l minds were exercising
themselves. The Pope and the European Powers were confident, believing the
reports which had reached them of the discontent in England. Cranmer
feared it, as he almost confessed in the letter which he wrote to the King
when he first heard of the arrest of Anne. She had been conspicuously
Lutheran; her family and her party were Lutheran, and the disgrace might
naturally extend to the cause which they represented. The King was to show
that he had not, as he said himself, "proceeded on such light grounds."
The divorce had been the spark which kindled the mine; but the explosive
force was in the temper of the English nation. The English nation was
weary of a tribunal which sold its decrees for money, or allowed itself to
be used as a tool by the Continental Sovereigns. It was weary of the
iniquities of its own Church Courts, which had plundered rich and poor at
their arbitrary pleasure--of a clergy which, protected by the immunities
which Becket had won for them, and restrained by no laws save those which
they themselves allowed, had made their lives a scandal and their
profession an offence. The property which had been granted them in pious
confidence for holy uses was squandered in luxurious self-indulgence; and
they had replied to the reforms which were forced upon them by disloyalty
and treason. They had been coerced into obedience; they had been brought
under the control of the law, punished for their crimes in spite of their
sacred calling under which they had claimed exemption, and been driven
into the position of ordinary citizens. Their prelates were no longer able
to seize and burn _ex officio_ obnoxious preachers, or imprison or ruin
under the name of heretics rash persons who dared to speak the truth of
them.

In exasperation at the invasion of these time-honoured privileges, they
denounced as sacrilege the statutes which had been required to restrain
them. They had conspired to provoke the Pope to excommunicate their
Sovereign, and solicited the Catholic Powers to invade their country and
put the Reformers down with fire and sword. The King, who had been the
instrument of their beneficent humiliation, did not intend either to
submit the internal interests of the country to the authority of a foreign
bishop, or to allow the black regiments at home to recover the power which
they had so long abused.

Cromwell's commissioners were still busy on the visitation of the
religious houses. Each