History of the English People, Volume IV | Page 5

firm ground of custom was broken and their minds set
drifting and questioning, that little as was the actual religious change,
the thought of religious change had become familiar to the people as a
whole. And with religious change was certain to come religious revolt.
The human conscience was hardly likely to move everywhere in strict
time to the slow advance of Henry's reforms. Men who had been roused
from implicit obedience to the Papacy as a revelation of the Divine will
by hearing the Pope denounced in royal proclamations as a usurper and
an impostor were hardly inclined to take up submissively the new
official doctrine which substituted implicit belief in the King for
implicit belief in the "Bishop of Rome." But bound as Church and King
now were together, it was impossible to deny a tenet of the one without
entering on a course of opposition to the other. Cromwell had raised
against the Monarchy the most fatal of all enemies, the force of the
individual conscience, the enthusiasm of religious belief, the fire of
religious fanaticism. Slowly as the area of the new Protestantism
extended, every man that it gained was a possible opponent of the
Crown. And should the time come, as the time was soon to come, when
the Crown moved to the side of Protestantism, then in turn every soul
that the older faith retained was pledged to a lifelong combat with the
Monarchy.
[Sidenote: The Imperial Alliance.]
How irresistible was the national drift was seen on Cromwell's fall. Its
first result indeed promised to be a reversal of all that Cromwell had
done. Norfolk returned to power, and his influence over Henry seemed
secured by the king's repudiation of Anne of Cleves and his marriage in
the summer of 1540 to a niece of the Duke, Catharine Howard. But
Norfolk's temper had now become wholly hostile to the movement
about him. "I never read the Scripture nor never will!" the Duke replied
hotly to a Protestant arguer. "It was merry in England afore the new
learning came up; yea, I would all things were as hath been in times
past." In his preference of an Imperial alliance to an alliance with

Francis and the Lutherans Henry went warmly with his minister. Parted
as he had been from Charles by the question of the divorce, the King's
sympathies had remained true to the Emperor; and at this moment he
was embittered against France by the difficulties it threw in the way of
his projects for gaining a hold upon Scotland. Above all the king still
clung to the hope of a purification of the Church by a Council, as well
as of a reconciliation of England with the general body of this purified
Christendom, and it was only by the Emperor that such a Council could
be convened or such a reconciliation brought about. An alliance with
him was far from indicating any retreat from Henry's position of
independence or any submission to the Papacy. To the men of his own
day Charles seemed no Catholic bigot. On the contrary the stricter
representatives of Catholicism such as Paul the Fourth denounced him
as a patron of heretics, and attributed the upgrowth of Lutheranism to
his steady protection and encouragement. Nor was the charge without
seeming justification. The old jealousy between Pope and Emperor, the
more recent hostility between them as rival Italian powers, had from
the beginning proved Luther's security. At the first appearance of the
reformer Maximilian had recommended the Elector of Saxony to suffer
no harm to be done to him; "there might come a time," said the old
Emperor, "when he would be needed." Charles had looked on the
matter mainly in the same political way. In his earliest years he bought
Leo's aid in his recovery of Milan from the French king by issuing the
ban of the Empire against Luther in the Diet of Worms; but every
Italian held that in suffering the reformer to withdraw unharmed
Charles had shown not so much regard to his own safe-conduct as a
purpose still "to keep the Pope in check with that rein." And as Charles
dealt with Luther so he dealt with Lutheranism. The new faith profited
by the Emperor's struggle with Clement the Seventh for the lordship
over Italy. It was in the midst of this struggle that his brother and
representative, Ferdinand, signed in the Diet of Spires an Imperial
decree by which the German States were left free to arrange their
religious affairs "as each should best answer to God and the Emperor."
The decree gave a legal existence to the Protestant body in the Empire
which it never afterwards lost.
[Sidenote: Charles and the Council.]

Such a step might well encourage the belief that Charles was himself
inclining