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It was a long time to wait, but at length patience had its reward; one of the birds flew down to the bushes on the steep slope above me and fed a youngster in plain view. No time was lost in pushing through the bushy tangle to the magic spot. Behold! it was a young cowbird that had been fed by the devoted little moth...
If all birds were as sociably disposed as the little tomtit--for that is also one of his names--bird study would be a delight, and almost a sinecure. Trustful and fearless, he often comes within a few feet of you, and fixes you with his keen little eyes, which dart out innumerable interrogation points. Sometimes he c...
No doubt they were right, for I went back, in spite of their protest, and peeped into the nest, and found four gleaming white eggs studding the bottom like pearls. Alas! when I visited the place two weeks later, the little domicile had been raided, the half-decayed walls having been broken down. A tuft of gray hair h...
These birds have another habit that is worth mentioning. Having found a larger supply of food than they require for their immediate use, they carry morsels away and jam them into all sorts of holes and crannies in the bark of the trees. I have watched a pair for an hour diligently laying by a store of sunflower seeds...
In spite of his unique and interesting habits, the poets have scarcely begun to chant the praises of the American nuthatch. One of the best tributes I have been able to find is from the pen of Edith Thomas, who apostrophizes our bird in this way:"Shrewd little haunter of woods all gray, Whom I meet on my walk of a w...
It is interesting to note that the European nuthatch, while nesting regularly in tree cavities, sometimes also chooses the crannies of rocks, when he goes a little more extensively into the plastering business; but his skill is not so well developed as that of his oriental cousin, whose mud cottage is a model of its ki...
Her finesse is still further to be seen in the fact that she usually selects some bird for a victim that is smaller than herself, so that when her young hopefuls begin to grow they will be able to crowd or starve out the true heirs of the family. In this way it is thought that many a brood comes to an untimely end, th...
Naturally one would expect to find some other eccentricities in this aberrant family besides that of parasitism, and in this expectation one is not disappointed. There are two other species of cowbirds in the Argentine country--the screaming cowbird (_Molothrus rufoaxillaris_) and the bay-winged cowbird (_Molothrus ba...
Presently the mother wren heard its calls and paid it a visit; but instead of feeding it, she seemed very anxious to drive it away, knowing, no doubt, that there were predaceous enemies in the neighborhood. In her attempts to drive it into hiding, she pecked it on the head and in the mouth. Then she dropped down into...
Some things cause a great to-do in the jay world. One day, while I was living in Kansas, the skeleton of a jay, with the feathers still attached, was found in the rubbish of an ash-pile in my rear yard, and exposed to view. An hour later a half dozen or more jays were flinging about in the peach tree above the feathe...
The nests of the scissorstails are set in the crotches of trees in the neighborhood of country homes on the prairie. Considering the size of the birds, their nests are quite small, not so large as those of the brown thrashers, though the cup is deeper and the architecture more compact and elaborate. A friend describe...
Long before we reached the summit we were saluted by a new bird voice--one that had not been heard farther down the mountain. It was a cordial chirp, which seemed to bid us welcome to the alpine region and to assure us that there was no risk in climbing to these sky-aspiring summits. A glance proved that our little s...
Speaking of the voracious appetites of birds, as exhibited by the young pewees, which never seemed to get enough, I am reminded of something I witnessed one day in a deep, wooded hollow. A red-eyed vireo suddenly appeared in the branches above me, holding an immense green worm in his beak. Then followed a tussle for ...
Most birds, however, do not take their dinner at night, and therefore it is easier to watch them at their _table d'hote_. One day a red-headed woodpecker was giving a strapping youngster as large as herself his noonday meal. She came close to him with a morsel in her long bill, and, after pounding it awhile against a...
Here were nuthatches and chickadees in plenty, and also tufted tits, tree sparrows, juncos, downy woodpeckers, and, to make the complement as nearly full as possible, a hairy woodpecker drummed and _chir-r-r-red_, several blue jays complained in the distance, and a goldfinch swinging overhead threaded the air with fest...
Wondering at the reticence of the Kansas sparrows, I wrote to a friend living in Springfield, Ohio, my former home, and inquired what the song sparrows were doing in that locality. His reply was that, as usual, they had been singing with splendid effect on almost every day after the middle of February. What is the re...
