Chapter VIII: Part 8

We remark, then, first, that under the _régime_ of Somerset, the changes in religion were almost precisely what the Archbishop had advocated under Henry VIII. The Homilies were authorised; the destruction of “abused images” was renewed; the administration of the cup to the laity in the sacrament was enjoined, and the marriage of priests permitted--both on the petition of convocation; and the promulgation of a new Order of Service was almost of necessity attended by an “Act of Uniformity” compelling the clergy to adopt it. Equally as a matter of course, the Six Articles Act, against which Cranmer had fought at the outset, was repealed. The present writer has in the past been severely rebuked for attributing the form the Reformed Church in England took to Cranmer more than to any other single man. “He ought to know,” said the critics, “that Somerset was the man.” Yet repentance lags. Somerset was the politician who, up to a certain point, carried the Reformation through: at that point his influence on it ceased abruptly, and the business passed into Warwick’s hands. The point where this change took place coincided accurately with the completion of the series of reforms of which the Archbishop had for some years past avowedly been in favour. The inference that Somerset was guided by Cranmer is sufficiently obvious, though no doubt the hand was the Protector’s hand. The further advance after Somerset’s fall was mainly, or largely, the work of men of extreme views, whose zeal the Archbishop succeeded, to some extent, in restraining; his influence was still at work--no longer, however, as that of the artificer, but as that of the moderator.

Apparently, Cranmer and the Protector worked in complete harmony, save in the one matter of the chantries; but there is no sign at all that he took his cue from the Protector. The principles of Somerset’s reformation were his. Those principles, moreover, do not appear to have gone beyond what the most anti-Protestant of modern Anglicans accept. The statutory changes, however, were accompanied by proceedings of a regrettable character. In the attack on images, individuals were guilty of violence and irreverence, not to say sacrilege. Extravagant and inflammatory language was used in the pulpits. The treatment of the leaders of the Opposition was not altogether free from vindictiveness. For the first group, Cranmer was in no way responsible; Somerset was, because in some respects he set a bad example himself. For the second, the two were jointly responsible, since preaching was restricted to licensed persons, and the licences were issued only by the Protector and the Archbishop. For the third, Somerset was guiltless. The attacks on Gardiner and Bonner were made in his absence and supported by his colleague. But the mildest of men do not often view opportunities of retaliation with entire indifference. Gardiner had certainly done his best to ruin Cranmer under Henry; and by comparison at least the measures taken against him were mild enough.

Some consideration, however, must be given to the argument that the Protector’s government forced Protestantism hastily and prematurely on a reluctant nation. Whether the religion formulated in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. can be legitimately called Protestantism at all may be left to the controversialists; but there is no manner of doubt that the methods attending the introduction of the Service Book were ill-judged and vexatious. On the other hand, the evidence that there was any strong opposition to the change itself lies mainly in the fact that the Western rising which immediately followed was professedly directed against it. Nevertheless, the mere fact that there was an almost simultaneous rising in the Eastern counties, which beyond all question was exclusively agrarian in character, suggests forcibly that the real moving force of the Western revolt also was agrarian. Ket’s supporters, significantly enough, held daily services, using the new Service Book: while one of the demands of the Cornishmen was for the restoration of the monastic lands--that is, of the monasteries as landlords in place of their rapacious supplanters. Clerical agitators would have found little difficulty in making the Westland rustics believe that half their troubles were due to the attacks on the Church in the past reign; and the identification of greedy landlords with the cause of ecclesiastical reform was at the worst colourable. Cranmer might condemn and Latimer might lash the landlords from the pulpit, Somerset might set up his Court of Requests; these things did not reach the remote districts. But there, men did see the spoilers of the Church enclosing commons, changing tillage into sheep-runs, and evicting small tenants. And they drew their conclusions. The Reformation would have had to wait half a century if it had been delayed till that argument was deprived of all force. But it may certainly be granted that the changes which preceded Somerset’s fall went quite as far as the country at large was prepared for.

It is rather curious to observe that Cranmer fairly lost his temper over the Cornish rebellion, and scolded the insurgents somewhat after the model set by Henry VIII. when he rated the Lincolnshire men a dozen years earlier.

VI

THE FLOWING TIDE OF PROTESTANTISM

Cranmer had no hand at all in the intrigue which overthrew the Protector. For a brief interval there was even some uncertainty whether the group who had captured the Government might not make terms with the Opposition, release Gardiner, and possibly take him into partnership. If Warwick ever had such an idea in his mind, he was far too acute to entertain it for long. Gardiner as a colleague would have been a very dangerous rival. The alternative was to assume the lead of the advanced wing of the progressive party. Warwick, who died professing himself a devout Catholic, had no difficulty in assimilating the jargon of the zealots, and convincing their honest enthusiasm that they might look upon him as a Joshua, while he doubled the part with that of Achan. To him, religion was not among the things that mattered; but religion might be made to serve its turn in forwarding his own ambitions.

