Chapter XVII: The Royal Reform (2)

Henry meanwhile was uneasy; the Emperor and King Francis I. had recently concluded at Nice, under the auspices of the Pope, a truce for ten years; hence the alliance of England lost the value which had often attracted the advances of the two great rivals; Paul III. again threatened to promulgate the bull so long prepared, and he sought to unite against King Henry the forces of the empire and of France. Cardinal Pole had been employed in this negotiation; it remained without result, but the distrust and jealousy of the despot had been aroused, and the fate which the family of the cardinal had so long dreaded at length overtook them. In the month of December, 1538, Lord Montacute and Sir Geoffrey Pole, brother of the cardinal, as well as the Marquis of Exeter, grandson of King Edward IV., through his daughter Catherine, were arrested and conducted to the Tower. {242} Some months later the Countess of Salisbury, mother of the cardinal, the Marchioness of Exeter, and the son of Lord Montacute were impeached in their turn. All were condemned, and all perished, with the exception of Sir Geoffrey Pole, who betrayed his kinsmen. The old countess remained for a long time in Prison, as though to experience all the horrors of her situation. When she was finally led to the scaffold, at the age of seventy-two, she refused to place her head upon the block. "No," she said; "my head has committed no treason; if you want it, come and take it." It was found necessary to seize her by force, and she resisted until the last moment.

While bathing his hands in blood. King Henry was much occupied in instructing his people in sound doctrine; he had entered seriously upon his duties as supreme head of the Church, and was carefully preparing the articles of faith which were to form the basis of the popular belief; woe to him who should not adhere to the six articles which the king sent to the convocation of the clergy. In the main, the doctrines expounded by the king were those of the Roman Catholic Church, with the exception of the supremacy of the Pope; the efforts which Cranmer made to bring about, by discussion with the German theologians, some modifications in the ideas of Henry, remained without result. {243} The emissaries of the reformed Churches in vain maintained the doctrine of communion of the two kinds, the marriage of priests, and other important points in doctrine and in practise; the king thanked them for the trouble which they had taken in coming to his kingdom; he assured them of the esteem in which he held their erudition and virtues, but he sent to the Parliament of 1539 an act recapitulating the obligatory articles of faith, entirely in conformity with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, and threatening the most severe penalties against whosoever should reject these doctrines, or should fail to conform his life thereto. The influence of Cranmer was once more defeated, and that of Bishop Gardiner, who had constantly remained faithful to the old Church, was again triumphant. The star of Cromwell was on the wane; the first instigator of the religious rivalry of Henry VIII. with the Pope, was about in his turn to succumb beneath the jealous despotism which he had contributed to raise.

The two great parties which had been formed in the Church of England after the reformation continued to share power under the king. The bishops favourable to Protestantism had for a time prevailed, when Henry alarmed by the alliance of the Catholic powers, sent a mission to Germany to the Protestant princes, and authorized the journey of the German theologians to England. The prelates attached to the Catholic Church triumphed when Gardiner was recalled from his retirement, and the king accepted his revision of the religious edict submitted to Parliament. Several of the reforming bishops had already resigned or had been deprived of their dignities, when Cromwell, still favourable to the new party, desired to furnish it with an important support by uniting the king with a Protestant queen. {244} For several months past, Henry had in vain looked for a consort among the European princesses; the Dowager Duchess of Milan replied that if she had two heads, she might have thought of that alliance, but that, having but one, she declined the honour which his Majesty wished to do her. He solicited the hand of Mary of Guise, Duchess of Longueville, but she was betrothed to his nephew, James V., king of Scotland, who had lost his first wife, Madeleine of France, a few months after their marriage. King Francis I. had refused to send to Calais the two sisters of Mary of Guise, whom Henry wished to see. Cromwell proposed the Princess Anne of Cleves, sister of the reigning duke, whose beauty, gentleness, and virtue were much extolled. Henry VIII. despatched to Germany his favourite painter, Holbein, to bring him back a portrait of the princess; it was contained in a rose of ivory admirably carved; the casket and the contents pleased the king; he asked for the hand of Anne of Cleves, to the great joy of Cromwell. The unfortunate man had never seen the princess.

