land,[262] lest the
opportunity should be made use of for an insurrection; but prudence
taught him, though disappointed in Francis, to make the best of a
connexion too convenient to be sacrificed. The German league was left in
abeyance till the immediate danger was passed, and till the effect of
the shock in England itself had been first experienced. He gladly
accepted, in lieu of it, an offer that the French fleet should guard the
Channel through the summer; and meanwhile, he collected himself
resolutely to abide the issue, whatever the issue was to be.

[Sidenote: Effect of the sentence upon Henry.]

[Sidenote: April 7. Convocation declares the pope's authority
abolished.]

[Sidenote: The garrisons are strengthened along the coasts.]

The Tudor spirit was at length awake in the English sovereign. He had
exhausted the resources of patience; he had stooped even to indignity to
avoid the conclusion which had come at last. There was nothing left but
to meet defiance by defiance, and accept the position to which the pope
had driven him. In quiet times occasionally wayward and capricious,
Henry, like Elizabeth after him, reserved his noblest nature for the
moments of danger, and was ever greatest when peril was most immediate.
Woe to those who crossed him now, for the time was grown stern, and to
trifle further was to be lost. The suspended act of parliament was made
law on the day (it would seem) of the arrival of the sentence.
Convocation, which was still sitting, hurried through a declaration that
the pope had no more power in England than any other bishop.[263] Five
years before, if a heretic had ventured so desperate an opinion, the
clergy would have shut their ears and run upon him: now they only
contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness. The houses of
the Observants at Canterbury and Greenwich, which had been implicated
with the Nun of Kent, were suppressed, and the brethren were scattered
among monasteries where they could be under surveillance. The Nun and
her friends were sent to execution.[264] The ordnance stores were
examined, the repairs of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were
strengthened along the coast. Everywhere the realm armed itself for the
struggle, looking well to the joints of its harness and to the temper of
its weapons.

[Sidenote: The commission sits to receive the oaths of allegiance.]

The commission appointed under the Statute of Succession opened its
sittings to