led to the reformation, too much stress is sometimes laid on the individuals who stood forward in the cause; and the succession of them, and connexion between those who followed each other, is traced with a minuteness which tends rather to cloud the truth, than to place it in the clearest light. Let any one study the word of God while he beholds the systems of error and knavery which have been pretended to be built on it, and the necessity of reformation will need no other light than that which Providence has furnished. Greathead and Fitzralph, Wiclif and Pecock, Sawtrey and lord Cobham, may have advanced the reformation among us; but he who will behold the truth must look beyond these instruments to their great Artificer. The flame which was kindled among the Albigenses, and in the valleys of Piedmont, may have lent its brightness to dispel the thick darkness which enveloped us; but we shall fail to derive its greatest advantage from the study of ecclesiastical history, if we turn not our eyes to that brightness which no human device can extinguish, and look not up to the true church of Christ, built upon the Rock of truth, against which the gates of hell shall never prevail.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VIII, 1509, TO THE END OF THE DIVORCE AND SEPARATION

FROM ROME, 1534.

151. Ecclesiastical exemptions. 152. Hunne murdered. 153.

Impolicy of the clergy with regard to the immunities. 154. Faults of the clergy. 155. Wolsey, his rise. 156. He spoils Henry VIII. 157. The progress of literature favourable to the reformation. 158. Origin of the divorce. 159. Progress of it. Campegio. 160. Wolsey's fall. 161. Conduct after it. 162. The divorce referred to the universities. 163. The opinions of the universities. 164. Cranmer made archbishop of Canterbury. 165. Cranmer dissolves the marriage. Final rupture with Rome. 166. The parliament join in the rupture. 167. More and Fisher. 168. Character of More. 169. Character of Fisher. 170. Persecutions. 171. Supplication of Beggars. Practice of Prelates. 172. Effects of discussion. 173. Effects of persecution. 174. Review of the reformation.

§. 151. THE events which were most instrumental in producing the reformation in England belong rather to the civil than the ecclesiastical historian; for though the spirit of reform was amply spread throughout the people, yet unless other circumstances had tended to promote a change, and to weaken the power of the church, it is probable that this body might still have been able to suppress those innovations which sapped the foundations on which the superstructure of its wealth and authority was raised. Whatever contributed to weaken the influence of the ecclesiastical body, gave at the same time a greater freedom of discussion to the laity; and the extension

of knowledge at once paved the way to truth, and deprived the clergy of that branch of power which consisted in their being almost the only depositories of every species of information*.

The first event which bears on these points was a bill which passed the commons in 1513, subjecting all robbers and murderers to the civil power, and which, in order that it might get through the lords, had two provisos attached to it; first, that bishops, priests, and deaconsa should be exempted from it; and, secondly, that it should remain in force during this parliament only. At the termination of that period, the clergy were not satisfied that the bill should expire with the authority from which it sprung; but some little time afterwards, a preacher, at Paul's Cross, vehemently reprobated the idea of subjecting any ecclesiastics to the jurisdiction of the common courts of law; and this question was afterwards discussed before the king, who ultimately determined to support his own authority over all his subjects.

§. 152. While this point was in agitation, an event occurred which not only tended to irritate the minds

a It is hardly perhaps necessary to observe, that sub-deacons and the four inferior orders were subjected to the effects of it. As the greater part of this and the following chapter are abridged from Burnet's History of the Reformation, of which there are many editions, and to which reference may be made without any difficulty, I shall omit the mention of the page in which the event occurs, and merely quote the book in which it is to be found.

* Burnet, i.

of the people generally on this subject, but to throw the balance very much against the clergy in the opinion of the nation. Hunne, a respectable citizen of London, (A.D. 1514,) was put into the ecclesiastical court, for not paying certain fees to the priest of his parish, and was subsequently impolitic enough to sue the priest in a præmunire. Such indiscretion naturally suggested the idea to his spiritual opponents, that he must be tinged with heretical pravity, and he was consequently confined in the Lollards tower, where he was soon after found hanging. The coroner's jury which sat on the body brought in a verdict of wilful murder against Horsey the chancellor, and other ecclesiastical officers; who, on the other hand, declared that he had put an end to himself. The persecution of this unfortunate man did not terminate here; for after having been tried for his heterodox opinions, and condemned, the murdered body was exposed to the flames. The convocation, too, vehemently attacked Dr. Standish, who, though a churchman, had ventured to advocate the cause of the civil power, and to declare that a breach of the common law, perpetrated by an ecclesiastic, should be punished by the civil authority: in this case, however, their malice was obviated by the support of the king, who had been convinced by Dr. Veysey, that the immunities claimed by the clergy had no more foundation in scripture than in reason.

s. 153. After a considerable struggle, the parties came to a sort of compromise ; Horsey was brought

general did not proceed against him; the question, indeed, seemed brought to a quiet termination; but nothing could tranquillize the minds of the people of London, whose hatred to the clergy became so excessive, that one of the arguments by which the bishops tried to prevail on the king not to suffer Horsey to be brought before a jury, was, that they could expect no justice from men who were so vehemently prejudiced against them. The clergy themselves must have lost much in the good opinion of the people in general, by the obstinate manner in which they advocated so odious a cause. They seemed determined to join themselves to crimes of which they must have disapproved in their hearts; and in coupling their own immunities with the outrages of some of their members, they extended to the whole body that general detestation, which would otherwise have justly fallen on the individuals in fault. This proceeding of the clergy, in withdrawing the cause of Horsey into their own courts from before a lay tribunal, might have arisen from mistaken principles; but the ecclesiastical power should then have proceeded to punish his enormities with due severity; whereas Horsey seems not only to have escaped, but to have been rewarded for his crime*.

s. 154. Such conduct could not fail to make the people entertain a low opinion of the justice of the plea itself, when the exercise of it, in the present instance, was so palpably iniquitous, and naturally inclined them to listen to arguments in opposition

* Supplication of Beggars. Fox, ii. 232.