In England from Wicliffe to Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

oll of melancholy facts on the other. History's
verdict is, that with the ascent of the Popes to
supremacy came not peace but war to the nations
of Christendom. The noon of the Papal power was
illustrated, not by its calm splendors and its
tranquil joys, but by tempest and battle and
destruction.
We return from this digression to the picture of
Europe in the middle of the fifteenth century. To
the distractions that were rife in every quarter, in
the east, in the south, and in the center of
Christendom, we have to add those that raged in
the north. The King of England had proclaimed
war against France. Mighty armaments were
setting sail from–
"that pale, that white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring
tides,
And coops from other lands her islanders"
the man who led them being forgetful that
nature had ordained the sea around England to be
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