tedious narrative which would follow, through a series
of fifty-six years, the caprices and weaknesses of so mean a prince as
Henry? The chief reason why Protestant writers have been so anxious
to spread out the incidents of this reign, is in order to expose the
rapacity, ambition, and artifices of the court of Rome, and to prove,
that the great dignitaries of the Catholic church, while they pretended
to have nothing in view but the salvation of souls, had bent all their
attention to the acquisition of riches, and were restrained by no sense
of justice or of honor in the pursuit of that great object.[*] But this
conclusion would readily be allowed them, though it were not illustrated
by such a detail of uninteresting incidents; and follows indeed, by
an evident necessity, from the very situation in which that church
was placed with regard to the rest of Europe. For, besides that
ecclesiastical power, as it can always cover its operations under a
cloak of sanctity, and attacks men on the side where they dare not
employ their reason, lies less under control than civil government;
besides this general cause, I say, the pope and his courtiers were
foreigners to most of the churches which they governed; they could not
possibly have any other object than to pillage the provinces for present
gain; and as they lived at a distance, they would be little awed by
shame or remorse in employing every lucrative expedient which was
suggested to them. England being one of the most remote provinces
attached to the Romish hierarchy, as well as the most prone to
superstition, felt severely, during this reign, while its patience was
not yet fully exhausted, the influence of these causes, and we shall
often have occasion to touch cursorily upon such incidents. But we shall
not attempt to comprehend every transaction transmitted to us: and till
the end of the reign, when the events become more memorable, we shall
not always observe an exact chronological order in our narration.

* M. Paris, p. 623.

The earl of Pembroke, who at the time of John's death, was mareschal
of England, was, by his office, at the head of the armies, and
consequently, during a state of civil wars and convulsions, at the head
of the government; and it happened, fortunately for the young monarch
and for the nation, that the power could not have been intrusted into
more able and more faithful hands. This nobleman, who had maintained
his loyalty unshaken to John dur