One good result, however, arose out of this base and sordid turmoil. In 1535, Thomas Cromwell appointed a Commission to inquire into the state of the monasteries. The condition of those establishments had long been known to be scandalous in the last degree; but no one had had the power or the interest to remedy the evil, or even to examine minutely into its nature and extent. The interest and the power were now no longer wanting; for Henry, supported by a compliant Parliament, could do what he pleased, and the enormous wealth of the conventual bodies was a powerful incentive to attack. Cromwell himself acted as Visitor-General of the monasteries, and the reports

of £32,000 a year, besides receiving £100,000 in ready money. Henry was enabled, moreover, to make immense grants of land to his favourites, and the power of the aristocracy was greatly increased by this sudden access of wealth. But, however necessary the measure, and however beneficial in its ultimate effects, it was undoubtedly productive of considerable hardship for the time; nor is it easy to justify the seizure, without any compensation, of private property which had been bequeathed for different purposes. A large class was suddenly stricken with poverty, while its stored-up wealth went into the coffers of the King, or the hands of private persons. Something like

a social convulsion followed on the great measure of Thomas Cromwell. In Lincolnshire, forty thousand men rose against what they considered an injustice; the northern counties were in rebellion; all over England, the dispossessed monks and friars swelled the army of the malcontents. Yet the King and his advisers shrank not from pursuing their policy to the end. Partly by force, and partly by promises, the insurrections were put down. In 1539, the remaining monasteries were suppressed; the abbeys were despoiled of their gold and silver vessels, jewels, relics, and other property; and a large destruction of Gothic architecture gave a touch of barbarism to the struggle against Papal tyranny and corruption. Six new bishoprics were formed, and fourteen abbeys were converted into cathedrals and collegiate churches. But religion gained very little by all these acts, while the freedom of the intellect gained not at all. So disinclined was Henry to support what is understood as Protestantism, that he procured a declaration from his Parliament, establishing the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Communion in one kind, the celibacy of the clergy, masses, and auricular confession; and punishing with death any one who should venture to deny the validity of those opinions and practices.

Catherine of Aragon died towards the end of 1535, and in May, 1536, Queen Anne was executed on charges of adultery imperfectly supported by the evidence. The very next morning, Henry, with brutal indecency, married Jane Seymour, a lady whose personal attractions had inspired him with the same uncontrollable feeling that had formerly been excited by Anne Boleyn. Queen Jane died on the 14th of October, 1537, and in January, 1540, the King married Anne, sister of the Duke of Cleves, who was divorced six months later. The fifth consort of Henry VIII. was Lady Catherine Howard, whom he married on the 8th of August, 1540, and beheaded on the 13th of February, 1542, on a charge of adultery which seems to have been better established than in the case of Anne. The sixth and last Queen of this despotic monarch was Catherine Parr, who was married on the 10th of July, 1543, and had the good fortune to survive her lord. The fact of Henry VIII. having had so many wives goes against him with a nation like the English; but the popular feeling on this subject has been somewhat exaggerated. It should be recollected that, of these six wives, one was divorced because there were grave doubts as to the lawfulness of the union; that two were beheaded on charges of

adultery which were undoubtedly proved in one case, if they were questionable in the other; that one died a natural death, and one was still living at the time of Henry's decease. The instance which appears most characterised by caprice was that of Anne of Cleves, who seems, from the first moment of their meeting, to have displeased Henry by her plainness. One reason for his repeated marriages was the desire to provide the nation with heirs to the throne, of indisputable legitimacy, and with a probability of their lives being prolonged beyond youth. It is true that, when the King married Anne of Cleves, he had three children-Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward. But the legitimacy of the two daughters was open to question, owing, in the case of Mary, to the doubtful nature of the marriage with Catherine of Aragon, and, in that of Elizabeth, to the alleged infidelity of Anne Boleyn. Edward, the only son, was so sickly from the first that fears were entertained of his never reaching manhood; and the event entirely justified those apprehensions. The marriage with Anne of Cleves was contracted by the advice of the Privy Council; but, although the nuptials took place, Henry never lived with the Queen, and very shortly dissolved the union. The actions of Henry were often violent and heartless; but it is a mere extravagance of rhetoric to represent him, so far as his married life was concerned, as a species of ogre, guided simply by the wild frenzy of his passions. In some respects he was unfortunate, in some he was selfish; but he was certainly not the unmitigated sensualist that we behold in his contemporary, Francis L, or in many other monarchs who have disgraced the regal office by the scandal of their licentious lives.

