, the low standard of clerical
morality should be raised. It is plain that the men of the New Learning
looked forward, not to a reform of doctrine but to a reform of life, not
to a revolution which should sweep away the older superstitions which they
despised but to a regeneration of spiritual feeling before which these
superstitions would inevitably fade away. Colet was soon charged with
heresy by the Bishop of London. Warham however protected him, and Henry to
whom the Dean was denounced bade him go boldly on. "Let every man have his
own doctor," said the young king after a long interview, "but this man is
the doctor for me!"

[Sidenote: Henry's Temper]

But for the success of the new reform, a reform which could only be
wrought out by the tranquil spread of knowledge and the gradual
enlightenment of the human conscience, the one thing needful was peace;
and peace was already vanishing away. Splendid as were the gifts with
which Nature had endowed Henry the Eighth, there lay beneath them all a
boundless selfishness. "He is a prince," said Wolsey as he lay dying, "of
a most royal courage; sooner than miss any part of his will he will
endanger one half of his kingdom, and I do assure you I have often kneeled
to him, sometimes for three hours together, to persuade him from his
appetite and could not prevail." It was this personal will and appetite
that was in Henry the Eighth to shape the very course of English history,
to override the highest interests of the state, to trample under foot the
wisest counsels, to crush with the blind ingratitude of fate the servants
who opposed it. Even Wolsey, while he recoiled from the monstrous form
which had revealed itself, could hardly have dreamed of the work which
that royal courage and yet more royal appetite was to accomplish in the
years to come. As yet however Henry was far from having reached the height
of self-assertion which bowed all constitutional law and even the religion
of his realm beneath his personal will. But one of the earliest acts of
his reign gave an earnest of the part which the new strength of the crown
was to enable an English king to play. Through the later years of Henry
the Seventh Catharine of Aragon had been recognized at the English court
simply as Arthur's widow and Princess Dowager of Wales. Her betrothal to
Prince Henry was looked upon as cancelled by his protest, and though the
king was cautious not to break openly with Spain by sending her home,