Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/488

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
468
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 12.

sured that it would not be remembered against him.[1] Simultaneously with, or soon after this letter, August.the Bishop of Durham wrote also by the King's order, saying that, as he objected to return, it should not be insisted on; inasmuch, however, as he had affirmed so positively that his book was a private communication, there could be no further reason for preserving any other copies of it, and if he had such copies in his possession he was called upon to prove his sincerity by burning them. On his compliance, his property, which would be forfeited under the Supremacy Act, should remain in his hands, and he was free to reside in any country which he might choose.[2]

Pole did not burn his book, nor was it long before he gave the Government reason to regret their forbearance towards him. For the time he continued in receipt of his income, and the stir which he had created died away.

There are many scenes in human life which, as a great poet teaches us, are either sad or beautiful, cheerless or refreshing, according to the direction from which we approach them.[3] If, on a morning in spring, we behold the ridges of a fresh-turned ploughed field from their northern side, our eyes, catching only the shadowed slopes of the successive furrows, see an expanse of white, the unmelted remains of the night's hail-storm, or the
  1. Starkey to Pole: Rolls House MS.
  2. Phillips' Life of Cardinal Pole, vol. i. p. 148. Reginald Pole to Edward VI.: Epist. Reg. Pol.
  3. Wordsworth's Excursion, book v.