orfolk, trod the same dizzy path to the same fatal end;
and the English people looked on powerless or unmoved. They sent their
burgesses and knights of the shire to Westminster without let or
hindrance, and Parliament met with a regularity that grew with the
rigour of Henry's rule; but it seemed to assemble only to register the
royal edicts and clothe with a legal cloak the naked violence of
Henry's acts. It remembered its privileges only to lay them at Henry's
feet, it cancelled his debts, endowed his proclamations with the force
of laws, and authorised him to repeal acts of attainder and dispose of
his crown at will. Secure of its support Henry turned and rent the
spiritual unity of Western Christendom, and settled at a blow that
perennial struggle between Church and State, in which kings and (p. 003)
emperors had bitten the dust. With every epithet of contumely and
scorn he trampled under foot the jurisdiction of him who was believed
to hold the keys of heaven and hell. Borrowing in practice the old
maxim of Roman law, _cujus regio, ejus religio_,[19] he placed himself
in the seat of authority in religion and presumed to define the faith
of which Leo had styled him defender. Others have made themselves
despots by their mastery of many legions, through the agency of a
secret police, or by means of an organised bureaucracy. Yet Henry's
standing army consisted of a few gentlemen pensioners and yeomen of
the guard; he had neither secret police nor organised bureaucracy.
Even then Englishmen boasted that they were not slaves like the
French,[20] and foreigners pointed a finger of scorn at their turbulence.
Had they not permanently or temporarily deprived of power nearly half
their kings who had reigned since William the Conqueror? Yet Henry
VIII. not only left them their arms, but repeatedly urged them to keep
those arms ready for use.[21] He eschewed that air of mystery with
which tyrants have usually sought to impose on the mind of the people.
All his life he moved familiarly and almost unguarded in the midst of
his subjects, and he died in his bed, full of years, with the spell of
his power unbroken and the terror of his name unimpaired.

[Footnote 16: Bainbridge, Wolsey, Fisher, Pole.
Bainbridge was a cardinal after Julius II's own
heart, and he received the red hat for military
services rendered to that warlike Pope (_Ven.