Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/72

52 their way to power, make a compromise with the world, and accept some portion of the world's spirit as the price at which they may exercise their ever limited dominion. So it is at the best: too often, as the devil loves most to mar the fairest works, the good, when success is gained, are pushed aside as dreamers, or used only as a shield for the bad deeds of their confederates; they are happy if their own nature escape infection from the instruments which they use, and from the elements in which they are compelled to work.

While the lay ministers' of Edward VI. were 'sowing the wind,' where the harvest in due time would follow, Archbishop Oranmer, keeping aloof more and more from them and their doings, or meddling in them only to protest, was working silently at the English Prayerbook. No plunder of Church or Crown had touched the hands of Cranmer. No fibre of political intrigue, or crime, or conspiracy could be traced to the palace at Lambeth. He had lent himself, it was true, in his too great eagerness to carry out the Reformation, to the persecution and deposition of Bonner and Gardiner; but his share had been slight in the more recent acts