t Calais between the sovereigns. The king
for the moment was afraid to leave England,[710] lest the opportunity
should be made use of for an insurrection; but prudence taught him, though
disappointed in Francis, to make the best of a connection too convenient to
be sacrificed. The German league was left in abeyance till the immediate
danger was passed, and till the effect of the shock in England itself had
been first experienced. He gladly accepted, in lieu of it, an offer that
the French fleet should guard the Channel through the summer; and
meanwhile, he collected himself resolutely, to abide the issue, whatever
the issue was to be.

The Tudor spirit was at length awake in the English sovereign. He had
exhausted the resources of patience; he had stooped even to indignity to
avoid the conclusion which had come at last. There was nothing left but to
meet defiance by defiance, and accept the position to which the pope had
driven him. In quiet times occasionally wayward and capricious, Henry, like
Elizabeth after him, reserved his noblest nature for the moment of danger,
and was ever greatest when peril was most immediate. Woe to those who
crossed him now, for the time was grown stern, and to trifle further was to
be lost. The suspended act of parliament was made law on the day (it would
seem) of the arrival of the sentence. Convocation, which was still sitting,
hurried through a declaration that the pope had no more power in England
than any other bishop.[711] Five years before, if a heretic had ventured so
desperate an opinion, the clergy would have shut their ears and run upon
him: now they only contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness.
The houses of the Observants at Canterbury and Greenwich, which had been
implicated with the Nun of Kent, were suppressed, and the brethren were
scattered among monasteries where they could be under surveillance. The Nun
and her friends were sent to execution.[712] The ordnance stores were
examined, the repairs of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were
strengthened along the coast. Everywhere the realm armed itself for the
struggle, looking well to the joints of its harness and to the temper of
its weapons.

The commission appointed under the Statute of Succession opened its
sittings to receive the oaths of allegiance. Now, more than ever, was it
necessary to try men's dispositions, when the pope had challenged their
obedience. In words all went well: the peers sw