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 REIGN OF HENRY VIII (continued)

's reign had been one of great quiet and apparent prosperity to the Church. The King had been on good terms with the Papacy, and had, especially in the later years of his reign, been a munificent builder and decorator of churches. His greatest ministers had been great ecclesiastics. Morton and Fox had risen to fame and eminence in his reign, and Wolsey had begun to display those great powers which were soon to make him the most important man in Europe, in the last few years of it.

At the same time we must not suppose that the reverence felt for the Pope by Henry VII. and other contemporary sovereigns was very genuine or deep, or was of a kind which promised any great permanence to his influence in Europe. Thus there is a despatch from Ferdinand and Isabella (the Catholics par excellence) to Henry's ambassador, in which they recommend the King to send his contributions to the crusade, either at once in a fleet to be built in England, or else to send the money direct to Rhodes by some person of great trust, ' for if they should send it to the Pope it is certain that he would expend it for some other purpose, and not on account of the said expedition.'

This state of things continued unchanged in its main features through the first half of his son's reign also. Though, as we have seen, there were signs for