within the compass of the statute. It would have been no avail for Wolsey to plead, that he had the King's express and written permission to accept and exercise that office, and indeed, he had reason to be thankful that instead of an old law of præmunire, he was not included in a new law of treason. The statute of Provisor was indeed a production of the age of Richard II., but it had grown almost obsolete. Its enforcement was therefore an ill omen from the Papal power in England, for its provisions gave the King all the supremacy which any King ought to claim, the supremacy over all property, and all temporal power, however sanctified, in his own dominions. It forbad any subject to withdraw his person or property from the common operation of the land's law. It was a good act, and King Henry did well and wisely in making it effective, for till his time it had little more than the declaration of a right in abeyance. But since his predecessors had suffered it to sleep, and he himself had formally dispensed with its violation, even to the extent of pleading before the Legate, in his own person, in his own dominions, he should not have given any retrospective or punitive effect. But Wolsey's destruction was determined, and with that the King was for the present content; but afterwards, his avarice increasing with his years, he included the whole clergy and laity of England in a præmunire for their compliance with the legatine authority. The clergy were fain to compromise the matter with one hundred and eighteen thousand eight hundred and forty pounds, a sum more than equal to half a million of present money. The laity were held in suspense awhile, and their supplications for indemnity haughtily answered; but at last they had a free pardon. All these were progressive steps towards the final breach with Rome, and consequent ecclesiastical revolution; but it does not appear that any of the superior clergy opposed the condemnation of Wolsey on such anti-papal grounds. They rejoiced in the fall of him who had outshone and overawed them, and reckoned not how soon they were themselves to be curtailed of their gettings,-not by the poor Commons, against whom their invectives were levelled, but by that monarchy and aristocracy with which it was their pride to vie. Fisher had no affection for Wolsey, and was as short sighted as the generality of narrow minded honest men. Besides he had already made himself obnoxious both to King and people, and had no hopes of bettering the church's prospects, or his own, by thrusting himself between "the lion and his wrath."

The year 1530 was one of the most eventful years in the history of the world, and a perilous year for Bishop Fisher. Twice was his life attacked; it is not very plain why. One Rouse, or Rose, who was acquainted with the Bishop's cook, came into his kitchen, and while the

cook was gone to fetch him some drink, made use of his opportunity to mingle poison in the gruel that was preparing for the Bishop and his household. Probably it was a fast day; for the Bishop, fasting altogether, escaped; but of seventeen persons, who partook of the gruel, two died, and the rest were terribly disordered. We may suppose the crime of poisoning to have been frightfully common in England, since it was thought necessary, by an express act, to declare it high-treason, and to punish it by boiling alive, which horrible death was inflicted upon the miserable Rouse. If he thought to please the King by removing a thorn out of his side, he found himself mistaken. But it is more likely that he was a fanatic, whom Fisher's severity in enforcing the laws against heresy had driven mad. Excessive cruelty in punishment rarely answers its purpose, for we find that the example of boiling Rouse did not deter a woman servant from poisoning three families; She suffered the same penalty, which was abolished along with the rest of Henry the Eighth's new invented treasons. It is the chance of impunity; not the lenity of punishment that encourages crime. The Spanish inquisition was the only system of cruelty that perfectly answered its end; but this succeeded rather by destroying all confidence and security than by the terror of its ghastly tortures.

The other danger which threatened the Bishop proceeded from a cannon ball, which being shot from the other side of the Thames, pierced through his house at Lambeth-marsh, and only just missed his study. This might possibly be accidental, but Fisher suspected a design against his life, and retired to his see of Rochester.

The divorce cause, which, upon the Queen's appeal, had been advoked to Rome, still lingered on. The case had been divided into three and twenty heads, and a year was consumed in discussing the first, which had little relation to the main point, and was of a nature which had better not been discussed at all. Perhaps the suit was wilfully protracted, in hopes that the death of Catherine would end it in the most convenient manner; for she had many infirmities, and a breaking heart but this prospect suited not the impatience of Henry. That he endured so long delay can only be ascribed to his reluctance to break with the see of Rome. But accident about this time introduced him to Cranmer, and all his scruples were quickly removed. In 1521 it was first proposed in Convocation to bestow on the King the title of Supreme Head of the Church. Fisher opposed the innovation, which to him appeared blasphemous, with all his might, and succeeded so far as to get a clause inserted to the effect, that the King was acknowledged Head of the Church, IN SO FAR AS IT IS LAWFUL BY THE LAW OF CHRIST, which was almost taking away with the one hand

what was given by the other. In this form, however, it passed the upper house of Convocation, nine Bishops and fifty-two Abbots and Priors voting in its favour.

If we are to believe the author of the Life of Bishop Fisher, published under the name of Bailey, but really composed by Hall, a bigotted Romanist, and seminary priest at Cambray, King Henry was mightily enraged at the introduction of this neutralizing ingredient into his title. He sent for those whom he had employed to manage the business in the Convocation, and rated in the following kingly strain:-" Mother of God! you have played me a pretty prank: I thought to have made fools of them, and now you have so ordered the business that they are likely to make a fool of me, as they have done of you already, Go unto them again, and let me have the business passed without any quantums or tantums. I will have no quantums or tantums in the business, but let it be done." But in truth, there is nothing in eastern fiction more unfounded than the reports of Princes' private conversations with which many so-called histories abound. The poet may well be allowed to overhear the whispers of lovers, and the soliloquies of captives in their dungeons, but the historian should not usurp the same privilege. This assumption of supremacy met with little opposition in the province of Canterbury, but York, encouraged by Archbishop Lee, held out long and honourably, and sent two letters to his Majesty, respectfully informing him of their reasons for denying the title he claimed. The King, the evil of whose violent nature was not yet ripened, answered the northern Convocation in a mild and argumentative letter, probably composed, however, by Cranmer, in which "he disclaimed all design by fraud to surprise, or by force to captivate, their judgments, but only to convince them of the truth, and the equity of what he desired. He declared the sense of "Supreme Head of the Church," (though offensive in the sound to ignorant ears) claiming nothing thereby more than what christian princes in the primitive times assumed to themselves in their own dominions, so that it seems he wrought so far on their affections, that at last they consented thereunto."

