beyond his tender years, all men foresaw, in the course of his reign, the total abolition of the Catholic faith in England; and they early began to declare themselves in favour of those tenets which were likely to become in the end entirely prevalent. After Southhampton's fall, few members of the council seemed to retain any attachment to the Romish communion; and most of the counsellors appeared even sanguine in forwarding the progress of the reformation. The riches which most of them had acquired from the spoils of the clergy, induced them to widen the breach between England and Rome; and by establishing a contrariety of speculative tenets, as well as of discipline and worship, to render a coalition with the mother church altogether impracticable. Their rapacity, also, the chief source of their reforming spirit, was excited by the prospect of pillaging the secular, as they had already done the regular clergy; and they knew, that while any share of the old principles remained, or any regard to the ecclesiastics, they could never hope to succeed in that enterprise. The numerous and burdensome superstitions with which the Romish church was loaded had thrown many of the reformers, by the spirit of opposition, into an enthusiastic strain of devotion; and all rites, ceremonies, pomp, order, and extreme observances were zealously proscribed by them, as hindrances to their spiritual contemplations, and obstructions to their immediate converse with heaven." _D. Hume, History of England, volume 3, chapter 34._