Protestantism in England From the Times of Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

they said, and it was no great matter to promise
submission to the law in this respect, and "to take
the Pope for chief head of this Church of England,
so far as the laws of God, and the laws and customs
of this realm, will permit." He might himself
dictate the words of this submission. The man who
had stood erect amid the storms of Henry VIII's
time, and had oftener than once ignored the wishes
and threatenings of that wayward monarch and
followed the path of duty, fell by the arts of these
seducers. He signed the submission demanded of
him. The queen and Cardinal Pole were overjoyed
at the fall of the archbishop. His recantation would
do more than all the stakes to suppress the
Reformation in England. None the less did they
adhere steadfastly to their purpose of burning him,
though they carefully concealed their intentions
from himself. On the morning of the 21st of March,
1556, they led him out of prison and preceded by
the mayor and alderman, and a Spanish friar on
either side of him, chanting penitential psalms, they
conducted him to St. Mary's Church, there to make
his recantation in public. The archbishop, having
already felt the fires that consume the soul, dreaded
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