bibl. Imper. Paris.--_The Pilgrim_, pp. 97, 98. Cf. FOXE, vol. v.
+p. 110.
+
+[633] I hear of a number of Gelders which be lately reared; and the opinion
+of the people here is that they shall go into England. All men there speak
+evil of England, and threaten it in their foolish manner.--Vaughan to
+Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 511.
+
+[634] RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 189.
+
+[635] Parties were so divided in England that lookers-on who reported any
+one sentiment as general there, reported in fact by their own wishes and
+sympathies. D'Inteville, the French ambassador, a strong Catholic, declares
+the feeling to have been against the revolt. Chastillon, on the other hand,
+writing at the same time from the same place (for he had returned from
+France, and was present with d'Inteville at the last interview), says, "The
+King has made up his mind to a complete separation from Rome; and the lords
+and the majority of the people go along with him."--Chastillon to the
+Bishop of Paris: _The Pilgrim_, p. 99.
+
+[636] STRYPE, _Eccles. Memor._, vol. i. p. 224.
+
+[637] Instructions to the Earls of Oxford, Essex, and Sussex, to
+remonstrate with the Lady Mary: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[638] Ibid.
+
+[639] On the 15th of November, Queen Catherine wrote to the Emperor, and
+after congratulating him on his successes against the Turks, she continued,
+
+"And as our Lord in his mercy has worked so great a good for Christendom by
+your Highness's hands, so has he enlightened also his Holiness; and I and
+all this realm have now a sure hope that, with the grace of God, his
+Holiness will slay this second Turk, this affair between the King my Lord
+and me. Second Turk, I call it, from the misfortunes which, through his
+Holiness's long delay, have grown out of it, and are now so vast and of so
+ill example that I know not whether this or the Turk be the worst. Sorry am
+I to have been compelled to importune your Majesty so often in this matter,
+for sure I am you do not need my pressing. But I see delay to be so
+calamitous, my own life is so unquiet and so painful, and the opportunity
+to make an end now so convenient, that it seems as if God of his goodness
+had brought his Holiness and your Majesty together to bring about so great
+a good. I am forced to be importunate, and I implore your Highness for the
+passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, that in return for the signal benefits
+which God each day is heaping on you, you will accomplish for me this great
+blessing, and bring his Holiness to a decision. Let him remember what he
+promised you at Bologna. The truth here is known, and he will thus destroy
+the hopes of those who persuade the King my Lord that he will never pass
+judgment."--Queen Catherine to Charles V.: _MS. Simancas_, November 15,
+1533.
+
+[640] Letter to the King, giving an account of certain Friars Observants
+who had been about the Princess Dowager: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[641] We remember the northern prophecy, "In England shall be slain the
+decorate Rose in his mother's belly," which the monks of Furness
+interpreted as meaning that "the King's Grace should die by the hands of
+priests."--Vol. i. cap. 4.
+
+[642] Statutes of the Realm, 25 Henry VIII. cap. 12. State Papers relating
+to Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House MS._ Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury,
+to Cromwell: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 20.
+
+[643] Thus Cromwell writes to Fisher: "My Lord, [the outward evidences
+that she was speaking truth] moved you not to give credence to her, but
+only the very matter whereupon she made her false prophecies, to which
+matter ye were so affected--as ye be noted to be on all matters which
+ye once enter into--that nothing could come amiss that made for that
+purpose."--_Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 30.
+
+[644] Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[645] Ibid.
+
+[646] Ibid.
+
+[647] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[648] Papers relating to the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._ 25 Hen. VIII.
+cap. 12. The "many" nobles are not more particularly designated in the
+official papers. It was not desirable to mention names when the offence was
+to be passed over.
+
+[649] Report of the Commissioners--Papers relating to the Nun of Kent:
+_Rolls House MS._
+
+[650] Goold, says the Act of the Nun's attainder, travelled to Bugden, "to
+animate the said Lady Princess to make commotion in the realm against our
+sovereign lord; surmitting that the said Nun should hear by revelation of
+God that the said Lady Catherine should prosper and do well, and that her
+issue, the Lady Mary, should prosper and reign in the realm."--25 Henry
+VIII. cap. 13.
+
+[651] Report of the Proceedings of the Nun of Kent: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[652] MS. Bibliot. Imper., Paris. The letter is undated. It was apparently
+written in the autumn of 1533.
