“Forrest, the fryar,
      That obstinate lyar,
    That wilfully will be dead;
      Incontinently
      The Gospel doth deny,
    The King to be supreme head.”

There is a grand and simple irony in this not easily surpassed.  Some very evident proofs had been given in England, that to deny the King’s spiritual supremacy was “wilfully to be dead,” although neither the King nor the Parliament had vouchsafed to inform the victims in what part of the Gospel the keys of the kingdom of heaven had been given to a temporal prince.  Still, as I have observed, the royal process was extremely simple—­if you believed, you were saved; if you doubted, you died.

With the example of Sir Thomas More[393] before their eyes, the Anglo-Norman nobles and gentlemen, assembled in Parliament by the royal command, were easily persuaded to do the royal bidding.  But the ecclesiastics were by no means so pliable.  Every diocese had the privilege of sending two proctors to Parliament; and these proctors proved so serious an obstacle, that Lords Grey and Brabazon wrote to Cromwell, that they had prorogued the Parliament in consequence of the “forwardness and obstinacy of the proctors, of the clergy, and of the bishops and abbots;” and they suggest that “some means should be devised, whereby they should be brought to remember their duty better,” or that “means may be found which shall put these proctors from a voice in Parliament."[394] The means were easily found—­the proctors were forbidden to vote.[395] The Act was passed.  Every one who objected to it having been forbidden to vote, Henry’s agents on the Continent proclaimed triumphantly that the Irish nation had renounced the supremacy of Rome.  A triumph obtained at the expense of truth, is but poor compensation for the heavy retribution which shall assuredly be demanded of those who have thus borne false witness against their neighbour.  Men forget too often, in the headlong eagerness of controversy, that truth is eternal and immutable, and that no amount of self-deceit or successful deception of others can alter its purity and integrity in the eyes of the Eternal Verity.

The Irish Parliament, or, we should say more correctly, the men permitted to vote in Ireland according to royal directions, had already imitated their English brethren by declaring the marriage of Henry and Catherine of Arragon null and void, and limiting the succession to the crown to the children of Anna Boleyn.  When this lady had fallen a victim to her husband’s caprice, they attainted her and her posterity with equal facility.  A modern historian has attempted to excuse Henry’s repudiation of his lawful wife, on the ground of his sincere anxiety to prevent disputes about the succession.[396] But the King’s subsequent conduct ought surely to have deterred any one from attempting so rash an apology.  To doubt the royal supremacy, or the right of the lady, who for the time being held a place in Henry’s affections, to royal honours, was an evidence of insincerity in devotion to himself which he could not easily pardon.