She arrived in England on the 31st of December, 1539; notwithstanding his gout, and his inconvenient stoutness, the king repaired to Rochester, in order to see secretly the princess who came courageously to share with him the fatal throne. He started back in dread and anger. Anne was tall and muscular, as he had been informed, and as he wished; her features were regular, but coarse; her complexion, which was fresh, bore traces of small-pox; her figure was massive, her walk awkward, and, above all, the worthy German lady was clad in the fashion of her country, without elegance or grace. {245} The voluptuous and debilitated monarch experienced an indignation that did not permit him to show himself at first. When at length he consented to see the princess, he said but a few words to her: Anne of Cleves spoke German, the king did not know that language. He sent her a present of some furs, and returned to London to convoke his council. On perceiving Cromwell, he reproached him, in violent terms, for having married him to a great Flemish nag, uncouth and awkward, ill-fitted to inspire her love; he then commanded him to find some pretext for breaking off this odious union. Cromwell was politic, he trembled for his favour and, perhaps his life; he was compelled to remind the king that, in the situation of his affairs in Germany, it would be dangerous to displease the German princes. "There is no remedy then? I must place my head in the halter?" exclaimed Henry piteously. He yielded, and the marriage was celebrated at Greenwich on the 5th of January. But the burden of this union became every day more insupportable to the king; he was not accustomed to find himself thwarted; the objections of Cromwell to the divorce rankled in his breast. A theological quarrel of a dependent of the minister with Bishop Gardiner completed the exasperation of the king against his vicar-general; the heterodoxy of Barnes called in question the orthodoxy of Cromwell, who had employed him in the fatal negotiations for the marriage of Anne of Cleves. The king still continued his resentment. {246} Cromwell opened Parliament as usual, entrusted with the royal message, which related solely to the religious questions yet in litigation; he obtained from the Houses enormous subsidies, dispensed court favours, threatened with the royal displeasure the chiefs of the Catholic party, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Bishops of Durham, Winchester, and Bath; then, on the 10th of June, 1540, he was arrested in the very council-chamber, for high treason. Four days afterwards, he was condemned by a bill of attainder, a process which he himself contributed to establish, and on the 28th of June, he suffered his sentence as a traitor to the Head of the Church and a pestilent heretic. The king was compelled, in order to replace Cromwell, whose activity was indefatigable, to summon to his side two secretaries of State, of whom one, Wriothesley, afterwards became his chancellor.

The ill-starred marriage with Anne of Cleves and the theological errors of Barnes were not the sole causes of the ruin of Cromwell; the beautiful face of Lady Catherine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, had played a part in the overthrow of the condemned minister. Before Cromwell perished upon the scaffold, Henry VIII. had married Catherine Howard. Anne of Sleeves had at first swooned on learning the intentions of the king towards her, but recovering her senses, she had no doubt, returned thanks to God for having preserved her from the melancholy fate of the wives of Henry VIII., and had accepted without a murmur the title of "adopted sister" of the king, which was bestowed upon her by that gracious sovereign. A suitable establishment was granted to her in England, and the Duke of Suffolk, entrusted with the letters of the princess for her brother, started for Cleves, in order to explain to the duke the scruples concerning a former contract of the princess with the Duke of Lorraine, which had led the king to break off the marriage, while assuring him of the happy condition and full consent of the dethroned queen.

[Image] Anger of Henry VIII on his First View of Anne of Cleves.

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By way of celebrating his fifth nuptials Henry sent to the stake Dr. Barnes, the maladroit dependent of Cromwell, in company with two or three other heretics, while certain Catholics were quartered for having refused to take the oath of supremacy. The punishment alone was different: Catholics and Protestants were dragged to Smithfield upon the same hurdle, bound together, to the common indignation of both parties. "How do folks manage to live here?" exclaimed a Frenchman, "the Papists are hanged and the Anti-Papists are burned." In the following month, the Prior of Doncaster and six of his monks were hanged for having defended monastic institutions; all crimes became equally grave in the eyes of the despot, from the moment they thwarted his supreme will.

