intimate friend, it appears, in the Steelyard in London, called Hans Dhiel, one of the merchants of Almaine-or, as we should now say, Germany-and he it was who told him all about the poor miner's son, and of the stand he was taking in his own country against prevalent corruptions.

And thus it came about on the present occasion that the two rectors of Hanwood and Pontesbury began to converse on the matter, and being good and holy men they bethought them much of what they had seen round about them in their own country, encouraged to do so, no doubt, by Hans Dhiel, who usually made an annual visit to Ludlow and Shrewsbury. To Ludlow it is probable—as the Court of the Marches was there -he was led by his occupation as a merchant; his visit to Shrewsbury is not so apparent, unless it had something to do, as the old accounts speak, 'touching the order of wools,' which come under the same item with Luther's books. Whether this was so or not, whenever he came to Shrewsbury the chief part of his time was spent at Hanwood; and being a sportsman, although a Londoner, the woods round about were his delight, and no one more than he enjoyed catching the trout of the river Rea.

But it is equally evident that Hans Dhiel was a man of deep thought, and he constantly conversed with the rector of Hanwood on the many and great corruptions which had overspread, like the moss and lichen on the willow trees hard by, the pure Word of Faith, and the truth as it is in Jesus.

On one occasion when Hans Dhiel was in Shrewsbury he witnessed all sorts of profane and unhallowed mummeries, as he called them, from which we may infer, I think, that that visit must have been in the month of May; 'and he hoped,' he said, 'that the time would come when it would not be thought necessary to make game of the clergy and sacred things on the Wyle and on Mardol Cop, and to allow disbursements in the town accounts for painting and restoring the tattered ornaments of the abbot of Masham, Mayvoll, or, as he added slyly, Mayfool,' words which presently reminded me of a passage in the Historians of Shrewsbury, which I will transcribe. It is in an account of the minstrels, players, sports, and pastimes of the day.

'Least of all, in the account of the amusements of our forefathers, must we forget that important character the Lord Abbot of Masham, Masall, Mardol, or Mayvoll (for by all these names he is called): a personage, we presume, peculiarly Salopian, though a near relation, no doubt, of the Abbot of the Northumberland Household, the Abbot of Unreazon of the Scottish Court, and the Abbé de Loesse of Artois. How our ancestors, whose reverence for the offices and ministers of religion was extreme, should, at one season of the year, indulge in so ludicrous employment of one of its highest titles, may at first excite surprise; but there can be little doubt that the practice was borrowed from the Saturnalian festivities of ancient Rome, and was permitted for the same reason; and that, as then, the pressure of habitual servitude was lightened by the "annual liberty of December," so, in the dark ages, the prelates indulged their "subditi," or subjects, as the laity were called, with an occasional relaxation of the implicit veneration which they exacted during the remainder of the year. In the Eton Montem-till recently one of the most remarkable relics existing of the festive shows of a barbarous age-the parson and clerk made a conspicuous part of the procession.'

It was upon one of these visits that Hans Dhiel, the good Almaine merchant, told the rector of Hanwood many little incidents about Luther's childhood. Amongst other things, he recorded how, when a carrend- or, as we should speak, a chorister boy-he was received with much kindness into the house of the Cotta family at Eisenach, and how he never forgot it when he became the great doctor of Wittemberg, and the far-famed Reformer. It was in remembrance of a Christian woman of this family that he said, 'There is nothing sweeter on earth than the heart of a woman in which pity dwells,' which Chaucer would have put thus:

For pitie renneth sone in gentel herte.

She was a widow woman of this family that made a mantle for the child Luther, as report says, in the days of his poverty- and I could wish the critics had not tried to disprove it. The lovableness of the story transcends pretended

accuracy. Antiquarians last year (Mrs. Watson of Lancing told me) went to Lutterworth and disproved the reality of Wiclif's table and candlesticks. I should like to have excommunicated them for their pains, with bell, book, and candle. I want to uphold nothing that is untrue; but there is something traitorous in breaking up the bonds of love and tender reminiscences. If one were false to me I had rather not hear another tell it. It is enough to move inwardly and to eat out one's own heart like the sorrowing and desolate one in the Greek story!

*Ον θυμὸν κατέδων, πάτον ἀνθρώπων ἀλεείνων—

or, as Cicero translates it in the Third Book of the Tusculan Disputations,

Qui miser in campis morens errabat Aleis

Ipse suum cor edens, hominum vestigia vitans.

