was now issued, and had come into England; but
he burned innumerable people whose only offence was that they differed
from the Pope's religious opinions. There was a wretched man named
LAMBERT, among others, who was tried for this before the King, and with
whom six bishops argued one after another. When he was quite exhausted
(as well he might be, after six bishops), he threw himself on the King's
mercy; but the King blustered out that he had no mercy for heretics. So,
_he_ too fed the fire.

All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. The national
spirit seems to have been banished from the kingdom at this time. The
very people who were executed for treason, the very wives and friends of
the 'bluff' King, spoke of him on the scaffold as a good prince, and a
gentle prince--just as serfs in similar circumstances have been known to
do, under the Sultan and Bashaws of the East, or under the fierce old
tyrants of Russia, who poured boiling and freezing water on them
alternately, until they died. The Parliament were as bad as the rest,
and gave the King whatever he wanted; among other vile accommodations,
they gave him new powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure, any one
whom he might choose to call a traitor. But the worst measure they
passed was an Act of Six Articles, commonly called at the time 'the whip
with six strings;' which punished offences against the Pope's opinions,
without mercy, and enforced the very worst parts of the monkish religion.
Cranmer would have modified it, if he could; but, being overborne by the
Romish party, had not the power. As one of the articles declared that
priests should not marry, and as he was married himself, he sent his wife
and children into Germany, and began to tremble at his danger; none the
less because he was, and had long been, the King's friend. This whip of
six strings was made under the King's own eye. It should never be
forgotten of him how cruelly he supported the worst of the Popish
doctrines when there was nothing to be got by opposing them.

This amiable monarch now thought of taking another wife. He proposed to
the French King to have some of the ladies of the French Court exhibited
before him, that he might make his Royal choice; but the French King
answered that he would rather not have his ladies trotted out to be shown
like horses at a fair. He proposed to the Dowager Duchess of Milan, who
replied that she might have thought of such a ma