were pressed forward into prominence, and divided the victory with the reformers.  The presence of Sir Thomas More in the council was a guarantee that no exaggerated measures against the church would be permitted so long as he held the seals; and Henry, perhaps, was anxious to leave room for conciliation, which he hoped that the pope would desire as much as himself, so soon as the meeting of parliament had convinced him that the mutinous disposition of the nation had not been overstated by his own and Wolsey’s letters.

The impression conceived two years before of the hostile relations between the pope and Charles had not yet been wholly effaced; and even as late as September, 1529, after the closing of the legates’ court, in the very heat of the public irritation, there were persons who believed that when Clement met his imperial captor face to face, and the interview had taken place which had been arranged for the ensuing January, his eyes would be opened, and that he would fall back upon England.[172] At the same time, the incongruities in the constitution of the council became so early apparent, that their agreement was thought impossible, and Wolsey’s return to power was discussed openly as a probability[173]—­a result which Anne Boleyn, who, better than any other person, knew the king’s feelings, never ceased to fear, till, a year after his disgrace, the welcome news were brought to her that he had sunk into his long rest, where the sick load of office and of obloquy would gall his back no more.

There was a third party in the country, unconsidered as yet, who had a part to play in the historical drama:  a party which, indeed, if any one had known it, was the most important of all; the only one which, in a true, high sense, was of importance at all; and for the sake of which, little as it then appeared to be so, the whole work was to be done—­composed at that time merely of poor men, poor cobblers, weavers, carpenters, trade apprentices, and humble artisans, men of low birth and low estate, who might be seen at night stealing along the lanes and alleys of London, carrying with them some precious load of books which it was death to possess; and giving their lives gladly, if it must be so, for the brief tenure of so dear a treasure.  These men, for the present, were likely to fare ill from the new ministry.  They were the disturbers of order, the anarchists, the men disfigured pravitate heretica, by monstrous doctrines, and consequently by monstrous lives—­who railed at authorities, and dared to read New Testaments with their own eyes—­who, consequently, by their excesses and extravagances, brought discredit upon liberal opinions, and whom moderate liberals (as they always have done, and always will do while human nature remains itself) held it necessary for their credit’s sake to persecute, that a censorious world might learn to make no confusion between true wisdom and the folly which seemed to resemble it.  The Protestants had not loved Wolsey, and they had