some points of view equally evident: but that
he was a supporter of the Pope against the rights of the church in
England and other his dominions, or was an upholder of the abuses
which had then overspread the whole garden of Christ's heritage, so
far from being established by evidence, is inconsistent with the
testimony of facts. The usurpations of the Romish see called for
resistance,[32] and Henry to a certain extent resisted them. The
abuses in the church needed reformation, and Henry showed that he
possessed the spirit of a real reformer, bent on the correction of
what was wrong, but uncompromising in his maintenance of the religion
which he embraced in his heart. He gave proof of a spirit more
Catholic than Roman, more Apostolic than Papal.

[Footnote 32: In the early part of his father's
reign, an ordinance was made, charging the King's
officers not to suffer aliens to bring bulls or
other letters into the kingdom, which might injure
the King or his realm.--Cleop. F. III. f. 114.]

In his very first parliament strong enactments were passed forbidding
ecclesiastics to receive bishoprics and benefices from Rome, on pain
of forfeiture and exile. And on complaints being made against (p. 034)
the ordinaries, Henry's answer is very characteristic of his
principles of church reform: "I will direct the bishops to remedy
these evils themselves; and, if they fail, then I will myself take the
matter into my own hands."

He had been little more than half a year on the throne,[33] when he
sent a peremptory mandate to the bishops of Aquitain, that they should
on no account obey any provision from the court of Rome, by which
preferment would be given to an enemy of England. And in the following
month, Dec. 11, 1413, Henry issued a prohibition, forbidding John
Bremore, clerk, whom the Pope had recommended to him when Prince of
Wales, to return to the court of Rome for the purpose of carrying on
mischievous designs against the King and his people, under a penalty
of 100_l._ And among his own bishops, countenanced and confidentially
employed by himself, were found men who protested honestly and
decidedly against the tyranny and corruption of Rome, and were as
zealously bent on restoring the church to the purity of its better
days, as were those martyrs to the truth who in the middle of the next
century sealed their testimony by t