The views of these women reflect the destructive criticism of congregations emerging from a subject childhood. The deeds of Mistress Smith, a widow of Coventry, show the constructive tendencies of the religious of her age. She was brought before her bishop charged with the offence of teaching her children the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments in their native tongue. The scroll of writing from which she had instructed them was discovered hidden in her sleeve. There was no denying the accusation, and she was burned at the stake, with six men found guilty of the same iniquity.

These women, and others like them, were forerunners of the Reformation. In the time of Anne Boleyn, the Reformation began. Anne Boleyn cannot, in any light, be regarded as a Christian heroine. Yet with the story of her days the history of the Church of England is bound up.

The child of Sir Thomas Boleyn and of his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, later created Duke of Norfolk, Anne associated much in her youth with Sir Thomas Wyatt, her brother's friend, and with Lord Surrey-the poet Surrey-her first cousin. Part of her girlhood was spent in France at the Court of Francis I. From infancy, through girlhood, the very breath of her nostrils was the "new" atmosphere created by the revival of learning, the invention of printing, the discovery of fresh continents and the stirring of scientific thought. Both in France and in her own country she grew among those who were impatient of bonds of religious bigotry and disdainful of restraints of social convention. Surrey, who praised in Wyatt

"... A heart whose dread was never so impressed
To hide the thought that might the truth advance,"

and Wyatt, who exclaimed concerning the King's suit to Rome, "Lord! that a man cannot repent him of his sin but by the Pope's leave," were her associates in the pastimes of fashioning epigrams and bandying repartees. And petulance was in the wit of them all! They could

not withhold announcements of their emancipation from fetters of thought and belief, even to save themselves from the dungeon and the scaffold.

"Alas! . . . how men do seek the best
And find the worse."

This was a versified regret of Sir Thomas Wyatt looking back upon the promise of his life and its performance, and musing upon the fate of her he had extolled and championed, as Dante his Beatrice, Petrarch his Laura and Surrey his Geraldine.

Anne happened on the worse indeed. In the whirlpool of her woman's vanity she was dragged down-she who had attempted to swim the rapids of religious turmoil and reach the bank of religious reform!

Before all things Anne was feminine. By the play of her bold, black eyes, by the dressing and adorning of her magnificent hair, as by her quick jests, her intelligent satire and her great physical energy, she meant to captivate her fellow-courtiers if no higher offered, her King if he deigned to woo her. And he did deign.

English Tyndale, tied to the stake in the market-place of Antwerp for his heresies, cried with a loud voice, "Lord, open the King of England's heart!"

It was the cry, perforce, of every would-be reformer of England's laws, England's policy and England's Church.

Henry VIII. was, perhaps, the most arbitrary Sovereign that ever sat on the English throne. Rising on and with the New Learning, the New Politics and the New Religion, had been the New Monarchy. Wolsey laid its foundations. Thomas Cromwell built up its towering structure. Henry himself placed the coping-stone. He dominated the wills and consciences of his people. The inhabitants of England, to their remotest thoughts, were called upon to be subjects of the King.

How, then, to open the King of England's heart? Parliament and Convocation might gain the King of England's ear. Through Parliament and Convocation the people of England were allowed a limited power of

self-expression and a circumscribed form of advertising their grievances, requirements and ideas. But the King's heart was not won because his ear was assailed. Neither were his eyes opened. It was the task of a woman to persuade the King; to challenge his understanding and to attract his sympathy. Anne was made the mouthpiece of the party of reform.

It has been pointed out by a forcible modern historian 1 that from the first the revival of letters took a "tone in England very different from the tone it had taken in Italy, a tone less literary, less largely human, but more moral, more religious, more practical in its bearings both upon society and politics." Anne was of the foreign school of thought. France had directly contributed to her education. Italy, through Surrey, Wyatt and other imitators of the Latins, had indirectly assisted it. Her followers and supporters were English men and women. These facts partly explain the inconsistency of a light woman-if Anne were no more than a light woman-being the chosen head of a serious movement. Her versatility in morals, as in learning, was great. The angel of "manifold virtues," the "bountiful" almsgiver and "zealous defender" of "Christ's gospel" of Foxe in his Book of Martyrs, is the "she-devil" and the "concubine" of the Imperialists and the Papists.

