Archbishop of York, and after that, farmed the revenues of Worcester and Salisbury on behalf of two foreigners, Italians, resident at Rome. He had held, in commendam, the Diocese of Bath and the Abbey of St. Albans. As early as 1518 he had a settled annuity from the French King, of twelve thousand livres ; and in 1520, Charles V. and the Pontiff had granted him an yearly pension of seven thousand five hundred ducats, as the revenues of Toledo and Placencia, two bishoprics in Spain. The epistolary correspondence addressed to him, and still in preservation, proves the height to which he had attained. Louis XII., Francis I., and Charles V., addressed him as their "good," or "good and loyal friend." Maximilian before this, and the Pontiffs, always approached him with marked consideration. The Venetian Republic abroad, had treated him as a vital portion of the Royal power, and the Oxford University at home, had gone so far as to employ in writing the appellation of "Your Majesty!" This occurred before the title was in use to Henry himself! In short, it actually seemed as if that dominant power which had reigned so long over all Europe, had been gathering into strength, and lighting on the head of one man in England, and that one, merely an ecclesiastic raised from low degree.

In these circumstances, could any event have been more improbable than that England above all other countries, England under her present monarch, would ever be separated from Rome? Independently, however, of all the past, certain events in the year 1521 seemed to have placed such a supposition out of all question. Milan had then been rescued from the yoke of France, and no one was more overjoyed than the reigning Pontiff, Leo the Tenth; but in a few days after, whether from joy, or as has been supposed, by poison, on the 1st of December he breathed his last.

Henry had missed the Imperial crown, but now came his Prime Minister's opportunity for advancement. No sooner had the intelligence arrived, than Wolsey became an eager candidate for the papal throne. His royal master, in pursuit of his own glory, had long and ardently desired the appointment of his favourite. The Emperor had been sounded before, and feigned consent. The preceptor of Charles, however, Florent, Bishop of Tortosa, as Adrian VI., gained the day, and Wolsey had to content himself for the present, with the prolongation of his Legantine authority. Another opportunity, indeed, soon presented itself, by the death of Adrian in 1523. Again Wolsey started, with express orders from Henry as well as himself, that no wealth or substance should be spared to ensure success. But again he was doomed to bitter disappointment, and Julio di Medici, once Bishop of Worcester, was chosen. This was the second time that the Emperor had deceived Wolsey, and the effects of his duplicity, at the Cardinal's hands, he shall feel for years to come. In the meanwhile, Julio, under the name

of Clement the Seventh, was willing to do all in his power to secure the allegiance and good will of England. To Henry he had sent a consecrated rose tree of fine gold, with a confirmation of his title "Defender of the Faith," first obtained from Leo. To Wolsey he sent a ring from his own finger, with the appointment of Legate a latere, for life.

These three Sovereigns, therefore, with Clement VII. as Pontiff, and last, though not least, Cardinal Wolsey, will now engage attention and occupy their own conspicuous places in the great drama, for years to

come.

Such had been the chief political movements up to the year 1523,— but was there no stir in the world of letters? Certainly there was; and in England, to a degree hitherto quite unknown. The triumph achieved on the Continent, had already shed its influence on our detached Island. The road to Italy had not been unfrequented by our countrymen, influenced chiefly by thirst for such learning as could there be best acquired. Hence the well known names of Grocyn and Linacre, of Colet and Lilly, of Tunstal, Wakefield, William Latimer, and Sir Thomas More. Wolsey himself wished to be regarded as a scholar-and so did, above them all in his own esteem, the King upon the throne; though neither the one nor the other had ever beheld an Italian sky. Grocyn, the first Englishman who taught Greek at Oxford, and Linacre, at once physician and tutor to Henry VIII., had spent years in Italy under Politian and Chalcondyles, then the most eminent classical scholars in Europe. Colet, though only a Latinist, after his return from abroad, became the founder of St. Paul's school, the first public seminary where Greek was taught; having chosen Lilly for the head master, who had studied the language for five years at Rhodes, under the refugees from Constantinople. Tunstal, an eminent Latin, as well as a good Greek and Hebrew scholar, had been chosen Bishop of London in 1522; and Sir Thomas More, the pupil of Grocyn, was now Speaker of the House of Commons. In short, the court of Henry had become so celebrated for an awakened attention to letters, as to be eulogised on the Continent; and the company round the royal table was regarded as superior to any academy of learning-at least so said Erasmus, though he was rather too complimentary.

