[173] The Catholics were saying that before Anne’s head fell the wax tapers on Katharine’s shrine at Peterborough kindled themselves. (John de Ponte’s letter to Cromwell, Cotton MSS., Titus B 1, printed by Ellis.)
[174] Spanish Calendar, 6th June 1536.
[175] The Parliament of 1536 enacted that all Bulls, Briefs, and Dispensations from Rome should be held void; that every officer, lay or clerical, should take an oath to renounce and resist all authority of the Pope on pain of high treason. In Convocation, Cromwell for the King at the same time introduced a new ecclesiastical constitution, establishing the Scriptures as the basis of faith, as interpreted by the four first Councils of the Church. Three sacraments only were acknowledged—Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist. The use of images and invocation of the saints were regulated and modified, all idolatrous or material worship of them being forbidden. Cromwell at the same period was raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Cromwell, and made Vicar-General of the Church. (Lord Herbert’s Henry VIII.)
[176] They are all in Cotton MSS., Otho x., and have been printed in Hearne’s Sylloge.
[177] She did her best for her backers during the Pilgrimage of Grace, throwing herself upon her knees before the King and beseeching him to restore the dissolved abbeys. Henry’s reply was to bid her get up and not meddle in his affairs—she should bear in mind what happened to her predecessor through having done so. The hint was enough for Jane, who appears to have had no strength of character, and thenceforward, though interesting herself personally for the Princess Mary, she let politics alone. (Calendar Henry VIII., vol. 12.)
[178] Chapuys to the Emperor. (Calendar Henry VIII.)
[179] Hist. MSS. Commission, Report XII., Appendix iv. vol. 1, Duke of Rutland’s Papers.
[180] Ibid.
[181] The assertion almost invariably made that Bishop Nicholas Sanders, the Jesuit writer, “invented” the story that the Cesarian operation was performed at birth is not true. The facts of this time are to a great extent copied textually by Sanders from the MS. Cronica de Enrico Otavo, by Guaras, and the statement is there made as an unsupported rumour only.
[182] Henry’s elaborate testamentary directions for the erection and adornment with precious stones of a sumptuous monument to himself and Jane were never carried out.