otion in their own tongue, a measure from which none but
the fanatics of either side dissented. This process went slowly on in
the issuing of two primers in 1535 and 1539, the rendering into English
of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, the
publication of an English Litany for outdoor processions in 1544, and
the adding to this of a collection of English prayers in 1545.

[Sidenote: The Court Factions.]

But the very tone of Henry shows his consciousness that this religious
truce rested on his will alone. Around him as he lay dying stood men who
were girding themselves to a fierce struggle for power, a struggle that
could not fail to wake the elements of religious discord which he had
striven to lull asleep. Adherents of the Papacy, advocates of a new
submission to a foreign spiritual jurisdiction there were few or none;
for the most conservative of English Churchmen or nobles had as yet no
wish to restore the older Roman supremacy. But Norfolk and Gardiner were
content with this assertion of national and ecclesiastical independence;
in all matters of faith they were earnest to conserve, to keep things as
they were, and in front of them stood a group of nobles who were bent on
radical change. The marriages, the reforms, the profusion of Henry had
aided him in his policy of weakening the nobles by building up a new
nobility which sprang from the Court and was wholly dependent on the
Crown. Such were the Russells, the Cavendishes, the Wriothesleys, the
Fitzwilliams. Such was John Dudley, a son of the Dudley who had been put
to death for his financial oppression in Henry the Seventh's days, but
who had been restored in blood, attached to the court, raised to the
peerage as Lord Lisle, and who, whether as adviser or general, had been
actively employed in high stations at the close of this reign. Such
above all were the two brothers of Jane Seymour. The elder of the two,
Edward Seymour, had been raised to the earldom of Hertford, and
entrusted with the command of the English army in its operations against
Scotland. As uncle of Henry's boy Edward, he could not fail to play a
leading part in the coming reign; and the nobles of the "new blood," as
their opponents called them in disdain, drew round him as their head.
Without any historical hold on the country, raised by the royal caprice,
and enriched by the spoil of the monasteries, these nobles were pledged
to the changes from which they had sprung and to