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438 it be so. Let us compensate the Queen's sorrows with unstinted sympathy; but let us not trifle with history, by confusing a political necessity with a moral crime.

The English Parliament, then, had taken up the gauntlet which the Pope had flung to it with trembling fingers: and there remained nothing but for the Archbishop of Canterbury to make use of the power of which by law he was now possessed. And the time was pressing, for the new Queen was enceinte, and further concealment was not to be thought of. The delay of the interview between the Pope and Francis, and the change in the demeanour of the latter, which had become palpably evident, discharged Henry of all promises by which he might have bound himself; and to hesitate before the menaces of the Pope's brief would have been fatal.

The Act of Appeals being passed, Convocation was the authority to which the power of determining unsettled points of spiritual law seemed to have lapsed. In the month of April, therefore, Cranmer, now Archbishop of Canterbury, submitted to it the