In the latter part of February the juncos began to rehearse their spring songs, which were a welcome sound in the almost unbroken silence of the winter. The nearer the spring approached, the higher they mounted in the trees, and the more prolonged was their flight, as if they were practicing their wing exercises to in...
By playing the spy on the birds we may learn much about their dietary habits. It is the first of January, and we are in a wooded hollow. There is a tufted titmouse; now he flits to the ground, picks up a tidbit, darts up to a twig, places his morsel under his claws, and proceeds to peck it to pieces. Our binocular sh...
Another fact about robin music may be of interest to those who have not observed it. In the early spring these birds are extremely lyrical, that being their season of courtship; then will follow a few weeks of comparative silence--the time when there are little ones in need of parental care. At this period the husban...
Conspicuous members of the early chorus were the wood thrushes, a dozen or more of which were often singing at the same time. From every part of the woods their peals arose. Of course, there was no attempt--at least, so far as I could discover--to sing in concert, but each minstrel followed his own sweet will, and so...
Sometimes the rambler and bird gazer meets with other than avian "specimens" in his excursions. One evening I was loitering in a distant hollow, ogling with my field glass several lark sparrows that were flitting about on the ground in an adjacent patch of some kind. The birds were singing as only these beautiful spar...
However, strange as it may seem, I have found the corpses of several birds in the wild outdoors. At an abandoned limestone quarry one spring I discovered the nest of a pair of phoebes. I called at the pretty domicile a number of times in my rambles. It was set on a shelf of one stratum of rock, and roofed over by an...
A favorite roosting place for the sparrows, towhees, juncos, and even the robins, was in some thickets by the roadside. As I passed along, a bird would occasionally leap from his perch to the ground and go galloping away over the rustling leaves. At one place a half dozen Harris sparrows were chirping loudly and flit...
The chirping of birds is mostly, if not wholly, a matter of inheritance. For instance, my little wood thrushes, as soon as they reached a sufficient age, called just like their relatives of the sylvan solitudes; my brown thrashers uttered the labial chirp of the species; my red-winged blackbird exclaimed "Chack! chack...
My notes on instinct and education in bird song correspond with the conviction expressed by Dr. W. H. Hudson on page 257 of his interesting book entitled "The Naturalist in La Plata," fourth edition, 1903: "It is true that Daines Barrington's notion that young song birds learn to sing only by imitating the adults, stil...
Now, if the reader will pucker up his lips and whistle a tune, he will notice that the sound is actually produced at the small labial orifice and nowhere else; however, the tones are modified and modulated at will in a variety of ways--by a deft, though almost imperceptible, manipulation of the tongue, by a slight enla...
The wings are highly specialized members of the avicular organism, and hence differ in many important respects from the fore or pectoral limbs of the mammals. Beginning at the point nearest the body, let us examine one of these wonderful instruments. The wing proper begins at the shoulder joint, which hinges freely u...
Recent developments in aërial navigation have renewed interest in the comparative study of the mechanical principles involved in the flying of birds. There is one exceedingly puzzling law in regard to birds and all flying creatures, the solution of which may work far-reaching influences in the construction of flying c...
No bird has ever been found with more than four toes; and four seem to be ample for all purposes. A fifth toe for a bird would be as useless as a fifth wheel on a wagon. Quite a number of species have only three toes, most of them among the walkers and waders, and none, I believe, among the true perchers. Take the p...
E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 26337-h.htm or 26337-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/3/3/26337/26337-h/26337-h.htm...
The second period began in 1558, when the Protestant queen, Elizabeth, ascended the throne of England. She and Philip of Spain became the champions of their respective faiths; the strife extended over Europe, and soon developed into bitter war. This spread from land to land, and finally returned to Germany as the awful...
This success of their younger rival was very differently received by Henry and by Francis. The English King accepted the rebuff good-naturedly; perhaps he had never felt any real hope of success. But Francis was enraged. It was the first check he had met in a career of spectacular success. He invited Henry to their cel...
Meanwhile since neither Pope nor Emperor had found time to offer any vigorous opposition to the German Reformation, it had grown unchecked. In its inception it had unquestionably been a pure and noble movement: but as the "protesting" princes moved further in the matter, it dawned on them that the suppression of the Ro...
Charles returned with an army the next year, and made peace with his Germans, that he might turn all his fury against Henry, who had thus assumed his father's unforgotten quarrel. A mighty German army laid siege to Henry's most valuable bit of spoils, the strong city of Metz. But the young French nobles, under Francis,...