The triumph of Catherine Howard was destined to be of short duration, and to cost her dearly. The king was much attached to her, and had taken her with him on a royal tour of inspection, during the summer of 1541, but when he returned to London, in the month of August, Cranmer revealed to him a grievous discovery, made in his absence, by his servants, with regard to the conduct of the queen before her marriage, during her sojourn with her great aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Jealous and suspicious, Henry VIII. did not demand proofs before losing all confidence in the virtue of his wife; but he wished nevertheless to have the witnesses examined, and they were all arrested and put to the torture. {248} The queen herself, it is said, confessed her transgressions, as did the man accused of complicity with her--her cousin, Francis Dereham. The guilt of Lady Catherine Howard did not suffice, however, to ruin the queen; she positively affirmed her conjugal fidelity, and the king, whose whole love appeared to have been changed to aversion, set every means to work in order to assure himself of her alleged offence towards him. The old Duchess of Norfolk, her daughter, Lady Bridgewater, and her son, Lord William Howard, were placed in the Tower charged with having favoured the bad conduct of the queen; every species of ill-treatment, every ruse, every falsehood was employed in order to extract the truth, or at least to obtain avowals capable of ruining Catherine Howard. All was in vain; "the mother and the daughter are equally stubborn," say the records of the council, and both rejected with indignation the idea of any complicity in the crimes of which the queen was accused. The two gentlemen accused, Dereham and Culpepper, were tried and condemned, and were executed at Tyburn, on the 10th of December, while the Duke of Cleves was hastening to send an ambassador to King Henry, in order to induce him to take again the Princess Anne, his sister, as his wife. The proposal was rejected by Cranmer, the emissary not even being admitted into the presence of the king; Anne of Cleves remained the _good sister_ of his Majesty, and the trial of Catherine Howard continued, without any one protesting in favour of the unhappy woman, deprived of all means of defence, and delivered over, bound hand and foot, to her accusers. {249} Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, had abandoned her, as he had formerly done in the case of his other niece, Anne Boleyn, protesting to his Majesty "the grief occasioned to him by the abominable actions of two kinswomen towards his Grace, who might in consequence hold even himself in abhorrence." Search was being made meanwhile, in the coffers and hiding-places of all the accused persons, and his Majesty had already collected in this manner large sums, when the council condemned them all to imprisonment for life, with the confiscation of all their property, simply recommending that some consolations should be accorded to them in their captivity, and that certain of their friends should be admitted to them in the Tower. The king took care to cut short this indulgence, and on the same evening he caused a council to be assembled to forbid any modification in the treatment inflicted upon the prisoners, "for great and important reasons," added the conscientious monarch. The trial had established nothing except that the old Duchess of Norfolk and her children had been informed of the reciprocal love of Francis Dereham and Catherine before the marriage of the latter.

The severity which was employed towards her relatives should have enlightened the unhappy queen if she had been able for one moment to believe the promise of her life which the king had transmitted to her through Cranmer. Parliament on the 16th of January addressed an humble petition to the sovereign, asking permission to proceed against Lady Catherine Howard by a bill of attainder, in order to spare his Majesty the grief of hearing the crimes of his wife recapitulated. {250} Henry graciously consented to this delicate request, and on the 11th of February the queen was condemned by Parliament together with Lady Rochford, sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, who had formerly given evidence against her husband and her sister. She was accused of having been an accomplice in the crimes of Catherine since her marriage. The queen and Lady Rochford were executed on the 13th of February, within the precincts of the Tower; Catherine protested even on the scaffold that she had always been faithful to her spouse, "whatever might have been the faults of her past life." The bill of attainder against Catherine Howard made it incumbent on any woman whom the king might admit to the honour of a union with his sacred person, to make a full confession before marriage. "The king had better marry a widow," it was said among the people. Henry appeared for the moment disgusted with marriage; he was absorbed in theology, that second passion of his life, which he treated almost as despotically as his spouses.

The death of Catherine Howard had not, as might have been expected, thrown the king back upon the party of the Reformation; in the month of April, 1542, he retracted the encouragements which he had given to the reading of the Holy Scriptures; he prohibited the use of the old version of Tyndal as heretical, while ordering that the new and authorized translation, without notes or commentary, should be used exclusively; above all, he forbade the reading of the Bible in public even by the orthodox, only permitting the use of the Holy Scriptures in families of the nobility and gentry. {251} People of the inferior class were to be liable to a month's imprisonment if they dared to open the sacred volume. At the same time the revision of the _Institution of a Christian Man_, formerly published by the bishops by order of the king, was completed. The new work, which appeared in 1543, differed essentially upon several points from the first one; it was entitled _The necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man:_ the people named it the _King's Book_, and the king imposed it in fact as a model of faith upon his subjects, without troubling himself about the changes which his own mind had undergone since he had caused the _Bishop's Book_ to be drawn up. The _King's Book_ inclined more and more towards the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Like the first catechism, it insisted upon transubstantiation, oral confession, and the celibacy of the clergy; it also maintained the uselessness of communion in both kinds for the faithful, and recommended masses for the dead. The new Symbol was adopted by the two convocations of the clergy; all the books which were not in conformity with it were forbidden, and the primate, Cranmer, who saw the condemnation of his most cherished convictions, and the affirmation of the dogmas which he rejected, was charged with the duty of watching over the execution of the royal orders. Henry VIII. was accustomed to be obeyed; Cranmer had sent his wife and children away to Germany, since the celibacy of the priests had become legally obligatory.

