ruel one, but the government are not to
be blamed.]

[Sidenote: The king orders the court into mourning.]

So fell the monks of the London Charterhouse, splintered to pieces--for
so only could their resistance be overcome--by the iron sceptre and the
iron hand which held it. They were, however, alone of their kind. There
were many perhaps who wished to resemble them, who would have imitated
their example had they dared. But all bent except these. If it had been
otherwise, the Reformation would have been impossible, and perhaps it
would not have been needed. Their story claims from us that sympathy
which is the due of their exalted courage. But we cannot blame the
government. Those who know what the condition of the country really was,
must feel their inability to suggest, with any tolerable reasonableness,
what else could have been done. They may regret so hard a necessity, but
they will regret in silence. The king, too, was not without feeling. It
was no matter of indifference to him that he found himself driven to
such stern courses with his subjects; and as the golden splendour of
his manhood was thus sullenly clouding, "he commanded all about his
court to poll their heads," in public token of mourning; "and to give
them example, he caused his own head to be polled; and from thenceforth
his beard to be knotted, and to be no more shaven."[439]

[Sidenote: May 8. Other martyrs who were not Catholics.]

The friars of Charterhouse suffered for the Catholic faith, as
Protestants had suffered, and were still to suffer, for a faith fairer
than theirs. In this same month of May, in the same year, the English
annals contain another entry of no less sad significance. The bishops,
as each day they parted further from their old allegiance, and were
called in consequence by the hateful name of heretics, were increasingly
anxious to prove by evident tokens their zeal for the true faith; and
although the late act of heresy had moderated their powers, yet power
enough remained to enable them to work their will upon all extreme
offenders. Henry, also, it is likely, was not sorry of an opportunity of
showing that his justice was even-handed, and that a schism from the
papacy was not a lapse into heterodoxy. His mind was moving. Latimer and
Shaxton, who three years before had been on trial for their lives, were
soon to be upon the bench; and in the late injunctions, the Bible, and
not the decrees of the church, had been held up as t