Before this date two domestic occurrences took place that especially deserve to be noted. The first of these was the execution, in 1513, immediately before Henry proceeded ou his expedition to France, of Edmund de Is Pole, duke of Suffolk, whose mother was Elizabeth I'lantagenet, sister of Edward IV.; he had lain a prisoner in the Tower ever since is short time before the death of the late king, who had contrived to obtain possession of his person after he had fled to the Contiucct, and, it is said, had in his last hours recommended that he should not be suffered to live. llo was now put to death without any form of trial or other legal proceeding, his crime, there can be no doubt, being merely his connection with the House of York. 1Volsey was perhaps as yet too new in office to be•fairly made answerable for this act of bloodshed ; in the next case the unfortunate victim is generally believed to have been sacrificed to his resentment and thirst of vengeance. In 1521 Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, son of the duke beheaded by Richard IIL [Hz env VIL), was apprehended on some information furnished to Wolsey by a discarded servant, and being brought to trial was found guilty and executed as a traitor. The acts with which he was charged did not according to law amount to treason, even if they had been proved; but the duke is said by certain indiscretions of speech and demeanour to have wounded the pride of the all-powerful minister; and, besides, he was also of dangerous pedigree, being not only maternally of the stock of John of Gaunt, but likewise a Plantagenet by his descent from Anne, the daughter of Edward III:a youngest son Thomas, duke of Gloucester. With this nobleman came to an end the great office of hereditary lord high constable.
What may be called the second part of Henry's reign begins in the year 1527, from which date our attention is called to a busy scene of domestic) transactions beside which the foreign politics of the kingdom become of little interest or importance. It is no longer the ambition and intrigue of the minister, but the wilfulness and furious passioue of the king himself, that move all things. In 1527 Henry cast his eyes upon Anne Boleyn, and appears to have very soon formed the design of ridding himself of Catherine, and making the object of this new attachment his queen. [Boterte, ANNE.] Aune was understood to be favourably disposed towards those new views on the subject of religion and ecclesiastical affairs which had been agitating all Europe over since Luther had begun his intrepid career by publicly opposing iudnlgeoces at Wittenberg ten years before. Queen Catherine, on the other hand, was a good Catholic; and, besides, the circumstances in which she was placed made it her interest to take her stand by the Church, as on the other baud her adversaries were driven iu like manner by their interests and the course of events into dissent and opposition. This one consideration sufficiently explains all that followed. The friends of the old religion generally considered Cathie rine's cause as their own; the Reformers as naturally arrayed them selvee on the aide of her rival. Henry himself again, though he had been till now resolutely opposed to the new opinions, was carried over by his purism towards the same side; the consequence of which was the loss of the royal favour by thoso who had hitherto monopolised it, and its trausference in great part to other men, to be employed by them iu the promotion of entirely opposite purposes and politics. The proceedings for the divorce were commenced by an application to the court of Rome, in August 1527. For two years the affair lingered on through a succession of legal proceedings, but without any decisive result. From the autumn of 1529 are to be dated both the fall of Wolsey aud the rise of Creamer. [CnaNsalt, Thomas.] The death
of the great cardinal took place on the 29th of November 1530. lu January following the first blow was struck at the Church by an indictment being brought Into the King's Bench against all the clergy of the kingdom for supporting Woiscy iu the exercise of his legntiue powers without the royal licence, as required by the old statutes of prorisors and premunire; and it was in an act passed immediately after by the Convocation of the province of Canterbury, for grunting to the king a sum of money to exempt them from the penalties of their conviction on this indictment, that the first movement was made towards is revolt against the see of Rome, by the titles given to Henry of "tho one protector of the English Church, its only and supreme lord, and, as far as might be by the law of Christ, its supreme head." Shortly after, the convocation declared tho king's marriage with Catherine to be contrary to the law of God. The same year Henry went the length of openly countenancing Protestantism abroad by remitting a subsidy to the confederacy of the Elector of Brandenburg and other German princes, called the League of Smalcald. Iu August 1532 Creamer was appointed to the archbishopric of Canterbury. In the beginning of the year 1533 Henry was privately married to Anne Boleyn ; and on the 23rd of May following Archbishop Craumer pro nounced the former marriage with Catherine void. In the meantime the parliament had passed an act forbidding all appeals to the ace of Rome. Pope Clement VIL met this by annulling the sentence of Craumer in the matter of the marriage ; on which the separation from Rome became complete. Acts were passed by the parliament the next year declaring that the clergy should in future be assembled in con vocation only by the king's writ, that no constitutions enacted by them should be of force without the king's assent, and that no first fruits, or Peter's pence, or money for dispensations, should be any longer paid to the pope. The clergy of the province of York themselves iu convocation declared that the pope had no more power in England than any other bishop. A new and most efficient supporter of this Reformation now also becomes conspicuous on the scene, Thomas Cromwell (afterwards Lord Cromwell and Earl of Essex), who ens this year made first secretary of state, and then master of the rolls. (Cltomwett, Trioisas.) In the next session, the parliament, which re-assembled in the end of this same year, passed acts declaring the king's highness to be supreme head of the Church of England, and to have authority to redress all errors, heresies, and abuses in the Church; and ordering first fruits and tenths of all spiritual benefices to be paid to the king. After Gals various persons were executed for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy ; among others, two illustrious victims, the learned Fidler, bishop of Rochester, and the admirable Sir Thomas More. [Fisusn, Joan; Mons, Tuomes.] In 1535 began the dissolution of the monasteries, uuder the zealous euperintendauce of Cromwell, constituted for that purpose visitor general of these establishments. Latimer and other friends of Crea mer and the Reformation were now also promoted to bishoprics; so that not only in matters of discipline aud polity, hut even of doctrine, the Church might be said to have separated itself from Rome. One of the last acts of the parliament under which all these great inno vations bad beau made was to petition the king that a new translation of the Scriptures might be made by authority and set up in churches. It was dissolved on the 18th of July 1536, after having sat for the then unprecedented period of six years.