+
+[653] Il a des nouvelles amours. In a paper at Simancas, containing Nuevas
+de Inglaterra, written about this time, is a similar account of the dislike
+of Anne and her family, as well as of the king's altered feelings towards
+her. Dicano anchora che la Anna e mal voluta degli Si. di Inghilterra si
+per la sua superbia, si anche per l'insolentia e mali portamenti che fanno
+nel regno li fratelli e parenti di Anna; e che per questo il Re non la
+porta la affezione que soleva per che il Re festeggia una altra Donna della
+quale se mostra esser inamorato, e molti Si. di Inghilterra lo ajutano nel
+seguir el predito amor per deviar questo Re dalla pratica di Anna.
+
+[654] HALL.
+
+[655] "I, dame Elizabeth Barton," she said, "do confess that I, most
+miserable and wretched person, have been the original of all this mischief,
+and by my falsehood I have deceived all these persons (the monks who were
+her accomplices), and many more; whereby I have most grievously offended
+Almighty God, and my most noble sovereign the King's Grace. Wherefore I
+humbly, and with heart most sorrowful, desire you to pray to Almighty God
+for my miserable sins, and make supplication for me to my sovereign for his
+gracious mercy and pardon."--Confession of Elizabeth Barton: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[656] Papers relating to Elizabeth Barton: Ibid.
+
+[657] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 415.
+
+[658] A curious trait in Mary's character may be mentioned in connection
+with this transfer. She had a voracious appetite; and in Elizabeth's
+household expenses an extra charge was made necessary of L26 a year for the
+meat breakfasts and meat suppers "served into the Lady Mary's
+chamber."--Statement of the expenses of the Household of the Princess
+Elizabeth: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[659] He is called _frater consobrinus_. See FULLER'S _Worthies_, vol. iii.
+p. 128.
+
+[660] He was killed at the battle of Pavia.
+
+[661] Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, married Catherine, daughter of Edward.
+
+[662] Believe me, my lord, there are some here, and those of the greatest
+in the land, who will be indignant if the Pope confirm the sentence against
+the late Queen.--D'Inteville to Montmorency: _The Pilgrim_, p. 97.
+
+[663] She once rode to Canterbury, disguised as a servant, with only a
+young girl for a companion.--Depositions of Sir Geoffrey Pole: _Rolls House
+MS._
+
+[664] Confession of Sir William Neville: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[665] Confession of Sir George Neville: Ibid.
+
+[666] Confession of the Oxford Wizard: Ibid.
+
+[667] Queen Anne Boleyn to Gardiner: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 355. Office
+for the Consecration of Cramp Rings: Ibid.
+
+[668] So at least the Oxford Wizard said that Sir William Neville had told
+him.--Confession of the Wizard: _Rolls House MS._ But the authority is not
+good.
+
+[669] Henry alone never listened seriously to the Nun of Kent.
+
+[670] John of Transylvania, the rival of Ferdinand. His designation by the
+title of king in an English state paper was a menace that, if driven to
+extremities, Henry would support him against the empire.
+
+[671] Acts of Council: _State Papers_, vol. i. pp. 414-15.
+
+[672] Henry VIII. to Sir John Wallop: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 524.
+
+[673] Stephen Vaughan to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 517.
+Vaughan describes Peto with Shakespearian raciness. "Peto is an ipocrite
+knave, as the most part of his brethren be; a wolf; a tiger clad in a
+sheep's skin. It is a perilous knave--a raiser of sedition--an evil
+reporter of the King's Highness--a prophecyer of mischief--a fellow I would
+wish to be in the king's hands, and to be shamefully punished. Would God I
+could get him by any policy--I will work what I can. Be sure he shall do
+nothing, nor pretend to do nothing, in these parts, that I will not find
+means to cause the King's Highness to know. I have laid a bait for him. He
+is not able to wear the clokys and cucullys that be sent him out of
+England, they be so many."
+
+[674] Hacket to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 528.
+
+[675] Ibid. p. 530.
+
+[676] Hacket to Cromwell: _State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 531.
+
+[677] So at least Henry supposed, if we may judge by the resolutions of the
+Council "for the fortification of all the frontiers of the realm, as well
+upon the coasts of the sea as the frontiers foreanenst Scotland." The
+fortresses and havens were to be "fortefyed and munited;" and money to be
+sent to York to be in readiness "if any business should happen."--Ibid.
+vol. i. p. 411.
+
+[678] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 19.
+
+[679] A design which unfortunately was not put in effect. In the hurry of
+the time it was allowed to drop.
+
+[680] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 14.
