[150] Soranzo, Relatione d'Inghilterra 1554. 'Per posseder la sua grazia ben amplamente, non solo faceva qualche spettacolo, per dargli piacere, ma gli diede liberta di danari.' Florentine Collection viii. 37.
[151] As he advises a friend: 'Apply yourself to riding shooting or tennis—not forgetting sometimes when you have leisure, your learning, chiefly reading the Scripture.' Halliwell ii. 49.
[152] Wheatly in Soames, History of the Reformation iii. 604.
[153] In the commission of 32 members (bishops, divines, civilians, lawyers) we find the names of Will. Cecil, Will Peters, Thomas Smith.
[154] Compare Heylin, History of the Reformation 50, 101.
CHAPTER VII.
TRANSFER OF THE GOVERNMENT TO A CATHOLIC QUEEN.
We can easily see how the power of the crown, founded by the first Tudor, and developed by the second through the emancipation from the Papacy, was further strengthened under the third. From Edward VI we have essays, in which he speaks about the spiritual and temporal government with the consciousness of a sovereign, whose actions depend only on himself. In the Homilies, which obtained legal sanction, there is found an express condemnation of resistance to the King, 'for Godes sake, from whom Kings are, and for orders sake.'
Whilst men were now expecting that Edward VI would arrive at manhood, and take the government completely into his own hands, and conduct it in the sense he had hitherto foreshadowed—not merely carrying out the Reformation thoroughly at home, but assuming the leadership of the Protestant world, symptoms appeared in him of the malady to which his half-brother Richmond had succumbed at an early age. But how then if the same fate befell him? According to Henry VIII's arrangement Mary was then to ascend the throne who, through her descent from Queen Catharine and from an inborn disposition which had become all the more confirmed by her opposition to her father and brother, represented the Catholic and Spanish interest. Nothing else could be expected but that she would employ the whole power of the State in support of her own views, would, so far as it could possibly be done, bring back the church to its earlier form, would depress the men who had hitherto played a great part by the side of the King and subject them to the opposite faction. But were they quietly to acquiesce in their fate?