The rebels were supposed to have been instigated by the intrigues of Cardinal Pole; and the king was instantly deter mined to make the countess of Salisbury, who already lay under sentence of death, suffer for ner son's offences. He ordered her to be carried to execution; and this venerable matron maintained still, in these distressful circumstances, the pirit of that long race of monarchs from whom she was descended.* She refused to lay her head on the block, or subinit to a sentence where she had received no trial. She told the executioner, that if he would have her head, he must win it the best way he could: and thus, shaking her venerable gray locks, she ran about the scaffold; and the executioner followed with his axe, aiming many fruitless blows at her neck, before he was able to give the fatal stroke. Thus perished the last of the line of Plantagenet, which, with grea: glory, but still greater crimes and misfortunes, had governed England for the space of three hundred years. Lord Leonard Grey, a man who had formerly rendered service to the crown, was also beheaded for treason, soon after the countess of Salisbury. We know little concerning the grounds of his prosecution.

[1541.] The insurrection in the north engaged Henry to make a progress thither, in order to quiet the ininds of his people, to reconcile them to his government, and to abolish the ancient superstitions, to which those parts were much addicted. He had also another motive for this journey: he purposed to have a conference at York with his nephew the king of Scotland, and, if possible, to cement a close and indissoluble union with that kingdom.

The same spirit of religious innovation which had seized other parts of Europe had made its way into Scotland, and had begun, before this period, to excite the same jealousies fears, and persccutions. About the year 1527, Patrick Hamilton, a young man of a noble family, having been created abbot of Ferne, was sent abroad for his education, buɩ had fallen into company with some reformers; and he returned into his own country very ill' disposed towards that church, of which his birth and his merit entitled him to attain the highest dign'ties. The fervor of youth and his zeal for novelty made it impossible for him to conceal his sentiments and Campbell, prior of the Dominicans, who, under color of

* Herbert, p. 468.

friendship, and a sympathy in opinion, had insinuated him self into his confidence, accused him before Beaton, trch hishop of St. Andrews. Hamilton was invited to St. Andrews, in order to maintain with some of the clergy a dispute concerning the controverted points; and after inuch reasoning with regard to justification, free will, original sin, and other topics of that nature, the conference ended with their con-. demning Hamilton to be burned for his errors. The young man, who had been deaf to the insinuations of ambition, was less likely to be shaken with the fears of death; while he proposed to himself, both the glory of bearing testimony to the truth, and the immediate reward attending his martyrdom. The people, who compassionated his youth, his virtue, and his noble birth, were much moved at the constancy of his end; and an incident which soon followed still more confirmed them in their favorable sentiments towards him. He had cited Campbell, who still insulted him at the stake, to answer before the judgment seat of Christ; and as that per secutor, either astonished with these events, or overcome with remorse, or perhaps seized casually with a distemper, soon after lost his senses, and fell into a fever, of which he died; the people regarded Hamilton as a prophet as well as a martyr.*

Among the disciples converted by Hamilton, was one friar Forrest, who became a zealous preacher; and who, though. he did not openly discover his sentiments, was suspected to lean towards the new opinions. His diocesan, the bishop of Dunkel, enjoined him, when he met with a good epistle or good gospel, which favored the liberties of holy church, to preach on it, and let the rest alone. Forrest replied, that he had read both Old and New Testament, and had not found an ill epistle or ill gospel in any part of them. The extreme attachment to the Scriptures was regarded, in those days, as a sure characteristic of heresy; and Forrest was soon after brought to trial, and condemned to the flames. While the priests were deliberating on the place of his execution, a bystander advised them to burn him in a cellar; for that the smoke of Mr. Patrick Hamilton had infected all those on whom it blew.t

The clergy were at that time reduced to great difficulties,

Spotswood's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, p. 62.

+ Spotswood's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, p. 65

not only in Scotland, but all over Europe. As the reformers aimed at a total subversion of ancient establishments, which they represented as idolatrous, impious, detestable; the priests, who found both their honors and properties at stake, thought that they had a right to resist, by every expedient, these dangerous invaders, and that the same simple principles of equity which justified a man in killing a pirate or a robber, would acquit them for the execution of such heretics. A toleration, though it is never acceptable to ecclesiastics, might, they said, be admitted in other cases; but seemed an absurdity where fundamentals were shaken, and where the possessions and even the existence of the established clergy were brought in danger. But though the church was thus carried by policy, as well as inclination, to kindle the fires of persecution, they found the success of this remedy very precarious; and observed, that the enthusiastic zeal of the reformers, inflamed by punishment, was apt to prove contagious on the compassionate minds of the spectators. The new doctrine, amidst all the dangers to which it was exposed, secretly spread itself every where; and the minds of men were gradually disposed to a revolution in religion.

