Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/594

574 in the interest of the Lords. So disastrously miserable were all the consequences of her marriage, that it was said, the Pope, who had granted the dispensation for the contraction of it, had better grant another for its dissolution. Unfortunately there was one direction open in which her frenzy could have uncontrolled scope.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, after his trial and his citation to Rome, addressed to the Queen a singular letter: he did not ask for mercy, and evidently he did not expect mercy: he reasserted calmly the truth of the opinions for which he was to suffer; but he protested against the indignity done to the realm of England, and the degradation of the royal prerogative, 'when the King and Queen, as if they were subjects in their own realm, complained and required justice at a stranger's hand against their own subjects, being already condemned to death by their own laws.' 'Death,' he said, 'could not grieve him much more than to have his most dread and gracious sovereigns, to whom under God he owed all obedience, to be his accusers in judgment before a stranger and outward power.'