to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue of the general imagination.[1]
These were the forces which were working on the surface of the English mind; while underneath, availing themselves skilfully of the excitement, the agents of the disaffected among the clergy, or the friars mendicant, who to a man were devoted to the Pope and to Queen Catherine, passed up and down the country, denouncing the divorce, foretelling ruin, disaster, and the wrath of God; and mingling with their prophecies more than dubious language on the near destruction or deposition of a prince who was opposing God and Heaven. The soil was manured by treason, and the sowers made haste to use their opportunity. Thus especially was there danger in those wandering encampments of 'outlandish people,' whose habits rendered them the ready-made missionaries of sedition; whose swarthy features might hide a Spanish heart, and who in telling fortunes might readily dictate policy.[2] Under the disguise of gipsies, the emissaries of the Emperor or the Pope might pass unsuspected from the Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, penetrating the secrets of families, tying the links of the
- ↑ Miscellaneous Depositions on the State of the Country: Rolls House MS.
- ↑ See the Preamble of the Bill against conjurations, witchcraft, sorceries, and enchantments. 33 Hen. VIII. cap. 8.Also 'the Bill touching Prophecies upon Arms and Badges.' 33 Hen. VIII. cap. 14.A similar edict expelled the gipsies from Germany. At the Diet of Spires, June 10, 1544.Statutum est ne vagabundum hominum genus quos vulgo Saracenos vocant per Germaniam oberrare sinatur, usu enim compertum est eos exploratores et proditores esse.—State Papers, vol. ix. p. 705.
