Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/273

chester, Durham, and Chichester, were openly and violently opposed to him. The House of Lords and the country gentlemen, baffled, as it seemed to them, by his treachery (for he had professed to go along with their statute while it was under discussion), maintained an attitude of sullen menace or open resistance. If the laws against the heretics might not be put in force, they would lend no help to execute the laws against the Romanists.^[1] They despised Cromwell's injunctions, though supported by orders from the Crown. They would not acknowledge so much as the receipt of his letters. He was playing a critical and most dangerous game, in which he must triumph or be annihilated. The King warned him repeatedly to be cautious;^[2] but the terms on which he had placed himself with the nobility had perhaps passed the point where caution could have been of use. He answered haughtiness by haughtiness; and he left his fate to the chances of fortune, careless what it might be, if only he could accomplish his work while life and power remained to him. One illustration of his relation with the temporal peers shall be given in this place, conveying, as it does, other allusions also, the drift of which is painfully intelligible. The following letter is written in Cromwell's own hand. The address is lost, but the rank of the

1. See a correspondence between Cranmer and a Justice of the Peace: Jenkins's Cranmer, vol. i.
2. 'I would to Christ I had obeyed your often most gracious grave councils and advertisements. Then it had not been with me as now it is.'—Cromwell to the King Burnet's Collectanea, p. 510.