I did not pick up from my Talking Friend whether or not the rector of Hanwood said anything about Henry's book, written in 1521-the' Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum,' etc., for which the royal author received from Leo X. the title of 'Defender of the Faith,' by a Bull dated October 11 that same year.

But, as I said before, greater were the events which resulted in the movement of Luther; and much as the rectors of Hanwood and Pontesbury rejoiced to think that true and vital religion was in the ascendant, the valley of the Rea was little concerned locally, and the private views of these men, in advance of the age and people amongst whom they dwelt, could be but little known. It does not follow, either, that they were too timid or too cautious in promulgating their own impressions, for the soil was hardly ready for the seed, and their Christian prudence and moderation did more, probably, for the furthering of the views of the Reformation than any violent outburst would have done. As to Henry's own views, nothing, most likely, was known about them in this retired vale, except what oozed out through the rector of Hanwood, coming either from his friend Hans Dhiel, or from the old town of Shrewsbury and his friends there. We have learned more about Henry VIII, now than the best informed did then;

and although he has his supporters we cannot give him credence for any great desire to further the interests of religion. Certainly, as late as 1524, he had no real breach with the papacy, for in that very year, as old Stow tells us, he received the Golden Rose. Here are the very words:

The first of September, Dr. Tho. Haniball, Master of the Rols, was received into London as ambassador from Clement the VIIth, Pope, which brought with him a Rose of Golde for a token to the King, which was presented to him at Windsor. This tree was forged of fine golde, and wrought with branches, leaves, and flowers resembling Roses; set in a potte of Gold, which potte had three feete of artistic fashion; of measure halfe a pinte. In the uppermost Rose was a faire Sapphire loupe pearced the bigness of an Acorne. This tree was of height half an English yard, and in breadth a foote.'

Of all that was happening at this time, and for some years later, relative to Wolsey, Queen Catherine, and Anne Boleyn, very little reached the Rea-side. It is under the year 1528 that Stow introduces Henry's scruples about his first marriage, but they seem to have begun earlier, and he ceased to live with Catherine in 1524, though she resided in the Court till 1531. The notorious Court held at Black Friars, recently made use of in the novel by that name, was in 1529-two years, probably, after the king had first seen and danced forth Anne Boleyn-that unhappy, short-lived queen, who, if tempted by the magnificence of royalty, has had her character well defended from vulgar slanders. It is not credible that she ever was what her defamers would have made her out to be. All history is agreed to it, and her reported words to Sir William Kingston have much beauty and, no doubt, truth in them:

Ye weep

To see me smile-I smile to see you weep.

I have no tears; I have been reading over

His agony that suffered on the Cross
For such poor sinners as myself, and thee.
Mine eyes spent all their moisture.

But, after all, it is not Anne Boleyn that interests us SO much as Catherine of Arragon; and the scene at Kimbolton

in 'Henry VIII.' is, as Johnson said, above any scene in any other part, tender and pathetic. Well did she deserve to be strewed over with maiden flowers; for, although "unqueened," never did any in the midst of her misfortunes shew herself “liker to a queen."' It is quite recently that there has been published a striking letter of Catherine's-' brave old Kate,' as the monks called her from her death-bed to Henry, which he is said to have perused with tears; for she had gone ‘a-Maying in Greenwich Park, and had fought Flodden in his absence, and had chastised Wolsey with her scorn.'

The death of Wolsey, November 29, 1530, disturbed neither the shallows nor the deep pools of the Rea; but, all this time, the good rectors so often referred to consulted together about what they heard periodically when in Shrewsbury. It was quite clear to them that great changes were likely to take place, and if the prosperity of the Old Town was not so great as formerly-which seems to be the case -light was dawning upon the people, nevertheless, and a decided religious improvement was taking place.

And I bethought me that great must have been the change in the chancellor of the day from Wolsey to Sir Thomas More that eminently great and good man (notwithstanding his prejudices and sometime bigotry) whom all ages since, even the most zealous Reformers and anti-Romanists have agreed to honour-as great as the contrast between Wolsey and Cranmer, who had now come into notice on the matters of the Divorce; for he it was, who, when Wolsey and Campeggio could not be brought to decide in favour of it, advised that application should be made to the learned in the different universities of Europe as to whether the Laws of God allowed a man to marry his brother's widow.' Much has been said about the melancholy dilemma of the Divorce, but, weighing all the evidence together, it is most probable that Cranmer untied the knot. His meeting with Gardiner, then the king's secretary, and Fox the royal almoner, must have been a striking one. It took place at the house of a Mr. Cressy, near Waltham; but, as nothing of this reached the vale of Hanwood and the banks of the Rea it must be VOL. III, C