miration of the great schoolman, Aquinas. He was introduced at court, was caressed by Henry, and permitted to share in the munificence with which that monarch then patronised learned men. Erasmus could not endure the indolence, the greed, the gluttony, the crass ignorance of the monks, and he lashed them mercilessly with his keen wit and his pungent satire. The two great scholars, Erasmus and More, met for the first time at the table of the Lord Mayor of London. A short but brilliant encounter of wits revealed the one to the other. More was the Erasmus of England; the Utopia of the former answers to the Praise of Folly (Encomium Morice) of the latter. Possessing a play ful fancy, a vigorous understanding, and a polished sarcasm, More delighted to assail with a delicate but effective raillery the same class of men against whom Erasmus had levelled his keenest shafts. He united with Erasmus in calling for a reformation of that Church of which, as says one, "he lived to be the champion, the inquisitor, and the martyr."1 In his Utopia he shows us what sort of world he would fain have given us a commonwealth in which there should be no place for monks, in which the number of priests should not exceed the number of churches, and in which the right of private judgment should be accorded to every one, and if any should think wrong, he was to be put right by argument, and not by the rack or the faggot. Of great intellect, but not of equally great character, the two scholars had raised their voices, as we have said, for a reformation of abuses; but when they heard the voice of Luther resounding through Europe, and raising the same cry, and when they saw the reformation they had demanded at last approaching, they drew back in affright. They had

failed to take account of the strength of error, and the forces necessary to uproot it; and when they saw altars overturned and thrones shaken-in short, a tempest arise that threatened to shake "not the earth only, but also heaven"-they resembled the magician who shudders at the spirit himself hath conjured up.

Such were the men and the agencies now at work in England. They were not the Reformation, but they were necessary preparatives of that great and much-needed change. The spiritual principles that Wicliffe had taught were still in the soil; but, like flowers in the time of winter, they had hidden themselves, and waited in the darkness the coming of a more mollient time to blossom forth. Letters might exist where they would not be suffered to live. But meanwhile the action of these principles was by no means suspended. Wicliffe's Bible was being disseminated among the people; the line of his disciples was perpetuated in the poor and despised Lollards: Protestant tracts were frequently arriving in the Thames from Germany: and here and there young priests and scholars were reading public lectures on portions of the Scriptures. In the political sphere, also, preparations were going forward. England had been overturned-the old tree had been cut down to its roots, as it were, in order that fresh and more friendly shoots might spring forth. The barons had fallen in the wars: the Plantagenets had disappeared from the throne: a Tudor was now swaying the sceptre; inveterate customs and traditions were vanishing in the clear though chilly dawn of letters; and the plough of Reform, which had stood motionless in the furrow for wellnigh a century, was once more about to go forward.

HENRY VIII. again appears on the stage. We find him still the idol of the people; his court con

1 Blunt, Reformation in England, p. 105; Lond., 1832.

tinues to be the resort of scholars; and the enormous wealth left him by his father enables him still to extend his munificent patronage to learning, and at the same time provide those shows, tournaments,

and banquets, which made his court one of the gayest in all Europe. Nothing, at this hour, was less likely than that this prince should separate himself from the communion of the Roman Church, and withdraw his kingdom from obedience to the Pontifical jurisdiction. He had been educated for the priesthood until the death of Prince Arthur, his elder brother; and though this event placed a crown instead of a mitre upon his head, it left him still so much the churchman that he plumed himself upon his theological lore, and was ever ready to do battle for a hierarchy in whose ranks he had looked forward to being enrolled, and at whose altars he had hoped to spend his life. A disciple of Thomas Aquinas, the subtlest intellect of the thirteenth century, and the man who had done more than any other doctor of the Middle Ages to fortify the basis of the Papal supremacy, Henry was not likely to be wanting in reverence for the See of Rome. Indeed, in one well-known instance he had shown abundance of zeal in the Pope's behalf: we refer to his book against Luther, for which the conclave at Rome voted him the title of "Defender of the Faith." But the train for the opposition he was to show, not to the doctrine of the Papacy, but to its jurisdiction, was laid nearly twenty years before; and it is instructive to mark that it was laid in an act of submission to that very jurisdiction, against which Henry was fated at a future day to rebel. Arthur, Prince of Wales, was married during his father's lifetime to Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The bride of the young prince, who was a year older than her husband, was the wealthiest heiress in Europe, and her dowry had been a prime consideration with Henry VII. in promoting the match. About five months after the marriage, Prince Arthur fell ill and died (2nd April, 1502), at the age of sixteen. When a few months had passed, and it was seen that no issue was to be expected from Arthur's marriage, Prince Henry was proclaimed heir to the throne, and Catherine was about to return to Spain. But the parsimonious Henry VII., grieved to think that her dowry of 200,000 ducats should have to be sent back with her, to become, it might be, the possession of a scion of some other royal house, started the proposal that Henry should marry his deceased brother's widow.

