Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/301

1553.] her own soul, and the souls of the millions of her subjects who were perishing in separation from the Church; for no worldly policy or carnal respect ought she to defer for a moment to apply a remedy to so monstrous a calamity. But the danger was imaginary—or, rather, such danger as there was, arose from the opposite cause. The right of the Queen to the throne did not rest on an Act of Parliament; it rested on her birth as the lawful child of the lawful marriage between Henry and Catherine of Arragon. Parliament, he was informed, would affirm the marriage legitimate, if nothing was said about the Pope; but, unless the Pope's authority was first recognized, Parliament would only stultify itself; the Papal dispensation alone made valid a connection which, if the Pope had no power to dispense, was incestuous, and the offspring of it illegitimate. God had made the peaceful settlement of the kingdom dependent on submission to the Holy See, and for Parliament to interfere and give an opinion upon the subject would be but a fresh act of schism and disobedience.

The original letter, being in our own State Paper