the University, young and old, so well acquainted (as they supposed) with the bearings of the difficulty, that they naturally resisted, as at the other University, the demand that their power should be delegated to a committee: and the Cambridge Convocation, as well as that of Oxford, threw out this resolution when it was first proposed to them. A king's letter having made them more amenable, a list of the intended committee was drawn out, which, containing Latimer's name, occasioned a fresh storm. But the number in the senate house being nearly divided, 'the labour of certain friends' turned the scale; the vote passed, and the committee was allowed, on condition that the question should be argued publicly in the presence of the whole University. Finally, judgment was obtained on the King's side, though in a less absolute form than he had required, and the commissioners did not think it prudent to press for a more extreme conclusion. They had been desired to pronounce that the Pope had no power to permit a man to marry his brother's widow. They consented only to say that a marriage within those degrees was contrary to the divine law; but the question of the Pope's power was left unapproached.[1]
It will not be uninteresting to follow this judgment a further step, to the delivery of it into the hands of the King, where it will introduce us to a Sunday at Windsor Castle three centuries ago. We shall find present there, as a significant symptom of the time, Hugh Latimer,
- ↑ Burnet's Collectanea, p. 48.
