ning to feel anxious about the succession. They had not forgotten the Wars of the Roses, and were afraid that when Henry died there might be another struggle for the crown. After eighteen years of wedded life the king began to profess doubts about the lawfulness of his marriage. He might have felt them, but if he did his conscience must have been quickened by the violent fancy he had taken to Anne Boleyn (one of the queen's maids of honour) and by his desire to have an heir.

The result was that he asked the Pope (Clement VII.) to grant him a divorce. It was a miserable business altogether. The Pope was in the power of the queen's nephew, Charles V., Emperor of Germany and King of Spain. If he said "Yes" to Henry, he would offend Charles; if he said "No," he would offend Henry. He therefore neither said "Yes" nor "No," but shuffled and delayed in the hope that some lucky accident might come to his relief.

4

Clement appointed Wolsey and another cardinal to try the lawfulness of the marriage. Catherine demanded that the case should be tried by the Pope himself, and the settlement of the matter was thus put off indefinitely. The king was furious at the delay, and vented his wrath upon the minister. Wolsey was prosecuted for acting as legate, though during the eleven years wherein he had so acted Henry made no objection. The cardinal, on giving up his wealth to the king, was pardoned and allowed to retire to his archbishopric of York. But his enemies were not content that he should thus escape: they charged him with treason, and a royal officer was sent to bring him to London. The blow was fatal; the old man,

With age, with cares, with maladies oppressed,

did not live to reach the capital. At Leicester he grew dangerously ill, and was led into the abbey to die. As he lay upon his bed his thoughts wandered back with something of regret over the years during which he had given himself up, body and soul, to the service of an ungrateful master. "Had I but served my God," he said, "with half the zeal I served my king, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.” 1 Divorce, a breaking of a marriage. 2 dispense, to excuse from keeping. 3 indefinitely, to a future time not named. who managed business for the Pope.

legate, one

THE BEGINNING OF THE

REFORMATION.

THE most important event of the sixteenth century is the Reformation,-that great change in the religious opinions of men which took place in England and Scotland, and in some parts of the Continent. The beginning of the Reformation in our own country is connected with the attempt of Henry VIII. to get a divorce, but a change of some kind would, beyond doubt, have taken place had there been no Henry and no Catherine. Still, the form and time of the change did in a large degree depend upon the personal character of the king and his desire for a separation from his wife, so that the poet Gray had some ground for speaking of the period

1

When love could teach a monarch to be wise,

And gospel light first dawned from Boleyn's eyes.

Wiclif, "the Morning Star of the Reformation," had tried to mend matters, but Lollardism was trampled out. Things did not grow better after that; the priests, and

BOOK III.

E

especially the monks, continued many to lead useless and some to lead unholy lives.

About a hundred years after the death of Wiclif a strong desire for improvement began to lay hold of good men. They were not heretics, some of them were even ready to persecute heretics; they had little fault to find with the teachings of the Church,—it was her practice which they wished to amend.

In the time of Henry VIII. we find people who were dissatisfied alike with teachings and practice. Their 2 vague desire of something better grew more definite when the news spread over Europe that in Germany Martin Luther had defied the power of the Pope. The princes who supported Luther 3 protested at the Diet of 5 Spire against a decree passed against him; hence they got the name of Protestants, which was afterwards extended to all persons of the same way of thinking.

Besides the two classes of reformers named,—those who strove after holier living, and those who strove after holier living together with change of doctrine,— there was a third class, made up of those who, while caring very little about the teachings of religion, and perhaps not much about its practice, would like to see the Church in England independent.

The Reformation in this country was the outcome of the feelings of these three classes, and the history of its progress shows how each class in turn influenced it. First, attempts were made at greater purity of life; then the supremacy of the Pope was done away with; and lastly, several of the chief beliefs of the Church of Rome were cast aside.

6

After the fall of Wolsey, Henry tried to frighten the Pope into granting the desired divorce. A series of laws was passed by which all appeals to the court of

Rome were forbidden, the clergy were no longer to pay first-fruits, and bishops were to be appointed by the king, who was declared "the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England."

While these great changes were being made, Henry married Anne Boleyn. Four months after the wedding, Thomas Cranmer, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced the union with Catherine to have been " null and void" from the beginning.

Gray. Thomas Gray (1716-1771) wrote "Odes" and the famous "Elegy." The lines quoted are a fragment from an unfinished poem. 3 vague, not clear, indefinite. protest, to make a formal statement of opposition to anything. diet, an assembly; spoken especially of an assembly of the German princes. 5 Spire, or Speyer, on the Rhine, in Bavaria. acy, the being supreme or highest. 7 first-fruits. The clergy used to pay to the Pope the whole of the first year's salary of any new post to which they were appointed.

6

suprem

SIR THOMAS MORE.

PART I.

ANNE BOLEYN bore a daughter Elizabeth, and Henry therefore got Parliament to pass an Act of Succession, making the children of Anne heirs to the throne, and declaring the marriage with Catherine to have been unlawful from the beginning. Men were required to swear that they agreed to the Act, but many who were willing that the crown should go to the children of Anne could not 1assent to the rest of the 2 measure, for the marriage with Catherine had been 3 sanctioned by the Pope, and, therefore, to declare it unlawful was to deny his authority. To frighten such persons into submission, the greatest and noblest of them, Sir Thomas