So says that stout Church and King man, Tom Fuller; but we believe that the King's prerogative, after all, was more effective than his sophistry. If nothing more be meant by the King's supremacy than his right to govern the persons and properties of all his subjects, this had been asserted over and over again by almost every monarch in Europe. Even the royal right to the appointment of Bishops, &c., to the summoning convocations and synods, and the passing of regulative ordinances for the Church, was not altogether a new claim, though it

had been stoutly resisted by the more zealous Church-men. And indeed, however expedient it may be in a secular point of view, that such power be vested in the crown, it is utterly without example in the primitive church, or even analogy in the Jewish theocracy. It is a moot point whether the Bishops who purchased of Constantine an establishment for Christianity, and a secular rank for themselves, were not traitors to the Church. The question should be argued on grounds of christian expediency. If, however, it be deemed necessary that the Church possess a fixed property, and that property be the foundation of political privileges, it seems inconsistent with public safety, that the civil government should suffer the disposal of such property to pass out of its own hands. But Henry, following the precedent of Constantinopolitan Emperors, doubtless meant, by assuming the spiritual supremacy within his own dominions, to be lord of his subjects' faith as well as of their works, and to dispose of their creeds as well as of their properties; in fact, to be Alterius orbis Papa, the Pope of his own kingdom. Now of all possible tyrannies, this would have been the worst. No need to suppose a succession of Harry the Eigths. Such a power would have been fatal to all civil and intellectual freedom, even if possessed by Princes mild, intelligent, and pious as Charles the First. That no toleration would have been admitted or admissible, that every shade of opinion or mode of adoration that did not accord with the fancy of the reigning monarch would be subject to the penalties of treason; and, on the other hand, that every effort on behalf of civil liberty would be treated as schism or sacrilege, would not have been the worst consequence of the royal and national papacy. There would have been a new creed at least with every reign, perhaps with every year. The Church would have been impoverished and the clergy ruined by capricious changes in garments, which would be altered as frequently and as expensively as the uniforms of crack regiments. But worse than all, nobody who wished to be saved in the Church Royal would know what to believe, or how to pray. It is by no means impossible that the immortality of the soul might have been abolished, or purgatory established by royal proclamation, and royal proclamations would then have had the force of laws.

We think, therefore, that the clergy of Yorkshire and the other northern provinces acted commendably in delaying to transfer their spiritual allegiance; for as Henry still maintained the doctrines of the Church of Rome,-nay, even burned many for the disbelief of tenets grounded solely on the authority and tradition of that Church-tenets of which he could have no proof that did not rest on the infallibility of that Church, of which the papacy is the sealing stone. The mere act of

separation from the Catholic body was on Henry's part an act of schism, however justifiable in those real reformers, who held conscientiously that the Popes had been, and continued to be, corrupters of christianity, and upholders of corruption.

But unfortunately for their own credit, the adherents of the ancient Church attempted to support their failing cause by means the most illjudged and unjustifiable; and Bishop Fisher in his old age betrayed a degree of credulity, or rather gullibility, which the darkness of the time can hardly excuse. At the same time, we entirely acquit him of any participation in, or connivance at, the fraud. He was one of those good men who think the excellence of faith consists in believing readily and much. He was weak and grey-headed. He saw that Church which he esteemed the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and the Israel of God, in peril of being led away captive; and thought that if ever power divine displayed itself at time of need, that time was come. Nothing almost sees miracles,

But miseries.

In the parish of Aldington, in Kent, there lived a young woman, named Elizabeth Barton, of mean birth and no education, who was subject to that sort of epileptic fits which the ignorance of mankind was wont to attribute either to possession or inspiration. When in these trances, she uttered wild incoherent speeches, which sometimes seemed to have relation to the passages of the times. Hereupon Masters, the priest of Adlington, hoping to draw much custom by means of this poor diseased creature, drew up an account of her ravings and prophecyings, and went to the Archbishop Warham, and wrought so successfully upon the aged prelate, that he received orders to attend the damsel carefully, and bring tidings of any new trances she might fall into. It is probable that the woman was not from the beginning an impostor; but rather affected with that sort of docile insanity which has proved in past times so serviceable to the cause of priestcraft. When she awoke out of her trances, she was utterly unconscious what she had been saying; but the crafty priest would not have the matter to stop so, but persuaded her to believe, or at least to profess herself inspired by the Holy Ghost. He afterwards induced her to counterfeit, or perhaps wilfully to produce, renewed trances, and to deal in visions and revelations. The affair at length made a considerable noise, and many came to see her; and Masters, in order to raise the reputation of an image of the Virgin that was in a chapel within his parish, by which he might expect to profit largely from the offerings of devotees and the concourse of pilgrims, chose for an associate in his imposture one Dr. Bocking, a canon of Christ Church, in Canterbury. By