the circumstances of the
time called properly for an open declaration of
this kind on the part of Cranmer, yet every one of
his predecessors, from the time of Edward I., must
have been inducted with a tacit understanding of
the same kind. If a bishop had been prosecuted
under the Statutes of Provisors, his oath to the
Papacy would have been no more admitted as an
excuse by the Plantagenet sovereigns, than the oath
of a college Fellow to obey the statutes of the
founder would have saved him from penalties under
the House of Hanover had he said mass in his
college chapel. Because Cranmer, foreseeing an
immediate collision between two powers, which each
asserted claims upon him, expressed in words a
qualification which was implied in the nature of
the case--it was, and is (I regret to be obliged to
speak in the present tense), but a shallow sarcasm
to taunt him with premeditated perjury.]

"It pleased the king's highness," Cranmer replied, "many and sundry
times to talk with me of the matter. I declared that, if I accepted
the office of archbishop, I must receive it at {p.228} the pope's
hands, which I neither would nor could do, for his highness was the
only supreme governor of this church in England. Perceiving that I
could not be brought to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of
Rome, the king called Doctor Oliver and other civil lawyers, and
devised with them how he might bestow it on me, enforcing me nothing
against my conscience, who informed him I might do it by way of
protestation. I said, I did not acknowledge the Bishop of Rome's
authority further than as it agreed with the word of God, and that it
might be lawful for me at all times to speak against him; and my
protestation did I cause to be enrolled, and there I think it
remaineth."

"Let your protestation, with the rest of your talk, give judgment
against you," answered Martin. "_Hinc prima mali labes_: of that your
execrable perjury, and the king's coloured and too shamefully suffered
adultery, came heresy and all mischief into the realm."

The special charges were then proceeded with.

In reply to a series of ques