ere
defied; Europe was shocked; Francis himself disapproved of the breach
with the Church; Ireland was in revolt; Scotland, as ever, was
hostile; legislation had been thrust down the throats of a
recalcitrant Church, and, we are asked to believe, of a no less
unwilling House of Commons, while the people at large were seething
with indignation at the insults heaped upon the injured Queen and her
daughter. By all the laws of nature, of morals, and of politics, it
would seem, Henry was doomed to the fate of the monarch in the Book of
Daniel the Prophet,[864] who did according to his will and exalted and
magnified himself above every god; who divided the land for gain, and
had power over the treasures of gold and silver; who was troubled by
tidings from the east and from the north; who went forth with (p. 307)
great fury to destroy and utterly make away many, and yet came to
his end, and none helped him.

[Footnote 852: _Ibid._, vi., 918.]

[Footnote 853: _L. and P._, vi., 508; vii., 121.]

[Footnote 854: _Ibid._, v., 1324.]

[Footnote 855: _Ibid._, v., 416.]

[Footnote 856: See _Transactions of the Royal Hist.
Soc._, N.S., xviii.; _L. and P._, vi., 1419, 1445,
1464, 1467, 1468.]

[Footnote 857: _L. and P._, v., 609, 807; vi., 815,
821.]

[Footnote 858: _Ibid._, vi., 446, 541; vii., 114.]

[Footnote 859: _Ibid._, vi., 1164.]

[Footnote 860: _L. and P._, vii., 1368.]

[Footnote 861: Even Norfolk, and Suffolk and his
wife wanted to dissuade Henry in 1531 from
persisting in the divorce (_ibid._, v., 287).]

[Footnote 862: _Ibid._, v., 696.]

[Footnote 863: _Ibid._, vii., 14.]

[Footnote 864: Daniel xi., 36-45.]

All these circumstances, real and alleged, would be quite convincing
as reasons for Henry's failure; but they are singularly inconclusive
as explanations of his success, of the facts that his people did not
rise and depose him, that no Spanish Armada disgorged its host on
English shores, and that, for all the papal thunderbolts, Henry died
quietly in his bed fourteen years later, and was buried with a pomp
and respect to which Popes themselves were little accusto