letters, and of illustrating his name by the erection of new establishments of learning, the cardinal procured from the pontiff authority to suppress certain monasteries for the purpose of founding two magnificent colleges, one at Oxford and the other at Ipswich his native town, an authority which the Roman see was, as Hume remarks, the more easily disposed to grant, having perceived that, for resisting the attacks of the reformers, scholars were now become more necessary than monks. The precedent of suppression was thus exhibited to the sovereign, to be imitated in regard to the great body of the monastic establishments; and these were in the mean time, by the arbitrary exercise of the legatine authority retained in the most entire subjection.

At length, in the nineteenth year of this reign was agitated the celebrated question of the divorce of Catherine, which drove the reluctant Henry into those measures of hostility against the papal see, that have been followed by such memorable consequences. It is remarkable that his marriage with the widow of his brother, which gave occasion to his defection from the see of Rome, had been sanctioned by one of those papal dispensations, which had constituted so powerful an engine of the papal supremacy, so that the controversy was not, as has been commonly supposed, a mere struggle for ob

taining a divorce, but involved the important consideration of the claim of the papacy to a right of dispensing with a law acknowledged to be of divine authority. In this instance, as in that of the Indulgences which had roused the resistance of Luther, the machine had been stretched too far, and recoiled against the system, which it had been employed to strengthen. That a pontiff should have been induced to grant such a dispensation, affords, as Burnet * has remarked, an example of the blindness of human policy, and of the overruling providence of God. It had probably been supposed that the succeeding princes of England would have been thereby bound to give their support to the papal authority; but the actual result was that the supremacy and the religion of Rome were renounced by the nation.

The frugal and politic father of Henry, unwilling to restore the dowry of the Spanish princess, and anxious to secure the alliance with her country, had caused her, after the death of his elder son Arthur, to be affianced to the younger but he appears to have entertained no serious intention of completing an alliance so irregular, having ordered the young prince, so soon as he should arrive at full age, to protest against the marriage, and having on his death-bed solemnly charged him to decline

Burnet's Hist. of the Reform. vol. 1. p. 35.

a match so objectionable. The passions of the young prince however frustrated the policy of his father. The marriage was completed notwithstanding these injunctions; but the recollection of them served to render him scrupulous about the transaction when his passions had subsided, especially when he reflected on his disappointment in regard to male offspring, which seemed to be a curse entailed on the alliance. The attractions of Anne Boleyn, who had lately appeared at court, added new force to these considerations, by presenting a more desirable object for his wishes; but it is certain that he had long before entertained serious scruples in regard to his marriage with Catherine.

In the efforts which were used for obtaining a dissolution of this marriage, the question naturally arose, whether a papal dispensation could authorise an act forbidden by the divine law; and though Henry was willing that the dispensation should be withdrawn by the same power, by which it had been originally granted, yet the agitation of the question tended to shake the authority of the Roman see, and to prepare the minds of men for that defection, to which he was at length compelled. Luther's opposition to the church of Rome had arisen from a question more directly connected with the essentials of religion; but this reformer having

begun a doctrinal separation from that church, all that was at this time necessary was that a contest should arise about her claim of power, as a doctrinal reformation was sure to succeed. The neutrality of the question, which gave occasion to the English reformation was however productive of two considerable advantages. As it immediately tended but to transfer to the sovereign the authority which had been exercised by the pontiff, it left to the throne the regulation of the subsequent changes, and thus ensured their moderation; and as the separation was effected independently of all tenets of religion, it left to the reformers of the English church an entire freedom in making their choice among the separatists of the continent.

And here it may be interesting to reflect on the various origin and fortune of the Reformation in the three countries composing this united kingdom, which shall hereafter be shown to have powerfully influenced the adjustment of the common constitution of the government. In England, the principal member of this triple system, some preparation had indeed been made long before for such a change in public opinion, as might facilitate a religious revolution; but the immediate impulse was received from the government, which was at this period by a combination of various causes exalted to such a degree of authority, that the people were necessi

tated to await in submission the creed, which should be dictated by their sovereign. In Scotland the circumstances connected with this important change were in almost every respect the reverse of those, which existed in the neighbouring country. Here the people were the reformers in opposition to the government, which had been itself so weakened by a long series of preceding events, that it could give no effectual resistance; and the late professor of law in the university of Glasgow has * remarked, that the prevalence of aristocracy in Scotland contributed most powerfully to that destruction of the hierarchy, which distinguished its reformation, the nobles being both hostile to the clergy, as the great supporters of the royal authority, and also subject to no control in their rapacious appropriation of the spoils of the church. Our own country felt also the struggles of the Reformation; but here unhappily neither did the government reform the people, nor did the people force a reformation on the government. In our melancholy history we find an unsuccessful effort to press the Reformation on a people alienated from the English nation, very imperfectly subjected to the authority of the government, and devoted to the support of the ancient system of religion; an effort which could tend only to rivet them in their

Millar's Hist. View of the Engl. Gov. vol. 3. p. 69.