grants, amongst which were Barking and Crowland.* At this time Clinton openly sustained the Reformation; but in Mary's reign he was a Papist again. Upon the accession of Elizabeth, Lord Clinton, like Sir William Cecil, "saw the error of his way" and was once more a Reformer. This versatile "noble " was finally created Earl of Nottingham, and increased in wealth. Clinton, as to personal

character, has been set down by general authority to have been a "dicer and a man of odious morals," but Anthony Delebarre considered him " a God-fearing man."

Henry VIII. had many other convivial companions. Sir Francis Bryan, is represented by his contemporaries as "the man who corrupted King Henry;" but this accusation might more justly be laid to the account of Charles, Duke of Suffolk and Lord Clinton-that is, if any one could corrupt a being with such passions as Henry. Bryan was engaged as a divorce agent at Rome, where he employed himself in forging letters and falsifying reports. He has been also charged with stealing from a cabinet a correspondence of Wolsey with Clement VII., and "placing Wolsey's letters in his royal master's possession." Many circumstances raise doubts as to the accuracy of these statements, for the Pontiff was remarkable for the care and caution he used in securing his foreign correspondence. Sir Francis Bryan, however, was capable of committing such an act of larcenous dishonour if he had the opportunity. In London he was known as "dicer and a profligate." He appeared to some advantage in the masks and theatrical entertainments of the King; was the associate

a

Records of the Monastic Confiscations.

of Suffolk and Clinton in their night revels and visits to Bankside.* He had the tact to adapt himself to whatever the Court required, whether masking, dicing, or discreditable conversation at the King's "private merrie meetings in a certain house at Westminster." In a tilting match at Greenwich he lost his right eye. This incident won for him the sympathy of the King. The only virtue he seemed to possess was courage-his greatest talent that of being a clever practical soldier. At the battle of Musselburgh (1547) he commanded with skill and valour, and had the reputation of being humane to the wounded enemy, and kind to his own soldiers. He was esteemed a good Latin and Spanish scholar, and was the author of some songs and sonnets. His politics and religion were those of the Court" for the time being."

Ponieroy's Chronicle; Wyatt and Cobham's Correspondence.

CHAPTER XI.

HENRY'S INTENTIONS EXCEEDED.

MANY countries have changed their government-few their religion; but how many disturbances and how much bloodshed has not the latter change involved! It filled Germany

with civil strife, and raised myriads of revolutionary sectaries who agreed in nothing but turmoils, fanaticism and violence. And it surely has not been without its disturbing elements in England. It produced the Puritans, and they certainly were the founders of revolutionary movements, so antagonistic to the monarchical institutions so beloved of old by the people of Britain. Some writers have noticed the fact that the "Roi galant-homme," Francis the First― whose assistant spouses were not so ambitious nor so fastidious as Anna Boleyn in the matter of marriage-complained once to the Papal Nuncio then in Paris, and menaced imitation of Henry's secession. "No, sire," said the Nuncio, "you would be the first to repent it; the spreading of a new religion amongst the common people is soon attended with a revolution in government." Again, Admiral de Coligny happening to converse with the celebrated Strozzi about the new doctrine, the latter assured the Admiral that "if the King wants to destroy the monarchy he cannot take a better way than to change the religion of

the country." In one of his sermons the well-known Huguenot preacher, M. d'Aillé, remarked that "never was there a new religion promulgated but a great many prophets started up who followed one another in propagating their reveries." "To change the religion of a country," says David Hume, "even when seconded by a party, is one of the most perilous enterprises which any sovereign can attempt, and often proves the most destructive to royal authority." This state of facts Henry himself realized. The conduct of the Anabaptists in Germany and the Netherlands is a striking illustration of this. When the storm of passion had passed away, Henry calmly and apprehensively weighed the responsibility he had incurred. In becoming the Head of a Church he had not reckoned the cost, and his will was, for too long a time, the order of observance. Being discontented himself he had revolted, and his arrogance, not his belief, founded a new Spiritual Kingdom. He forgot the principles of government, if he ever intended to establish new observances for the novel condition of affairs, and so those outside of his immediate influence adopted their own ordinances-one God the worshipped of a myriad formulæ. The King too soon realised that the indiscriminate teading of the Scriptures did not tend to make certain classes more loyal to the monarch or obedient to the law. In 1541 Henry made a discovery that even the authorised version of the Scriptures was disfigured by unfaithful renderings and contaminated with notes calculated to mislead the ignorant and unwary; that the indiscriminate perusal of the Sacred tomes had not only generated

* See Leopold Rancke on the Anabaptist Movement in Germany, vol. iii.

a race of teachers who promulgated doctrines the most strange and contradictory, but had taught ignorant men to discuss the meaning of the inspired writings in alehouses and taverns, till heated with controversy and liquor, they burst into injurious language, and provoked each other to breaches of the peace. To remedy the first of these evils it was enacted that the version of Tyndale should be disused altogether as "crafty, false, and untrue," and that the authorised translation should be published without note or comment; to obviate the second, the permission of reading the Bible to others in public was revoked; that of reading it to private families was confined to persons of the rank of lords, or gentlemen, and that of reading it personally and in secret was granted to men who were householders, and to females of noble or gentle birth. Any otherwoman, or any artificer, apprentice, journeyman, servant, or labourer who should presume to open the Sacred volume, was made liable for each offence to one month's imprisonment.* The King had already issued a proclamation forbidding the possession of Tyndale's or Coverdale's versions, or of any book or manuscript containing matter contrary to the doctrine set forth by authority of Parliament, ordaining all such books to be given up before the last day of August, that they might be burnt by order of the sheriff or the bishop, and prohibiting the importation "of any manner of Englishe booke concerning any matter of Christien religione, from parts beyond the sea."+

* Statute 34, 1 Henry VIII.

+ Chron. Catal. 228. The persons whose writings are condemned by name are Frythe, Tyndale, Wicliffe, Joye, Roye, Basyle, Beale, Barnes, Coverdale, Tournour, and Tracey. Several of these Reformers were the friends of Dr.