The servile obedience which the king exacted from his subjects in England was not everywhere exacted with the same rigour; Henry VIII. had furnished proof of skill and foresight by his government of the almost independent principalities ranged under his sceptre. {252} In 1536 he had definitively annexed Wales to England, subjecting the whole territory to English laws, which hitherto had only ruled in a portion of that country. The Welsh counties had been admitted to the privilege of sending members to Parliament, as well as the Palatinate of Chester, hitherto administered according to local customs. But the most important reform which King Henry VIII. effected in this respect was the elevation of Ireland from the rank of a seigniory to that of a kingdom. From generation to generation the hereditary struggle of the Butlers under their chiefs, the Earls of Ormond and Ossory, with the Fitzgeralds, at the head of whom was the Earl of Kildare, had kept the country in a continual state of agitation; by dint of political reverses, treasons, acts of perfidy, executions, and murders, the great Irish Houses had wearied and destroyed each other, and the government had never failed to interpose to further the work. In 1541 the king, wishing to secure the attachment of the more powerful of the Irish chiefs, elevated a number of them to the honours of the peerage. The eagerness of the chiefs was extreme: the great noblemen swore fidelity to the king, undertook military service, and accepted houses at Dublin, whither they were to repair to sit as members of the Parliament of Ireland. The king had granted letters patent to them for their property, which removed their former fears of seeing the English sovereigns one day confiscate all their estates. The appropriation of the ecclesiastical property to the crown was accomplished with prudence; "Do not press them too vigorously," said the instructions of Henry VIII.; "but persuade them discreetly that the Church lands are my legitimate inheritance." {253} The Catholic fervour of the Irish had some difficulty in accepting this mode of succession, but the work proceeded, though slowly, and did not prevent the progress of English authority in Ireland from being real and important under the reign of Henry VIII.

Scotland still remained in a body attached to the old faith. King James distrusted the treacherous manœuvres of his uncle; he had sought the hereditary alliances of his House, and his marriage with Mary of Guise, and the influence which Cardinal David Beaton exercised over him, had drawn closer the bonds which united him to France, as well as to the Church of Rome. All the attempts of the King of England to bring his nephew over to his opinions, and to induce him to follow the English example by the destruction of the monasteries, had completely failed. Cardinal Beaton set out for Rome with secret instructions, a fact which troubled Henry. Hostilities broke out in the month of August, 1542; an English army crossed the frontier; they were vigorously repulsed; but the Duke of Norfolk was advancing with considerable forces; he received the reinforcements of the Earl of Angus, the father-in-law of the young king, who had come with all the members of his family, and who marched, like himself, under the English banners. The duke had scarcely advanced a few steps into Scotland when the king reassembled his forces in order to meet him. But the great noblemen were nearly all disaffected; some were secretly in favour of the Reformation; they wished to enrich themselves at the expense of the monasteries; others were bound by old friendship to the Douglases, and would not fight against them; nearly all regretted the war with England, and wished to remain upon the defensive. {254} Norfolk having been compelled to beat a retreat, in consequence of the bad weather and the want of provisions, the king was anxious to pursue him beyond the frontiers; but his troops refused to follow him to a second battle of Flodden: one after another the barons withdrew with their vassals; the king had now no more than ten thousand men, whom he placed under the command of Lord Maxwell. This faithful little army suddenly entered England. As they were crossing the frontier, the favourite of the king, Oliver Sinclair, produced a warrant which placed him at the head of the troops. All the noblemen refused to obey his command; disorder set in among the soldiers; the English fell upon the Scottish army, made a great slaughter, captured many prisoners of high rank, and put all the rest to flight. The troops, vanquished without a struggle, rejoined the king at Carlaverock Castle, where he awaited the result of the expedition. The blow struck home; the monarch returned in sadness of heart to Edinburgh, and took refuge in his castle of Falkland, where he spent long hours, with his head in his hands, plunged in melancholy thoughts, without uttering a word. He was thirty-one years of age, his constitution had always been vigorous, but he was dying of a broken heart. His wife, Mary of Guise, had borne him two sons, who had both died in infancy; the birth of a daughter, the celebrated and unfortunate Mary Stuart, was announced to James V.; the sadness of the king only became greater. {255} "It came through a daughter," he said, remembering the daughter of Bruce, who had brought the throne to his family, "and it will return through a daughter." A week afterwards, on the 14th of December, 1542, James V. expired, leaving his kingdom rent asunder by political factions and religious dissensions, a prey to all the evils of a long minority and the prospect of the reign of a woman. If he had been able to foresee the future, the last moments of the unhappy king would have been still more gloomy.