Hitherto the Reformation in England had moved a good deal more closely along the lines laid down a hundred and fifty years before by Wiclif than on those of Luther or of Calvin; approximating more nearly to the Zurich school, though by no means identical with them. Zurich had proved more attractive to English refugees also. But now the abolition of the penal laws in England, and the dissatisfaction caused by the Augsburg Interim in Germany, brought into the country a number of foreigners, Lutheran and Calvinist as well as Zwinglian, including on the one hand Bucer and on the other John Knox--besides returning English refugees. Not a few of these foreign visitors were inspired with a lively missionary zeal, and the freedom of discussion permitted naturally caused debate and controversy to wax fast and furious. If the country in general found the concessions already made to the new learning somewhat larger than was quite to its taste, the followers of the new learning were very far from satisfied with them. And they were vocal exceedingly, if not precisely harmonious. It was very soon evident that the comprehensive ambiguity of the new Book of Common Prayer was in the eyes of the Reformers too liberal to the old Catholics and not sufficiently advanced for the new Protestants--controversy raging chiefly over two subjects, the first being the Eucharist, and the second Forms and Ceremonies.

Without attempting to examine the actual views on the former subject held at this time by Cranmer--as to which critics appear able to form very positive but very contradictory conclusions--it may be quite safely asserted that he had quite definitely given up all belief in Transubstantiation, but had not accepted the view most remote from it, that the service was purely commemorative. The varied range of intermediate views might be associated with either of these in a common Form of Service, but these extremes were evidently incompatible. One or other must be excluded. Cranmer, his right-hand man Ridley, and their associates, were all travelling towards the Zwinglian position, whether they ultimately reached it or not. If there was to be any more defining, it was the followers of the old learning who would be shut out thereby.

It was much the same with forms and ceremonies. The extreme men, whether they looked to Zurich or Geneva for guidance, regarded nearly everything in the way of vestments and ceremonial as the trappings of the Scarlet Woman. The Archbishop did not. Where these things did not directly imply the truth of specific doctrines definitely discarded--the sacrifice of the Mass, the worship of images, and the like--their preservation, in his view, tended to decency and reverence. Here, again, it was evident that any changes must tend to the exclusion of the rigid Catholics. They and the Calvinists could not travel in the same boat.

The result is to be seen in the second Prayer Book of Edward VI., in the new Ordinal, and in the Forty-two Articles which, with slight modification, became the Thirty-nine of Queen Elizabeth. Warwick--otherwise Northumberland--was with the extremists, who were vigorous and loud-voiced, and altogether exercised an amount of forcing-power quite disproportionate to the number of their adherents among the general public. If they had had their way, the re-modelling would have been on lines satisfactory to John Knox. Northumberland’s government would not have stood in the way. The Lutheranism of Germany and the Augsburg Confession was uncongenial. It was Cranmer, Ridley, and their adherents who succeeded in retaining for the Church of England a form to which she could mould herself, after the Marian _régime_, without returning to the Roman obedience or adopting the Scottish model. If that was a praiseworthy achievement, it is to Cranmer primarily that the praise is rightfully due.

That is what Cranmer did. From Somerset’s record, it may reasonably be inferred that it is very much what he would have endeavoured to do if he had remained in power. But he did not have the opportunity, because he was not in power, and Warwick cut his head off.

What Cranmer would have liked to do, beyond what he did, is another matter, and may be gathered from his proposed _Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum_--a document which shows that, Erastian though he was, he desired the clergy to have much ampler powers of jurisdiction than there was the faintest chance of the State delegating to them. It was an essay in constitution-making of a decidedly academic order: the machinery would never have worked. It does not reveal unsuspected qualities of constructive statesmanship; but it does not detract from the credit due to the manner in which the Archbishop managed to steer the ship through very stormy waters with a mutinous crew on board. The performance was not, perhaps, masterly; but it is not extravagant praise to call it meritorious.

VII

DE PROFUNDIS

Northumberland’s methods did not make him popular; but they made him powerful, and it was his primary object to place on the throne in succession to Edward some one who should be his own puppet. To this end he devoted himself in the last months of the young king’s life. By Henry VIII.’s will, the succession was fixed first on Mary, then on Elizabeth, then on the Greys--not Suffolk himself, but his wife Frances Brandon and their children. The accession of Mary could only mean destruction for Northumberland. He could not be sure of Elizabeth, who was now in her twentieth year. But he thought he could make quite sure of Lady Jane Grey, who was hardly more than a child and had been brought up under pronounced Protestant tutelage. His plan was to marry her to one of his own sons, induce Edward to assume the authority formally granted to his father and name her his heir--ostensibly, of course, on the ground that both his sisters had been declared illegitimate and those judgments had not been revoked--and trust to intrigue and force to secure her on the throne. Having won the king over, he succeeded in entangling several of the Council in the conspiracy; the rest were then worked upon individually to give their adherence. One after another did so, reluctantly, till all were drawn in save Hales--Cranmer being the last, and assenting only on the positive assurance that the Crown lawyers had guaranteed the constitutional validity of the instrument he was called upon to sign, and under direct personal pressure from the king. Northumberland, however, had completely miscalculated the forces at work. He knew that the very signatories of the document could not be relied on when out of his reach; but having them under his grip, he thought himself safe. But the country rallied to Mary; the troops deserted to her standard; the plot failed, ignominiously and utterly. Mary was hailed Queen; the arch-traitor was sent to the block; for the rest, only a few of those most conspicuously compromised were sent to the Tower.

