he Reformation.]

[Sidenote: The approaching revulsion, and the use which was made of it.]

These were the first Paladins of the Reformation, the knights who slew
the dragons and the enchanters, and made the earth habitable for common
flesh and blood. They were rarely, as we have said, men of great
ability, still more rarely men of "wealth and station"; but men rather
of clear senses and honest hearts. Tyndal was a remarkable person, and
so Clark and Frith promised to become; but the two last were cut off
before they had found scope to show themselves; and Tyndal remaining
abroad, lay outside the battle which was being fought in England, doing
noble work, indeed, and ending as the rest ended, with earning a
martyr's crown; but taking no part in the actual struggle except with
his pen. As yet but two men of the highest order of power were on the
side of Protestantism--Latimer and Cromwell. Of them we have already
said something; but the time was now fast coming when they were to step
forward, pressed by circumstances which could no longer dispense with
them, into scenes of far wider activity; and the present seems a fitting
occasion to give some closer account of their history. When the breach
with the pope was made irreparable, and the papal party at home had
assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the fortunes of the
Protestants entered into a new phase. The persecution ceased; and those
who but lately were carrying fagots in the streets, or hiding for their
lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the sunshine of
political favour. The summer was but a brief one, followed soon by
returning winter; but Cromwell and Latimer had together caught the
moment as it went by; and before it was over, a work had been done in
England which, when it was accomplished once, was accomplished for ever.
The conservative party recovered their power, and abused it as before;
but the chains of the nation were broken, and no craft of kings or
priests or statesmen could weld the magic links again.

It is a pity that of two persons to whom England owes so deep a debt, we
can piece together such scanty biographies. I must attempt, however, to
give some outline of the little which is known.

[Sidenote: The family of Hugh Latimer. His father a Leicestershire
yeoman.]

The father of Latimer was a solid English yeoman, of Thurcaston, in
Leicestershire. "He had no lands of his own," but he rented a farm "of
four pounds by the