[Sidenote: Printing Introduced into England.]

During all this time, while Kings came and Kings went, the people
viewed these changes from afar. But if they had no longer any share in
the government, a great expansion was going on in their inner life.
Caxton had set up his printing press, and the "art preservative of all
arts," was bringing streams of new knowledge into thousands of homes.
Copernicus had discovered a new Heaven, and Columbus a new Earth. The
sun no longer circled around the Earth, nor was the Earth a flat plain.
There was a revival of classic learning at Oxford, and Erasmus, the
great preacher, was founding schools and preparing the minds of the
people for the impending change, which was soon to be wrought by that
Monk in Germany, whose soul was at this time beginning to be stirred to
its mighty effort at reform.




CHAPTER VI.


[Sidenote: Henry VIII., 1509-1517]

When in the year 1509 a handsome youth of eighteen came to the throne,
the hopes of England ran high. His intelligence, his frank, genial
manners, his sympathy with the "new learning," won all classes. Erasmus
in his hopes of purifying the Church, and Sir Thomas More in his
"Utopian" dreams for politics and society, felt that a friend had come
to the throne in the young Henry VIII.