Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/321

1540.] led the King into his embarrassment. Yet, was a second divorce to give mortal affront to the Lutherans, as the first had done to the Catholics? Was another marriage scandal to taint a movement which had already furnished too much of such material to insolence? What a triumph to the Pope! What a triumph to the Emperor! How would his own elaborate policy crumble to ruins! It was a great matter indeed to Cromwell.

But how would the whisper of the word sound in the ears of the English reactionaries? What would the clergy think of it, in whose, only not unanimous, convictions the German alliance had been from the first a pollution? What would the Parliament think of it, who had seen the fruit of their theological labours so cunningly snatched from them? What would the Anglican bishops think of it, who had found themselves insulted from the pulpit, from behind the shield of the hateful connection—with one of their body already in the Tower, and the same danger hanging before them all? Or the laity generally—the wool-growers of the counties, the merchants of the cities, the taxpayers charged with the new subsidy, who, in the connection with the house of Cleves, saw a fresh cause of quarrel with the Emperor and the ruin of the trade with Flanders; what, to all these, in the heat and rage of party, must have seemed the natural remedy for the King's difficulty? Let Queen Catherine and her friends be avenged by a retribution in kind. Their opinions on the matter were shortly expressed.