from the intercourse between the Old World and the New. Men would find that as sailors, merchants, or manufacturers, they could find plenty to do which was as good as keeping sheep, and a good deal better than robbing and murdering.

6. Beginning of the Reformation.-Whilst some men were thinking how the poor could be made

better and happier, others were thinking about religion. Martin Luther taught in Germany that the religion which men had believed for many centuries was very different from the religion taught in the New Testament. After a little time those who followed Luther were called Protestants. A few people in England thought as Luther taught, but as

yet they were not many. There were many more who did not wish to believe otherwise than they had believed before, but who thought that there was need of some change. Very few monks and nuns now lived as well as they had when the monasteries were first founded. Most of them were living idle, useless lives, and cared very little about more than the form of religion. Both they and many of the priests were extremely ignorant. Those who are idle and ignorant usually become vicious as well. Wolsey and the king himself wanted to alter this state of things. They thought that by founding schools and colleges and by spreading learning the clergy would become better.

7. Henry quarrels with the Pope.-After Henry had been married for some time he grew tired of his wife, Queen Catharine, and wanted to marry a sparkling young beauty named Anne Boleyn. He suddenly discovered that he had done wrong in marrying his brother's widow, and asked the pope to divorce him from Catharine, and to declare that he had never been lawfully married to her. The pope, Clement VII., could not make up his mind. what to do. One of the old popes, when the popes were really great, would have done what he thought right, and would have borne the consequences. Clement was not brave enough for this. He was afraid to make an enemy of Henry, for fear lest Henry should turn Protestant. But he was also afraid of offending Catharine's nephew, the Emperor Charles, who had a large army in Italy. He therefore tried to put off giving any answer as long

as he possibly could. At last he sent orders to Cardinal Wolsey and another cardinal to hear what was to be said on both sides as the pope's legates or representatives. In 1529 their court was opened at Blackfriars. The queen threw herself at Henry's feet. Twice he tried in vain to raise her up. In her broken English she prayed him to have pity on her. She said she was a poor woman and a foreigner. For twenty years she had been his true and obedient wife. In the end she appealed to the pope himself, and declared that she would make answer to the pope only. The legates, however, did not at first take any heed to this, but went on with their inquiry. After a time, however, they gave out that it must be as she asked, and that the trial would be finished at Rome. Henry was very angry. He knew that the pope would be too much afraid of the emperor to decide as he wished.

8. Fall of Wolsey.-Wolsey was the first to suffer, as he had been one of the legates. He was turned out of office and his goods were taken from him on the pretence that he had been unfaithful to the king. Not long afterwards he was sent for to answer to a charge of treason. At Leicester, on his way to London, he was taken ill and died.

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If I had served God,' he said, 'as diligently as I have served the king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs.'

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE LAST PART OF THE REIGN OF
HENRY VIII. (1529–1547.)

1. The King's Divorce.--Henry was resolved that whether the pope were willing or not, he would be divorced from Catharine. He first tried to frighten the pope into doing what he wanted. When he

found that he did not succeed he got the parliament to pass laws by which all matters relating to the Church were to be settled in England. The king then married Anne Boleyn. Thomas Cranmer, who perhaps believed that the king's marriage with Catharine was really unlawful, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and held a court at Dunstable, where he pronounced sentence that the king had never been lawfully married at all. The King married Anne. Catharine refused to accept Cranmer's decision. She said that she had always been the king's wife, and that she was his wife still, unless the pope decided against her. I would rather,' she said, 'be a poor beggar's wife and be sure of heaven, than queen of all the world and stand in doubt thereof by reason of my own consent.' Henry treated her with contempt, and openly acknowledged Anne as his wife. 2. Henry burns the Protestants, and hangs or beheads the Catholics. It was no longer possible for Henry even to pretend to be subject in any way to the pope. But he had not the least wish to become a Protestant, or to change either his religion or the

religion of the people. He intended to make people more religious in the old way than the pope had been able to do. What he wanted was very much what most people in England wanted. Even those who thought that Catharine had been hardly treated were glad that the country should no longer be obliged to submit to the pope, who was an Italian foreigner. But they thought that the Church should be just as it had always been, and that no one should be allowed to teach Protestantism, which they considered to be heresy, and to be therefore certain to bring those who believed it to hell after they died. During the remainder of the reign most people were quite satisfied when Henry had people burnt alive as heretics for being Protestants, and hung others or beheaded them as traitors for saying that the pope was superior to the king in matters of religion.

3. Execution of Sir Thomas More.-The noblest of those who suffered as traitors was Sir Thomas More. He had been the first to think how to make the life of poor raen and women happier and better. His own house was a place adorned with every virtue. He brought up his children in a way which was very unusual then. Both at that time and long afterwards it was generally supposed that the only way to drive knowledge into the heads of boys and girls was to flog them frequently and severely. Luther used to tell how he was once beaten at school fifteen times in one day. We hear of a young lady related to the Paston family that she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week

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