as found to send English envoys to
Cleves itself to offer an alliance in the matter of the Duchy of Gueldres,
which the Duke of Cleves had just seized without the Emperor's connivance
or consent. Carne and Wotton, the envoys, were also to offer the hand of
the Princess Mary to the young Duke, and cautiously to hint at a marriage
between his sister Anne and Henry, if conditions were favourable; and,
like Mont in Saxony, were to close the ranks of Protestantism around the
threatened Henry, from whose Court both the imperial and French
ambassadors had now been withdrawn.

Whilst these intrigues for Protestant support on the Continent were being
carried on, and the defences of England on all sides were being
strengthened, Henry, apparently for the purpose of disarming the Catholic
elements, and proving that, apart from the Papal submission, he was as
good a Catholic as any, forced through Parliament (May 1539) the
extraordinary statute called the Six Articles, or the Bloody Statute,
which threw all English Protestants into a panic. The Act was drafted on
Henry's instructions by Bishop Gardiner, and was called an "Act to abolish
diversity of opinions." The articles of faith dictated by the King to his
subjects under ferocious penalties included the main Catholic doctrine;
the real presence in the Sacrament in its fullest sense; the celibacy of
the clergy; that the administration of the Sacrament in two kinds is not
necessary; that auricular confession is compulsory, that private masses
may be said, and that vows of chastity must be kept for ever. Cranmer, who
was married and had children, dared to argue against the Bill when the
Duke of Norfolk introduced it in the House of Lords, and others of the new
bishops timidly did likewise; but they were overborne by the old bishops
and the great majority of the lay peers, influenced by their traditions
and by the peremptory arguments of the King himself. Even more important
was an Act passed in the same servile Parliament giving to the King's
proclamations the force of law; and an Act of attainder against every one,
living or dead, in England or abroad, who had opposed the King, completed
the terror under which thenceforward the country lay. Henry was now,
indeed, master of the bodies and souls of his subjects, and had reduced
them all, Protestants and Catholics alike, to a condition of abject
subjection to his mere will. The passage of these Acts, especially the Six
Articles, marks