At this crisis, therefore, an important question naturally presents itself. Political events gave no promise whatever of any important change. But here were men of great pretensions to polite literature. Now, among all these learned men, already named, or not named, who gave celebrity to the court of Henry, or adorned the royal table, had the idea of giving the Sacred Volume, translated from the original, into the language of the common people, once been mooted? Had the learning they had acquired ever led them to this one point, and as to one that was important, incumbent, or necessary? So far from it, the very proposal would have made them tremble, or have filled the majority with

indignation. Colet, a man to be distinguished from all others then living, might perhaps have hailed such a proposal, though decidedly attached to the forms then existing, but his opinions had rendered him so obnoxious, that, but for the King's personal regard, he might have suffered. However, he died in 1519, and Grocyn, absorbed in Greek only as a language, died of palsy the same year. As for Linacre, who expired in 1524, nothing favourable is upon record. It has even been said, that though enjoying the fruit of several ecclesiastical preferments, he had not begun to look into the Greek New Testament till towards the close of life; and on reading our Lord's beautiful Sermon on the Mount, as in Matthew, coming to that passage,-"Swear not at all," he cast the book aside, saying, that "this was either not the Gospel, or we were not Christians."3 But with regard to the rest of these scholars, when the Book of Life in the vulgar tongue once comes into England, Tunstal and More, Wolsey and the King, will not fail to render themselves conspicuous as its bitterest and most determined opponents.

Neither the political nor literary condition of England, under the dominant sway of Cardinal Wolsey, affording the slightest indication of the Sacred Scriptures being about to be given to the people, but the reverse; in justice to that event it is necessary to observe also, the nature of that connexion which had existed for ages between Britain and Rome, more especially since it was now as intimate and powerful as ever. Indeed, under Henry VIII., it arrived at its climax. This connexion sustained a peculiarly complicated character. There was the Annate, or first fruits, payable by the Archbishop down to the lowest ecclesiastic, upon election to office-the Appeal to Rome-the Dispensation from it—the Indulgence -the Legantine levy-the Mortuary-the Pardon-the Ethelwolf's pension-the Peter's pence for every chimney that smoked in England-the Pilgrimage-the Tenth-besides the sale of trinkets or holy wares from Rome! Here were not fewer than twelve distinct sources of revenue! These altogether were operating on the inhabitants without any exception, and with as much regularity as the rising and setting of the sun. It was a pecuniary connexion of immense power, made to bear upon the general conscience, which knew no pause by day, no pause by night; falling, as it did, not merely on the living, but on the dying and the dead!

3 Cheko-" De pronunc. Græcæ Linguæ." Fuller indeed tries to soften this, but Cheke was almost a contemporary.

In no other country throughout Europe, without exception, was it so probable that this system, in all its oppressive and fearful integrity, would be maintained. Under an imperative Monarch, originally educated as an ecclesiastic, and who now gloried in his acquaintance with scholastic divinity; with a Prime Minister so well known to every foreign Court, and who himself breathed with ardour after the Pontificate, England had become the right arm or main-stay of this system. Nay, as if to render this still more apparent, and so fix the eye of posterity, the King upon the throne had resolved to distinguish himself as the reputed author, in support of this singular power; and he became at once the first and the only Sovereign in Europe who was understood to have lifted his pen in defence and defiance. For this feat in reply, though not an answer to Luther, it is well known that Henry had obtained from Leo X. his highly prized title of "Defender of the Faith."4

