were to be slaves for two years; if not so entitled, for five years. The masters of this new class of slaves could sell them, let them out for hire, or give them without hire, in any manner or for any term that they thought proper, as they had a right to do with any other of their movable goods and chattels. If no one presented them to the magistrates, they might hunt them up themselves, brand them as slaves, and dispose of them as they thought best, by selling them, letting them out to work in chains on the roads or other public works. Thus, ample powers were given for establishing an extensive slave-trade and slavery in England and in Englishmen in the sixteenth century. Still worse, any one might seize the children of beggars, and use or dispose of them as slaves: the boys till they were twenty-four years of age, and the girls till they were twenty. If they ran away they were empowered to put them in chains, and otherwise to punish them. And though these unfortunates would nominally acquire their freedom at the prescribed age, yet that was perfectly nominal, for being found begging or loitering as they must do, they were liable to be immediately seized again.
This act was so atrocious, and liable to such hideous abuses, that it was repealed after two years' trial, and the statute of 28 Henry VIII., c. 12, was revived, allowing persons to beg with license of the magistrates, and punishing beggars without license with whipping, or the stocks for three days and three nights.
Parliament terminated its sitting on the 24th of December, and the council, carrying forward its measures for the advancement of the Reformation, issued an order prohibiting the bearing of candles on Candlemas-Day, of ashes on Ash Wednesday, and of palms on Palm Sunday. The order against images was repeated, the clothes covering which were directed to be given to the poor. The people, however, who delighted in religious ceremonies, processions, and spectacles, and thought the sermons very dull, were by no means pleased with these innovations. There was to be no elevation of the host, and the whole service was to be in English.
Cranmer employed himself in composing a catechism, which was published "for the singular profit and instruction of children and young people;" and a committee of bishops and divines sat to compile a new liturgy for the use of the English Church. They took the Latin missals and breviaries for the groundwork, omitting whatever they deemed superfluous or superstitious, and adding fresh matter. Before Christmas they had compiled a book of common prayer, differing in various particulars from the one now in use, and all ministers were ordered to make use of that book, under penalty, on refusal, of forfeiture of a year's income, and six months' imprisonment for the first offence; for the second, loss of all his preferments, with twelve months' imprisonment; and for a third, imprisonment for life. Any one taking upon him to preach, except in his own house, without license from the king's visitors, the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the bishop of the diocese, was liable to imprisonment. Latimer, who had resigned his bishopric in 1539, was now called forward again, and appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, and also in the king's privy garden, where Edward, attended by his court, used to listen to his bold and quaint eloquence for an hour together.
Gardiner, on the contrary, continued to give his decided opposition to the progress of reform. The act of general pardon at the close of the session gave him his liberty; on the 5th of January, 1548, he was called into the presence of the council, admonished, and discharged. He returned to his diocese, but there he continued to exert himself with such effect in resistance to the new doctrines and institutions, that he was again summoned before the council in June, and ordered to preach at St. Paul's Cross, on the feast of St. Peter, in presence of the king. He conducted his sermon with such adroitness, that it was only in the third part of it, where he had treated of the mass and the eucharist, which had been prohibited to him by the Protector in writing, that they could find occasion against him. The next day, June 30th, he was committed to the Tower, and detained in confinement during the remainder of the reign.
Towards the close of the year 1547, a bill passed the Commons authorising the marriage of the clergy, and on the 9th of February, 1548, a different bill for the same object was carried in the House of Lords, and accepted by the Commons.
Whilst these events had been taking place in England, the war had been steadily prosecuted against Scotland, and led to the result which might naturally be expected, but which was least expected by the Protector—that of the passing of the young queen of Scotland into the hands of the French. To woo a woman by making war on her, ravaging her estates, and murdering her friends and servants, would be thought monstrous in private life. But kings and Royal councillors have often peculiar ideas, and this had been the absurd plan of England's wooing of the Queen of Scots. Very soon after the battle of Pinkie, a council was summoned at Stirling, where the queen-dowager proposed that, to put an end to those barbarous inroads of the English on pretence of seeking the hand of the queen, they should apply to France for its assistance; and as a means of engaging it in effectual aid, they should offer the young queen in marriage to the dauphin, and that for her better security she should be educated in the French court. The news of this proposition struck Somerset with the greatest alarm. He issued a proclamation on the 5th of February, 1548, to the Scottish people, charging the evils of the war on Arran and his advisers, who, he said, had the last year suppressed the favourable offers of the English Government. He asked them what they hoped for in marrying their queen to a foreign prince, which would at once reduce Scotland to a province of France, and render perpetual the quarrel with England? For 800 years, he said, no such opportunity had offered for uniting the people of the two countries, each under their own laws, but in all the blessings of peace, union, and strength, under the common name of Britons.
To add force to his arguments, Somerset adopted both those of Henry VIII. He had used his argument of war, and now he added his argument of money. He freely bribed the Scotch nobles, and they as freely promised him their aid, but their promises were more readily given than the aid; and when Lord Wharton and the Earl of Lennox invaded the western marches, they even turned against the invaders, and drove them back across the borders with considerable slaughter. On the eastern coast, Lord Gray de Wilton marched with a powerful army to the very gates of