To this proposal Ferdinand of Spain gave his consent. Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, opposed it. "It is declared in the law of God," said the primate, "that if a man shall take his brother's

1 Burnet, History of the Reformation in England, vol. i., p. 35; Lond., 1681.

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wife, it is an unclean thing: they shall be childless." Fox, Bishop of Winchester, hinted that the difficulty might be got over by a dispensation from the Pope. The warlike Julius II. was then reigning; he thought more of battles than of the Mosaic code, and on being applied to, he readily granted the dispensation sought. In December, 1503, a bull was issued, authorising Catherine's marriage with the brother of her first husband. This was followed by the betrothal of the parties, but not as yet by their marriage, the Prince of Wales being then only twelve years of age."

The interval gave the old king time for reflection. He began strongly to suspect that the proposed marriage, the Pope's bull notwithstanding, was contrary to the law of God; and calling Prince Henry, now fourteen years of age, to him, he caused him to sign a protest, duly authenticated, against the consummation of the marriage.' And when four years afterwards he lay on his death-bed, he again summoned the prince to his presence, and conjured him not to marry her who had been the wife of his brother. On the 9th of May, 1509, Henry VII. was borne to the tomb; and no sooner had the coffin been lowered into the vault, and the staves of the officers of state, who stood around the grave, broken and cast in after it, than the heralds proclaimed, with flourish of trumpets, King Henry VIII. Henry could now do as he liked in the matter of the marriage. Meanwhile the amiable disposition and irreproachable virtue of Catherine had conciliated the nation, which at first had asked, "Can the Pope repeal the laws of God?" and when on the 24th of June Henry was crowned in Westminster, there sat by his side Catherine, as his bride and queen. Henry thus began his reign with an act of submission to the Papal authority; for in accepting his brother's widow as his wife, he accepted the Pope's dispensation as valid; and the Pontiff, on his part, rejoiced in what had taken place, as a new pledge of obedience to the Roman See on the part of England and her sovereign, seeing that with the validity of his bull was now clearly bound up the legitimacy of the future princes of the realm. The two must stand or fall together; for if his bull was nought, so too was their title to the crown.

Years passed away without anything remarkable taking place in the domestic life of Henry and Catherine. These years were spent in jousts and costly entertainments; in the society of scholars and the patronage of learning; in a military raid into

and who was destined to act a great part in the events which were about to engage the attention, not of England only, but of Christendom.

From the lowest ranks there now sprang up a man of vast ambition and equal talent, who speedily rose to the highest posts in the State, and the most splendid dignities of the Church, and who, by his

before the eyes of the English people, the glory of

the Church of Rome before it should finally sink and disappear. His name was Thomas Wolseyby far the most famous of all those Englishmen who have borne the title of Cardinal. A few sentences will enable us to trace the rapid rise of this man to that blaze of power in which, for a season, he shone, only to fall as suddenly and portentously as he had risen. Wolsey (born 1471) was the son of a butcher at Ipswich, and after studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, he passed into the family of the Marquis of Dorset, as tutor. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Keeper of the Privy Seal, finding himself eclipsed by the Earl of

Surrey in the graces of Henry VII, looked about him for one to counterbalance his rival; and deeming that he had found a suitable instrument in Wolsey, drew him from an obscure sphere in

the country, and found a place for him at court as almoner to the king. Wolsey ingratiated

SIR THOMAS MORE.

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never forbade in his sovereign those liaisons in which, unless public report hugely calumniated him, he himself freely indulged. Royal favours fell thick and fast on the clever and most accommodating churchman. The mitres of Tournay, Lincoln, and York were in one year placed on his head. But Wolsey was one of those who think that nothing has been gained unless all has been won. He refused to lower the cross of York to the cross of Canterbury, thus claiming for himself equality with the primate; and when this was

himself into that monarch's favour, by executing successfully a secret negotiation at Brussels, with such dispatch that he returned before he had had time, as Henry thought, to set out. His advancement from that moment would have been rapid but for the death of the king, which happened not long afterwards. Under the young Henry, Wolsey played his part not less adroitly. versatility developed more freely, in the warm air of Henry VIII.'s court, than it had done in the cold atmosphere of that of his predecessor. Business or pleasure came alike to Wolsey. He could be as gay as the gayest of the king's courtiers, and as wise and grave as the most staid of his councillors. He could retail, for the monarch's amusement, the gossip of the court and the town, or edify him by quoting the sayings of some mediæval doctor, and especially his favourite, the angelic Aquinas. Wolsey was no ascetic; in presence Vice never hung her head, and he

his

1 Hume, vol. i., chap. 27, p. 488; Lond., 1826.

His

denied him, he reached

his end by another road. He solicited, through Francis I., the Roman purple, and in this too he succeeded. In November, 1515, an envoy from Rome arrived in England, bringing to the cardinal his "red hat"-that gift which has ever in the end wrought evil to the wearer, as well as to the realm; converting, as it does, its owner into the satrap of a foreign Power.

