plained of the translations as inaccurate, - of unbecoming reflections on themselves in the prefaces and side-notes. They required stronger powers of repression, more frequent holocausts*, a more efficient inquisitorial police. In Henry's reply they found that the waters of their life were poisoned at the spring. The king, too, was infected with the madness. The king would have the Bible in English; and directed them, if the translation was unsound, to prepare a better translation without delay. But the bishops remained for several years inactive, and at length the king's patience was exhausted. The legitimate methods having been tried in vain, he acted on his own responsibility. Miles Coverdale silently went abroad with a license from the Crown, with Tyndal's help collected and edited the scattered portions, and in 1536 there appeared in London, published under authority and dedicated to Henry VIII., the first complete copy of the English Bible. The fountain of the new opinions- so long dreaded, so long execrated-was thenceforth to lie open in every church in England; and the clergy were ordered not to permit only, but to encourage all men to resort to it and read. Froude.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE UNDER EDWARD VI.

FOLLOWING, boylike, the Platonic analogy between the body of the individual and the body politic, Edward saw in all men the members of a common organisation, where each was to work, and each ought to be contented with the moderate gratification of his own desires. The country required an order of gentlemen; but gentlemen should not have so much as they had in France, where the peasantry was of no value. In a well-ordered commonwealth no

* Holocausts, burnt sacrifices; wholesale burnings.

"The

one should have more than the proportion of the general stock would bear. In the body no member had too much or too little; in the commonwealth every man should have enough for healthy support, not enough for indulgence. Again, as every member of the body was obliged "to work and take pains," so there should be no unit in the commonwealth which was not "laborsome in his vocation.” gentleman should do service in his country, the servingman should wait diligently on his master, the artisan should work at his trade, the husbandman at his tillage, the merchant in passing the tempests." The vagabond should be banished as 66 the superfluous humor of the body," "the spittle and filth which is put out by strength of nature.” Looking at England, however, as England was, the young king saw "all things out of order." “Farming gentlemen and clerking knights," neglecting their duties as overseers of the people, "were exercising the gain of living." "They would have their twenty miles square of their own land or of their own farms." Artificers and clothiers no longer worked honestly; the necessaries of life had risen in price, and the laborers had raised their wages, "whereby to recompense the loss of things they bought." The country swarmed with vagabonds; and those who broke the laws escaped punishment by bribery or through foolish pity. The lawyers, and even the judges, were corrupt. Peace and order were violated by religious dissensions and universal neglect of the law. Offices of trust were bought and sold, benefices impropriated*, tillage ground turned to pasture, "not considering the sustaining of men." The poor were robbed by the enclosures, and extravagance in dress and idle luxury of living were eating like ulcers into the state. These were the vices of the age; nor were they likely, as Edward thought, to yield in any way to the most correct formula of justification. The "medicines to

* Impropriated, given over to laymen.

cure these sores were to be looked for in good education, good laws, and "just execution of the laws without respect of persons, in the example of rulers, the punishment of misdocrs, and the encouragement of the good." Corrupt magistrates should be deposed, seeing that those who were themselves guilty would not enforce the laws against their own faults; and all gentlemen and noblemen should be compelled to reside on their estates, and fulfil the duties of their place. Meanwhile, amidst discussions on the remedies of evils, the evils themselves for the most part continued. Discipline could not be restored. The king's abilities did not anticipate his majority; the revenues were still unpaid. Officials, indeed, in the interest of Northumberland were permitted to indemnify themselves for their services. Bishop Ponet, for instance, composed a catechism, which was ordered for general use, and was allowed a "monopoly of the printing." But ordinary persons, servants, artisans, tradesmen in public employment, "fed upon the chameleon's dish," and still cried in vain for their wages — it might be from prison. Prices of provisions would not abate. Vainly the Duke of Northumberland reprimanded the Lord Mayor in the Guildhall; vainly butchers' carts were seized and the meat was forfeited; vainly the dealers were threatened with the loss of their freedom and expulsion from the towns and cities; the distrust and hatred of the administration were too strong for menace.

Froude.

THE PROTECTOR'S ERRORS.

SUCH was the result of an administration of something less than three years by the Duke of Somerset. He had found the country at peace, recruiting itself after a long and exhausting war. The struggle which he had reopened had cost, with the commotions of the summer, almost a million and a half, when the regular revenue was but 300,000l., and of that sum a third was wasted on the expenses of the household. The confiscated church lands, intended to have been sold for public purposes, had been made away with, and the exchequer had been supplied by loans at interest of thirteen and fourteen per cent by a steadily maintained drain upon the currency. In return for the outlay he had to show Scotland utterly lost, the imperial alliance trifled away, the people at home mutinous, a rebellion extinguished by foreign mercenaries, in which 10,000 lives had been lost, the French conquests held by Henry VIII. as a guarantee for a repudiated debt on the point of being wrested from his hands, and of the two million crowns due for them, but a small fraction likely now to be forthcoming; finally, foreign war, with its coming obligations and uncertainties.

The blame was not wholly his. The Protector's power was probably less than it seemed to be, and the ill will, and perhaps the rival schemes of others, may have thwarted projects in themselves feasible. Yet it may be doubted whether, if he had been wholly free to pursue his own way, his blunders would not have been even more considerable; and by contemporary statesmen delicate allowances were not likely to be made for a ruler who had grasped at an authority which had not been intended for him, and had obtained it under conditions which he had violated. His intentions had been good, but there were so many of them that he was betrayed by their very number. He was po

pular with the multitude, for he was the defender of the poor against the rich; but the magnificent weakness of his character had aimed at achievements beyond his ability. He had attempted the work of a giant with the strength of a woman, and in his failures he was passionate and unmanageable; while the princely name and the princely splendor which he affected, the vast fortune which he had amassed amidst the ruin of the national finances, and the palace which was rising before the eyes of the world amidst the national defeats and misfortunes, combined to embitter the irritation with which the council regarded him.

In the presence, therefore, of the fruits of Somerset's bad management, it is idle to look for the causes of his deposition from power in private intrigue or personal ambition. Both intrigue and ambition there may have been; but assuredly the remaining executors of the will of Henry VIII. would have been as negligent as Somerset was incapable, if they had allowed the interests of the nation to remain any longer in his hands. He had been sworn to act in no matter of importance without their advice and consent; he had acted alone, he had not sought their advice, and he would not listen to their remonstrances, and the consequences were before them. Warwick, Southampton, Russell, Herbert, St. John, Arundel, Paget, might possibly govern no better, but they had not failed as yet, and Somerset had failed. Their advice, if taken in time, would have saved Boulogne and perhaps prevented the rebellion; and whether others were fit or unfit, the existing state of England was a fatal testimony of the incapacity of the Protector. Froude.