These were the first Paladins of the Reformation; the knights who slew the dragons and the enchanters, and made the earth habitable for common flesh and blood.  They were rarely, as we have said, men of great ability, still more rarely men of “wealth and station;” but men rather of clear senses and honest hearts.  Tyndal was a remarkable person, and so Clark and Frith promised to become; but the two last were cut off before they had found scope to show themselves; and Tyndal remaining abroad, lay outside the battle which was being fought in England, doing noble work, indeed, and ending as the rest ended, with earning a martyr’s crown; but taking no part in the actual struggle except with his pen.  As yet but two men of the highest order of power were on the side of Protestantism—­Latimer and Cromwell.  Of them we have already said something; but the time was now fast coming when they were to step forward, pressed by circumstances which could no longer dispense with them, into scenes of far wider activity; and the present seems a fitting occasion to give some closer account of their history.  When the breach with the pope was made irreparable, and the papal party at home had assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the fortunes of the Protestants entered into a new phase.  The persecution ceased; and those who but lately were carrying fagots in the streets, or hiding for their lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the sunshine of political favour.  The summer was but a brief one, followed soon by returning winter; but Cromwell and Latimer had together caught the moment as it went by; and before it was over, a work had been done in England which, when it was accomplished once, was accomplished for ever.  The conservative party recovered their power, and abused it as before; but the chains of the nation were broken, and no craft of kings or priests or statesmen could weld the magic links again.

It is a pity that of two persons to whom England owes so deep a debt, we can piece together such scanty biographies.  I must attempt, however, to give some outline of the little which is known.

The father of Latimer was a solid English yeoman, of Thurcaston, in Leicestershire.  “He had no lands of his own,” but he rented a farm “of four pounds by the year,” on which “he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men;” “he had walk for a hundred sheep, and meadow ground for thirty cows."[557] The world prospered with him; he was able to save money for his son’s education and his daughters’ portions; but he was freehanded and hospitable; he kept open house for his poor neighbours; and he was a good citizen, too, for “he did find the king a harness with himself and his horse,” ready to do battle for his country, if occasion called.  His family were brought up “in godliness and the fear of the Lord;” and in all points the old Latimer seems to have been a worthy, sound, upright man, of the true English mettle.