The sacred associations of twelve
centuries were tumbling into ruin; and hot and angry as men had been before
the work began, the hearts of numbers sank in them when they "saw what was
done;" and they fell away slowly to doubt, disaffection, distrust, and at
last treason.

The first outward symptom of importance pointing in this direction, was the
resignation of the seals by Sir Thomas More.[361] More had not been an
illiberal man; when he wrote the _Utopia_, he seemed even to be in advance
of his time. None could see the rogue's face under the cowl clearer than
he, or the proud bad heart under the scarlet hat; and few men had ventured
to speak their thoughts more boldly. But there was in More a want of
confidence in human nature, a scorn of the follies of his fellow creatures
which, as he became more earnestly religious, narrowed and hardened his
convictions, and transformed the genial philosopher into the merciless
bigot. "Heresy" was naturally hateful to him; his mind was too clear and
genuine to allow him to deceive himself with the delusions of Anglicanism;
and as he saw the inevitable tendency of the Reformation to lead ultimately
to a change of doctrine, he attached himself with increasing determination
to the cause of the pope and of the old faith. As if with an instinctive
prescience of what would follow from it, he had from the first been opposed
to the divorce; and he had not concealed his feeling from the king at the
time when the latter had pressed the seals on his unwilling acceptance. In
consenting to become chancellor, he had yielded only to Henry's entreaties;
he had held his office for two years and a half--and it would have been
well for his memory if he had been constant in his refusal--for in his
ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to counterpoise
the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy Protestants. At the
close of the session, however, the acts of which we have just described, he
felt that he must no longer countenance, by remaining in an office so near
to the crown, measures which he so intensely disapproved and deplored; it
was time for him to retire from a world not moving to his mind; and in the
fair tranquillity of his family prepare himself for the evil days which he
foresaw. In May, 1532, he petitioned for permission to resign, resting his
request unobtrusively on failing health; and Henry sadly consented to lose
his services.

Parallel to More's retireme