their hopes are raised. With every advantage of person, he united a high degree of bodily and mental accomplishments; his understanding was quick and vigorous, and his learning such as might have raised him to distinction, had he been born in humble life. Had he died before his mind was depraved, and his heart hardened by sensuality and the possession of absolute power, his death would have been regretted as a national calamity. The splendour of his Court exceeded any thing which had ever been seen in Europe. A succession of feasts and pageants was exhibited there, with so profuse an expenditure, that, in less than three years, the whole accumulation of his father's reign, amounting to the then enormous sum of 1,800,000l., was' consumed. But it was no less remarkable for learning; in this respect we have the testimony of Erasmus, that no school, no monastery, no university equalled it. Both in his prodigality, and in his patronage of letters, the King was encouraged by his favourite, Wolsey, the most munificent of men. Under his administration, the disorders of the Clergy were repressed, men of worth and learning were promoted in the Church, libraries were formed, and the study of Greek and Hebrew introduced at Oxford. The practices and doctrines of the Church Wolsey took as he found, and so he would have left them; but he removed its ignorance, reformed its manners, and might have enabled it yet awhile to have supported itself by the improvements which it derived from his liberality and love of learning, if a more perilous but needful reformation had not commenced, when Luther proclaimed the principles of religious liberty which he had derived from Huss, and Huss from Wicliffe.

Little could it have been apprehended, when Henry engaged in controversy with Luther, and for so doing obtained from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith, that the Reformation, under his auspices, would be introduced into England. A speech of the Court Fool upon that occasion has been preserved : "O, good Harry, let thou and I defend one another, and let the Faith alone to defend itself." The same turn of mind which led him thus to come forward as the champion of the Church became accidentally the cause of his defection from it, when he applied his casuistry to the purpose for which that art has usually been Burnet, Reformation, i. 2. 2 Fuller, b. v. p. 168.

employed, that of making his conscience conform to his inclinations. He was desirous of male issue; he was weary of his wife, who had ceased child-bearing; and he was in love with Anne Boleyn. Queen Catharine was by manners and disposition better suited for a convent than a court; . . . she was pious and noble-minded, but now of infirm health, and always of a melancholy constitution. Had she possessed his affections as she did his esteem, it is not likely that he would have fallen into scruples concerning the lawfulness of the marriage, because she had been his brother's widow; but the scruple accorded with his wishes; and it suited also so well with his predilection for subtleties, that from whatever motive it may at first have been entertained, there is abundant proof of his having been sincere in it when the question was brought before the world.

The question is one which admits of an easy and decisive solution. The impediment was not founded upon natural and moral law; therefore it was dispensable by that authority in which the dispensing power was vested; and having been dispensed with, it would be manifestly unjust to revoke a dispensation which had been acted upon in good faith. But any case may be perplexed by legal subtleties, when law has been made a craft, and this question was suited to the age; for hitherto all active intellects throughout Christendom had been exercised only in spinning the snares of disputation,... and it was but in this generation that a course of healthier studies had been opened. The point was so doubtful, according to the notions which then prevailed, that the French Ambassador objected, on this score, to a marriage proposed between Francis I., or his brother, and the Princess Mary; and when it came to be discussed by all the canonists throughout Europe, opinions were divided.

The Queen demeaned herself during the proceedings with a true dignity, to which history has rendered justice, and from which, I believe, no writer has ever yet been base enough to detract. There was a deeper sorrow in her heart, than what her own wrongs occasioned; she had not offended, she said,' . . . but it was a judgement of God, for her former marriage had been made in blood. King Ferdinand, her father, had stipu1 Bacon's Henry VII. p. 196.

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lated that the Earl of Warwick should be put to death, for the purpose of securing the succession to her issue, and Catharine felt that this innocent life was visited upon her.' The Pope would have made little demur in granting a divorce, had he not feared to offend her nephew, the Emperor; his policy was to prolong the suit; "whilst it depended, he was sure of two great friends; but when it should be decided, of one great foe." A strange compromise was proposed by Henry, that if the Queen would not take the vows, and thus, by retiring into a convent, consent to their divorce, a dispensation for having two wives might be granted him, which it was pretended was sanctioned by the Old Testament; both the Pope3 and the Emperor agreed to this, and probably the only reason why the matter was not thus accommodated, was an apprehension of the just scandal which such a measure would excite. The Court of Rome sought, therefore, to protract the suit, in hopes that the not improbable death of the Queen, or some other of those accidents to which human affairs are subject, might extricate it from its embarrassment. But Henry, who had fixed his affections, such as they were, upon Anne Boleyn, with singular constancy for such a man, during the process, was not of a temper patiently to brook seven years' delay; and perceiving that nothing was to be looked for from the Pope, but a continuance of studied procrastination, resolved to act in defiance of him.

