It became evident to Henry early in the spring that he was left substantially alone.  His marriage had been kept secret with the intention that it should be divulged by the King of France to the pope when he met him at Marseilles; and as the pope had pretended an anxiety that either the King of England should be present in person at that interview, or should be represented by an ambassador of adequate rank, a train had been equipped for the occasion, the most magnificent which England could furnish.  Time, meanwhile, passed on; the meeting, which was to have taken place first in January, and then in April, was delayed till October, and in the interval the papal brief had appeared in Flanders; the queen’s pregnancy could not admit of concealment; and the evident proof which appeared that France was no longer to be depended upon, convinced the English government that they had nothing to hope for from abroad, and that Henry’s best resources were to be found, where in fact they had always been, in the strength and affection of his own people.

From this choking atmosphere, therefore, we now turn back to England and the English parliament; and the change is from darkness to light, from death to life.  Here was no wavering, no uncertainty, no smiling faces with false hearts behind them; but the steady purpose of resolute men, who slowly, and with ever opening vision, bore the nation forward to the fair future which was already dawning.

Parliament met at the beginning of February, a few days after the king’s marriage, which, however, still remained a secret.  It is, I think, no slight evidence of the calmness with which the statesmen of the day proceeded with their work, that in a session so momentous, in a session in which the decisive blow was to be struck of the most serious revolution through which the country as yet had passed, they should have first settled themselves calmly down to transact what was then the ordinary business of legislation, the struggle with the vital evils of society.  The first nine statutes which were passed in this session were economic acts to protect the public against the frauds of money-making tradesmen; to provide that shoes and boots should be made of honest leather; that food should be sold at fair prices, that merchants should part with their goods at fair profits; to compel, or as far as the legislature was able to do it, to compel all classes of persons to be true men; to deal honestly with each other, in that high Quixotic sense of honesty which requires good subjects at all times and under all circumstances to consider the interests of the commonwealth as more important than their own.  I have already spoken of this economic legislation, and I need not dwell now upon details of it; although under some aspects it may be thought that more which is truly valuable in English history lies in these unobtrusive statutes than in all our noisy wars, reformations, and revolutions.  The history of this as of all