virtues which he possessed in
as eminent a degree as those times, equally distracted with faction and
oppressed by tyranny, could easily permit. On the other hand, the duke
of Norfolk adhered to the ancient faith, and by his high rank, as well
as by his talents, both for peace and war, he had great authority in
the king's council: Gardiner, lately created bishop of Winchester, had
enlisted himself in the same party; and the suppleness of his character,
and dexterity of his conduct, had rendered him extremely useful to it.

All these ministers, while they stood in the most irreconcilable
opposition of principles to each other, were obliged to disguise
their particular opinions, and to pretend an entire agreement with
the sentiments of their master. Cromwell and Cranmer still carried the
appearance of a conformity to the ancient speculative tenets; but they
artfully made use of Henry's resentment to widen the breach with the see
of Rome. Norfolk and Gardiner feigned an assent to the king's supremacy,
and to his renunciation of the sovereign pontiff; but they encouraged
his passion for the Catholic faith, and instigated him to punish those
daring heretics who had presumed to reject his theological principles.
Both sides hoped, by their unlimited compliance, to bring him over
to their party: the king, meanwhile, who held the balance between the
factions, was enabled, by the courtship paid him both by Protestants
and Catholics, to assume an unbounded authority: and though in all
his measures he was really driven by his ungoverned humor, he casually
steered a course which led more certainly to arbitrary power, than any
which the most profound politics could have traced out to him. Artifice,
refinement, and hypocrisy, in his situation, would have put both parties
on their guard against him, and would have taught them reserve in
complying with a monarch whom they could never hope thoroughly to have
gained;* but while the frankness, sincerity, and openness of Henry's
temper were generally known, as well as the dominion of his furious
passions, each side dreaded to lose him by the smallest opposition, and
flattered themselves that a blind compliance with his will would throw
him cordially and fully into their interests.

The ambiguity of the king's conduct, though it kept the courtiers in
awe, served, in the main, to encourage the Protestant doctrine among his
subjects, and promoted that spirit of innovation with which the age wa