was so captivated with the queen's accomplishments, that he gave public thanks for his felicity, and desired his confessor to join with him in the same thanksgiving. This joy, however, was of very short duration. While the king was at York, upon an intended conference with the king of Scotland, a man of the name of Lassels waited upon Cranmer at London; and, from the information of this man's sister, who had been servant to the duchess dowager of Norfolk, he gave a very surprising account of the queen's incontinence. When the queen was first examined relative to her crime, she denied the charge; but afterwards, finding that her accomplices were her accusers, she confessed her incontinence before marriage, but denied her having dishonoured the king's bed since their union. Three maids of honour, who were admitted to her secrets, still further alledged her guilt; and some of them confessed having passed the night in the same bed with her and her lovers. The servile parliament, upon being informed of the queen's crime and confession, found her quickly guilty, and petitioned the king that she might be punished with death; that the same penalty might be inflicted on the lady Rochford, the accomplice in her debaucheries; and that her grandmother, the duchess dowager of Norfolk, together with her father, mother, and nine others, men and women, as having been privy to the queen's irregularities, should participate in her punishment. With this petition the king was most graciously pleased to agree; they were condemned to death by an act of attainder, which at the same time made it capital for all persons to conceal their knowledge of the debaucheries of any. future queen. It was also enacted, that if the king married any woman who had been incontinent, taking her for a true maid, she should be guilty of treason, in case she did not previously reveal her guilt. The people made merry with this absurd and brutal statute; and it was said, that the king must henceforth look out for a widow. After all these laws were passed, in which the most wonderful circumstance is, that a body of men could ever be induced to give their consent, the queen was beheaded on Tower-hill, together with the lady Rochford, who found no great degree of compassion, as she had herself before tampered in blood. A. D. 1 In about a year after the death of the last queen, 1543. Henry once more changed his condition, by marrying his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, who, according to the ridiculous suggestions of the people, was, in fact, a widow. She was the wife of the late lord Latimer; and was considered as a woman of discretion and virtue. She was already passed the meridian of life, and managed this capricious tyrant's temper with prudence and success. Still, however, the king's severity to his subjects continued as fierce as ever. For some time he had been incommoded by an ulcer in his leg; the pain of which, added to his corpulence, and other infirmities, increased his natural irrascibility to such a degree, that scarce any of his domestics approached him without terror. It was not to be expected, therefore, that any who differed from him in opinion, should, at this time particularly, hope for pardon. Though his health was declining apace, yet his implacable cruelties were not the less frequent. His resentments were diffused indiscriminately to all at one time a protestant, and at another a catholic, were the objects of his severity. The duke of Norfolk, and his son, the earl of Surrey, were the last that felt the injustice of the tyrant's groundless suspicions. The duke was a nobleman who had served the king with talents and fidelity; his son was a young man of the most promising hopes, who excelled in every accomplishment that became a scholar, a courtier, and a soldier. He excelled in all the military exercises which were then in request; he encouraged the fine arts by his practice and example; and it is remarkable, that he was the first who brought our language, in his poetical pieces, to any degree of refinement. He celebrated the fair Geraldine in all his sonnets, and maintained her superior beauty in all places of public contention. These qualifications, however, were no safeguard to him against Henry's suspicions; he had dropt some expressions of resentment against the king's ministers, upon being displaced from the government of Boulogne; and the whole family was become obnoxious from the late incontinence of Catherine Howard, the queen, who was executed. From these motives, therefore, private orders were given to arrest the father and son; and accordingly they were arrested both on the same day, and confined to the Tower. Surrey being a commoner, his trial was the more expeditious; and as to proofs, there were many informers base enough to betray the intimacies of private confidence, and all the connections of blood. The duchess dowager of Richmond, Surrey's own sister, enlisted herself among the number of his accusers; and Sir Richard Southwell also, his most intimate friend, charged him with infidelity to the king. It would seem, that, at this dreary period, there was neither faith nor honour to be found in all the nation. Surrey denied the charge, and challenged his accuser to single combat. This favour was refused him; and it was alledged, that he had quartered the arms of Edward the Confessor on his escutcheon, which alone was suf-, ficient to convict him of aspiring to the crown. To this he could make no reply; and indeed any answer would have been needless; for neither parliaments nor juries, during this reign, seemed to be guided by any other proofs but the will of the erown. This young nobleman was, therefore, condemned for high treason, notwithstanding his eloquent and spirited defence; and the sentence was soon after executed upon him on Tower-hill. In the mean time the duke endeavoured to mollify the king by letters and submissions; but