case,' says the concluding paragraph, 'of any cause, or matter, or contention now depending for the causes before rehearsed, or that hereafter shall come into contention for any of the same causes in any of the foresaid courts, which hath, doth, shall, or may touch the King, his heirs or successors, kings of this realm; in all or every such case or cases the party grieved as aforesaid shall or may appeal from any of the said courts of this realm, to the spiritual prelates and other abbots and priors of the Upper House, assembled and convocate by the King's writ in Convocation.'[1] If Catherine's cause was as just as Catholics and English high churchmen are agreed to consider it, the English Church might have saved her. If Catherine herself had thought first or chiefly of justice, she would not perhaps have accepted the arbitration of the English Convocation; but long years before she would have been in a cloister.
Thus it is that while we regret, we are unable to blame; and we cannot wish undone an act, to have shrunk from which might have spared a single heart, but might have wrecked the English nation. We increase our pity for Catherine because she was a princess. We measure the magnitude of the evils which human beings endure by their position in the scale of society; and misfortunes which private persons would be expected to bear without excessive complaining, furnish matter for the lamentation of ages when they touch the sacred head which has been circled with a diadem. Let
- ↑ 24 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
