s, and such trumpery as that,
Popery, purgatory, pardons, were flat
Against God's word and primitive constitution,
Crept in through covetousness and superstition
Of late years, through blindness, and men of no knowledge,
Even such as have been in every age.

It is with some surprise certainly that we find King John of England
glorified, for purposes of Protestant propaganda, as a sincere and godly
'protestant'. So it is, however. In his play, _King John_ (about 1548),
Bishop Bale depicts that monarch as an inspired hater of papistical
tyranny and an ardent lover of his country, in whose cause he suffered
death by poisoning at the hands of a monk. Stephen Langton, the Pope and
Cardinal Pandulph figure as Sedition, Usurped Power and Private Wealth.
A summary of the play, provided by an Interpreter, supplies us with the
following explanation of John's quarrel with Rome.

This noble King John, as a faithful Moses,
Withstood proud Pharaoh for his poor Israel,
Minding to bring it out of the land of darkness;
But the Egyptians did against him so rebel,
That his poor people did still in the desert dwell,
Till that duke Joshua, which was our late King Henry,
Closely brought us into the land of milk and honey.
As a strong David, at the voice of verity,
Great Goliah, the pope, he struck down with his sling,
Restoring again to a Christian liberty
His land and people, like a most victorious king;
To his first beauty intending the Church to bring
From ceremonies dead to the living word of the Lord.
This the second act will plenteously record.

As put into the mouth of the king himself, these other lines are hard to
beat for deliberate partisan misrepresentation. The king feels himself
about to die.

I have sore hungered and thirsted righteousness
For the office sake that God hath me appointed,
But now I perceive that sin and wickedness
In this wretched world, like as Christ prophesied,
Have the overhand: in me it is verified.
Pray for me, good people, I beseech you heartily,
That the Lord above on my poor soul have mercy.
Farewell noblemen, with the clergy spiritual,
Farewell men of law, with the whole commonalty.
Your disobedience I do forgive you all,
And desire God to pardon your iniquity.
Farewell, sweet England, now last of all to thee:
I am right sorry I could do for thee no more.
Farew