Scarcely had King Henry learned the death of his nephew, when he conceived the project of uniting the little queen, who had just opened her eyes to the light, with his son Edward, who was not yet six years of age. The alliance might have been serviceable to the two countries, but Henry claimed to take immediate possession of Scotland in the name of the future sovereigns, and his greedy selfishness caused all his designs to miscarry. He had enrolled in his cause not only all the Douglases, but the Scottish noblemen made prisoners at the rout of Solway Moss; they returned to their country determined to betray its most cherished interests. Cardinal Beaton had claimed the regency, according to a presumed will of the king, but the Earl of Arran, the heir presumptive to the throne and chief of the Protestant party, had been powerful enough to dispossess the cardinal; he held him imprisoned in Blackness Castle. The influence of the Catholic clergy over the common people and a certain portion of the nobility was considerable; the churches were closed, worship suspended, and the clergy worked ardently against the regent, who lent for support upon the Douglases and their friends, who had come back into favour with him. {256} The public voice accused the noblemen of treason and perfidy; the King of England urged them to perform their engagements. He claimed the right to hold in his hands Cardinal Beaton, and demanded the surrender of the fortresses. The truce was only to last until the month of June, and the English troops were already assembling in the northern counties; but public opinion in Scotland was aroused, and Sir George Douglas, the most active of the conspirators in the interest of England, assured King Henry that it would be impossible to lay claim on his behalf to the government of Scotland. "There would be no boys so little that they would not throw stones," he said, "nor a woman who would not raise her spindle. The commoners would willingly give their lives; many noblemen and all the clergy would do likewise rather than consent to it." The Catholic party, uniting the cause of religious liberty with that of the State, opposed both the reading of the New Testament by the common people and the alliance with England. The restoration to liberty of the cardinal was also claimed. All the noblemen repaired to Parliament, and the question of the marriage was there proposed without any opposition; but none dared to speak of the conditions attached by the King of England to this union so much desired by all, and Parliament, while approving of the project of marriage, strongly recommended that care should be taken not to send the little queen to England, at the same time taking the most jealous precautions for the maintenance of the national independence.

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The anger of King Henry equalled his aspirations; he heaped the most violent reproaches upon his Scottish allies, at the same time endeavouring to attach them once more to his service by new promises. They protested their good will, but pleaded their powerlessness. Cardinal Beaton had regained his liberty, and opposed to the Earl of Arran the Earl of Lennox, an ally of the royal family, who had served with Francis I. in the wars in Italy. The treaties were renewed; the hand of the little queen was promised to Prince Edward; she was to be left in Scotland, until the age of ten years; an English nobleman and his family were to form part of her household. But besides these open and reasonable conditions there was "a secret understanding;" all the conspirators engaged in the service of Henry promised in case of need to take up arms in his interest and to fight for him until he should have obtained "the things agreed upon," or at least dominion over this side of the Firth, that is to say, over all the southern portion of Scotland.

The treaty was scarcely concluded when Cardinal Beaton raised an army in the north, and employed it from the first to carry off the queen and her mother, in order to place them in safety in Stirling Castle. After having signed the conditions with England, he suddenly changed his party, became reconciled with Beaton, abjured his errors, and returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church. France had sent reinforcements, and notwithstanding the assistance of Lennox, who had abandoned the patriots, the conspirators found themselves once more baffled in their attempts by the national movement brought about by Beaton.

