tax without the consent of parliament, nearly brought on a general insurrection: so universal was the feeling of disaffection produced by this infringement of the constitution, that the king was obliged to disown the measures of his minister and to abandon the subsidy altogether. It was at this time that the dispute arose between Henry and the pope respecting the divorce of his queen, Catherine, which resulted in the final separation of England from the church of Rome. The king having formed an attachment for Anne Boleyn, the daughter of a private gentleman, determined to displace queen Catherine, and raise his favourite to the throne. To effect this object he professed to have religious scruples about living with his brother's widow, and appealed to the pope for a divorce; but Clement VII., fearing the power of the emperor, to whom Catherine was related, refused to gratify his wishes; and Wolsey, who had an eye to the papacy, seconded this policy. After much delay and ineffectual negotiation the king's patience became exhausted; he degraded Wolsey, and employed a young ecclesiastic, named Cranmer, to frame the question in such a form that it might be submitted to the universities of Europe without directly involving the case at issue. The universities of Paris and Oxford, and the Jewish doctors, returned answer that under no circumstances was it permitted by the law of God for a man to live with his brother's wife, and that the king would be justified in procuring a divorce. Pleased with this result, the king preferred Cranmer to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and without waiting for the sanction of the pope, divorced his queen and married Anne Boleyn. As soon as this came to the ears of Clement VII. he thundered forth the anathemas of the church and threatened Henry with excommunication unless he reinstated Catherine; but the king, although a good catholic, was of too stubborn a disposition to be moved by these threats, and he openly threatened to withdraw his kingdom from the papal jurisdiction unless the pope sanctioned his marriage. Clement would gladly have received Henry again into the bosom of the church, which he had so ably defended against the doctrines of the Reformation, but the political necessity of keeping on friendly terms with the emperor precluded the possibility of a reconciliation upon terms which Henry was willing to accept. Finding his power not only unfettered but considerably increased since his separation from Rome, Henry declared himself head of the church, and obtained the sanction of parliament to the entire abolition of the papal authority in England. Nor was this so difficult a matter as might at first sight appear; the times had vastly changed since Henry II. trembled at the frown of Rome; the rivalry of factions in the church, with the growth of learning and intelligence, had

shaken the strongholds of superstition, and men had begun not only to see but to remonstrate against the scandalous abuses of the church. Taking advantage of the national feeling, Henry appropriated to himself the power which had formerly belonged to the church, and claimed the disposal of all ecclesiastical preferments. His first act as head of the national church was the dissolution of the monastic houses and the appropriation of their immense wealth, estimated at no less than £1,600,000 yearly, besides plate and jewels to an enormous amount, to the crown. Although there can be no doubt that Henry's rapacity was the principal inducement to this measure, yet he preferred to conceal it under the semblance of moderation, and before proceeding to extremities he sent commissioners to inquire into the revenues and abuses of all the religious foundations in England; and having procured sufficient evidence of their perversion from their original foundations, he caused a series of charges to be published, in which it was shown that the monasteries and nunneries were no longer the refuge of the wayfaring traveller or of the poor, but hot-beds of immorality and crime; and although many of these charges may have been exaggerations, yet there can be little doubt that the time had come when these institutions had ceased to perform any useful function in the state, and their dissolution was not only desirable but fraught with many political advantages. Instead of one-fourth of the people being shut up from all the ordinary employments of life, the occupants of the religious houses were again brought into society; and this great increase in the amount of available labour produced an unprecedented activity in trade and commerce: manufactures were more industriously pursued, and the press for employment caused many new enterprises to be undertaken. The distribution of the monastic lands amongst the laity also contributed to forward the Reformation by engaging the influential families in its support, as they well knew if the Roman hierarchy should be again established, they would be compelled to deliver up their spoils. The only cause of regret in the dissolution of the monasteries is that the magnificent structures of Gothic architecture and the valuable libraries of rare manuscripts should have been so ruthlessly destroyed. At the commencement of his religious reforms Henry caused the bible to be translated into English and placed it in the churches for public perusal but he soon found that the unrestricted study of the scriptures was ill calculated to render men submissive to his arbitrary dictates; he therefore restricted the reading of the bible to the learned and educated classes, and compelled the clergy to subscribe to ordinances, which, from their inconsistency both with the catholic and reformed religions, were named the