Luther, the son of a poor miner, was born at Eisleben, Saxony, November 10, 1483. He became an Augustinian monk, in 1507 was consecrated a priest, and the next year was made professor of philosophy in the University of Wittenberg. In 1511 he visited Rome, and on his return to Wittenberg was mad...
On the same day that these theses were published, Luther sent a copy of them with a letter to the archbishop Albert, his "revered and gracious lord and shepherd in Christ." After a humble introduction, he begged him most earnestly to prevent the scandalizing and iniquitous harangues with which his agents hawked about t...
The surroundings he now entered, and the proceedings impending over him, were wholly novel and unaccustomed. But he met with men who received him with kindness and consideration; several of them were gentlemen of Augsburg favorable to him, especially the respected patrician, Dr. Conrad Peutinger, and two counsellors of...
After once the first restraints of awe were removed with which Luther had regarded the papacy, behind and beyond the matter of the indulgences, and he had learned to know the papal representative at Augsburg, and made a stand against his demands and menaces, and escaped from his dangerous clutches, he enjoyed for the f...
Never did the most momentous issue in the fortunes of the German nation and church rest so entirely with one man as they did now with the Emperor. Everything depended on this whether he, as head of the empire, should take the great work in hand, or should fling his authority and might into the opposite scale. Charles h...
So Luther had again, on April 18th, a Thursday, to appear before the diet. Again he had to wait two hours till six o'clock. He stood there in the hall among the dense crowd, talking unconstrained and cheerfully with the ambassador of the diet, Peutinger, his patron at Augsburg. After he was called in, Eck began by repr...
So freely and independently of the Pope did this committee of the German Diet, including several bishops and Duke George of Saxony, proceed in negotiating with a papal heretic. But everything was shipwrecked on Luther's firm reservation that the decision must not be contrary to the Word of God; and on that question his...
What pains they take to deceive us! In books of every size they teach us, even at the present day, that the beast, the man of sin, the creature of Babylon, are the names which God has given in his Scriptures to the pope and the papacy! Can it be imagined that Christ, who died for our sins, and saved us by his blood, wo...
When a gorgeous worship requires magnificent temples, imposing ceremonies, and striking solemnities; when religion presents to the eye sensible images as objects of public veneration; when earth and heaven are peopled with supernatural beings, to whom imagination can lend a sensible form--then it is that the arts, enco...
Villers has drawn a brilliant sketch of the influence which the Reformation exercised over biblical criticism. "It may be said that criticism of the Scripture text was unknown previous to the time of Luther; and if by this is meant that captious, whimsical, and shuffling criticism which DeWette has so justly condemned-...
The suggestion of Las Casas was approved of by the Chancellor; and, indeed, it is probable there was hardly a man of that time who would have seen further than the excellent clerigo did. Las Casas was asked what number of negroes would suffice? He replied that he did not know; upon which a letter was sent to the office...
He sailed from this river of St. Christopher on the 2d of the said month of February; they navigated along the said coast, and farther on to the south they discovered a point, which is in the same river more to the south, to which they gave the name of Point St. Anthony; it is in 36 deg.; hence they ran to the southwes...
They ran on until they reached the line, when Ferdinand Magellan said that now they were in the neighborhood of Molucca, and that he would go in a northerly direction as far as 10 deg. or 12 deg., and they reached to as far as 13 deg. north, and in this latitude they navigated to the west and a quarter southwest a matt...
Seeing this, they agreed to go to another island, where they had had some dealings, to see if they could get some provisions. Then they met with a contrary wind, and, going about in the direction in which they wished to go, they anchored, and while at anchor they saw people on shore hailing them to go thither; they wen...
Next day, in the morning, they saw a sail, and went to it and took it. This was a great junk in which the son of the King of Lucam came as captain, and had with him ninety men; and as soon as they took them they sent some of them to the King of Borneo; and they sent him word by these men to send the Christians whom the...
While they were thus waiting for the cargo, it seemed to them, from the delay in delivery, that the King was preparing some treachery against them, and the greater part of the ships' crews made an uproar and told the captains to go, as the delays which the King made were for nothing else than treachery: as it seemed to...