+
+[681] 23 Henry VIII. cap. 20.
+
+[682] At this very time Campeggio was Bishop of Salisbury, and Ghinucci,
+who had been acting for Henry at Rome, was Bishop of Worcester. The Act by
+which they were deprived speaks of these two appointments as _nominations_
+by the king.--25 Henry VIII. cap. 27.
+
+[683] Wolsey held three bishoprics and one archbishopric, besides the abbey
+of St. Albans.
+
+[684] Thus when Wolsey was presented, in 1514, to the See of Lincoln, Leo
+X. writes to his beloved son Thomas Wolsey how that in his great care for
+the interests of the Church, "Nos hodie Ecclesiae Lincolniensi, te in
+episcopum et pastorem praeficere intendimus." He then informs the Chapter
+of Lincoln of the appointment; and the king, in granting the temporalities,
+continues the fiction without seeming to recognise it:--"Cum dominus summus
+Pontifex nuper vacante Ecclesia cathedrali personam fidelis clerici nostri
+Thomae Wolsey, in ipsius Ecclesiae episcopum praefecerit, nos," etc.--See
+the Acts in RYMER, vol. vi. part 1, pp. 55-7.
+
+[685] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 20. The pre-existing, unrealities with respect to
+the election of bishops explain the unreality of the new arrangement, and
+divest it of the character of wanton tyranny with which it appeared _prima
+facie_ to press upon the Chapters. The history of this statute is curious,
+and perhaps explains the intentions with which it was originally passed. It
+was repealed by the 2nd of the 1st of Edward VI. on the ground that the
+liberty of election was merely nominal, and that the Chapters ought to be
+relieved of responsibility when they had no power of choice. Direct
+nomination by the crown was substituted for the _conge d'elire_, and
+remained the practice till the reaction under Mary, when the indefinite
+system was resumed which had existed before the Reformation. On the
+accession of Elizabeth, the statute of 25 Henry VIII. was again enacted.
+The more complicated process of Henry was preferred to the more simple one
+of Edward, and we are naturally led to ask the reason of so singular a
+preference. I cannot but think that it was this. The Council of Regency
+under Edward VI. treated the Church as an institution of the State, while
+Henry and Elizabeth endeavoured (under difficulties) to regard it under its
+more Catholic aspect of an organic body. So long as the Reformation was in
+progress, it was necessary to prevent the intrusion upon the bench of
+bishops of Romanising tendencies, and the deans and chapters were therefore
+protected by a strong hand from their own possible mistakes. But the form
+of liberty was conceded to them, not, I hope, to place deliberately a body
+of clergymen in a degrading position, but in the belief that at no distant
+time the Church might be allowed without danger to resume some degree of
+self-government.
+
+[686] 25 Henry VIII. cap. 21.
+
+[687] I sent you no heavy words, but words of great comfort; willing your
+brother to shew you how benign and merciful the prince was; and that I
+thought it expedient for you to write unto his Highness, and to recognise
+your offence and to desire his pardon, which his Grace would not deny you
+how in your age and sickness.--Cromwell to Fisher: _Suppression of the
+Monasteries_, p. 27.
+
+[688] Sir Thomas More to Cromwell: BURNET'S _Collectanea_, p. 350.
+
+[689] Ibid.
+
+[690] Ibid.
+
+[691] More to Cromwell: STRYPE'S _Memorials_, vol. i. Appendix, p. 195.
+
+[692] More to the King: ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 47.
+
+[693] Cromwell to Fisher: _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 27, et seq.
+
+[694] _Suppression of the Monasteries_, p. 27, et seq.
+
+[695] John Fisher to the Lords in Parliament: ELLIS, third series, vol. ii.
+p. 289.
+
+[696] _Lords' Journals_, p. 72.
+
+[697] 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
+
+[698] In a tract written by a Dr. Moryson in defence of the government,
+three years later, I find evidence that a distinction was made among the
+prisoners, and that Dr. Bocking was executed with peculiar cruelty. "Solus
+in crucem actus est Bockingus," are Moryson's words, though I feel
+uncertain of the nature of the punishment which he meant to designate.
+"Crucifixion" was unknown to the English law; and an event so peculiar as
+the "crucifixion" of a monk would hardly have escaped the notice of the
+contemporary chroniclers. In a careful diary kept by a London merchant
+during these years, which is in MS. in the Library of Balliol College,
+Oxford, the whole party are said to have been hanged.--See, however,
+_Morysini Apomaxis_, printed by Berthelet, 1537.
