654 



ENGLAND. 



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. iw king'. 



jn..> i.i 



York. 



InfideKiy 

 anil exrcu- 

 lionofilie 



The king's 

 pnpotte- 

 tout x- 

 irmpu to 

 direct the 

 faith of the 

 nation. 



were for dim were hanged." By these cruelties, a slight 

 insurrection was exciteJ 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 

 mid 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 concert had led a 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 indelicate 

 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 fol- 

 lowing 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- 

 ttites of these foundations, which prevented the surrender 

 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 enriched his 

 parasitical flatterers. While he gratified his rapacity by 

 plundering the church, he continued to indulge his bigo- 

 try by persecuting heretics. He engaged the parliament 

 indeed, to mitigate the law of the six articles, as far as 

 regarded those priests who entered into the married state ; 

 but he still persisted in maintaining the purity of specu- 

 lative principles, and enforcing uniformity 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 154], 

 tiy which they blindly ratified, by anticipation, all the te- 

 nets which these divines should afterwards establish with 



the king's consent. A small volume was at length pub- HUtory. 

 lished, called the Institution of a Christian Man, which >p Y*^ 

 may, in fart, 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 sacraments, which a few years 

 before had been limited to three, were here again increa- 

 sed to the number of seven, contbrmably to the opinion 

 of the Catholics. But the king soon after ordered a new 

 book to be composed, called The Condition of a Chrit- 

 lian Man, which, without consulting 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 sig- 

 nal of his inconstancy. He was much perplexed, how- 

 ever, what course to take with the scriptures ; and seems 

 to have felt the difficulty of reconciling his requisitions 

 of uniformity with the permission of free enquiry. With 

 the concurrence, therefore, of the parliament, he retracted 

 the concession which had been formerly made, that every 

 person might have the scriptures in his family, and now 

 prohibited 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. 



After the death of James V. of Scotland, Henry pro* T reat y O f 

 jected the scheme of uniting that kingdom to his own do- marriage 

 minions, by marrying his son Edward to the heiress of the between 

 Scottish crown ; and a treaty to that effect was actually J^ 08 K *~ 

 concluded, by which it was agreed, that the Princess M, of 

 Mary should remain in Scotland till she should be ten Scotland, 

 years of age; that she should then be sent to England to be 

 educated; and that the kingdom, notwithstanding its union 

 with England, should retain its own laws and privileges. 

 But all these prospects of perpetual amity between the two 

 nations were destroyed by the intrigues of Cardinal Bea- 

 ton, and the weakness of the Regent James Hamilton, 

 Earl of Arran, and the violent temper of Henry himself, 

 who, upon the first appearance of opposition to his views, 

 precipitated a new war against the Scots. His fleet land- 

 ed ten thousand men at Leith, who took and pillaged the 

 city of Edinburgh, while another army laid waste the 

 whole country between Berwick and Haddington. By 

 this violent incursion, he only inflamed the passions of 

 the Scota without subduing their spirit; and, as was 

 commonly observed, did too much if he wished to solicit 

 nn alliance, but too little if he intended to make a con- 

 quest. 



In the mean time, while thus ardently bent upon pro- 

 viding a match for his son, he formed another matrimo- rits his siith 

 nial connection for himself; and took as his sixth wife 

 Catherine Parr, widow of Nevil Lord Latimcr, a lady 

 who secretly favoured the sentiments of the reformers, 

 but who was obliged to conduct herself with so great cau- 

 tion, that she durst not even intercede for three Prote 



