ich she ventured towards a compliance with it showed the
difficulties she would have to meet. The grant of the first-fruits to
Henry the Eighth had undoubtedly rested on his claim of supremacy over
the Church; and now that this was at an end Mary had grounds for
proposing their restoration to church purposes. But the proposal was
looked on as a step towards the resumption of the monastic lands, and
after a hot and prolonged debate at the close of 1555 the Commons only
assented to it by a small majority. It was plain that no hearing would
be given to the Pope's demand for a restoration of all Church property;
great lords were heard to threaten that they would keep their lands so
long as they had a sword by their side; and England was thus left at
hopeless variance with the Papacy.

[Sidenote: Cranmer.]

But, difficult as Mary's task became, she clung as tenaciously as ever
to her work of blood. The martyrdoms went steadily on, and at the
opening of 1556 the sanction of Rome enabled the Queen to deal with a
victim whose death woke all England to the reality of the persecution.
Far as he stood in character beneath many who had gone before him to the
stake, Cranmer stood high above all in his ecclesiastical position. To
burn the Primate of the English Church for heresy was to shut out meaner
victims from all hope of escape. And on the position of Cranmer none
cast a doubt. The other prelates who had suffered had been placed in
their sees after the separation from Rome, and were hardly regarded as
bishops by their opponents. But, whatever had been his part in the
schism, Cranmer had received his Pallium from the Pope. He was, in the
eyes of all, Archbishop of Canterbury, the successor of St. Augustine
and of St. Thomas in the second see of Western Christendom. Revenge
however and religious zeal alike urged the Queen to bring Cranmer to
the stake. First among the many decisions in which the Archbishop had
prostituted justice to Henry's will stood that by which he had annulled
the king's marriage with Catharine and declared Mary a bastard. The last
of his political acts had been to join, whether reluctantly or no, in
the shameless plot to exclude Mary from the throne. His great position
too made Cranmer more than any man a representative of the religious
revolution which had passed over the land. His figure stood with those
of Henry and of Cromwell on the frontispiece of the English Bible. The
decisive change which had been g