hich lasted over six days and which left a third of the Lower House
still opposed to it. Their opposition by no means implied approval of
the whole series of religious changes of which the Prayer Book formed a
part, for the more moderate Catholics were pleading at this time for
prayers in the vulgar tongue, and on this question followers of More and
Colet might have voted with the followers of Cranmer. But it showed how
far men's minds were from any spirit of blind reaction or blind
compliance with the royal will.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Marriage.]

The temper of the Parliament indeed was very different from that of the
Houses which had knelt before Henry the Eighth. If it consented to
repeal the enactment which rendered her mother's marriage invalid and to
declare Mary "born in lawful matrimony," it secured the abolition of all
the new treasons and felonies created in the two last reigns. The demand
for their abolition showed that jealousy of the growth of civil tyranny
had now spread from the minds of philosophers like More to the minds of
common Englishmen. Still keener was the jealousy of any marked
revolution in the religious system which Henry had established. The wish
to return to the obedience of Rome lingered indeed among some of the
clergy and in the northern shires. But elsewhere the system of a
national Church was popular, and it was backed by the existence of a
large and influential class who had been enriched by the abbey lands.
Forty thousand families had profited by the spoil, and watched anxiously
any approach of danger to their new possessions, such as submission to
the Papacy was likely to bring about. On such a submission however Mary
was resolved: and it was to gain strength for such a step that she
determined to seek a husband from her mother's house. The policy of
Ferdinand of Aragon, so long held at bay by adverse fortune, was now to
find its complete fulfilment. To one line of the house of Austria, that
of Charles the Fifth, had fallen not only the Imperial Crown but the
great heritage of Burgundy, Aragon, Naples, Castille, and the Castillian
dependencies in the New World. To a second, that of the Emperor's
brother Ferdinand, had fallen the Austrian duchies, Bohemia and Hungary.
The marriage of Catharine was now, as it seemed, to bear its fruits by
the union of Mary with a son of Charles, and the placing a third
Austrian line upon the throne of England. The gigantic scheme of
bringing all weste