rch was to be required all
the righteous blood which it had shed, from the blood of Raymond of
Toulouse to the blood of the last victim who had blackened into ashes
at Smithfield. The voices crying underneath the altar had been heard
upon the throne of the Most High, and woe to the generation of which the
dark account had been demanded.

[Sidenote: The effect of these executions in Europe.]

In whatever light, however, we may now think of these things, the effect
in Europe was instantaneous and electrical. The irritation which had
accompanied the excommunication by Clement had died away in the
difficulty of executing the censures. The papal party had endeavoured to
persuade themselves that the king was acting under a passing caprice.
They had believed that the body of the people remained essentially
Catholic; and they had trusted to time, to discontent, to mutiny, to the
consequences of what they chose to regard as the mere indulgence of
criminal passion, to bring Henry to his senses. To threats and
anathemas, therefore, had again succeeded fair words and promises, and
intrigues and flatteries; and the pope and his advisers, so long
accustomed themselves to promise and to mean nothing, to fulminate
censures in form, and to treat human life as a foolish farce upon the
stage, had dreamed that others were like themselves. In the rough
awakening out of their delusion, as with a stroke of lightning, popes,
cardinals, kings, emperors, ambassadors, were startled into seriousness;
and, the diplomatic meshwork all rent and broken, they fell at once each
into their places, with a sense suddenly forced upon them that it was no
child's play any longer. The King of England was in earnest, it seemed.
The assumption of the supremacy was a fixed purpose, which he was
prepared to make a question of life and death; and with this resolution
they must thenceforward make their account.

[Sidenote: The news arrives at Rome of the deaths of the Carthusians.]

On the 1st of June, Cassalis wrote[464] from Rome that the French
ambassador had received a letter concerning certain friars who had been
put to death in England for denying the king to be Head of the Church.
The letter had been read in the consistory, and was reported to be
written in a tone of the deepest commiseration. There had been much
conversation about it, the French bishops having been louder than any in
their denunciations; and the form of the execution was described as
hav