Bill. An indecisive conflict took place at Shoreham,* and during the darkness of the night that followed, the French ships, which had been turned by a hot month at sea into pesthouses of disease, slipped away home. The English fleet had also suffered from the ravages of sickness.

Meanwhile how did the Reformation proceed? We have heard of the Bishops' Book (1537). Another hybrid volume appeared in 1540, with the title, The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man, in which the seven sacraments were once more enjoined. The third edition of this book, published in 1543, is known as the "King's Book," from the preface by Henry with which it opened. A step towards the great literary work of the next reign was taken, when in 1544 the Litany began to be spoken in English.

In 1544 three men-Person, Testwood, and Filmer-were burned at Windsor in terms of the Six Articles. But the martyrdom of these years which excites deepest interest is that of the heroic Anne Askew, a lady of Lincolnshire. When disowned by her husband and her father for clinging to the truth, she used to read the Bible aloud to all who chose to hear in the aisles of Lincoln Cathedral. Arrested in London and committed to Newgate, she quailed not a jot. When on trial at the Guildhall, she put her views on the real presence in a shape so unmistakable that sentence of death followed at "That which you call your God," she said, "is a piece of bread for proof thereof let it lie in a box three months and it will be mouldy. I am persuaded it cannot be God." She was burned with three others in front of St. Bartholomew's Church on the 16th of July 1546. In Scotland too the fierce fagot blazed. On the previous May-day, George Wishart, whom the faithful Knox used to attend sword in hand, as he preached the gospel abroad in the free air, was

once.

1546

Shoreham, a town in Sussex, twenty-four miles east by south of Chichester. The old port lies a mile inland.

gibbeted and burned before the old castle of St. Andrews. . Cardinal Beaton's cruel eye watched his death-throes from a window, gloating over the destruction of so great a soldier of the Cross. Before the month was out, a roaring mob of the burghers rushed at the loud clang of the alarm-bell up to the castle wall, and saw there the dead body of the cardinal hanging "by the tane arm and the tane foot." With Beaton perished the Papal cause in Scotland.

A conspiracy, in which the prominent actors were the Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey of poetic fame, disturbed the last days of Henry's life. Norfolk was the leading Catholic nobleman in England. It was easy, therefore, to suppose him plotting for the restoration of papal power there. The acts of Surrey were more open. Entitled as a collateral descendant of the Plantagenets to bear the arms of England in the second quarter of his shield, he suddenly assumed those heraldic symbols in the first quarter-a privilege which belonged only to the heirapparent of the throne. Thus he aimed at supporting his father's claim to the protectorship, when death, now not far off, might strike the king. Convicted of treason, he was executed. Norfolk lay in prison, but the death of Henry saved him from the block.

1547

CHAPTER IV.

THE REFORMATION.

The protectorate-Pinkie Cleugh-Seymour of Sudleye-Popular discontents-Fall of Somerset-The English Liturgy-Jane Grey.

THE

HE new king, Edward the Sixth, was only in his tenth year. His father's will appointed sixteen "executors" to govern during his minority; but they made the Earl of Hertford, the king's uncle, protector of his realms and governor of his person. Hertford was created Duke of Somerset. The other leading "executors" were Archbishop Cranmer, Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, who was made Earl of Southampton, and Lisle, made Earl of Warwick. Men who had cowered under the Six Articles and similar enactments began to look up and bestir themselves. Everything smiled on the Reforming movement, which, from purely political motives, Somerset and Warwick both encouraged. The popular spirit showed itself at once in the removal of pictures and the breaking of images. Ridley, the Principal of Pembroke Hall at Cambridge, spoke out bravely against images in churches and the use of holy water. Archbishop Cranmer ate meat in Lent in the public hall of Lambeth Palace. The peasantry of the land, however, as is always the case, accepted the change of creed more slowly. They had sorely felt the fall of the monasteries. The purification of the churches seemed to them at first but a part of the same apparently mischievous movement. But the progress of the Reformation for several months after Henry's

death was remarkably rapid. Long repressed and shackled, it went forward with a sudden and surprising bound when the cords were cut. Among other necessary innovations, a Book of Homilies for the instruction and direction of the more ignorant clergy was compiled under Cranmer's superintendence.

The marriage of young Edward with Mary of Scotland had been a darling project of the late king, who with his failing breath desired Hertford to carry it out, if possible. The match had been accepted by the Scottish Estates in 1543, and a marriage treaty had been concluded; but France had interposed to prevent a union so hurtful to herself, and the treaty of July was in December declared null and void. Somerset then advanced those claims to the sovereignty of Scotland which, two centuries before, had brought infinite woes on both lands—a piece of policy which made the completion of the marriage treaty impossible but by force. To the sword it came at last. Mustering a force of fourteen thousand foot, four thousand horse, and fifteen cannon at Berwick, the protector crossed the Tweed, and, advancing within sight of the fleet which moved abreast of his march, saw the Scottish tents whitening the bank of the Esk at Musselburgh. Forgetting differences of creed and race, all Scotland had mustered as one man, to keep unbroken the ancient freedom of the realm. Too confident in their double numbers, the Scottish army crossed the river in hopes of cutting off the retreat of the English by occupying the ridges in their rear. But Somerset was too quick for them. He took the hills himself. Then the battle of Pinkie Cleugh began. The English cavalry, charging over a wet ploughed field, were broken by the line of Scottish pikes. But the pikemen, rushing in pursuit of the retreating foe, were met by a rain of matchlock-balls and arrows, which first disordered them, and then turned them back in scattered flying groups. Down came the re-formed cavalry with irre

Sept. 10, 1547

sistible force to drive them back on the bodies in reserve. The

Regent Arran struck spurs and fled. In a few minutes the whole slope on both sides was covered with the flying wreck of the Scottish army. The dress of white leather or fustian, in which all, high and low, had come to battle, made every fugitive a conspicuous mark for the sabres of the pursuing horsemen. The victorious protector captured Edinburgh, and

placed English garrisons in Roxburgh and other castles; and then he went back to England crowned with empty honour. The Scots lost Pinkie, but they kept their queen, until she could for greater safety be sent to the kinsfolk of her mother in France.

While these events took place in Scotland, the Homilies and Injunctions were working their way among the English clergy. From two prelates-Bonner, Bishop of London, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester-they met with special opposition. Both were committed to the Fleet Prison. The meeting of Parliament in November 1547 was the signal for a great change in the English Statute Book, from which were swept "the Bloody Statute," and the enactments framed in the reigns of Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth against the Lollards. The sting was drawn from such acts as the Act of Words and the Act of