These measures, though passed in parliament, excited universal murmurs against the king and his minister Cromwell, The latter had long been hated by the no bility, on account of his low extraction, and his posses sion of many offices and honours which they considered as belonging only to persons of illustrious birth ; and he was equally obnoxious to the clergy and the people, as the supposed author of Henry's rapacious proceedings. By the Catholics he was regarded as the concealed ene my of their religion ; and by the Protestants, he was re proached with the timidity or treachery of his conduct, in giving his countenance to the persecutions by which they were harassed. Ile had lost afi favour with the king, in consequence of his having been the adviser of his late joyless mat riap-,e with Anne of Cleves ; and, as henry had now fixed his affections upon Catherine How ard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, who had long been at enmity with Cromwell, he was easily persuaded, at once to seek a divorce from his queen, and to consent to the ruin of his minister. Cromwell was accused of he resy and treason, and, without examination or evidence, was condemned to death. He made the most humble sub mission to the king, and wrote to him for mercy in so mo ving a strain as is said to have drawn tears from his eyes. Archbishop Cranmer interceded earnestly in his behalf, and even went so far as to affirm, that " no king in this realm ever had such a servant." But the charms of Ca therine Howard and the importunities of her friends pre vailed. Cromwell, one of the wisest and most upright ministers who had ever served in England, and who, in all his exaltation, betrayed no insolence towards his in feriors, and no forgetfulness of his former obligations, fell a sacrifice to the passions of a capricious tyrant, to whom he had been only too obsequious.
The measures for Henry's divorce were carried on at the same time with the bill of attainder against Crom well. The convocation and parliament readily annulled his marriage, upon his own affirmation, that he had not consented inwardly to the match, and had never con summated the union. Anne herself discovered the ut most indifference in the matter ; and, accepting a settle ment of 3000/. a-year, freely consented to the divorce ; but, unwilling to return to her own country after sus taining such an affront, she lived and died in England.
The king's marriage with Catherine Howard, which soon followed his divorce from Anne Cleves, was re garded by the Catholics as a favourable event to their party ; and a furious persecution was commenced against the Protestants who offended against the law of the six articles. Nor did Henry spare the Papists who denied his supremacy ; but displayed, with disgusting ostenta tion, his impartial oppression of both parties. Three Protestants, Barnes, Jerome, and Gerrard, coupled with three Catholics, Abel, Fetherstone, and Powell, were carried to execution at the same time; which gave ocea= sion to a foreigner to remark, that, " in England, those who were against the pope were burned, and those who were for him were hanged." By these cruelties, a sight insurrection was excited in the north; from which Hen ry took occasion to order to execution the venerable Countess of Salisbury, mother of Cardinal Pole, who had formerly been condemned, and who was now again ac cused of encouraging these disturbances, Many other persons of different ranks suffered about this time, part ly on political and partly on religious grounds; but their punishments only, and not the crimes laid to their charge, have been recorded.
In order to quiet the northern districts, and to confer with the king of Scotland, Henry took a journey to the city of York; but James being bribed by his clergy, who dreaded the consequences of this meeting, failed to ap pear; and his uncle, enraged at this affront, immediate ly ordered war to be carried on against the Scots by sea and land. Returning to his capital, he experienced a disgrace which touched him much more sensibly. He had openly proclaimed the satisfaction which he enjoyed in his new marriage, and even returned solemn thanks to heaven for his conjugal felicity. On the very next day he received information, too circumstantial and au thentic to admit of doubt, that his consort had led very dissolute life before marriage, and was strongly suspect ed of still continuing her licentious indulgences. Two
of her paramours having confessed their guilt, the queen herself, while she insisted upon her fidelity to the king's bed, having admitted her former acts of lewdness, and the king being little inclined to make any distinction be tween these degrees of criminality, she was condemned to death, and beheaded on Tower-hill, along with the infamous Duchess of Rochford, who had conducted her secret amours. At the same time, a bill of attainder for misprision of treason was passed against her grandmo ther, the old Duchess of Norfolk, her uncle Lord Howard and his lady, the Duchess of Bridgewater, and several other persons of distinction, because they had concealed the queen's vicious course of life ; but, probably from reflecting upon the oppressive cruelty of such a proceed ing, he afterwards granted a pardon to most of them. In order, however, to guard against the renewal of such misfortunes, he enacted several ridiculous and indeli cate laws against concealing the incontinence of future queens, which furnished matter of great derision to the people, and which were all repealed in the first year of the following reign.
Henry, in order to enrich his exchequer without de manding a subsidy, took farther steps to dissolve colle ges, hospitals, and similar institutions ; and the parlia ment, to promote his purpose, annulled all the local sta tutes of these foundations, which prevented the surren der of their revenues. He proceeded to make inroads also upon the secular clergy, and pillaged several of the wealthier sees of their chapter lands, with which he en riched his parasitical flatterers. While he gratified his rapacity by plundering the church, he continued to in dulge his bigotry by persecuting heretics. He engaged the parliament, indeed, to mitigate the law of the she ar ticles, as far as regarded those priests who entered into the married state; but he still persisted in maintaining the purity of speculative principles, and enforcing uni formity in religious sentiments. He had appointed a commission, to frame a system of faith for the nation ; and the parliament, in the grossness of their servility, had passed a law in 1541, by which they blindly ratified, by anticipation, all the tenets which these divines should afterwards establish with the king's consent. A small volume was at length published, called the Institution of a Christian Alan, which may, in fact, be considered as the composition of the king, and which was voted by the convocation to be the standard of sound religion. In all the great points of Christian truth, this production favoured the sentiments of the reformers ; but the sa craments, which a few years before had been limited to three, were here again increased to the number of seven, conformably to the opinion of the Catholics. But the king soon after ordered a new book to be composed, call ed The Condition of a Christian Man, which, without ,ronsulting the convocation, but by his own authority and that of the parliament, he published to the nation as the model of their faith, and required them to veer about in their belief at every signal of his inconstancy. Ile was much perplexed, however, what course to take with the scriptures ; and seems to have felt the difficulty of reconciling his requisitions of uniformity with the per mission of free enquiry. With the concurrence, there fore, of the parliament, he retracted the concession which had been formerly made, that every person might have the scriptures in his family, and now pro hibited all but gentlemen and merchants from perusing them. Even to these classes the permission was grant ed with evident hesitation and dread of the consequences ; for they were allowed to read for themselves, with this cautious proviso, "so it be done quietly, and with good order." The mass-book also passed under the king's re visal ; but the principal alterations consisted in striking from the calendar a few fictitious saints, and erasing the name of the pope wherever it occurred. This latter ap pellation was carefully excluded from every new book that was printed, and blotted out in every old one that was sold, in order, if possible, to abolish the term from the language, and to make the people forget that such a personage existed.