sorrow in 1471. The titular crown of France had been easily
taken from him by Charles VII. and Joan of Arc; and although Richard of
York, the great-grandson of Edward III., had failed in his attempts upon
the English throne, yet _his_ son Edward, afterward the Fourth, was
successful. Then came the patricide of Clarence, the accession and
cruelties of Richard III., the battle of Bosworth, and, at length, the
union of the two houses in the persons of Henry VII. (Henry Tudor of
Lancaster) and Elizabeth of York. Thus the strife of the succession was
settled, and the realm had rest to reorganize and start anew in its
historic career.

The weakening of the aristocracy by war and by execution gave to the
crown a power before unknown, and made it a fearful coigne of vantage for
Henry VIII., whose accession was in 1509. People and parliament were alike
subservient, and gave their consent to the unjust edicts and arbitrary
cruelties of this terrible tyrant.

In his reign the old English quarrel between Church and State--which
during the civil war had lain dormant--again rose, and was brought to a
final issue. It is not unusual to hear that the English Reformation grew
out of the ambition of a libidinous monarch. This is a coincidence rather
than a cause. His lust and his marriages would have occurred had there
been no question of Pope or Church; conversely, had there been a continent
king upon the throne, the great political and religious events would have
happened in almost the same order and manner. That "knock of a king" and
"incurable wound" prophesied by Piers Plowman were to come. Henry only
seized the opportunity afforded by his ungodly passions as the best
pretext, where there were many, for setting the Pope at defiance; and the
spirit of reformation so early displayed, and awhile dormant from
circumstances, and now strengthened by the voice of Luther, burst forth in
England. There was little demur to the suppression of the monasteries; the
tomb of St. Thomas a Becket was desecrated amidst the insulting mummeries
of the multitude; and if Henry still burned Lutherans--because he could
not forget that he had in earlier days denounced Luther--if he still
maintained the six bloody articles[22]--his reforming spirit is shown in
the execution of Fisher and More, by the anathema which he drew upon
himself from the Pope, and by Henry's retaliation upon the friends and
kinsmen of Cardinal Pole, the papal legate.

Having thus bri