INTRODUCTORY. 13 



devouring rapacity of the cardinals and other officials of the 

 Curia. My readers are aware that it was in the fifteenth 

 century that the doctrine took deep root that a general council 

 was superior to the Pope, perhaps in matters of doctrine, cer- 

 tainly in those of discipline, the tenet which Hallam by an 

 ingenious anticipation calls the ' Whig principles of the Catholic 

 Church V The feeling that England should be independent of 

 the Roman Curia was as keenly entertained in the sixteenth 

 century by Gardiner as it was by Cranmer, and was undoubtedly 

 the lever which Henry the Eighth used in order at once to 

 vindicate Anglican independence in Church as well as in State, 

 to strengthen the Government, to subdue the clergy, and to 

 confiscate the wealth of the monasteries. This spirit survived 

 the reaction under Mary Tudor. I know few facts more signi- 

 ficant than the protest of the well-known Bonner, bishop of 

 London, on December 26, 1554, against the act which repeals 

 all statutes made against the see of Rome since 20 Hen. VIII. 



Such economists as there were at that time complained that 

 the kingdom was impoverished by the enormous sums, to be 

 spent in simony, which were transmitted to the Roman court 

 by the candidates for the hierarchy. The English kings, who 

 were eager for money, and much in want of it, who had the 

 greatest difficulty in persuading their parliaments to make them 

 grants, whose appeals were met by the constant excuse of 

 poverty, and who resorted to every kind of expedient save that 

 of taxing the public generally without the consent of the 

 Commons, looked grudgingly at the huge sums which the 

 Roman Church extorted from those who negotiated bulls of 

 provision, or the consent of the Pope to their election or con- 

 secration. The evil was at its height during the feeble reign 

 of Henry the Sixth, whose debts were enormous, whose ex- 

 penditure was prodigal, whose revenue had sunk to a fifth 

 of his requisite income, and who was fifteen years of that in- 

 come in debt. 



The war with France was popular. In the first place, the 



1 Middle Ages, chap. vii. part 2. 