But the most dangerous symptom for the clergy in Scotland was, that the nobility, from the example of England, had cast a wishful eye on the church revenues, and hoped, if a reformation took place, to enrich themselves by the plunder of the ecclesiastics. James himself, who was very poor, and was somewhat inclined to magnificence, particularly in building, had been swayed by like motives; and began to threaten the clergy with the same fate that had attended them in the neighboring country. Henry also never ceased exhorting his nephew to imitate his example; and being moved, both by the pride of making proselytes, and the prospect of security, should Scotland embrace a close union with him, he solicited the king of Scots to meet him at York; and he obtained a promise to that purpose.

The ecclesiastics were alarmed at this resolution of James, and they employed every expedient in order to prevent the execution of it. They represented the danger of innovation; the pernicious consequences of aggrandizing the nobility, already too powerful; the hazard of putting himself into the hands of the English, his hereditary enemies; the depend. Once on them which must ensue upon his Ising the friend. ship of France, and of all foreign powers. To these con

siderations they added the prospect of immediate interest, by which they found the king to be much governed: they offered him a present gratuity of fifty thousand pounds: they promised him that the church should always be ready to contribute to his supply: and they pointed out to him the confiscation of heretics, as the means of filling his exchequer, and of adding a hundred thousand pounds a year to the crown revenues.* The insinuations of his new queen, to whom youth, beauty, and address had given a powerful influence over him, seconded all these reasons; and James was at last engaged, first to delay his journey, then to send excuses to the king of England, who had already come to York in order to be present at the interview.t

Henry, vexed with the disappointment, and enraged at the affront, vowed vengeance against his nephew; and he began, by permitting piracies at sea and incursions at land, to put his threats in execution. But he received soon after, in his own family, an affront to which he was much more sensible, and which touched him in a point where he always showed an extreme delicacy. He had thought himself very happy in his new marriage: the agreeable person and disposition of Catharine had entirely captivated his affections; and he made no secret of his devoted attachment to her. He had even publicly, in his chapel, returned solemn thanks to Heaven for the felicity which the conjugal state afforded him; and he directed the bishop of Lincoln to compose a form of prayer for that purpose. But the queen's conduct very little merited this tenderness: one Lascelles brought intelligence of her dissolute life to Cranmer; and told him that his sister, formerly a servant in the family of the old duchess of Norfolk, with whom Catharine was educated, had given him a particular account of her licentious manners. Derham and Mannoc, both of them servants to the duchess, had been admitted to her bed; and she had even taken little care to conceal her shame from the other servants of the family. The primate, etruck with this intelligence, which it was equally dangerous

Buchanan, lib. xiv. Drummond in Ja. V. Pitscotie, ibid. Knox Henry had sent some books, richly ornamented, to his nephew, who, as soon as he saw by the titles, that they had a tendency to defend the new doctrines, threw them into the fire, in the presence of the person who brought them; adding, it was better he should destroy them, than they him. See Epist. Reginald Pole, part 1 172.

to conceal or to discover, communicated the matter to the earl of Hertford and to the chancellor. They agreed, that the matter should by no means be buried in silence; and the archbishop himself seemed the most proper person to disclose it to the king. Cranmer, unwilling to speak on so delicate a subject, wrote a narrative of the whole, and conveyed it to Henry, who was infinitely astonished at the intelligence. So confident was he of the fidelity of his consort, that at first he gave no credit to the information; and he said to the privy. seal, to Lord Russel, high admiral, Sir Anthony Brown, and Wriothesley, that he regarded the whole as a falsehood. Cranmer was now in a very perilous situation; and had not full proof been found, certain and inevitable destruction hung over him. The king's impatience, however, and jealousy prompted him to search the matter to the bottom; the privy. seal was ordered to examine Lascelles, who persisted in the information he had given; and still appealed to his sister's testimony. That nobleman next made a journey, under pretence of hunting, and went to Sussex, where the woman at that time resided: he found her both constant in her former intelligence, and particular as to the facts; and the whole bore but too much the face of probability. Mannoc and Derham, who were arrested at the same time, and examined by the chancellor, made the queen's guilt entirely certain by their confession; and discovered other particulars, which redounded still more to her dishonor. Three maids of the family were admitted into her secrets; and some of them had even passed the night in bed with her and her lovers. the examinations were laid before the king, who was so deeply affected, that he remained a long time speechless, and at last burst into tears. He found to his surprise, that his great skill in distinguishing a true maid, of which he boasted in the case of Anne of Cleves, had failed him in that of his present consort. The queen, being next questioned, denied her guilt; but when informed that a full discovery was made, she confessed that she had been criminal before marriage; and only insisted that she had never been false to the king's bed. But as there was evidence that one Colepepper had passed the night with her alone since her marriage; and as it appeared that she had taken Derham, her old paramour, into her service, she seemed to deserve little credit in this asseveration; and the king, besides, was not of a humor to make any difference between these degrees of guilt.

All