Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/567

1555.] 'I protest before God I was no traitor,' said the Archbishop. 'I will never consent to the Bishop of Rome, for then I should give myself to the devil. I have made an oath to the King, and I must obey the King by God's law. By the Scripture, the King is chief, and no foreign person in his own realm above him. The Pope is contrary to the Crown. I cannot obey both, for no man can serve two masters at once. You attribute the keys to the Pope and the sword to the King. I say the King hath both.'

Continuing the same argument, the Archbishop entered at length into the condition of the law and the history of the Statutes of Provisors and Premunire: he showed that the constitution of the country was emphatically independent, and he maintained that no English subject could swear obedience to a foreign power without being involved in perjury.

The objection was set aside, and the subject of oaths was an opportunity for a taunt, which the Queen's proctors did not overlook. Cranmer had unwillingly accepted the archbishopric when the Act of Appeals was pending, and when the future relations of England with the See of Rome, and the degree of authority which (if any) the Pope was to retain, were uncertain. In taking the usual oaths, therefore, by the advice of lawyers, he made an especial and avowed reservation of his duty to the Crown; and this so-called perjury Martin now flung in his teeth.