Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/133

 into party warfare from the beginning of their career. So it was throughout the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary. On both sides moderation was cast away, and a revolution and reaction, each of the most violent kind, took place, creating a religious and political tempest which it took the utmost efforts of Elizabeth and her statesmen to still, and the effects of which continued for a century beyond her time.

During the whole of the sixteenth century and almost over the whole of Europe it may be said that religion—i.e., in fact, the relation of religion to the State—formed one of the most important questions of the day, and was intimately intermixed with both the internal and foreign policy of every State; but just at the period with which we are now dealing it became in England the absolutely paramount question, so that in this and the following reign the history of the Church is almost the history of the State as well. There was no problem, whether of domestic or foreign policy, into which the religious question did not enter, and in most cases as its most important element.

It needs not here to repeat the full account, which may be better read elsewhere, of how adroitly Lord Hertford, assisted by the most subtle statesman of the time. Sir William Paget, made use of Henry's will to defeat its own objects, overset the balance between the two parties, which Henry had been at so much pains to adjust, and finally emerged from the turmoil, which he had himself created, in the character of Duke of Somerset, governor of the young King's person and Lord Protector of the kingdom. Somerset was, it seems likely, sincerely attached to the reformed opinions; but even had he not been so, he had no choice but to