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 Chancellor about that, he would say. His Chancellor was the cunning Thomas Wolsey, afterwards Cardinal, Archbishop of York and Legate (i.e. special agent) of the Pope. Wolsey got all power into his own hands and managed things badly. He allowed his master to waste the treasures heaped up by Henry VII; and, when the King called Parliaments, they growled at this extravagance, and refused to vote the huge sums for which he asked them. He plunged into foreign politics, and made a foolish war with France, which at once broke the long peace with Scotland; for James IV invaded England with a huge army, which was defeated by Henry’s general, the Earl of Surrey, at Flodden Field (1513). Wolsey realized that the Church was in danger, both from the New Learning and from the growing outcry against its riches, and he was most anxious to put off any open attack on it; but as for reform, he had no plans.

The storm broke first in Germany, where, in 1517, the simple monk, Martin Luther, began by attacking some of the more scandalous abuses of the Church, and ended, a year or two later, by declaring the Pope to be ‘Antichrist’. Henry VIII professed himself to be deeply shocked at this, wrote a book in defence of the Catholic doctrines, and forbade Englishmen to read Luther's books. But these books, and many others upon the same side, could not be kept out of England, and nothing could prevent eager young men from reading them. By the year 1527 there was a small but vigorous body of scholars in England who were prepared to attack the teaching of the old Church as well as its riches. These were soon to be called ‘Protestants’; as yet men called them ‘heretics’. Their main cry was for the Bible as