The World's Greatest Books — Volume 11 — Ancient and Mediæval History
History
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 11 — Ancient and Mediæval History
History, Ancient; Middle Ages
Henry laid his conduct open to the world, declaring truly what he
desired, and seeking it by open means. He was determined to proceed with
the divorce, and also to continue the reformation of the English church.
And he was in no small measure aided in the former resolve by the
recommendation of Francis, for the French king advised him to act on the
general opinion of Europe that his marriage with Catherine, as widow of
his elder brother Arthur, was null, and at once made Anne Boleyn his
wife. This counsel was administered at an interview between the two
kings at Boulogne, in October, 1532.
The pope had trifled for six years with the momentous question, and
Henry was growing old. At the outset of the discussion the pope had
said: "Marry freely; fear nothing, and all shall be arranged as you
desire." But the pontiff, reduced to a dilemma by various causes, had
fallen back on his Italian cunning, and had changed his attitude,
listening to the appeals of Catherine and her powerful friends. And now
he threatened Henry with excommunication.
Henry entered privately into matrimonial relations with Anne in
November, 1532, and the marriage was solemnly celebrated, with a
gorgeous pageant, at Westminster Abbey in the following January. On July
24 the people gathering to church in every parish read, nailed to the
church doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that Lady Catherine
of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not to be called by
that title any more, but was to be called princess dowager, and so to be
held and esteemed. The triumph of Anne was to last but three short
years.
_Protestantism_
Wycliffe's labour had left only the Bible as the seed of a future life,
and no trace remained in the sixteenth century of the Lollardry of the
fourteenth. But now Protestantism recommenced its enterprise in the
growing desire for a nobler, holier insight into the will of God. In the
year 1525 was enrolled in London a society calling itself "The
Association of Christian Brothers." Its paid agents went up and down the
land carrying tracts and Testaments with them, and enrolling in the
order all who dared risk their lives in such a cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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