indeed a very Christian league and confederacy.'[1] At the same time he surprised Cranmer by telling him that he was prepared for the change at home of the mass into the modern communion.[2] The danger for which Anne of Cleves had been divorced, for which Cromwell had been hunted to death, which the whole energies of the Anglo-Catholics had for ten years been exerted to prevent, had returned at last, and, as it seemed, irresistibly. The Germans, indeed, were so blind to their peril as again to hesitate, and to demand impossible conditions. September.The false promises of the French betrayed them to their ruin.[3] But the King's intentions remained unaffected. Slow to resolve, he was never known to relinquish a resolution which once he had formed; and Elizabeth did but conclude and establish the changes which her father would have anticipated had another year of life been allowed to him.[4]
- ↑ Henry VIII. to Bruno: State Papers, vol. xi. pp. 281, 282.
- ↑ See Foxe, vol. v. p. 692: and Jenkins's Cranmer, vol. i. p. 320.
- ↑ 'Unless the Protestants be succoured, the Cardinal du Beliay saith that actum est de negotio evangelii.… We had long communication of this matter, and, among other things, when I said to him that, if the Protestants could have been contented with reason, peradventure they might have been in league with us ere this. Marry, it is true, quoth he; but to speak frankly with you, they durst not for fear of us, for if they had so done without us we threatened to be against them too: and then, they, being loath to refuse directly your amity, did demand such things of yon as they knew you would not grant unto.'—Wotton to Paget: State Papers, vol. xi. pp. 354, 355.
- ↑ I say Elizabeth, rather than Cranmer and Hertford; for the Reformation under Edward VI. was conducted in another spirit. Hertford, however, knew what Henry's intentions were, and partially if not wholly fulfilled them. He wrote to Mary on her complaint of the changes which he had introduced, saying that 'his Grace died before