Henry's penetration enabled him always to select men of ability for his service. Among the eminent persons whom he had raised to importance for their qualifications, Cromwell and Cranmer were peculiarly fitted to promote the object which he had now in view, of withdrawing the Church of England from its subjection to the See of Rome, the former from interested, the latter from conscientious, motives. Thomas Cromwell is a man whom the Romanists paint in the blackest colours, because they estimate the characters of men who distinguished themselves in that age, by no other criterion than their service or disservice to the Papal cause; neither justice therefore nor charity is to be found in their representations. Of Cromwell, it may truly be

"She was wont to acknowledge the death of her two sons as Heaven's judgement on her family for the murdering of this Earl." Fuller's Worthies, vol. ii. P. 407. 2 Fuller, Ch. Hist. b. 4. p. 177. 3 Burnet, i. p. 60, 93.

said, that many who have entertained better principles, have been worse men. The desire of obtaining promotion and keeping it, was his ruling motive; and to this he made his conduct subservient. He was bold and unscrupulous; but if any redeeming virtues may atone for a time-serving ambition, they were to be found in him. In the most selfish, the most ungrateful, the most cruel age of English History, he was generous, grateful, and compassionate; and it was by the fidelity with which he served his first patron, Wolsey, when that munificent man was disgraced and ruined, that he acquired the good opinion of the King. Cranmer, on the contrary, was a meek, unworldly spirit, courageous only when the strong sense of duty enabled him to overcome his natural temper. Widely dissimilar as they were in other respects, there was a bond of friendship between them in their generous and benevolent feelings, and in these unhappily little sympathy was to be found elsewhere.

By Cromwell's suggestion, Henry resolved to declare himself head of the Church in his own dominions; and the same politic minister devised a means, whereby the submission of the Clergy to this decisive measure was secured. The statute of Præmunire had been so little observed, before it was made the engine for Wolsey's overthrow, that almost all the higher Clergy had become amenable to its penalties; and when this charge was brought against them, they were glad to compound by paying the heavy sum of 100,000l., and acknowledging the King's supremacy, with the qualifying clause quantum per Christi leges licet. This great measure was soon followed by the divorce, which was pronounced in the King's own Court, and by his marriage with Anne Boleyn.

Hitherto the system of persecution had been carried on with unabated rigour, if indeed the progress of the reformed opinions openly in Germany, and rapidly every where else, did not rather provoke the Clergy to stricter vigilance, and a more exasperated vengeance. Children were compelled to accuse their parents, and parents their children, wives their husbands, and husbands their wives, unless they would share the same fate. The poor wretches who saved their lives by abjuration, were under the name of perpetual penance condemned to perpetual bondage, being distributed in monasteries, beyond the precincts of which

they were never to pass, and where by their labour they were to indemnify the convent for their share of such food as was regularly bestowed in charity at the gate. The mark of the branding-iron they were never to conceal; they were to bear a faggot at stated periods, and once at the burning of a heretic, . . . for which purpose every one who contributed a faggot, was rewarded with forty days' indulgence.

Among the martyrs of those days, Thomas Bilney is one whose name will ever be held in deserved reverence. He had been brought up from a child at Cambridge, where laying aside the profession of both laws, he entered upon what was then the dangerous study of divinity; and being troubled in mind, repaired to priests, who enjoined him in masses, fasting, watching, and the purchase of indulgences, till his scanty purse and feeble constitution were both well nigh exhausted. At this time, hearing the New Testament which Erasmus had just published, praised for its Latinity, he bought it for that inducement only; and opened it upon a text, which, finding his heart open, rooted itself there: ..."This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." The comfort which these words conveyed, was confirmed by the frequent perusal of a book which now became to him sweeter than honey, or the honey-comb; and he began to preach as he had learnt, that men should seek for righteousness by faith. It was not long before he was accused before Cuthbert Tonstal, then Bishop of London, a man of integrity and moderation, though compelled to bear a part in proceedings which were utterly abhorrent to his natural disposition. The main accusations against him were, that he asserted Christ was our only mediator, not the Virgin Mary, nor the Saints; that pilgrimages were useless; and that offerings to images were idolatry. Of these doctrines he was found guilty; but was persuaded to recant, and accordingly bore a faggot at St. Paul's Cross. It appears that Tonstal, with his wonted humanity, favoured and wished to save him: he was not branded, nor subjected to any further punishment, but permitted to return to Cambridge.

From that hour Bilney had no peace in himself. Latimer, who was at that time Cross-keeper in the University, and who