Phenomena of this eccentric kind always accompany periods of intellectual change. Most men live and think by habit; and when habit fails them, they are like unskilful sailors who have lost the landmarks of their course, and have no compass and no celestial charts by which to steer. In the years which preceded the French Revolution, Cagliostro was the companion of princes,--at the dissolution of paganism the practicers of curious arts, the witches and the necromancers, were the sole objects of reverence in the Roman world; and so, before the Reformation, archbishops and cardinals saw an inspired prophetess in a Kentish servant-girl; Oxford heads of colleges sought out heretics with the help of astrology; Anne Boleyn blessed a basin of rings, her royal fingers pouring such virtue into the metal that no disorder could resist it;[219] Wolsey had a magic crystal; and Cromwell, while in Wolsey's household, "did haunt to the company of a wizard."[220] These things were the counterpart of a religion which taught that slips of paper, duly paid for, could secure indemnity for sin. It was well for England that the chief captain at least was proof against the epidemic--no random scandal seems ever to have whispered that such delusions had touched the mind of the king.[221] [Sidenote: The king incurs the censures of the church.] While the government were prosecuting these inquiries at home, the law at the Vatican had run its course; November passed, and as no submission had arrived, the sentence of the 12th of July came into force, and the king, the queen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury were declared to have incurred the threatened censures. [Sidenote: Measures of the Council.] [Sidenote: Renewed suggestion of a Protestant league.]