History of the English People, Volume IVGreen, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume IV
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
As he entered London with the Queen, men noted curiously the look of the
young king whose fortunes were to be so closely linked with those of
England for fifty years to come. Far younger than his bride, for he was
but twenty-six, there was little of youth in the small and fragile
frame, the sickly face, the sedentary habits, the Spanish silence and
reserve, which estranged Englishmen from Philip as they had already
estranged his subjects in Italy and his future subjects in the
Netherlands. Here however he sought by an unusual pleasantness of
demeanour as well as by profuse distributions of gifts to win the
national goodwill, for it was only by winning it that he could
accomplish the work he came to do. His first aim was to reconcile
England with the Church. The new Spanish marriage was to repair the harm
which the earlier Spanish marriage had brought about by securing that
submission to Rome on which Mary was resolved. Even before Philip's
landing in England the great obstacle to reunion had been removed by the
consent of Julius the Third under pressure from the Emperor to waive the
restoration of the Church lands in the event of England's return to
obedience. Other and almost as great obstacles indeed seemed to remain.
The temper of the nation had gone with Henry in his rejection of the
Papal jurisdiction. Mary's counsellors had been foremost among the men
who advocated the change. Her minister, Bishop Gardiner, seemed pledged
to oppose any submission to Rome. As secretary of state after Wolsey's
fall he had taken a prominent part in the measures which brought about a
severance between England and the Papacy; as Bishop of Winchester he had
written a famous tract "On True Obedience" in which the Papal supremacy
had been expressly repudiated; and to the end of Henry's days he had
been looked upon as the leading advocate of the system of a national and
independent Church. Nor had his attitude changed in Edward's reign. In
the process for his deprivation he avowed himself ready as ever to
maintain as well "the supremacy and supreme authority of the king's
majesty that now is as the abolishing of the usurped power of the Bishop
of Rome."
[Sidenote: The submission to Rome.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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