Situated in a flat and uninviting plain--poor and barren, as the uncultivated border-land of the two kingdoms--Guines and its castle offered little attraction, and if possible less accommodation, to the gay throng now to be gathered within its walls. Its weedy moat and dismantled battlements, "its keep too ruinous to m...
At the time that Henry set sail for Calais, Francis started from Montreuil for Ardres. It was a meagre old town, long since in ruins, the fosses and castle of which had been hastily repaired. He was attended on his route by a vast and motley multitude. No less than ten thousand of this poor vagrant crew were compelled ...
Friday and Saturday were occupied in preparing the field for the tournament. The lists, nine hundred feet in length and three hundred twenty feet broad, were pitched on a rising ground in the territory of Guines, about half way between Guines and Ardres. Galleries hung with tapestry surrounded the enclosure, and on the...
Francis still hovered on the frontier in the fruitless hope of being invited to take part in this interview with the Emperor. The day before Charles left Ghent, the Lady Vendome and the Duchess her daughter-in-law contrived to have business in that town, but their artifice was not successful. Francis was obliged to con...
He still postponed the assault for several hours. But the impatience of his troops at this delay was heightened by the rumor that Guatemotzin and his nobles were preparing to escape with their effects in the periaguas and canoes which were moored on the margin of the lake. Convinced of the fruitlessness and impolicy of...
She was the youngest daughter of Montezuma, and was hardly yet on the verge of womanhood. On the accession of her cousin Guatemotzin to the throne, she had been wedded to him as his lawful wife. She is celebrated by her contemporaries for her personal charms; and the beautiful Princess Tecuichpo is still commemorated b...
Ten years afterward, the Dalecarlians recall the fact that they had received a friendly answer to the request which their accredited messengers had preferred on that occasion, and that their neighbors the Helsingers had promised to stand by them as one man, "whatever evils might befall them from the oppression of forei...
The fight of Westeras, from its influence on public opinion, acquired greater importance than of itself it would have possessed. Little was gained by the conquest of the town, so long as the castle held out; and how unserviceable a force of peasants was for a siege, Gustavus was often subsequently to experience. Wherev...
In the month of August he arrived at Stegeborg, which was now besieged by his general, Arwid the West-Goth, who had recently repulsed with great bravery Severin Norby's attempt to relieve the castle, and had even begun to take homage for Gustavus from the people of his province, although in this he experienced difficul...
Thus ended the reign of Christian II, a king in whom one knows not which rivets the attention, the multiplied undertakings he commenced and abandoned in a career so often stained with blood, his audacity, his feebleness, or that misery of many years by which he was to expiate a short and ill-used tenure of power. There...
It was not the religious movement that gave birth to political agitations; but in many places it was carried away by their impetuous waves. Perhaps we should even go further, and acknowledge that the movement communicated to the people by the Reformation gave fresh strength to the discontent fermenting in the nation. T...
The opinions of the Wittenberg divines were consulted. Luther and Melanchthon delivered theirs separately, and they both gave evidence of the difference of their characters. Melanchthon, who thought every kind of disturbance a crime, oversteps the limits of his usual gentleness, and cannot find language strong enough t...
Many nobles, some through fear, others from ambition, then joined the insurgents. The famous Goetz von Berlichingen, finding his vassals refuse to obey him, desired to flee to the Elector of Saxony; but his wife, who was lying-in, wishing to keep him near her, concealed the Elector's answer. Goetz, being closely pursue...
Terror spread far and wide. Even at Wittenberg some anxiety was felt. Those doctors, who had feared neither the Emperor nor the Pope, trembled in the presence of a madman. They were always on the watch for news; every step of the rebels was counted. "We are here in great danger," said Melanchthon. "If Munzer succeeds, ...
On the side of the princes, it was continually repeated that Luther and his doctrine were the cause of the revolt, and, however absurd this idea may be, the reformer could not see it so generally entertained without experiencing the deepest grief. On the side of the people, Munzer and all the leaders of the insurrectio...
Francis having, by this transaction, deprived the Emperor of his two most powerful allies, and at the same time having secured a passage for his own troops through their territories, formed a scheme of attacking the kingdom of Naples, hoping either to overrun that country, which was left altogether without defence, or ...
Lannoy, though he treated Francis with all the outward marks of honor due to his rank and character, guarded him with the utmost attention. He was solicitous, not only to prevent any possibility of his escaping, but afraid that his own troops might seize his person and detain it as the best security for the payment of ...
