Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/239

1539.] received like gentleness at any prince's hand.' The preacher consented to revoke his words in the place where he had used them; and appearing again in the same pulpit, he confessed that he had spoken wrongly. The King had shown him that to restrain the power of the Government within the limits which he desired, would create confusion in the commonwealth, and that his declamation against the burgesses had been ill and slanderously spoken. He recanted, also, other parts of his sermon on questions of doctrine; but he added an explanation of his submission characteristic of the man and of the time. 'He was perplexed,' he said, 'but not confounded;' 'he was compelled to deny himself; but to deny himself was no more but when adversity should come, as loss of goods, infamies, and like trouble, to deny his own will, and call upon the Lord, saying, Fiat voluntas tua.' Catholics and Protestants combined to render the King's task of ruling them as arduous as it could be made.

The bill, nevertheless, though it might be softened in the execution, was a hard blow on the Reformation, and was bitterly taken. Good came at last out of the evil. The excesses of the moving party required absolutely to be checked; nor could this necessary result be obtained till the bishops for a time had their way uncontrolled; but the dismissal of Latimer from the bench, the loss of the one man in England whose conduct was, perhaps, absolutely straightforward,