However disinclined Henry may have been to accept the principles of Luther and Zwingli, of Wyclif and Huss, he had set going a movement which it was beyond his power to confine within the limits he wished to set. For him, it was enough if the jurisdiction of the Pope was excluded from England; but the Parliament and the nation desired to go farther. The former presented a petition to the King, in 1536, requesting that a new translation of the Bible might be executed by authority, and set up in the churches. Two years later, the version known as Miles Coverdale's was ordered to be kept in places of worship where it could be seen and read by the people; at the same time, incumbents were directed to teach their congregations the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vernacular. These measures, and others tending to the suppression of idolatry, were due to the reforming zeal of Thomas, Lord

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Cromwell, as he had now become a man of remarkable genius and energy, who seems to have been animated by a spirit similar to that of his still more famous namesake a century later. of his many appointments was to the office of VicarGeneral, which gave him a control over the Church, and enabled him to advance the cause of the Reformation more than the sovereign himself desired. This over-confident activity caused the fall of the minister not long after he had been created Earl of Essex and Lord Chamberlain of England. Henry was now under the influence of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester--a champion of the old faith, but one who knew how to accommodate himself to existing facts. By his incentive, the Parliament of 1539 enacted that the proclamations of the King in Council should thenceforth have the same authority as statutes, and passed the celebrated Six Articles, by which the punishment of death, or some other severe penalty, was attached to the denial of several among the cherished doctrines and practices of the Romish Church. Cromwell endeavoured to thwart the operation of this Act, and, having been committed to the Tower on a charge of treason, was beheaded on the 28th of July, 1540.

The last years of Henry VIII. were spent in fruitless wars with France and Scotland, and in the unrestrained indulgence of those bloody and resentful passions which had now become habitual, and which the torments of disease exasperated to frenzy. He expired on the 28th of January, 1547, leaving the throne to his youthful son, Edward VI., whose mother, Jane Seymour, had died at the period of his birth. Edward was a boy of nine when he thus succeeded to an ancient and illustrious throne. His disposition seems to have been amiable; but he was of course the creature of others during his brief reign of six years and a half. The duties of Protector were discharged by his maternal uncle, the Earl of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset; and Cranmer, as Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of the Council of Regency. The establishment of that form of Protestantism which finds its expression in the Church of England, was mainly the work of Cranmer; and although the arrangement was upset for a few years under Mary, it had struck too deep a root in the national character not to revive at the first opportunity. The Reformation made great progress under this able and learned prelate, who was assisted in his labours by Bishops Latimer and Ridley, and by others equally devoted to the cause. Very little bloodshed accompanied the changes then effected; many noble charities were endowed out of the confiscated

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revenues of the abbeys and other conventual institutions; and, while much of the old religion was retained which a more searching and philosophical spirit would have discarded, an important approach was made towards that emancipation of the mind from dogma and tradition which modern times have carried much farther, and with the happiest results. Henry's Six Articles, known as the Bloody Statute, were repealed, and the country entered on a period of comparative repose, as regarded religion, which was unfortunately broken, so far as politics were concerned, by the struggles for power of the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland.

The ambition of the latter nobleman, who, in January, 1552, procured the execution of his rival, was to secure the throne of England for his posterity. He therefore united his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, daughter of Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and afterwards Duke of Suffolk. The mother of Jane was Lady Frances Brandon, daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and of Mary, sister of Henry VIII., who had been previously married to Louis XII. of France. After the death of Somerset, the Dukes of Northumberland and Suffolk prevailed on King Edward, then in failing health, to make a deed of settlement, transferring the succession from the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots (the next in relationship), to Lady Jane, who appears to have had no knowledge of what was intended. Edward died on the 6th of July, 1553, and Lady Jane Grey-a girl of about sixteen, learned, amiable, and graceful-suffered herself, though unwillingly, to be proclaimed as his successor. But the people speedily rallied to the rightful heir, as Mary undoubtedly was, unless we regard her as illegitimate; and in ten days Jane was deposed. She was executed on the 12th of February, 1554, when the fortunes of England passed into the hands of a bigoted Romanist, the circumstances of whose reign must be deferred to another Chapter. The premature death of Edward VI., from a species of consumption, opened a brief period of reaction, bloodshed, and disturbance, which might have been spared had his life continued. But the future of Protestantism was assured within the seas of Britain.