Such an exertion of generosity is not, perhaps, to be expected in the conduct of political affairs, and it was far too refined for that prince to whom it was proposed. The more obvious but less splendid scheme, of endeavoring to make the utmost of Francis' calamity, had a greater number in the council to recommend it, ...
On the death of Giovanni de' Medici in Lombardy, the Pope, at the advice of Messer Jacopo Salviati, dismissed the five bands he had engaged; and when the Constable of Bourbon knew there were no troops in Rome, he pushed his army with the utmost energy up to the city. The whole of Rome upon this flew to arms. I happened...
It seems doubtful how far they were, in so doing, executing the orders or carrying out the wishes of the Emperor. Clement, though he had played the traitor to Charles, as he did to everyone else, and had been at war with him recently, had now entered into a treaty with the Emperor's viceroy. And apart from this there w...
The Vallombrosan monk, who thus bestead the Viceroy at his need, was, as Varchi records, rewarded by the bishopric of Muro, in the kingdom of Naples, which, adds the historian, "he still holds."The fate of Rome was no longer doubtful. Clement, who by his pennywise parsimony had left himself defenceless, made a feeble a...
[37] Cellini here refers to the attack made upon Rome by the great Ghibelline house of Colonna, led by their chief captain, Pompeo, in September, 1526. They took possession of the city and drove Clement into the castle of St. Angelo, where they forced him to agree to terms favoring the Imperial cause. It was customary ...
The smouldering embers needed but a breath to fan them into flame, and the breath came from William Tyndale. Born among the Cotswolds when Bosworth Field gave England to the Tudors, Tyndale passed from Oxford to Cambridge to feel the full impulse given by the appearance there of the New Testament of Erasmus. From that ...
At fourteen he was at Cambridge, flinging himself into the New Learning which was winning its way there with a zeal that at last told on his physical strength. The ardor of his mental efforts left its mark on him in ailments and enfeebled health from which, vigorous as he was, his frame never wholly freed itself. But h...
The Pope was now in fact a prisoner in the Emperor's hands. At the very moment of the suit Rome was stormed and sacked by the army of the Duke of Bourbon. "If the Pope's holiness fortune either to be slain or taken," Wolsey wrote to the King when the news of this event reached England, "it shall not a little hinder you...
Amid difficulties such as these the papal court saw no course open save one of delay. But the long delay told fatally for Wolsey's fortunes. Even Clement blamed him for having hindered Henry from judging the matter in his own realm and marrying on the sentence of his own courts, and the Boleyns naturally looked upon hi...
The "Petition of the Commons" sounded like an echo of Colet's famous address to the convocation. It attributed the growth of heresy not more to "frantic and seditious books published in the English tongue contrary to the very true Catholic and Christian faith" than to "the extreme and uncharitable behavior of divers or...
The Governor continued his march until he came to a town called La Ramada. Up to that point all the land was flat, while all beyond was very rugged and obstructed by very difficult passes. When he saw that the messenger from Atahualpa did not return, he wished to obtain intelligence from some Indians who had come from ...
He came in a litter, and before him went three or four hundred Indians in liveries, cleaning the straws from the road and singing. Then came Atahualpa in the midst of his chiefs and principal men, the greatest among them being also borne on men's shoulders. When they entered the open space, twelve or fifteen Indians we...
When we arrived on the plain of the sea-coast we met with a people who were less civilized, but the country was populous. They also have houses of women, and all the other arrangements as in the towns of the mountains. They never wished to speak to us of the mosque, for there was an order that all who should speak to u...
After returning to Cajamarca and reporting my proceedings to the Governor, he ordered me to go to Spain and to give an account to his majesty of this and other things which appertain to his service. I took, from the heap of gold, one hundred thousand castellanos for his majesty, being the amount of his fifth. The day a...
It is difficult to account for this wavering conduct of Atahualpa, so different from the bold and decided character which history ascribes to him. There is no doubt that he made his visit to the white men in perfect good faith, though Pizarro was probably right in conjecturing that this amiable disposition stood on a v...
They made no resistance, as, indeed, they had no weapons with which to make it. Every avenue to escape was closed, for the entrance to the square was choked up with the dead bodies of men who had perished in vain efforts to fly; and such was the agony of the survivors under the terrible pressure of their assailants tha...
