Little Arthur's history of England

by Lady Maria Callcott

Yet he found a lady, named Catherine Parr, who was a widow; and she married him very willingly, for she was ready to run the risk for the sake of being a queen. She was very clever, and contrived to keep the passionate and cruel king in good humour till he died, when I dare say she was not sorry to find herself alive and safe, for he had once intended to put her to death like Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

Now we will end this chapter about Henry’s wives. You will find that as he grew old he grew more and more passionate and cruel; and in what I have to tell you about some other parts of his reign, in the next chapter, you will see that he grew wicked in almost everything.

CHAPTER XXXIX.
HENRY VIII.—Continued.
How the Pope and the friars imposed upon the people; how disputes arose in England about religion; how King Henry seized the convents and turned out the monks and nuns; how he called himself Supreme Head of the Church, and put many people to death who did not agree with him in all things.

In several parts of our history we have read of the Pope, that is, the Bishop of Rome. When Thomas à Becket was murdered in the reign of Henry the Second, I told you it was done after a quarrel between the king and Thomas, because Thomas wanted the Pope to have the power to punish clergymen in England, or to let them go without punishment, when they did wrong, without caring at all what the law of the country might be.

Now more than three hundred years had passed, and the Popes still pretended to have great power. And a great many new kinds of clergymen, especially the FRIARS, had begun to go about the country, doing nothing themselves, and pretending that the people ought to give them meat, and drink, and lodging, because they could read and say prayers. Besides that, they used to pretend to cure diseases, by making people kiss old bones, or bits of rag, and other trash, which they said had once belonged to some holy person or another, which was as wicked as it was foolish. It was wicked to tell such lies. It was foolish, because the cures that God has appointed for diseases are only to be learned by care and patience, and have nothing to do with such things as old bones and rags.

However, almost everybody believed these things for a long time. But at last, people began to read more books, as I told you in the chapter about Henry the Seventh; and they learned how foolish it was to believe all the friars had said.

One of the first books they began to read was the Bible, in which they found the commands of God; and they saw that all men ought to obey the laws of the countries they live in. And they found that clergymen might marry, and that, though they ought to be paid for teaching the people, they had no business to live idle.

It was not only in England that the people began to think of these things, but in other countries, especially in Germany, where a learned man, named Martin Luther, was the first who dared to tell the clergymen how ill he thought they behaved, and to try to persuade all kings and princes to forbid the Pope’s messengers and priests to meddle with the proper laws of the country. There were many other things he found fault with very justly, which I cannot tell you now, as we must speak of what was done in England.

You have not forgotten that I told you that gentlemen began to study a great deal in the reign of Henry the Seventh, and I promised to tell you something about Thomas Linacre’s scholars.