Note 303 — The Drawing Room.

"The king seemed to think that his subjects owed an entire resignation of their reasons and consciences to him; and, as he was highly offended with those who still adhered to the papal authority, so he could not bear the haste that some were making to a further reformation, before or beyond his allowance. So, in the end of the year 1538, he set out a proclamation, in which he prohibits the importing of all foreign books, or the printing of any at home without license; and the printing of any parts of the scripture, 'till they were examined by the king and his council," &c. "He requires that none may argue against the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, under the pain of death, and of the loss of their goods; and orders all to be punished who did disuse any rites or ceremonies not then abolished; yet he orders them only to be observed without superstition, only as remembrances, and not to repose in them a trust of salvation."—Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation. But long before this obscure and arbitrary act was passed, Henry's mind had been a little shaken against papacy from a singular work, published by one Fish, called "The Supplication of Beggers." Upon this book being read through in the presence of Henry, the latter observed, shrewdly enough, "If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and begin at the lower part, the upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his head." "And then he took the book, and put it into his desk, and commanded them, upon their allegiance, that they should not tell to any man that he had seen this book." Fox's Book of Martyrs; vol. ii., p. 280: edit. 1641. Sir Thomas More answered this work (which depicted, in frightful colours, the rapacity of the Roman Catholic clergy), in 1529; see my edition of the latter's Utopia; vol. i., xciii.