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The assistance rendered to the Scots by the King of France, excited the anger of Henry VIII.; he nourished an old grievance against that prince, for whom he had no liking, notwithstanding their frequent alliances, and he resolved to throw himself once more into the arms of the Emperor. Without effacing the stain of illegitimacy which he himself had imprinted upon his daughters, he caused both Mary and Elizabeth to be reinstated in their civil rights by an act of Parliament, restoring to them also their title to the throne. Charles V. contented himself with this concession, and concluded an alliance with England. Emissaries were sent to the King of France, with a mass of claims, to which Francis I. would not even listen, and great preparations were begun for the invasion of the French territory. Henry had recently married for the sixth time: he had espoused Lady Catharine Parr, the widow of Lord Latimer. She was beautiful, intelligent and ardently devoted to the Protestant party; the latter fact, however, did not prevent the execution, a fortnight after the royal marriage, of three _sacramentarians_, burned alive at Smithfield.

The first detachment sent to France under the command of Sir John Wallop in 1540, had completely failed in their attempt, when the king came in person at the head of an army of thirty thousand men, to lay siege to Boulogne. The two allied monarchs had agreed to march directly upon Paris, but sieges had an irresistible attraction for Henry VIII., and he had not yet made his entry into the town, which delayed him for two months, when the Emperor entered into negotiations with Francis I. at Crespy-en-Valois. {259} Thus they left the King of England, who had scornfully rejected the proposals of peace, free to return to his dominions after his conquest of Boulogne, exhausted by the efforts which he had had to make to raise his army and to maintain at the same time the forces which were carrying on the war in Scotland.

Intrigue upon intrigue, treachery upon treachery succeeded each other amongst the Scottish factions: sometimes the Catholics and Protestants became reconciled through their hatred of England; at others some deed of violence estranged them again. Beaton, more bold and skilful than his rivals, nearly always preserved his ascendancy, but his cruel persecution of the reformers incensed a considerable part of the nation. The English had made several irruptions into Scotland, under the orders of Lord Hertford and his lieutenants; they committed great cruelties, and finally found themselves shamefully repulsed in the environs of Ancrum. The secret manœuvres of Henry VIII., the relations which he still maintained with the nobility, and the perfidy of a certain number of great barons prevented the Scots, however, from profiting by their advantages and by the reinforcements sent by Francis I.; the southern counties of Scotland were again ravaged by the Earl of Hertford; a fatal manifestation of the fanaticism of Cardinal Beaton occurred to add strength to the English arms and intrigues. A reformed preacher, George Wishart, celebrated among his party and passionately loved by the people, was pursued, seized, and burned alive at St. Andrew's, amidst great public indignation. {260} For a long time past the assassination of Cardinal Beaton, whom Henry VIII. regarded as the principle obstacle to his projects against Scotland, was meditated; the moment appeared favourable, and, on the 28th of May, 1546, two gentlemen of the name of Lesley, with whom the cardinal had had great personal quarrels, accompanied by some friends, took Beaton by surprise in the castle of St. Andrews, and stabbed him in his bed. Norman Lesley hung the corpse on the wall, as the inhabitants of the town were advancing to the help of the legate. "There is your God," he said, "now you should be content; return to your homes." All the assassins received pensions from abroad, and hastened to claim the reward of their crime. King Henry had been mistaken in his hopes; the Church of Rome in Scotland had received a fatal blow, but the national independence remained erect. The embarrassments of the finances were increasing in England; Boulogne was closely pressed by the French. Henry VIII. was now suffering from ill-health; he concluded a treaty at Campes with King Francis I., and the Scots were included therein, to the great vexation of their implacable foe. Francis I. promised money; the sum once paid, England was to surrender Boulogne, which town had been fortified at great expense since its capture. It was the end of the campaigns of King Henry VIII., which had almost uniformly proved ruinous, and without any substantial results; and which had rarely been otherwise when the monarch placed himself personally at the head of his troops. The hostile armies did not allow themselves to be conquered as easily as England allowed itself to be oppressed.

