for a season to the frailty and gross capacity of his subjects."

It is in the following year (1538) that we find him associated with the martyrdom of Friar Forrest. Forrest had been Prior of the Observants' Convent at Greenwich. His main offence, like that of Sir Thomas More and others, was resistance to the Royal Supremacy Act. He appears to have submitted, and been pardoned, and then to have recanted his submission. The peculiarity in his case was, that he was finally condemned, not under the treason law, according to which his sentence might have had some show of justice, but under the law of heresy. Certain monstrous articles were devised against him by Cranmer, and he was adjudged to the fate of heretics in its most aggravated form. The judgment was carried out with unmitigated severity. He was literally roasted alive in an iron cage. One shudders to read the account of it, and to think that the names of both Cranmer and Latimer remain associated with so foul an atrocity. For Cranmer's share in it there can be found no excuse, save the usual one of the spirit of the times. Latimer's connection with it appears to have been more accidental. He was appointed by Cromwell to preach the sermon on the occasion; and there is a strange sadness in the way he writes about it, his unrelenting humour playing, like a wintry gleam, around the tragic story. And, sir, if it be your pleasure, as it is, that I shall play the fool after my customable manner when Forrest shall suffer, I would wish that my stage stood near unto Forrest; for I would endeavour myself so to content the people that

therewith I might also convert Forrest, God so helping, or rather altogether working. Wherefore I would that he should hear what I shall say, si forte, &c. If he could yet with heart return to his abjuration, I would wish his pardon: such is my foolishness." * He is moved obviously for the unhappy wretch, and the work is painful to him; but he cannot help himself, and the utterance of pity almost dies on his lips, as if it were something to be ashamed of. + "Hard times," indeed! (as Foxe complains), which could so lock up the warm impulses in Latimer's honest heart.

An ecclesiastical system which sought to prop itself by such means, was plainly in a very fluctuating and unstable condition. It was moved to and fro, in fact, by every changing impulse of the royal temper; and this temper reflected the agitated spirit of the times. To regard Henry's changes as mere brutal caprice, according to the long-prevailing traditionary views of his character, is probably what few would now do; but to recognise in them throughout a clear principle of conviction or intelligent guidance, seems no less absurd, on any fair construction of the facts. Henry was true to one thing, and one thing alone-his own supposed interest. This, in conjunction with his strong national feeling, was in many cases a sufficiently equitable rule of statecraft; but we cannot, without an amazing stretch of credulity, identify the royal will at all points with the national interest, and presume that the King acted from the higher principle. Henry * Remains, p. 391.

+ FROUDE, vol. iii. p. 295.-See his vivid description of the martyrdom.

is not the monster of the old and uncritical tradition; but he is not, even on his historian's own evidence, in the least the hero that he supposes him to be.

On the present occasion it is easy to understand how a reaction set in. The northern insurrections had proved how strong was the hold which the old superstitions still had upon the hearts of the people. The King himself, having secured his object against Rome, was disposed to cling to the Catholic doctrine in its completeness. It was very natural, therefore, that a party should spring up, attaching itself, on the one hand, to the Royal Supremacy Act, and, on the other hand, very strongly to the old ecclesiastical tradition -a party which has received the distinctive title of Anglo-Catholic, and which may be briefly characterised as doctrinally Romanist, but ecclesiastically Anglican. This party evidently represented a strong national feeling. The "Pilgrimage of grace," the insurrections in Yorkshire and Lancashire, testified to the strength of this feeling; it was such even as seriously to affect the stability of the throne; and Henry, true to the instinct of serving himself by a proper balance of parties, saw fit at this crisis to throw the weight of his influence into the rising party, headed in the Church by the well-known names of Gardiner and Bonner. The result of this was the six articles of 1539,* which undid as far as possible the work of the fourteen articles previously passed, and sought to check the reforming

They rendered it penal to deny, or in any way to impugn, transubstantiation, communion in one kind, celibacy, lawfulness of monastic vows, private masses, auricular confession.

impulse communicated by them. Cranmer laboured with all his might to defeat them, but in vain; and so soon as they were confirmed, Latimer resigned his bishopric.

During the remainder of Henry's reign, Latimer lived in great privacy. At first indeed, he suffered a mild imprisonment in the house of Dr Sampson, the Bishop of Chichester; he then appears to have been permitted to retire to the country, where he received an injury from the fall of a tree, and, coming up to London for medical advice, "he was molested and troubled by the bishops;" and finally, in 1546, just before the close of Henry's reign, he was brought before the Privy Council, and cast into the Tower, where he remained prisoner till the time that "blessed King Edward entered his crown.' Such is the brief sum of all we know of this period of his life. Whether, during the time he was at liberty, he continued to preach, is not indicated; probably he did not. His imprisonment, his growing infirmities, and the dangers around him, may have damped his old ardour and kept him. quiet. That he considered his own life in danger during his confinement, he himself tells us. He had a great interest, he says, to hear of the executions in the City, while he was in ward with the Bishop of Chichester," because I looked that my part should have been herein. I looked every day to be called to it myself."+

With the accession of Edward VI. he again emerged into public view. He remained, however, true to his old character, and not only did not mix himself up * FOXE, vol. vii. p. 463. + Sermons, p. 164.

with political affairs, but declined to receive back his bishopric, which was offered to him in the second year of Edward's reign. The fact that this offer was made at the instance of the House of Commons, gives us a touching glimpse of the popularity of the great preacher. His honest character and eloquence had made a deep impression on the mind of the country, and it found a voice in this notable manner. We can only guess at his reasons for declining an offer so honourable to him. The state of his health, and his conscientious feeling of inadequacy to the multiplied duties that would devolve upon him,* probably form the explanation. He felt, also, that preaching was his peculiar vocation, and that he could do more good to the cause of the Reformation in this way than in any other. He devoted himself, therefore, to the pulpit, and to practical works of benevolence on behalf of the poor and the oppressed. Leaving the public ordering of the affairs of the Reformation to others, he made it his aim to arouse in all classes a practical spirit of reform. He found his most natural and powerful source of influence in the eloquence which moved congregated thousands, and by his sermons more than anything, his name remains memorably associated with the reign of Edward VI. Among the other actors of the time, he stands forth as the great reforming preacher. The old picture

* He had, as everything shows, a strong feeling of the responsibility of the episcopal office, and of the oppression of the multiplied duties connected with it. Foxe relates in reference to his previous resignation of his bishopric-"At what time he first put off his rochet in his chamber among his friends, suddenly he gave a skip on the floor for joy, feeling his shoulder so light, and being discharged (as he said) of such a heavy burden."-Vol. vii. p. 463.