likewise whither the Pryncesse shall sende any newe yeres gifts
to the Kinge, the Quene, your Grace, and the Frensshe Quene, and of
the value and devise of the same. Besechyng yowre Grace also to pardon
oure busy and importunate suts to the same in suche behalf made. Thus
oure right syngler goode lorde we pray the holy Trynyte have you in
his holy preservacion. At Teoxbury, the xxvij day of November.

Youre humble orators,
John Exon
"To the most reverent Father Jeilez Grevile
in God the Lord Cardinall Peter Burnell
his good Grace." John Salter
G. Bromley
Thomas Audeley."

CHRISTMAS AND THE REFORMATION.

The great Reformer, Martin Luther, took much interest in the
festivities of Christmastide, including, of course, the
Christmas-tree. One of his biographers[45] tells how young Luther,
with other boys of Mansfeld, a village to the north-west of Eisleben,
sang Christmas carols "in honour of the Babe of Bethlehem." And the
same writer says, "Luther may be justly regarded as the central
representative of the Reformation in its early period, for this among
other reasons--that he, more powerfully than any other, impressed upon
the new doctrine the character of glad tidings of great joy." On
Christmas Day, 1521, Martin Luther "administered the communion in both
kinds, and almost without discrimination of applicants," in the parish
church of Eisenach, his "beloved town."

[Illustration: MARTIN LUTHER AND THE CHRISTMAS TREE.]

In England, the desire for some reform in the Church was recognised
even by Cardinal Wolsey, who obtained from the Pope permission to
suppress thirty monasteries, and use their revenues for educational
purposes; and Wolsey's schemes of reform might have progressed further
if Henry VIII. had not been fascinated by Anne Boleyn. But the King's
amour with the "little lively brunette" precipitated a crisis in the
relations between Church and State.

[Illustration: THE LITTLE ORLEANS MADONNA OF RAPHAEL]

Henry, who, by virtue of a papal dispensation, had married his
brother's widow, Katherine, now needed papal consent to a divorce,
that he might marry Anne Boleyn, and when he found that he could not
obtain it, he resolved to be his own Pope, "sole protector and supreme
head of the Church and clergy of England." And among the events of
Ch