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bloody articles.' The professors of the former were condemned for not acknowledging the king's supremacy, and the converts to the latter for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation or the real presence; so that catholics and protestants were burned together at the same stake. Nor were Henry's oppressions confined to ecclesiastical matters: he carried the same bold and tyrannical spirit into every sphere of government; and not only the nobles and clergy, but the commons, were equally submissive to his will. Parliament attainted his ministers and wives at pleasure, and even permitted him to alter the order of succession, thus risking again the horrors of a civil war. To deny the king's supremacy-to marry the king after having lived incontinently in any respect to have any criminal intercourse with the king's reputed children or his relations-to slander the queen (Anne Boleyn) or her issue, were made capital offences; and the execution of these laws were made still more tyrannical than their enactment such men as sir Thomas Cromwell and sir Thomas More were condemned without a hearing. To add to the infamy of their decisions on one of these occasions, the commons, fearing that their sentence would not stand the test of law, sent to the judges to inquire if an attainder in parliament could be reversed in an inferior court; to which the judges correctly replied in the negative; but added, that as parliament was the highest tribunal in the realm, it became it to show an example of justice to the inferior courts. This salutary admonition was disregarded, and parliament was not ashamed to act upon its privilege. The condemnation of the earl of Surrey, the most accomplished man of his age, and of his father the duke of Norfolk, for quartering the royal arms with their own, to which they were entitled in the opinion of the heralds, may be mentioned as one of the most barbarous acts of Henry's reign; but were we in want of evidence of the atrocity of Henry's private character, his conduct towards his queens affords an eminent example: tired of Anne Boleyn, as he had previously been of Catherine of Aragon, he caused her to be accused in parliament of adultery, and the next day after her execution publicly married Jane Seymour, who died about a year after. His choice next fell on Anne of Cleves, with whom he fell in love by report, but not finding her so beautiful as he had anticipated, he was again divorced, and sir Thomas Cromwell, who had been so unfortunate as to recommend the marriage, was degraded and impeached. His fifth wife was Catherine Howard, niece of the duke of Norfolk, who only retained his affections for a short period, and then it was discovered that before her marriage she had lived incontinently, and this by the new law amounted to treason, so that she was executed to make room for Catherine

Parr, the widow of Neville, lord Latimer: this lady was more than once placed in danger by her attachment to the reformed religion, but her prudence and forbearance saved her life, and she had the good fortune to survive her tyrant. That Henry VIII. should have acted thus is not so much to be wondered at, as that his clergy and parliament should have sanctioned him in it. Nor was the conduct of parliament less reprehensible with regard to the laws affecting the general security of life and property: besides placing the consciences of men at the disposal of a tyrant, the commons passed a statute in 1541 releasing the king from all his former debts, and decreeing that if any person had been already paid he should be compelled to refund. It was further enacted, that the king might repeal all laws made before his attaining the age of twenty-four; and, above all, that his proclamations, if promulgated under pain of fine and imprisonment, should have the power of law: which latter concession might be said to threaten the very existence of the constitution; but Henry VIII. was not at all averse to parliaments, as he was the better able to indulge his passions under the shelter they afforded him, and on one occasion, it is entered in the journals, that when the commons prayed that the servant of one of their members might be released, as he had been imprisoned for debt contrary to the privileges of the house, the king replied that it pleased him well, and he only hoped that as he was one of the constituent parts of parliament, the same favour might be extended to him and his servants. It was the good fortune of Henry to succeed to a throne which had been strengthened by so wise and moderate a prince as Henry VII.; and by pursuing the line of policy which had already been marked out for him, he brought the kingdom to a high state of perfection without much exertion on his own part; he appointed wise and able ministers, and permitted no tyranny but his own; his own gratification was the ultimate object of his life, and while he made the nobles tremble he exalted the condition of the working classes: his reign saw a vast amelioration in the condition of the artisan and agricultural labourer, and, if we may judge from his popularity, his vices and his crimes were in a great measure overlooked by the men of his time, in the service they rendered to the reformation. "Henry," said cardinal Wolsey, who had a good opportunity of judging of his character, "is a prince of a most royal carriage, and hath a princely heart; and rather than he will miss any part of his will, he will endanger the one-half of his kingdom. I do assure you

that I have often kneeled before him, sometimes three hours together, to persuade him from his will and appetite, but could not prevail. Had I but served God as diligently as I have served

the king, He would not have deserted me in my grey hairs." Henry was born at a time when the relations of Europe were so nearly balanced that the influence of England began to exercise an important weight in foreign affairs. With the exception of France and Scotland, the English kings had had little connection with the continent: but Henry's relationship to Ferdinand of Spain, and the rivalry of the kings of France and Spain with the emperor of Germany for the possession of several of the minor states of Italy, which since the treaty of Cambray had become objects of ambition, brought him into connection with the principal contracting powers, his aid being alternately courted by France and Germany. As Henry's life drew to a close, he appears to have become still more arbitrary and tyrannical: the 27th of January, 1547, was the day appointed for the duke of Norfolk's execution, but the king's death having occurred the previous night, he was respited.

Few were acquainted with the inward sentiments of Henry, but on his death-bed he professed his adherence to the protestant faith, and sent for Cranmer, to whose friendship he had always remained constant. Henry was a scholar and a politician, and to his discrimination in the choice of ministers must be attributed in a great measure the glory of his reign. His policy, however, with regard to commerce and manufactures was not to be compared with that of the Plantagenet princes; instead of encouraging foreign artisans to settle in his kingdom, he passed many severe measures against them, and on one occasion banished 15,000 Flemings from London under the pretext that they monopolized labour, and by drawing trade into their own hands obstructed the national industry and drove the natives to pillage and theft,which was supposed to be supported by the fact that in England alone there were above 60,000 persons in prison for crimes and debts, and that the annual executions reached the incredible number of 2000; whereas the true cause of this fearful amount of crime and immorality was the prevailing ignorance of the people, who were scarcely emerged from the condition of serfdom, and were unacquainted with the arts of industry, which they had to learn of foreigners; and so far from the price of grain and bread being raised, as was falsely alleged, by the number of foreigners resident in England, the natural tendency of such a state of affairs was to induce the country people to a more diligent cultivation of their lands and an improved mode of agriculture, by supplying a more ready and lucrative market. Nor was this false impression of the influence of foreign manufacturers confined to the king; it extended to the whole mass of the people, and the towns which benefited most largely by their trade petitioned