ighteen had been. He defied the Pope, married Anne (1533), and sent
his Minister into disgrace {76} for not serving him more effectually.
"There was the weight which pulled me down," said Wolsey of Anne, and
death from a broken heart mercifully saved the old man from the
scaffold he would certainly have reached.

The legion of demons which had been slumbering in the King were
awakened. He would break no law, but he would bend the law to his
will. He commanded a trembling Parliament to pass an act sustaining
his marriage with Anne. Another permitting him to name his successor,
and then another--making him _supreme head of the Church in England_.
The Pope was forever dethroned in his Kingdom, and Protestantism had
achieved a bloodstained victory.

Henry alone could judge what was orthodoxy and what heresy; but to
disagree with _him_, was death. Traitor and heretic went to the
scaffold in the same hurdle; the Catholic who denied the King's
supremacy riding side by side with the Protestant who denied
transubstantiation. The Protestantism of this great convert was
political, not {77} religious; he despised the doctrines of
Lutheranism, and it was dangerous to believe too much and equally
dangerous to believe too little. Heads dropped like leaves in the
forest, and in three years the Queen who had overturned England and
almost Europe, was herself carried to the scaffold (1536).

It was in truth a "Reign of Terror" by an absolutism standing upon the
ruin of every rival. The power of the Barons had gone; the Clergy were
panic-stricken, and Parliament was a servant, which arose and bowed
humbly to his vacant throne at mention of his name! A member for whom
he had sent knelt trembling one day before him. "Get my bill passed
to-morrow, my little man," said the King, "or to-morrow, this head of
yours will be off." The next day the bill passed, and millions of
Church property was confiscated, to be thrown away in gambling, or to
enrich the adherents of the King.

Thomas Cromwell, who had succeeded to Wolsey's vacant place, was his
efficient instrument. This student of Machiavelli's "Prince," without
passion or hate, pity or {78} regret, marked men for destruction, as a
woodman does tall trees, the highest and proudest names in the Kingdom
being set down in his little notebook under the head of either "Heresy"
or "Treason." Sir Thomas More, one of the wisest and best of men,
would not say he thought the marriage with