versations. It was enough,
however, for Cromwell's purpose when he needed it; and the fatal net was
cast over Pole's elder brother, Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter,
allied to the royal house, the Master of the Horse, Sir Nicholas Carew,
Sir Edward Neville, and half a score of other high gentlemen, known to be
faithful to the old cause--all to be unjustly sacrificed on the scaffold
to the fears of Henry and the political exigencies of Cromwell. Even the
women and children of the supposed sympathisers with the Papacy were not
spared; and the aged Countess of Salisbury, with her grandson, and the
Marchioness of Exeter, with her son, were imprisoned with many humbler
ones.

The defences of the kingdom on the coast and towards Scotland were rapidly
made ready to resist attack from abroad, which indeed looked imminent; and
when the noble and conservative party had been sufficiently cowed by the
sight of the blood of the highest of its members, when the reign of terror
over the land had made all men so dumb and fearsome that none dared say
him nay, Cromwell felt himself strong enough to endeavour to draw England
into the league of Protestant princes and defy the Catholic world. The
position for Henry personally was an extraordinary one. He had gradually
drifted into a position of independence from Rome; but he still professed
to be a strict Catholic in other respects. His primate, Cranmer, and
several other of his bishops whose ecclesiastical status was unrecognised
by the Pope, were unquestionably, and not unnaturally, Protestant in their
sympathies; whilst Cromwell was simply a politician who cared nothing for
creeds and faiths, except as ancillary to State policy. Francis, and even
on occasion Charles himself, made little of taking Church property for lay
purposes when he needed it: he had more than once been the ally of the
infidel against Catholic princes, and his religious belief was notoriously
lax; and yet he remained "the eldest son of the Church." Charles had
struggled successfully against the Papal pretensions to control the
temporalities of the Spanish Church, his troops had sacked Rome and
imprisoned the Pope, and his ministers for years had bullied pontiffs and
scolded them as if they were erring schoolboys. Excommunication had fallen
upon him and his, and as hard things had been said of him in Rome as of
Henry; and yet he was the champion of Catholic Christendom. The conclusion
is obvious that Henry's sin to