But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done,
Ver. 19. For Herodias his brother Philip's wife] Whom it was not lawful for Herod to have, though Philip were dead, as Josephus saith he was. This was the case so much controverted here and beyond seas in Henry VIII's time, touching his marriage with his brother Arthur's widow, by Papal dispensation. The king had first a scruple cast into his mind about it by the bishop of Baion, the French ambassador, who came to him to consult of a marriage between the Lady Mary and the Duke of Orleans, whether Mary were legitimate, &c. This gave occasion to the casting the pope's authority out of England. Mary was forced, for fear of death, to renounce the bishop of Rome, and to acknowledge her mother's marriage to have been incestuous and unjust, &c. Though afterwards she set up the pope here again, and it was her policy so to get and keep the crown upon her head.
And for all the evils which Herod, &c.] John reproved him with the same liberty that Herod committed them. So did John Chrysostom the great ones of his time. Ita quidem ut etiam Ducum, Eutropii et Gainae, imo ipsius Imperatoris errata reprehenderet: he spared not dukes, princes, nay, not the Emperor himself. (Osiand. Hist. Eccles. Cent. 5.)