Buried indeed as both Henry and his minister were in schemes of distant ambition, the sudden and general resistance of England woke them to an uneasy consciousness that their dream of uncontrolled authority was yet to find hindrances in the temper of the people they ruled.

And at this moment a new and irresistible power began to quicken the national love of freedom and law.

It was the influence of religion which was destined to ruin the fabric of the Monarchy; and the year which saw the defeat of the Crown in its exaction of Benevolences saw the translation of the English Bible.
[Sidenote: Luther] While Charles and Francis were struggling for the lordship of the world, Germany had been shaken by the outburst of the Reformation.

"That Luther has a fine genius!" laughed Leo the Tenth when he heard in 1517 that a German Professor had nailed some Propositions denouncing the abuse of Indulgences, or of the Papal power to remit certain penalties attached to the commission of sins, against the doors of a church at Wittemberg.

But the "Quarrel of Friars," as the controversy was termed contemptuously at Rome, soon took larger proportions.