He was certainly religious after the fashion of his day. ... His religious foundations and bequests perhaps do not necessarily imply anything more than conventional feeling. But we must not overlook the curious circumstance that he once argued with a heretic at the stake at Canterbury and got him to renounce his heresy. It is melancholy to add that he did not thereupon release him from the punishment to which he had been sentenced; but the fact seems to show that he was afraid of encouraging insincere conversions by such leniency. During the last two or three years of the 15th century there was a good deal of procedure against heretics, but on the whole, we are told, rather by penances than by fire. Henry had no desire to see the old foundations of the faith disturbed. His zeal for the Church was recognised by no less than three Popes in his time, who each sent him a sword and a cap of maintenance. ... To commerce and adventure he was always a good friend. By his encouragement Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol and discovered Newfoundland--The New Isle, as it at first was called. Four years earlier Columbus had first set foot on the great western continent, and had not his brother been taken by pirates at sea, it is supposed that he too might have made his great discovery under Henry's patronage." _James Gairdner, Henry the Seventh, chapter 13._ ALSO IN: _Lord Bacon, History of the Reign of King Henry VII._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1509, Accession of King Henry VIII. ENGLAND: A. D. 1151-1513. Enlisted In the Holy League of Pope Julius II. against France. See ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513. ENGLAND: A. D. 1513. Henry's invasion of France. The victory of the Battle of the Spurs. See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515. {827} ENGLAND: A. D. 1513-1529. The ministry of Cardinal Wolsey.