+
+[699] HALL, p. 814.] The inferior confederates were committed to their
+prisons with the exception only of Fisher, who, though sentenced, found
+mercy thrust upon him, till by fresh provocation the miserable old man
+forced himself upon his fate.[700
+
+[700] LORD HERBERT says he was pardoned; I do not find, however, on what
+authority: but he was certainly not imprisoned, nor was the sentence of
+forfeiture enforced against him.
+
+[701] This is the substance of the provisions, which are, of course, much
+abridged.
+
+[702] _Lords' Journals_, vol. i. p. 82. An act was also passed in this
+session "against the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome." We trace it in
+its progress through the House of Lords. (_Lords' Journals_, Parliament of
+1533-4.) It received the royal assent (ibid.), and is subsequently alluded
+to in the both of the 28th of Henry VIII., as well as in a Royal
+Proclamation dated June, 1534; and yet it is not on the Roll, nor do I
+anywhere find traces of it. It is not to be confounded with the act against
+payment of Peter's Pence, for in the _Lords' Journals_ the two acts are
+separately mentioned. It received the royal assent on the 30th of March,
+while that against Peter's Pence was suspended till the 7th of April. It
+contained, also, an indirect assertion that the king was Head of the
+English Church, according to the title which had been given him by
+Convocation. (King's Proclamation: FOXE, vol. v. p. 69.) For some cause or
+other, the act at the last moment must have been withdrawn.
+
+[703] See BURNET, vol. i. pp. 220-1: vol. iii p. 135; and LORD HERBERT. Du
+Bellay's brother, the author of the memoirs, says that the king, at the
+bishop's entreaty, promised that if the pope would delay sentence, and send
+"judges to hear the matter, he would himself forbear to do what he proposed
+to do"--that is, separate wholly from the See of Rome. If this is true, the
+sending "judges" must allude to the "sending them to Cambray," which had
+been proposed at Marseilles.
+
+[704] See the letter of the Bishop of Bayonne, dated March 23, in LEGRAND.
+A paraphrase is given by BURNET, vol. iii. p. 132.
+
+[705] Promisistis predecessori meo quod si sententiam contra regem Angliae
+tulisset, Caesar illum infra quatuor menses erat invasurus, et regno
+expulsurus.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 579.
+
+[706] Letter of Du Bellay in LEGRAND.
+
+[707] Ibid.
+
+[708] Sir Edward Karne and Dr. Revett to Henry VIII.: _State Papers_, vol.
+vii. pp. 553-4.
+
+[709] State Papers, vol. vii. p. 560, et seq.
+
+[710] His Highness, considering the time and the malice of the emperour,
+cannot conveniently pass out of the realm--since he leaveth behind him
+another daughter and a mother, with their friends, maligning his
+enterprises in this behalf--who bearing no small grudge against his most
+entirely beloved Queen Anne, and his young daughter the princess, might
+perchance in his absence take occasion to excogitate and practise with
+their said friends matters of no small peril to his royal person, realm,
+and subjects.--_State Papers_, vol. vii. p. 559.
+
+[711] LORD HERBERT.
+
+[712] I mentioned their execution in connection with their sentence; but it
+did not take place till the 20th of April, a month after their attainder:
+and delay of this kind was very unusual in cases of high treason. I have
+little doubt that their final sentence was in fact pronounced by the pope.
+
+[713] The oaths of a great many are in RYMER, vol. vi. part 2, p. 195, et
+seq.
+
+[714] His great-grandson's history of him (_Life of Sir Thomas More,_, by
+CRESACRE MORE, written about 1620, published 1627, with a dedication to
+Henrietta Maria) is incorrect in so many instances that I follow it with
+hesitation; but the account of the present matter is derived from Mr.
+Roper, More's son-in-law, who accompanied him to Lambeth, and it is
+incidentally confirmed in various details by More himself.
+
+[715] MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 232.
+
+[716] More held extreme republican opinions on the tenure of kings, holding
+that they might be deposed by act of parliament.
+
+[717] MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 237.
+
+[718] BURNET, vol. i. p. 255.
+
+[719] MORE'S _Life of More_, p. 237.
+
+[720] Cromwell to the Archbishop of Canterbury: _Rolls House MS._
+
+[721] _State Papers_, vol. i. p. 411, et seq.
+
+[722] Royal Proclamation, June, 1534.
+
+[723] Ibid.
+
+[724] FOXE, vol. v. p. 70.
+
+
+
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