kshire.--Remarkable trait of the power of the
nobles.--Rebellion of T. Fitzgerald.--Romantic adventures of Gerald
Fitzgerald.--Birth of prince Edward.--Death of the queen.--Rise of the
two Seymours.--Henry's views in their advancement.--His enmity to
cardinal Pole.--Causes of it.--Geffrey Pole discloses a plot.--Trial and
death of lord Montacute, the marquis of Exeter, sir Edward Nevil, and
sir N. Carew.--Particulars of these persons.--Attainder of the
marchioness of Exeter and countess of Salisbury.--Application of these
circumstances to the history of Elizabeth.--Decline of the protestant
party.--Its causes.--Cromwel proposes the king's marriage with Anne of
Cleves.--Accomplishments of this lady.--Royal marriage.--Cromwel made
earl of Essex.--Anger of the Bourchier family.--Justs at
Westminster.--The king determines to dissolve his marriage.--Permits the
fall of Cromwel.--Is divorced.--Behaviour of the queen.--Marriage of the
king to Catherine Howard.--Ascendency of the papists.--Execution of the
countess of Salisbury--of lord Leonard Grey.--Discovery of the queen's
ill-conduct.--Attainders passed against her and several others.

Nothing could be more opposite to the strict principles of hereditary
succession than the ideas entertained, even by the first lawyers of the
time of Henry VIII., concerning the manner in which a title to the crown
was to be established and recognised.

When Rich, the king's solicitor, was sent by his master to argue with
sir Thomas More on the lawfulness of acknowledging the royal supremacy;
he inquired in the course of his argument, whether sir Thomas would not
own for king any person whatever,--himself for example,--who should have
been declared so by parliament? He answered, that he would. Rich then
demanded, why he refused to acknowledge a head of the church so
appointed? "Because," replied More, "a parliament can make a king and
depose him, and that every parliament-man may give his consent
thereunto, but a subject cannot be bound so in case of supremacy[3]."
Bold as such doctrine respecting the power of parliaments would now be
thought, it could not well be controverted at a time when examples were
still recent of kings of the line of York or Lancaster alternately
elevated or degraded by a vote of the two houses, and when the father of
the reigning sovereign had occupied the throne in virtue of such a
nomination more than by right of birth.

[Note 3: See Herbert's Henry VIII.]

B