the monster's hard heart was rarely subject to tender impressions. The parliament meeting on the fourteenth day of January, a 1546. J bill of attainder was found against the duke of Norfolk; as it was thought he could not so easily have been convicted on a fair hearing by his peers. The death-warrant was made out, and immediately sent to the lieutenant of the Tower. The duke prepared for death; the following morning was to be his last; but an event of greater consequence to the kingdom intervened, and prevented his execution. A. D.1 The king had been for some time approaching fast towards his end; and for several days all those about his person plainly saw that his speedy death was inevitable. The disorder in his leg was now grown extremely painful; and this, added to his monstrous corpulency, which rendered him unable to stir, made. him more furious than a chained lion. He had been very sterne and severe; he was now outrageous. In this state he had continued for near four years before his death, the terror of all, and the tormentor of himself; his courtiers having no inclination to make an enemy of him, as they were more ardently employed in conspiring the death of each other. In this manner, therefore, he was suffered to struggle, without any of his domestics having the courage to warn him of his approaching end; as more than once, during this reign, persons had been put to death for foretelling the death of the king. At last, Sir Anthony Denny had the courage to disclose to him this dreadful secret; and, contrary to his usual custom, he received the tidings with an expression of resignation. His anguish and remorse was at this time greater than can be expressed: he desired that Cranmer might be sent for; but before that prelate could arrive, he was speechless. Crammer desired him A. D. to give some sign of his dying in the faith of Christ; he squeezed his hand, and immediately expired, after a reign of thirty-seven years and nine months, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. 1544. Some kings have been tyrants from contradiction and revolt; some from being misled by favourites; and some from a spirit of party; but Henry was cruel from a depraved disposition alone; cruel in government, cruel in religion, and cruel in his family. Our divines have taken some pains to vindicate the character of this brutal prince, as if his conduct and our reformation had any connection with each other. There is nothing so absurd as to defend the one by the other: the most noble designs are brought about by the most vicious instruments; for we see even that cruelty and injustice were thought necessary to be employed in our holy redemption. HENRY the Eighth was succeeded on the throne by his only son, Edward the Sixth, now in the ninth year of his age. The late king, in his will, which he expected would be implicitly obeyed, fixed the majority of the prince at the completion of his eighteenth year; and, in the mean time, appointed sixteen executors of his will, to whom, during the minority, he entrusted the government of the king and kingdom; the duke of Somerset, as protector, being placed at their head. The protector, in his schemes for advancing the reformation, had always recourse to the counsels of Cranmer, who, being a man of moderation and prudence, was averse to violent changes, and determined to bring over the people by insensible innovations to his own peculiar system. : A committee of bishops and divines had been appointed by the council to frame a liturgy for the service of the church; and this work was executed with great moderation, precision, and accuracy. A law was also enacted, permitting priests to marry the ceremony of auricular confession, though not abolished, was left at the discretion of the people, who were not displeased at being freed from the spiritual tyranny of their instructors; the doctrine of the real presence was the last tenet of popery that was wholly abandoned by the people, as both the clergy and laity were loath to renounce so miraculous a benefit as it was asserted to be. However, at last, not only this, but all the principal opinions and practices of the catholic religion, contrary to what the scripture authorises, were abolished; and the reformation, such as we have it, was almost entirely completed in England. With all these innovations the A. D. people and clergy in general acquiesced; and Gardiner 1549. and Bonner were the only persons whose opposition was thought of any weight: they were, therefore, sent to the Tower, and threatened with the king's further displeasure in case of disobedience. For all these the protector gained great applause and popularity; but he was raised to an enviable degree of eminence, and his enemies were numerous in proportion to his exaltation. Of all the ministers, at that time in the council, Dudley earl of Warwick was the most artful, ambitious, and unprincipled. Resolved, at any rate, to possess the principal place under the king, he cared not what means were to be used in acquiring it. However, unwilling to throw off the mask, he covered the most exorbitant views under the fairest appearances. Having associated himself with the earl of Southampton, he formed a strong party in the council, who were determined to free themselves from the control the protector assumed over them. That nobleman was, in fact, now grown obnoxious to a very prevailing party in the kingdom. He was hated by the nobles for his superior magnificence and power; he was hated by the catholic party for his regard to the reformation: he was disliked by many for his severity to his brother: besides, the great estate he had raised at the expense of the church and the crown, rendered him obnoxious to all. The palace which he was then building, in the Strand, served also, by its magnificence, and still more by the unjust methods that were taken to raise it, to expose him to the censures of the public. G The |