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So many checks abroad, together with the constant pecuniary embarrassments entailed by his prodigalities at home, completed the embitterment of the terrible character of the despot, who was now slowly dying in his palace at Whitehall. Addicted from the earliest time to the pleasures of the table, he had acquired an enormous corpulence, which rendered the least movements difficult to him. He had a difficulty in signing his name, and could not take a step without the assistance of his attendants. He suffered from an ulcer in the leg, and his morose disposition had completely metamorphosed his court, formerly so brilliant. None dared to raise his voice in favour of the most innocent victims. A lady who had access to the court, Anne Askew, young, beautiful, and learned, passionately attached to the doctrines of the Reformation, had left her husband and children to come to London to preach the Gospel; she was arrested and conducted before Bishop Bonner, who caused her to sign a confession of faith in conformity with the doctrines of the Catholic Church. But the zeal of Anne did not abate; she continued to preach: being again arrested, she was tried and condemned as a heretic. Her prosecutors were anxious to make her avow the means which she had made use of in order to spread the forbidden books amongst the ladies of the queen, and they put her to the torture to compel her to denounce her friends. "I have no friends at court," she repeated; "I have never been supported by any member of the council." The courage of Anne Askew remained firm at the stake as under the torture of the "wooden horse;" she died praising God in company with a gentleman of the King's household, named Lascelles, and two others equally dangerous heretics, who would not except [accept?] the doctrine of transubstantiation. {262} While he was ordering these executions, King Henry VIII. was delivering his last discourse to Parliament, grieving at the lack of brotherly love amongst his subjects: "Charity was never so faint amongst you, and virtuous and godly living was never less used, nor God Himself among Christians was never less reverenced, honoured, or served. Therefore be in charity one with another, like brother and brother; love, dread, and serve God; to the which, as your supreme Head and Sovereign Lord, I exhort and require you."

Perhaps Queen Catherine Parr suspected that the king needed upon his own account those religious exhortations which he had always so liberally bestowed upon his people, for she attempted, it is said, to discuss with him certain points in theology which she had studied in the heretical books, probably those very publications which Anne Askew had caused to be introduced into the royal household--a dangerous experiment which she had occasion to repent. The king flew into a violent passion. "A good hearing this," he exclaimed, "when women become such clerks, and a thing much to my comfort, to come in my old age to be taught by my wife!" The sword which had threatened Catherine so long was on the point of falling. Gardiner and Wriothesley, the new chancellor, ardent Roman Catholics, received the order to prepare the impeachment of the queen. She was warned in time; she was intelligent and skilful.

[Image] Catherine Discussing Theology With The King.

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When in the eventide the conversation turned again upon religious questions, the king appeared to urge her to speak; she began to laugh, "I am not so foolish as not to know what I can understand," she said, "when I possess the favour of having for a master and a spouse a prince so learned in holy matters." "By St. Mary!" exclaimed the king, "it is not so, Kate; thou hast become a doctor." The queen continued to laugh. "I thought I noticed," she said, "that that conversation diverted your Grace's attention from your sufferings, and I ventured to discuss with you in the hope of making you forget your present infirmity." "Is it so, sweetheart?" replied the king, "then we are friends again, and it doth me more good than if I had received a hundred thousand pounds." The orders given to the chancellor had not been revoked; he arrived on the morrow with forty men of his guard to arrest Catherine, but the king sent him away angrily. Catherine Parr henceforth left theology in peace.

A few more executions were wanting to light up the dismal valley of death into which the king felt himself descending; the jealousies of the political chiefs of the great factions which divided the country were about to furnish matter for the last deeds of violence of the dying monarch. The ancient and illustrious house of the Howards and its chief, the Duke of Norfolk, had observed with vexation the growing power and influence of the Earl of Hertford and of the family of the Seymours. The wealth, as well as the past renown of the Howards, had nothing to fear from the new rival who had sprung up beside them; but Lord Hertford was uncle to the heir to the throne, which gave him much power in the future, he wished to secure himself against any fatal mishap by striking his enemies beforehand. {264} The distrust and jealousy of King Henry VIII. were easily excited; the old Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, were arrested on the 12th of December, 1546, and taken to the Tower. At the same time, in the presence of several witnesses, the king erased their names from the list of his testamentary executors. The precautions had been well taken. Advantage had been taken of the bad terms which had for a long time existed between the Duke of Norfolk and his wife, between the Earl of Surrey and his sister, the Duchess of Richmond, to search the papers and coffers of the family, in order to discover some tokens of treason. The ladies had even been arrested, and had been severely interrogated; but all that could be alleged in the impeachment was that Lord Surrey had quartered with his own arms the royal arms of Edward the Confessor. The old Duke of Norfolk had, it was said, been guilty of seditious utterances regarding the death of the king while manifesting his dissatisfaction at the reforms of the Church. His trial had not commenced when Lord Surrey was brought to Guildhall to reply to his accusers. He was young, handsome, valiant; he was learned and cultivated; his poems are still famous. He defended himself with as much intelligence as courage, proving that he was authorized by the decisions of the heralds-at-arms to bear the arms of Edward the Confessor, which he had constantly displayed in the presence of the king without his Majesty having discovered anything to find fault with. The court declared, however, that this simple matter of royal arms betrayed pretensions to the throne; Surrey was condemned, and on the 19th of January the flower of English chivalry perished upon the scaffold, while King Henry VIII. was already at the point of death.

