Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/307

1553.] The Queen gave her assent to these three measures on the 21st of October; and there was then an interval of three days, during which the bishops were consulted on the view taken by Parliament of the Queen's legitimacy. Renard told the Bishop of Norwich, Thirlby, that they must bend to the times, and leave the Pope to his fortunes. They acted on the ambassador's advice. An Act was passed, in which the marriage from which the Queen was sprung, was declared valid, and the Pope's name was not mentioned; but the essential point being secured, the framers of the statute were willing to gratify their mistress by the intensity of the bitterness with which the history of the divorce was related. The bishops must have been glad to escape from so mortifying a subject, and to apply themselves to the more congenial subject of religion.

As soon as the disposition of Parliament had been generally ascertained, the restoration of the mass was first formally submitted, for the sake of decency, to the clergy of Convocation.

The bench had been purged of dangerous elements. The Lower House contained a small fraction of Protestants just large enough to permit a controversy, and to ensure a triumph to their antagonists. The proceedings opened with a sermon from Harpsfeld, then chaplain of the Bishop of London, in which, in a series of ascending antitheses, Northumberland was described as Holofernes, and Mary as Judith; Northumberland was