Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/491

1536.] above them all, in his vicar-general's chair, sat Cromwell, proud and powerful, lording over the scowling crowd. The present hour was his. His enemies' turn in due time would come, also.

The mass had been sung, the roll of the organ had died away. It was the time for the sermon, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, rose into the pulpit. Nine-tenths of all those eyes which were then fixed on him would have glistened with delight, could they have looked instead upon his burning. The whole multitude of passionate men were compelled, by a changed world, to listen quietly while he shot his bitter arrows among them.

We have heard Pole; we will now hear the heretic leader. His object on the present occasion was to tell the clergy what especially he thought of themselves; and Latimer was a plain speaker. They had no good opinion of him. His opinion of them was very bad indeed. His text was from the sixteenth chapter of St Luke's Gospel: 'The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.'

The race and parentage of all living things, he said, were known by their fruits. He desired by this test to try the parentage of the present Convocation. They had sat—the men that he saw before him—for seven years, more or less, session after session. What measures had come from them? They were the spiritualty—the teachers of the people, divinely commissioned; said to be, and believed to be, children of light; what had they done? … Mighty evils in those years had been