And to make this Anne Queen-Consort of England and the mother of England's heir, Henry VIII. quarrelled with the Pope, withdrew his kingdom from Roman protection, and proclaimed himself "Supreme Head of the Church in England."

Yet the passion of the King, the machinations of "the lady," the doctrines, aspirations and beliefs of the Reformers and the nationalism of great races were not all the causes of the "Great Schism." The methods of Rome, the cowardice and dishonesty of a line of Popes, and the sinful presumptions of the dogma of Infallibility, contributed in no small measure towards the catastrophe. Sooner or later the severance was bound to come.

1 John Richard Green, History of the English People

The

Church that counts territorial dominion the main bulwark of its authority and continuity is foredoomed. "My kingdom is not of this world, else would My children fight." "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's."

The calling for a judgment on the validity of a marriage would not seem the most crucial test of spirituality in a religious authority. Yet the application of that test by King Henry exposed unmistakably the worldly and self-interested character of the Papacy.

Katharine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, came to England in 1502 to marry Prince Arthur, the heir of Henry VII. All due regal and ecclesiastical ceremonies were performed at their wedding, but the prince died within five months of the marriage.

For ten months the young widow was kept in strict retirement, but it soon became evident that she was not to bear a child to Prince Arthur, and plans for her future disposal were quickly discussed. Katharine's experiences as daughter-in-law of the parsimonious Henry VII., had been of a nature that led her to write to her father that she had "no inclination for a second marriage in England," though she avowed herself ready to act in all things as suited King Ferdinand best. The desire of Henry VII. to maintain his alliance with Spain and to obtain in full the marriage portion promised with Arthur's bride, but not yet paid over, led the English King to propose either to marry Katharine himself or to create his second son Prince of Wales and give him the PrincessDowager of Wales-as Katharine was called-for his wife. Ferdinand refused the odious offer of the father, but accepted that of the son.

That Henry could even contemplate a marriage with his daughter-in-law was due to the "indulgence" of Rome. The Papacy had long trafficked in Bulls that permitted the solemnization of marriages that, without these dispensations, were regarded as unions of affinity contrary to the laws of man and God. Popes were found, both before and after the days of Henry VII., who were

only too ready to further State policies of rulers they feared might deprive them of territory or who were useful to them for the defence of domains. And one of the special means whereby the Court of Rome could win the favour of earthly potentates, was that of blessing questionable and abhorrent marriages desired either for the soft gratification of men's passions or for stern reasons of State. Even in the nineteenth century royal and other marriages between closely related parties were "dispensed." And now, as in the fifteenth century, there is among Roman Catholic peoples no very definite understanding as to what affinities are prohibitive of marriage. Papal indulgences can always be extended to particular

cases.

In the case of the daughter of Ferdinand of Spain and of the son of Henry of England, Rome was very ready to oblige two Catholic monarchs, one accounted the hardiest and the other the wealthiest of Christendom. The requested Bulls were granted. But even after their reception in this country some scruples as to the legality of the union of a brother-in-law and sister-in-law arose. Henry VII. would not allow his son to conclude his union with his brother's widow. But, on coming to the throne, Henry VIII. made Katharine his Queen. Their union was celebrated with full Church rites.

For eighteen years they remained together King and Queen! Children were born to them. Only the Princess Mary survived. The idea of a woman mounting the throne was not a familiar one to the popular or to the Royal mind. Mary, though revered as "Princess of England" and invested with the style and dignity of "Princess of Wales," was not looked upon as a possible Sovereign. Heirs-presumptive-collateral descendants with Henry from Plantagenet kings-clustered round the throne. There was no heir-apparent. To quiet faction and to secure the integrity of the realm it was needful—so it was thought that a prince should be born. There had come to be no hope of Katharine bearing that prince.

It is idle to force the belief that scruples of conscience were the only forces that drove Henry to apply to Rome