inferior to Knox in capacity, and not at all in piety and honesty, have not
met the same generous treatment at his hands. He sneers at Hooper because
he had scruples about wearing episcopal robes at his consecration as Bishop
of Worcester, though he himself in a famous passage asserts the anomalous
position of bishops in the Church of England. Hooper, as a Calvinist, was
in the right in objecting, and though the point upon which he took his
stand was nominally one of form, there lay behind it a protest against the
Anglican conception of a bishop. He speaks slightingly of Ridley and
Ferrars, though he makes ample amends to them and to Hooper, when he comes
to describe the manner of their death. To the reformers who fled from the
Marian persecution, including men like Jewel and Grindal, he refers with
scornful contempt, though he has no word of criticism to apply to Knox for
retiring to England and to the continent when the flame of persecution was
certainly not more fierce. Latimer is one of his favourites,--a plain,
practical man, not given to abstract speculation or theological subtleties,
but one who was content to do his duty day by day without the fear of man
before his eyes. Latimer, though he was looked upon as a Protestant in the
earliest years of the English Reformation, believed in the Real Presence up
to a short time before his death. But of all English ecclesiastics Thomas
Cranmer was perhaps most to Froude's liking. Cranmer was, like Froude
himself, an artist in words. The English liturgy owes its charm and beauty
to his sense of style, his grace of expression, and his cultured piety.
That he was a great man few will be found in these days to maintain; fewer
still will believe that he deserved the scathing invective of Macaulay. But
no one can read the account given by Froude of his last years without
feeling that the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury was neither
saint nor martyr. If ever there was one, he was a timeserver. He pronounced
the divorce of Catherine of Arragon, though he had sworn fealty to the
Pope. He never raised a protest against any of the political murders of
Henry VIII.--with the notable exception of his courageous attempt to save
his friend, Thomas Cromwell. Even in that case, however, he lies under the
suspicion of having interfered through fear that his own fate was involved
in that of the _malleus monachorum_. In the days of Edward VI. he aimed at
the liberty, if not at the life,