Page:Church and State under the Tudors.djvu/88

 Italian prince. Beyond these ideas lie never once soars, and for either of these he is prepared to commit any iniquity and to inflict any wrong, and this under the highest and holiest sanctions.

But though the divorce cannot be rationally looked upon as itself the cause of so mighty a change as that involved in the success of the Reformation in England, it is difficult to over-estimate the effect which it exercised indirectly over the especial measures by which it was brought about, and which gave it a character so different from that which it assumed in other countries.

It is a familiar commonplace to say that the peculiarly conservative character of the English Reformation arose from the fact that the impulsive force which originated it came from above, not from below; that instead of being a popular movement acquiesced in by the rulers of the State, as in Germany, for instance, it was initiated by the rulers of the State, and, for many years at least, only partially accepted by the people; but when we remember that the rulers of the State in this case meant Henry VIII. and his ministers, and that of all personal rulers Henry VIII. was the most individual, then we see that it was from his individual character that this conservative bias proceeded, and there is no difficulty in convincing ourselves that no motive less immediately personal than that supplied by the divorce question would ever have placed the defender of the Seven Sacraments, and the antagonist of Luther, in the anomalous position of an opponent of the Catholic Church.

Thus, though the divorce question was certainly opened as early as 1527, the first attack upon the privileges of the Church appears to have been the introduction of the Mortmain Bill in the parliamentary session of