Nor was controversy confined to the learned language. As Protestantism, coquetted with by Henry VIII, and encouraged by Cromwell, became gradually vocal in England and awakened an equally resonant reply, the vernacular drama, like every other form of literary expression, was swept into the war of creeds. This phase, dominating even the professional players, endured through the reigns of Edward VI and Mary, and still colours the early Elizabethan interludes. Its beginnings were independent of the Lutheran influences that so profoundly affected its progress. The morality already contained within itself that tendency to criticism which was perhaps the easiest way to correct its insipidity. Historically it was politics rather than religion with which the interlude first claimed to interfere. The story begins, harmlessly enough, at court, with an allegorical ‘disguising’ during the visit of the Emperor Charles V to London in 1523, in which the French king, typified by an unruly horse, was tamed by Amitie, who stood for the alliance between Charles and Henry[654]. In 1526 John Roo’s morality, played at Gray’s Inn, of ‘Lord Governaunce’ and ‘Lady Publike-Wele’ wrung Wolsey’s withers, although as a matter of fact it was twenty years old[655]. Religion was first touched in 1527 in a piece of which one would gladly know more. It was played, as it seems, in Latin and French by the St. Paul’s boys under John Ritwise, before ambassadors from France. The subject was the captivity of the Pope, and amongst the singular medley of characters named are found ‘the herretyke, Lewtar’ and ‘Lewtar’s wyfe, like a frowe of Spyers in Almayn[656].’ This was, no doubt, all in the interests of orthodoxy; and a similar tone may be assumed in the comedies acted before Wolsey in the following year on the release of the Pope[657]. But much water passed under the mill in the next few years, and in 1533 there was a comedy at court ‘to the no little defamation of certain cardinals[658].’ In the same year, however, a proclamation forbade ‘playing of enterludes’ ‘concerning doctrines in matters now in question and controversie[659].’ This is a kind of regulation which it is easier to make than to enforce. Its effect, if it had any, was not of long duration. In 1537 much offence was given to Bishop Gardiner, the Chancellor of Cambridge University, by the performance amongst the youth of Christ’s College of a ‘tragedie,’ part at least of which was ‘soo pestiferous as were intolerable.’ This ‘tragedie’ was none other than the redoubtable _Pammachius_ itself[660]. In the same year, strict orders were issued to stay games and unlawful assemblies in Suffolk, on account of a ‘seditious May-game’ which was ‘of a king, how he should rule his realm,’ and in which ‘one played Husbandry, and said many things against gentlemen more than was in the book of the play[661].’ These were exceptional cases. Both the students of Christ’s and the Suffolk rustics had in their various ways overstepped