Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/356

336 character of the offender. The via media Anglicana, on which Henry had planted his foot, prescribed an even justice; and as Cromwell, in this name of the via media, had struck down without mercy the adherents of the Church of Rome, there was no alternative but to surrender him to the same equitable rule, or to declare to the world and to himself that he no longer held that middle place which he so vehemently claimed. To sustain the Six Articles and to pardon the vicegerent was impossible. If the consent to the attainder cost the King any pang, we do not know; only this we know, that a passionate appeal for mercy, such as was rarely heard in those days of haughty endurance, found no response; and on the 28th of July the most despotic minister who had ever governed England passed from the Tower to the scaffold.

A speech was printed by authority, and circulated through Europe, which it was thought desirable that he should have been supposed to have uttered before his death. It was accepted as authentic by Hall, and from Hall's pages has been transferred into English history; and 'the Lord Cromwell' is represented to have confessed that he had been seduced into heresy, that he repented, and died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church. Reginald Pole, who, like others, at first accepted the official report as genuine, warned a correspondent, on the authority of persons whose account might be relied upon, that the words which were really spoken were very different, and to Catholic minds were