Parliament, when the secret
would have to be communicated to the world. The modern reader will
conceive that no other subject could have occupied his mind. The relative
importance of things varies with the distance from which we view them. He
was King of England first. His domestic anxieties held still the second
place. Before the opening, as the matter of greatest consequence, a draft
Act was prepared to carry out the object which in the last year he had
failed in securing--"an Act to restrain bishops from citing or arresting
any of the King's subjects to appear before them, unless the bishop or his
commissary was free from private grudge against the accused, unless there
were three, or at least two, credible witnesses, and a copy of the libel
had in all cases been delivered to the accused, with the names of the
accusers." Such an Act was needed. It was not to shield what was still
regarded as impiety, for Frith was burned a few months later for a denial
of the Real Presence, which Luther himself called heresy. It was to check
the arbitrary and indiscriminate tyranny of a sour, exasperated party, who
were pursuing everyone with fire and sword who presumed to oppose them.
More, writing to Erasmus, said he had purposely stated in his epitaph that
he had been hard upon the heretics. He so hated that folk that, unless
they repented, he preferred their enmity, so mischievous were they to the
world.[207]

The spirit of More was alive and dangerous. To Catholic minds there could
be no surer evidence that the King was given over to the Evil One than
leniency to heretics. They were the more disturbed to see how close the
intimacy had grown between him and the Pope's representative. The Nuncio
was constantly closeted with Henry or the Council. When Chapuys
remonstrated, he said "he was a poor gentleman, living on his salary, and
could not do otherwise." "The Pope had advised him to neglect no
opportunity of promoting the welfare of religion." "Practices," Chapuys
ascertained, were still going forward, and the Nuncio was at the bottom
of them. The Nuncio assured him that he had exhorted the King to take
Catherine back. The King had replied that he would not, and that
reconciliation was impossible. Yet the secret communications did not
cease, and the astonishment and alarm increased when the Nuncio consented
to accompany the King to the opening of Parliament. He was conducted in
state in the Royal barge from Greenwich. Henry sate