doctrine of transubstantiation, which
was as yet recognized by law, was held up in scorn in ballads and
mystery plays. In one church a Protestant lawyer raised a dog in his
hands when the priest elevated the host. The most sacred words of the
old worship, the words of consecration, "_Hoc est corpus_," were
travestied into a nickname for jugglery as "Hocus-pocus."

It was by this attack on the mass, even more than by the other outrages,
that the temper both of Henry and the nation was stirred to a deep
resentment. With the Protestants Henry had no sympathy whatever. He was
a man of the New Learning; he was proud of his orthodoxy and of his
title of "Defender of the Faith." And above all he shared to the utmost
his people's love of order, their clinging to the past, their hatred of
extravagance and excess. The first sign of reaction was seen in the
parliament of 1539. Never had the houses shown so little care for
political liberty. The monarchy seemed to free itself from all
parliamentary restrictions whatever when a formal statute gave the
King's proclamations the force of parliamentary laws.

Nor did the Church find favor with them. No word of the old opposition
was heard when a bill was introduced granting to the King the greater
monasteries which had been saved in 1536. More than six hundred
religious houses fell at a blow, and so great was the spoil that the
King promised never again to call on his people for subsidies. But the
houses were equally at one in withstanding the new innovations of
religion, and an act for "abolishing diversity of opinions in certain
articles concerning Christian religion" passed with general assent. On
the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was reasserted by the first of
six articles to which the act owes its usual name, there was no
difference of feeling or belief between the men of the New Learning and
the older Catholics. But the road to a further instalment of even
moderate reform seemed closed by the five other articles which
sanctioned communion in one kind, the celibacy of the clergy, monastic
vows, private masses, and auricular confession.

A more terrible feature of the reaction was the revival of persecution.
Burning was denounced as the penalty for a denial of transubstantiation;
on a second offence it became the penalty for an infraction of the other
five doctrines. A refusal to confess or to attend mass was made felony.
It was in vain that Cranmer, with the five bishops