The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
| Latimer and Ridley, | 131 |
| My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life. Part VI., | 137 |
| Additional Chapters from the History of John Bull, | 164 |
| Harry Bolton's Curacy, | 180 |
| The Dangers of the Country, | 196 |
| Curran and his Contemporaries, | 222 |
| Lord Holland's Foreign Reminiscences, | 234 |
| Popery in the Nineteenth Century, | 246 |
EDINBURGH:
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BLACKWOOD'S
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No. CCCCXXIV. FEBRUARY, 1851. Vol. LXIX.
[The fires of Smithfield and the massacre of Bartholomew are truly eventsof little consequence in history, if they fail to convince us of the aggressiveand unscrupulous policy of the Roman Catholic Church. The claim of thePope, which never has undergone or can undergo any modification whatever,is nothing less than one of universal supremacy. That claim is asserted nowas broadly and boldly as it was three hundred years ago; when, at the accessionof Mary, Cardinal Pole was sent over as legate to England, for thereduction of that realm to the obedience of the See of Rome, and for theextirpation of heresy.
It matters not what may have been the private character of the Cardinal.He has been represented as a man of mild nature, humane disposition, andaverse to the infamous cruelties which were then perpetrated, the odium ofwhich has been commonly thrown upon Bishops Gardiner and Bonner. Thismuch at least is plain, that, whatever may have been his opinion as to themethods which were employed for the suppression of Protestantism, he didnot deem it expedient to exercise his great power in mitigating the fury ortempering the cruelty of the persecution. He was a passive witness of theenormities, and allowed the mandates of the Church to supersede the dictatesof humanity and the merciful teaching of the Saviour.
The records of the reign of Mary ought, especially at the present tim