Wolsey was not yet satisfied: there was something higher still, and he must continue to climb. The pious Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, wearying of contending with the butcher's son, who had clothed his person in Roman purple, and his mind in more than Roman pride, now resigned the seals as Chancellor of the Kingdom, and the king put them into the hands of Wolsey. He was now near the summit: one more effort and he would reach it at last it was gained. There came a bull appointing him the Cardinal Legate-à-Latere of "Holy Church." This placed him a little, and only a little, below the Papal throne itself. To it Wolsey began to lift his eyes, as the only one of earth's grandeurs now above him; but meanwhile the pursuit of this dazzling prize was delayed, and he gave himself to the consolidation of those manifold powers which he wielded in England. His jurisdiction was immense. All church courts, all

Hume, vol. i., chap. 28, p. 495.

bishops and priests, the primate himself, all colleges and monasteries, were under him. All causes in which the Church was interested, however remotely, were adjudicated by him. He decided in all matters of conscience, in wills and testaments, in marriages and divorces, and in those actions which, though they might not be punishable by the law, were censurable by the Church as violations of good morals. From his sentences there was no appeal to the king's tribunals. The throne and Parliament must submit to have their prerogatives, laws, and jurisdiction circumscribed and regulated by the cardinal, as the representative of God's Vicar in England. Those causes which were excluded from his jurisdiction as Legate-à-Latere, came under his cognisance as Chancellor of the Kingdom, so that Wolsey really governed both Church and State. He was virtually king, and his own famous phrase, Ego et Rex meus "I and my king"-was not less in accordance with fact than it was with the idiom of the language in which it was expressed.

Of the grandeurs of his palace, the sumptuousness of his table, the number of his daily guests, and the multitude of his servants, it is needless to speak. The list of his domestics was upwards of 500, and some of the nobles of England did not account it beneath them to be enrolled in the number. When he moved out of doors he wore a dress of crimson velvet and silk; his shoes glittered with jewels; the goodliest priests of the realm marched before him, carrying silver crosses, while his pomp was swelled by a retinue of becoming length. When Wolsey said mass, it was after the manner of the Pope himself; bishops and abbots aided him in the function, and some of the first nobility gave him water and the towel.'

But with his pomps, pleasures, and hospitalities he mingled manifold labours. His capacity was great, and seemed to enlarge with the elevation of his rank and the increase of his offices. His two redeeming qualities were the patronage of learning and the administration of justice. His decisions in Chancery were impartial and equitable, and his enormous wealth, gathered from innumerable sources, enabled him to surround himself with scholars, and to found institutions of learning, for which he had his reward in the praises of the former, and the posthumous glory of the latter. Nevertheless he did not succeed in making himself popular. His haughty deportment offended the people, who knew him to be hollow, selfish, and vicious, despite his grand masses and his ostentatious beneficence.

1 Hume, vol. i., chap. 28, p. 499.

The rise at this hour of such a man, who had gathered into his single hand all the powers of the State, seemed of evil augury for the Reformation. Rome, in all her dominancy, was in him rising up again in England. The priests were emboldened to declare war, first against the scholars by sounding the alarm against Greek, which they stigmatised as a main source of heresy, and next against Parlia ment by demanding back the immunities of which they had been stripped during preceding reigns. In addition to former losses of prerogative, the priests were threatened with a new encroachment on their privileges. In 1513 a law was passed, ordering ecclesiastics who should commit murder or theft to be tried in the secular courts-bishops, priests, and deacons excepted. It was discovered that though the Pope could dispense with the laws of God, the Parliament could not. The Abbot of Winchelcomb, preaching at St. Paul's, gave the signal for battle, exclaiming, "Touch not mine anointed,' said the Lord." Thereafter a clerical deputation, headed by Wolsey, proceeded to the palace to demand that the impious law should be annulled. "Sire," said the cardinal, "to try a clerk is a violation of God's laws." "By God's will we are King of England," replied Henry, who saw that to put the clergy above the Parliament was to put them above himself," and the Kings in England, in times past, had never any superior but God only. Therefore know you well that we will maintain the right of our crown."

Baffled in their attack on Parliament, the priests vented their fury upon others. There were still many Lollards who, although living in the bosom of the Roman Church, gave the priests much disquiet. One of these was Richard Hun, a tradesman in London, who spent a portion of each day in the study of the Bible. He was summoned before the legate's court on the charge of refusing to pay a fee imposed by a priest, which he deemed exorbitant. Indignant at being made answerable before a foreign court, Hun lodged an accusation against the priest under the Act Præmunire.2 "Such boldness must be severely checked," said the clergy, "otherwise not a citizen but will set the Church at defiance." Hun was accused of heresy, consigned to the Lollards' Tower in St. Paul's, and left there in irons, chained so heavily that his fetters hardly permitted him to drag his steps across the floor. On his trial no such proof of heresy was produced as would suffice for his condemnation, and his persecutors found themselves in a greater dilemma than before, for to set him at liberty would proclaim

See ante, vol. i., p. 394.