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Norfolk had in vain demanded to be confronted with his accusers; he had written to the king, and his letters had remained without a reply. Henry VIII. when dying, had not forgotten the convenient arm which he had wielded so long; the old duke, alarmed and wearied, had even gone so far as to make a gift of all his property to the sovereign, begging him to secure them for Prince Edward. The experienced politician knew that it would be easier for his posterity to regain some day the riches concentrated in the hands of the sovereign, than to snatch them from the hands of the greedy courtiers, who were already in expectation sharing them amongst themselves; but this manœuvre was not successful in saving him; the confession which preceded his donation served as a basis for the bill of attainder, which was voted by the House of Commons on the 20th of January, 1547. The king was no longer able to sign. On the 27th the Chancellor Wriothesley informed the two Houses that his Majesty had chosen delegates to ratify the condemnation, and the order was despatched to the Lieutenant of the Tower to execute the Duke of Norfolk on the 28th, early in the morning. On the same night Henry VIII. expired, after a reign of thirty-seven years. On the last day only had the bolder of his courtiers dared to suggest to him the possibility of a near end, and proposed to bring a priest to him. "No other than Archbishop Cranmer," he said, "but not yet; when I shall have rested." When the archbishop was at length asked for, the king could no longer speak; Cranmer reminded him of the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and Henry grasped the hand of the prelate with his remaining strength; a moment afterwards he was no more.

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For some years past, endeavours have been made to place the memory of King Henry VIII. in a more favourable light. No one has laboured in this direction with more zeal and ability than Mr. Froude; but no party passions can annihilate the facts of history; the personal character of the king must still be regarded as corrupt and cruel; relations with him were fatal to all who approached him, wives and ministers. A despotic and arbitrary, violent and unjust monarch, he was at the same time a capricious and perfidious ally, a vain and harsh pedant. The reform which he undertook in England was the work of his private interest and his tyrannical pride, not of a settled and sincere conviction. In his heart he still remained a Catholic and only wished to rid himself of the supremacy of the Pope, who thwarted him and of the monasteries, the spoliation of which enriched him. Illegalities and abuses of all kinds were increasing with the servility of Parliament, the long duration of the reign and the development of the vices of the king. At the period of his death no one in England dared any longer to raise his head.

Notwithstanding so many crimes, oppressions and errors, England had grown under the reign of Henry VIII.; the king had overwhelmed his people with taxes, but he had maintained public order, and favoured the development of commerce; he had persecuted Catholics and Protestants, but by separating violently from the court of Rome, he had implanted in English soil the germ of that religious liberty which was destined never to perish: he had laboured to construct a strange structure, mingled with strange contradictions and he had called it the Church of England in order to place himself at its head as the supreme chief, but he had imprinted upon English reform its peculiar character, at once governmental and liberal, aristocratic and popular. {267} He infamously plundered the monasteries, but he thereby involved in the party of reform the great noblemen enriched by the spoils; he shed upon the scaffold the noblest blood of England, but he followed the policy of his father, in elevating to the summit obscure men drawn from that growing middle class which was one day to constitute the greatness and strength of his country. Without brilliant military genius, without great political talents, he had contrived to maintain himself abroad as the respected arbiter of the greatest sovereigns of Europe, causing the scale to incline to the side to which his capricious vanity impelled him. The royal coffers were full at the death of Henry VII.; they were empty at the death of his son, notwithstanding the enormous exactions which had filled them so many times; but sixty years of comparative peace had enriched the nation, so long crushed under the weight of civil and foreign wars; it had regained its breath. In vain had Henry VIII. oppressed it; in vain had he reduced Parliament to servile dependence; the new spirit inspired by the reformation had done its work; in spite of the stake, religious sects were already multiplying; the day of the Puritans was about to dawn; the obstinate resistance of weakness under a powerful oppression was already preparing. Protestant England had sprung into existence.

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