While the great monarchies of the continent were contending in deadly antagonism, and England was siding first with one, and then with another, as considerations of policy seemed to require, Scotland was pursuing an independent path, and mixing very little in the general affairs of Europe, unless when the French were to be indirectly helped

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by an inroad across the English border. great difficulty of the Scottish kings-a greater even than the rivalry or the ambition of England— proceeded from the turbulence and insubordination of the fierce Celtic chieftains of the North. For several generations, the Lords of the Isles, as the rulers of the Hebrides used to call themselves, exercised a power which often successfully defied that of the Scottish monarchs; and although this barbaric sovereignty was nearly shattered at the battle of Harlaw, in 1411, its effects endured much longer. The Highland clans continued to be troublesome; the great Scottish nobles were often the masters of their sovereign; and opposing factions fought out their quarrels in the streets of Edinburgh, as if there were no such thing as law in the country. The first three Jameses-whose reigns extended over the larger part of the fifteenth century-were frequently at issue with the powerful families of Lennox, Graham, Douglas, Crawford, Angus, Argyle, and others, and a state of permanent violence, sometimes amounting to open war, and sometimes degenerating into secret murder, retarded the progress of civilisation, and fostered the wildest passions of human nature. The nobility were for the most part of Celtic blood, while the monarchs, though of mixed race, represented the Lowland or Anglo-Saxon element in the composition of the people. It was from a Lowland cityEdinburgh, the town of Northumbrian Edwinthat Scotland was governed from about 1437; and, on the whole, the Anglo-Saxon genius, with its love of industry, orderliness, and freedom, prevailed over the restless mountain septs.

The disastrous battle of Flodden (to which allusion has before been made) was not without good results for the Scottish kings, in consequence of the terrific slaughter of the nobility, which left them but a wreck of their former power and influence. It was fought on the 9th of September, 1513, when James IV., having invaded Northumberland in consequence of certain injuries which he alleged against his brother-in-law, Henry VIII., was encountered by the English forces under the Earl of Surrey. On this memorable occasion, the Scots displayed even more than their wonted valour, spirit, and resolution; but they were ill-commanded, and exposed to every disadvantage which rashness and incompetence could assure. Against the advice of their French allies, the northern men, abandoning a strong position on the side of a hill, flung themselves in repeated charges against the steady lines of the English pikemen, who were supported on both flanks by the finest archers in the world. A temporary success against the right

wing of the southern army was accompanied and followed by a crushing reverse in all other directions. The fury of the combat continued until nightfall, even after the death of King James, who, spurring his horse towards the quarters of the Earl of Surrey, which he nearly reached, fell covered with blood upon the plain. The killed upon the Scottish side included thirteen earls, fifteen barons, a large number of chieftains and landed gentry, and multitudes of the poorer sort. The power of the feudal aristocracy of Scotland was reduced, at one blow, almost as much as that of England by the thirty years' war in which the Houses of York and Lancaster contended for the mastery.

His

James V. was only a year and a half old when his father perished on the field of Flodden. mother was Margaret of England, the daughter of Henry VII.; but this fact did not draw the two countries any closer together. When Henry VIII. declared his independence of the Pope, he was very desirous that his nephew should do the same; but James refused, and treated the proposals of the English King with a superciliousness which irritated the former opponent of Luther. War broke out between the larger and the smaller kingdom; the English were defeated during an incursion across the border in 1542; and James raised a large army to oppose the advance of the Duke of Norfolk, who was appointed to retrieve the recent disgrace. Norfolk retired before his antagonists, and the Scottish King then proposed to invade England. The nobles refused to follow him; a royal favourite, named Oliver Sinclair, was appointed to the command; tumult and mutiny ensued; and, while in this disorganised state, the Scots were attacked by a small English force, numbering not more than three hundred men, and totally routed. James died of grief and mortification on the 13th of December, a week after the birth of his daughter Mary, who succeeded him on the throne; and Scotland again passed under a Regency. This unfortunate war, terminating in the defeat at Solway Moss, first brought out in prominent colours the fact that the Scottish nation was divided in religion. The King held firmly to the old faith; the nobles, for the most part, had adopted the principles of the Reformation; and the mass of the people ranged themselves in hostile camps. Religious animosity had something to do with the insubordination of the great lords previous to their discomfiture by the English.

One of the earliest of the Scottish reformers, at the period we have now reached, was Patrick Hamilton; but at a previous date the teachings