make war upon him in order to force him to return to the obedience of the apostolic see. They were also commanded to seize upon all goods and merchandize belonging to the King or his accomplices, and such of his adhering subjects as were seized on were to be made slaves. It was also declared, that whoever should attempt to oppose the execution of any of the particulars contained in this bull, should incur the indignation of Almighty God, as well as of the holy apostles. Such was the power modestly assumed by the successor of St. Peter; but Henry paid little regard to these ecclesiastical thunders.

Henry having overcome his real grief for the loss of his favourite wife, in the year 1539, began to turn his thoughts upon a German alliance; and, as the Lutheran princes were extremely disgusted against the emperor, on account of the persecution of their religion, he hoped, by matching himself into one of those families, to renew an amity which he regarded as useful to him. Cromwell joyfully seconded this motion; and perceiving some of his bitterest enemies, particularly Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, began to be more in favour at court than himself, he exerted his utmost endeavours to bring about a marriage between the king and Anne of Cleves; for he imagined that a queen of his own making would powerfully support his interest; and, as the friends of Anne of Cleves were all protestants, their interest would assist him in destroying that of the popish faction, now prevailing again at court. But when Henry saw this princess, concerning whose person he had been deceived by a flattering picture, he declared she was a great Flanders mare, and he could never bear her any affection. He married her, however, which Cromwell thought would be the means of reconciling him to her; but when he came, full of anxious expectation, the morning after the nuptials, to enquire how the king found his bride, he had the mortification to be told, that his majesty hated her worse than ever; and that he was resolved never to cohabit with her. However, Henry continued to be civil to the new queen, and even seemed to repose his usual confidence in Cromwell; but though he exerted this command over his temper, a discontent lay lurking in his breast, and was ready to break forth on the first opportunity; nor was it long before such a one offered, as enabled him at once to gratify his resentment, and ingratiate himself with the public.

The meanness of Cromwell's birth had rendered him odious to all the nobility; the Roman Catholics detested him for having been so active in the dissolution of religious houses; and being encouraged by the duke of Norfolk, and Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, they raised so violent a clamour against him, that Henry, who was now as ready to hearken to his accusers as he was before deaf to them, finding that several articles were ready to be brought against him, resolved to sacrifice him to that revengeful party, whose favour he was now courting on

another account; which was a scheme he had planned, to marry Catherine Howard, the duke of Norfolk's niece, if by any means he could procure a divorce from the princess of Cleves; which Norfolk and Gardiner undertook to accomplish, if they were once fairly rid of Cromwell. Accordingly, the duke of Norfolk obtained a commission to arrest the earl of Essex at the council board, on the 10th of June, 1540, when he did not in the least suspect it. He was carried from the palace to the Tower, without knowing his accusers, or the crimes of which he was accused; yet, from his first commitment, he made no doubt of a design being laid against his life, because the duke of Norfolk had always been his professed enemy.

On the 17th of the same month, a bill of attainder against him was brought into the House of Lords. He was accused of heresy and treason; of setting persons at liberty convicted of misprision of treason, without the king's assent; of receiving bribes; and of having granted licenses to carry corn, money, horses, and other things out of the country, contrary to the king's proclamation. But what sufficiently shewed the spirit of the party, was a charge of having dispersed many erroneous books among his majesty's subjects, contrary to the belief of the sacraments. Several other things were alleged, equally frivolous, and though he had cleared himself from every accusation in letters to the king, during his confinement, yet, when brought to his trial, if it may be called such, barely to hear the charge, he was not suffered to speak in his own defence, and the bill of attainder passed both houses, after some alterations made in the lower house, where it was retarded ten days.

The duke of Norfolk, and the rest of the popish party, baffled all the applications that were made in favour of the earl of Essex, who, in pursuance of his attainder, was sentenced to be beheaded on Tower-hill, the 28th of July, 1540.

Upon the scaffold, in tenderness to his son, he avoided all complaints against his enemies; and, instead of vindicating himself, by a happy turn of thought, he acknowledged that he had offended God by his sins, and thus merited death. He prayed for the king, and the prince, and then told the people, that he died in the catholic faith; but by that he evidently meant, the faith established by the new articles on the scriptures. After a short time passed in private devotions, he gave the signal to the executioner, who, being unskilful or timid, cruelly mangled the unfortunate victim.

Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, was a Statesman of great abilities, joined with uncommon application to business. He had the public welfare at heart, which he pursued with great vigour and perseverance; but he sometimes extended the royal prerogative at the expense of civil liberty. In his person he was comely; in his deportment manly and graceful; and, though raised from a low to the most elevated station.

his character was free from pride or arrogance. He was courteous and affable; easy of access; a friend to the poor and distressed; and remarkably charitable; no less than 200 persons being fed twice every day at his house, in Throgmorton-street. To his dependents and domestics he was a kind and liberal master; and for his gratitude to his friends and benefactors, he was an example highly worthy of imitation.

He was a victim of the furious Popish party, who availed themselves of the king's brutality, to sacrifice the greatest enemy of priestcraft that ever appeared in England.

CARDINAL POLE.

REGINALD POLE was a younger son of Sir Richard Pole, Lord Montague, cousin-german to Henry VII. by Margaret, daughter of George, duke of Clarence, younger brother to king Edward IV. He was born at Stoverton Castle, in Staffordshire, in the year 1500. At nineteen years of age, having laid the foundation of learning at Oxford, it was determined to send him, for farther improvement, to Italy, where the liberal arts and sciences then flourished; and, for this purpose, an establishment suitable to his rank was provided by the king, who allowed him a liberal yearly pension, besides the income of his ecclesiastical preferments. Having spent five years abroad, he was recalled home; and devotion and study being his sole delight, he retired to the convent of the Carthusians at Sheen. He had passed two years with great pleasure in this retirement, when king Henry VIII. began to start his scruples about the lawfulness of his marriage with queen Catherine. Pole, foreseeing the troubles which this incident must occasion, and that he should not escape being involved in them, if he staid in the kingdom, resolved to withdraw; and obtained his majesty's leave to go to Paris in 1529.