If, however, the reader should now wish to know, whether there was any part of this Island, by way of eminence, where the power and pressure of Rome was more strikingly apparent; any ground which seemed to be "all her own;" he must look down to the west of England. In a district of country, extending from above Kidderminster to a little below Bristol, lay what was then styled the diocese of Worcester. Embracing the county of that name, as well as the whole of Gloucestershire to the borders of Somerset, we need to say nothing of its beauty, since a richer variety of scenery, or finer studies of the picturesque, can scarcely even now be found. It is of more importance to remark, that, even at this early period, there was no part of England in a better state of cultivation, if, indeed, there was any to equal it. This may very easily be imagined from the fact, that, to say nothing of the Cathedral at Worcester, with all its appendages, within the county of Gloucester alone there were not fewer than six Mitred Abbeys, viz. Gloucester, Cirencester and Winchcombe, Tewkesbury, Hailes and Flaxley; the three first Abbots having seats in Parliament as peers of the

4 The title of "Most Christian King," taken from the King of France, had actually been conveyed to Henry, by the warlike Julius II., through Cardinal Bainbridge.—Rymer's Fœdera. But Leo professed to know nothing of this, or would not recognise the transaction, and annulled all that his predecessor had done against Louis. The present title to Henry was no more than that which James IV. of Scotland had received, fourteen years ago, from Julius. Not being hereditary, it had died with him, though we shall find James V. irritating his uncle, by assuming that of "Defender of the Christian faith;" intended, perhaps, as a hint to Henry, after his defection. Neither was the title now conveyed to England meant to be hereditary: it became so only by an Act of Parliament in 1544, and though the statute had been repealed, the title was retained even by Philip and Mary. So it has continued to the present hour.

realm. But, besides these, there were many other Houses, styled Religious, of almost every grade and denomination. If, from the days of King John and Henry III., England had seemed to the eye of the Pontiff, like a "garden of delight and an unexhausted well," no judges as to the most pleasant and productive spots, were superior to the Monks; and these in this quarter were so numerous, as to have given rise to the common and profane proverb-that such a thing was as certain, as that "God was in Gloucestershire." And who were the Bishops, then in full power over all this Goshen or Gerar, and enjoying its fruits? Not one of them an Englishman, resident within our shores! Since this century commenced, or rather from the year 1497 to 1534, they were actually four Italians, in regular succession. The two first had been resident with a witness; but as for the two last, there was no occasion, since Wolsey, the Cardinal and Legate of England, transacted all their business. Indeed, for a period of half a century, or from 1484 to 1534, the connexion of this district with Italy is particularly worthy of notice, more especially on account of what then and there took place. The reader will discover presently, that there is one important reason for his attention being first directed to these Italian Bishops, and to their intimate and profitable alliance with England.

In the year 1484, Innocent VIII. had been elected Pontiff. It was by his authority that John de Lilius, or Giglis, LL.D., an Italian of Lucca, was sent into England. He came as Questor, or Collector, for the Apostolic Chamber, and it was not long before he had thoroughly feathered his own nest. From time to time he became Rector of Swaffam in Norfolk, of Langham in Suffolk, and of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, London; Prebendary of St. Paul's, York, and Lincoln; Prebendary, and afterwards Dean of Wells; Archdeacon of London and of Gloucester, or, in all, ten different appointments; in return for which, since he came as Questor-general for the Pontiff who sent him, he could have done little else than collect the revenues. From Innocent, moreover, de Lilius had received a most scandalous commission; authorising him to pardon the most heinous offences, such as robbery and murder, usury, simony and theft, or every species of crime; and to dispense with the non-restitution of goods acquired by any fraud, upon condition that part of such gain should be handed to the Pontiff's commissioners or their deputies! Nor can we suppose this man to have been negligent in employing this power to his own, as well as his master's emolument. At last, loaded with fruit, it was time to return to Italy, though his connexion with England was not to be broken off; so far as emolument was concerned, far from it. He became Henry's Solicitor in the Court of Rome; and no sooner was the diocese of Worcester vacant by the death of Robert Morton, than de Lilius, the Archdeacon of Gloucester, became Lord of the Sec. To this he was appointed by Alexander VI., on the