The events of the next few months are obscure, but we know enough to see how forces, internal and external, were working toward change. In the second half of 1532 and the earlier half of 1533 Calvin was in Orleans, studying, teaching, practising the law, and acting in the university as proctor for the Picard nation; th...
Hence his first chapter is concerned with duty or conduct as prescribed by the Ten Commandments; his second with faith as contained in the apostolic symbol; his third with prayer as fixed by the words of Christ; his fourth with the sacrament as given in the Scriptures; his fifth with the false sacraments as defined by ...
These were drastic proposals to be made to a city which had just dismissed its bishop, attained political freedom, and proclaimed a reformation of religion; and Calvin was not the man to leave them inoperative. A card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and two bridesmaids were arrested because they had adorn...
John Knox breathed for a while the atmosphere of Geneva, was subdued into the likeness of the man who had made it, and when he went home he copied its education and tried to repeat its reformation. English reformers, fleeing from martyrdom, found a refuge within its hospitable walls, and, returning to England, attempte...
"To all to whom these present letters shall come; John de la Barre, Chevalier Count d'Estampes, Governor of Paris and chief of the judicial tribunal of said city, greeting: We make known that before Simon Legendre and Peter le Roy, notaries of our lord the King, at Paris, came in person Master John Calvin, licentiate a...
It does not appear that Margaret enjoined the law of silence upon her guest of Noyon, for we find him disseminating his errors in Saintonge, where many laborers flocked to hear him and abandoned Catholicism to embrace the Reformation. It was while on one of his excursions that the missionary encountered Louis du Tillet...
"The Sieur de Charreton asked him if he thought this nothing. He replied that he was aware of the high consideration enjoyed by the Constable, but he also knew that the King, in disposing of benefices, was wont to choose the most proper persons, and that the relative of the Constable was of very poor capacity. To which...
At this epoch the grand agitator of society was first, society itself, and then Luther, that great pamphleteer, "whose books are quite full of demons," who drove humanity into the paths of a revolution, for which all the elements had been prepared years before. Luther had sown the wind, Calvin came to reap the whirlwin...
There is no ground for thinking that the "headship of the Church" which Henry claimed in this submission was more than a warning addressed to the independent spirit of the clergy, or that it bore as yet the meaning which was afterward attached to it. It certainly implied no independence of Rome, for negotiations were s...
The new primate at once laid the question of the King's marriage before the two houses of convocation, and both voted that the license of Pope Julius had been beyond the papal powers and that the marriage which it authorized was void. In May the King's suit was brought before the Archbishop in his court at Dunstable; h...
But they had drawn on themselves at once the hatred of the New Learning and of the monarchy. In the early days of the revival of letters, popes and bishops had joined with princes and scholars in welcoming the diffusion of culture and the hopes of religious reform. But, though an abbot or a prior here or there might be...
In temper, indeed, so far as we can judge from the few stories which lingered among his friends, he was a generous, kindly hearted man, with pleasant and winning manners which atoned for a certain awkwardness of person, and with a constancy of friendship which won him a host of devoted adherents. But no touch either of...
More than fifty volumes remain of the gigantic mass of his correspondence. Thousands of letters from "poor bedesmen," from outraged wives and wronged laborers and persecuted heretics, flowed in to the all-powerful minister, whose system of personal government turned him into the universal court of appeal. But powerful ...
A series of royal injunctions which followed carried out the same policy of reform. Pilgrimages were suppressed; the excessive number of holy days was curtailed; the worship of images and relics was discouraged in words which seemed almost copied from the protest of Erasmus. His appeal for a translation of the Bible wh...
But the results of the measure were fatal to the little culture and religion which even the past centuries of disorder had spared. Such as they were, the religious houses were the only schools that Ireland contained. The system of vicars, so general in England, was rare in Ireland; churches in the patronage of the abbe...
A more terrible feature of the reaction was the revival of persecution. Burning was denounced as the penalty for a denial of transubstantiation; on a second offence it became the penalty for an infraction of the other five doctrines. A refusal to confess or to attend mass was made felony. It was in vain that Cranmer, w...
Early in the sixteenth century, when France, after the Hundred Years' War with England, had begun to be a notable European power, the nation, under the young and brilliant Francis I, took up the project of prosecuting New World discovery and obtaining a firm footing on the mainland of America. ...