Pole had now been a considerable time abroad, and Henry had frequently intimated his desire that he would return home; but he made sundry excuses, and at last wrote to the king, that he neither approved of his divorce, nor his separation from the holy see, both of which had now taken place.

Pole was now employed in holding correspondence with Henry's rebellious subjects, and while he was abusing him in the most scurrilous manner in his publications, complained in his letters to the pope, and to the French nuncio, of the ignominious treatment which he had met with from the king of England, who had proclaimed him a traitor and set a price upon his head. His mother Margaret, countess of Salisbury, his eldest brother Henry Pole, lord Montague, the marquis of Exeter, Sir Edward Nevil, and Sir Nicholas Carew, were condemned and executed in England for high treason, in conspiring to bring the cardinal to the throne.

The next account we have of him, worth relating, is an extraordinary instance of his zealous audacity.

After Henry's death, he wrote a letter to the regency and council, advising them to reconcile the kingdom to the pope. Pope Paul III. dying in 1549, our cardinal was twice elected to succeed him, but refused both the elections, one as being too hasty, and without deliberation; and the other, because it was done in the middle of the night.

He continued in his retirement, at a monastery of the Benedictines at Maguzano, till the death of Edward VI. but on the accession of queen Mary, it was determined by the court of Rome,that Pole should be sent legate into England, as the fittest instrument, on all accounts, to effect the reduction of the kingdom to the obedience of the pope.

The marriage between Philip and Mary being solemnized, the lords Paget and Hastings were sent to Brussels to conduct the cardinal to England, and he arrived at Dover on the 20th of November, 1554.

On the 27th, he went to the parliament, and made a long and grave speech, inviting them to a reconciliation with the apostolic see, from whence, he said, he was sent by the common pastor of Christendom to recover them, who had long strayed from the inclosure of the church. On the 29th, the speaker reported to the commons the substance of this speech; and a message coming from the lords for a conference, in order to prepare a supplication, to be reconciled to the see of Rome, it was consented to, and the petition being agreed on, was reported and approved by both houses; so that being presented by them on their knees to the king and queen, these made their intercession with the cardinal, who thereupon delivered a long speech, at the end of which he granted them absolution. This done, they all went to the royal chapel, where Te Deum was sung, and thus the pope's authority being now restored, the cardinal, two days afterwards, made his public entry into London, with all the solemnities of a legate, and presently set about the business of purging the church of pretended heresy. Cranmer was degraded and burnt, to make room for the cardinal, and Pole was made archbishop of Canterbury the day after Cranmer's execution, and before the end of the same year, 1556, he was made chancellor of Oxford and Cambridge.

Though the cardinal countenanced every absurd and cruel measure to enforce the Romish faith, Paul IV. openly shewed his aversion to him, by revoking his legantine power, which he conferred on Peyto, a Franciscan friar; whom he had sent for to Rome, and made a cardinal for the purpose,

But he did not live long to enjoy the restoration, being seized with a double quartan ague, which carried him off the stage of life, early in the morning of the eighteenth of November, 1558, and his death is said to have been hastened by that of his royal mistress and kinswoman, queen Mary; which happened about sixteen hours before, in the 43d year of her age, and 6th of her reign.

HUGH LATIMER,

BISHOP OF WORCESTER.

In the following pages we record the lives, in connexion, of three of the renowned martyrs of the Reformation; and their tragical ends, are lessons for protestants and matter of fact

commentaries on the principles of the Romish religion; if that policy can be called RELIGION, which consigns men to the horrors of being burnt alive for obeying their consciences in their communion with God. It is true, it is pretended that to burn men for religious differences, is not a tenet of the Catholic religion; but unhappily it is a practice, and has for three or four hundred years been a practice, whenever the Ca

tholic clergy have had uncontrolled ascendancy. Witness the burnings and auto da fès, which have been celebrated down even to our own age; for a public burning of heretics took place as a festival so late as 1787. Look too at the horrors of the Inquisition, at the late massacres of Protestants in the south of France, and at the spirit of intolerance and persecution which prevails in all Catholic countries.

Ought a system to be considered as Christian, Social, or even Human, which demands victims at the stake, and which seeks to make converts by such means? Nevertheless, we would not have Protestants imitate their bad example, but set them a better, in the spirit of their Divine Master. Let no one be persecuted for conscience sake, or for any opinions which lie solely between a man and God. If, however, the Catholic religion, by its uniform practices during several hundred years, has proved itself CRUEL, PERSECUTING, and INTOLERANT, whenever and wherever it has had civil power, it appears to be the duty of Protestants, with one accord, to prevent, as far as lies in them, the attainment of civil power by those who cherish such principles. They ought to permit no chance of the revival of the Fires of Smithfield, or the infernal celebration of festivals of auto da fès, when hundreds of Protestants were burnt alive in the presence of kings, as affairs of public rejoicing. The blood, the cries, and the sufferings, of all these martyrs, forbid the concession; and although men may profess such a system as religion, yet their mistake ought not to be corrected by persecution, while they ought not, if possible, to be allowed any opportunity of renewing their sacrifices to Moloch, by the attainment of civil power.

WORTHIES, No. 11.

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