CHAPTER V.

SOON after these events, Henry was prevailed upon by Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne, (who was commissioned by Francis,) to make concessions to the Court of Rome. The Pope, who really had no wish to come to extremities with England, finally agreed to defer his sentence of excommunication in consequence of Catharine's divorce and Henry's marriage, and wait for the submission. This negotiation in part transpired, and gave doubt and alarm to Anne and her party. Anne knew that she could find no favor with the Pope, and the Protestants were fully aware that a renewal of apologies and promises was a renewal of Catholic bonds.

Cranmer, well acquainted with the obstinacy of Henry, looked on with dismay, trusting, however, that the reformed religion might yet be protected. The messenger was despatched to Rome, and the English Protestants waited with anxious feelings for the events that were to follow.

Contrary winds detained the courier of the King beyond the time appointed. To the ex

cited mind of the Pope, this delay was a new insult. In vain his counsellors solicited him to suspend the sentence, and suggested the possibility of involuntary detention. The Pope positively refused, and uttered the sentence of excommunication against Henry, and England became a Protestant country!

The dismay of the Catholic conclave, with Clement at their head, may well be imagined at the arrival of the courier freighted with Henry's submission, two days after the tremendous sentence of excommunication had been hurled at his royal head. Cranmer might well say with Luther, "God is on our side," when he found the intended submission of the King was rendered of no avail by the precipitancy of the Pope, and his zeal in the cause of reformation seems from this time to have been unceasing. The first step he proposed, was, to have the Scriptures put into vulgar or common language, and liberty given to all to read them. Though this motion was acceded to in Parliament, yet another was added of an opposite spirit, and greatly vexed the Archbishop. "That all in whose possession were books printed in the vulgar language, either beyond or this side of the sea, of suspect doctrine, should be warned, within three months to bring them in before certain persons appointed by the King, under certain penalties to be determined by

the King." The Archbishop had openly in his preaching denied the Pope's jurisdiction; but in March, 1534, a bill was read in the House of Lords, setting forth the intolerable exactions for Peter-pence, provisions, pensions, and bulls, which were contrary to all laws, and grounded only on the Pope's power of dispensing, which was usurped; for the King, and the Lords and Commons only had the right to consider how the laws might be dispensed with, or abrogated, and that the King ought to be considered the supreme head of the Church. This act was accepted, and the succession to the crown was secured, in another bill passed a few days after, to the descendants of Queen Anne, in which all were required" to swear to bear faith, truth, and obedience alonely to the King's majesty, and to his heirs of his most dear and entirely beloved wife, Queen Anne."

This bill very naturally awoke new opposition among the Catholics, and new tumults. Anne had the mortification of seeing herself continually styled the "upstart Queen," the subject of coarse and indecent jests; for the English were not at that time accomplished in the neat and pointed epigram of the French. They pounced upon their prey, and mauled and battered like any boxers. Not contented with this prowess, their dissatisfaction began to take a treasonable shape, mak

ing a woman by the name of Anne Barton their unfortunate tool.

This person had been subject to epileptic fits, and, while under their partial dominion, adopted a wildness and strangeness of denunciation, that has since afforded a model for many romances. Bred in the Roman Catholic school, and deeply sensible of the wrongs of Catharine, she naturally turned her vituperation upon her successor Anne. More than once, Anne had, in her excursions, heard the wild ravings of the selfstyled prophetess. With the curiosity of youth, she had even paused to listen; and, when her attendants would have arrested or used violence towards the woman, she had ordered them to let her alone. The impression was a fleeting one upon the Queen's mind, and it was not till she was styled the Maid of Kent, and her mission "accredited by a letter written in heaven, and sent to her by Mary Magdalene," that the mad woman was recalled to her memory.

Nothing more entirely exhibits the darkness of the age, than the importance attached to this miserable woman. The King became more especially the object of her predictions. She ventured to proclaim that he would die the death of a common felon. As she resided within the diocese of Cranmer, he could not remain ignorant of her growing influence. For some time

he regarded her as Anne had done, as of little importance; but, when her predictions took a form so treasonable, and she even fixed on a day for the death of the King, he could no longer remain inactive. There is a letter of the Archbishop's still extant giving an account of her. "When

she was brought here and laid before the image. of our Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes being in a manner plucked out, and laid upon her cheeks; and so greatly disordered." Le Bas, the historian of Cranmer, supposes she had something of the gift of ventriloquism, for the Archbishop goes on to say; "Then there was a voice heard speaking inwardly, her lips not greatly moving; she all that while continuing by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it told any thing of the joys of heaven, it spake so sweetly and so heavenly, that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof. And contrary, when it told any thing of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly, that it put the hearers in great fear. It spake also many things for the confirmation of pilgrimages, and trentals, hearing of masses and confessions, and many other such things. And after she had lain there a long time, she came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. And so this miracle was finished and solemnly sung, and a book written of all the story thereof,