It was, of course, obvious at the outset that Mary’s rule must mean the return to power of the party which had been in opposition under Somerset and more actively repressed under his successor. The daughter of Katharine of Aragon was a convinced adherent of the entire Roman position. That she would go so far as to restore the Roman obedience might have been a matter of doubt; but, short of that, she was not likely to allow limits to reaction. Gardiner and Bonner, Tunstal and Day and Heath, had all been imprisoned and deprived of their sees during the last four years; it was not likely that the advanced bishops would be allowed to retain their functions. And, beyond theological differences, some of them had been driven by the religious motive into open and vigorous support of Lady Jane Grey’s succession. Of Cranmer himself the most that could be said was that he was an assenting party; but Ridley, Bishop of London, had committed himself to the cause in somewhat inflammatory language.

Nevertheless, Mary was in no haste to strike. Every one who feared for his own skin was given time and opportunity to retire from the country--whereof not a few made haste to take advantage. Ridley was arrested; but Cranmer, Latimer, and others who stood their ground manfully, might have gone if they would. After all, no Catholics during the last reign had suffered anything worse than imprisonment, and Mary’s leniency towards the participators in the rebellion may well have given an impression that retaliation would not go beyond the infliction of corresponding penalties.

Cranmer, then, remained at large for a time. But a report was circulated that he was about to make submission, and had himself set up the Mass again. Had it not been for this, he might have hoped to be allowed to retire into obscurity; but the rumour stirred him to an indignant and uncompromising denial, which was promptly followed by his arrest for complicity in Northumberland’s plot. The Archbishop was by nature a sanguine man, but he can hardly have imagined that this protest of his would be allowed to pass; for it was practically a challenge to all and sundry who desired the Mass to be restored. No government of the time would have dreamed of ignoring the action of its author.

Even when he was safely in the Tower along with Ridley, the hopefulness of Cranmer’s temperament displayed itself. He had an incurable conviction that any one who listened to him was bound to recognise the entire reasonableness of his views; and from prison he petitioned Mary for leave to “open his mind” to her. That accomplished, he felt that he would have discharged his conscience and could retire from further controversy without reproach, even though he might fail to persuade his sovereign. The duty of conformity, in conduct at least, to the sovereign’s decrees, was, as already remarked, a cardinal belief with him.

The petition was not granted. Moreover, the reign of clemency was destined to very brief duration. Wyatt’s rebellion hardened the Queen, whose determination to marry Philip of Spain strengthened _pari passu_ with her determination to be reconciled with Rome and to discharge her duty as a daughter of the Church by bringing her subjects back to the fold. Throughout 1554 signs accumulated, ominous of the coming storm. Whatever Mary’s original intent may have been, mercy to Cranmer must have ceased to be a part of it at an early stage; though, if she had definitely resolved on his destruction, it is difficult to find an adequate explanation of the extreme prolongation of his imprisonment.

In April 1554, the three who were most obnoxious to Mary and the reactionaries, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were removed to Oxford, to play their part in a great disputation. All three held their ground stoutly. It was pronounced, of course, that all three had been completely refuted, and were manifest heretics; but being thereupon invited to recant, they all refused. Cranmer had been treated with considerable rudeness in the course of the debates; but the mildness and dignity of his bearing throughout were such that one of his chief antagonists, the Prolocutor, Dean Weston, thanked him openly for his admirable behaviour.

This condemnation, however, was of no practical account, since, in 1554, the penal laws against heresy were not yet re-enacted. On the other hand, to punish Cranmer for treason would be a palpable piece of pure vindictiveness. His treason, such as it was, had been shared by several of the men who were now on the Council. But the arrival of Pole and the formal reconciliation with Rome at the close of the year were accompanied by the revival of the statute _de heretico comburendo_, and the great persecution opened in February with the burning of Rogers. A twelvemonth more passed before the end came for Cranmer himself. It is perhaps, after all, a sufficient explanation of the delay that the Primate of England could only be condemned for heresy by the Pope. Other cases fell within the jurisdiction of the legatine or national ecclesiastical courts; his did not.

In September 1555, a Papal Commission sat in Oxford to examine the case of the Archbishop and report to Rome for the Pope to pass judgment. Cranmer refused to recognise the jurisdiction, but made a declaration in answer to the questions put to him as coming from the Queen’s Proctors, who were on the Commission. He maintained his views on the Sacrament, and on the Royal Supremacy, and on the usurpations of Rome; and justified his actions on all points in respect of which it had been impugned. The trial over, he followed up his defence by a vigorous address to the Queen, asserting the utter incompatibility of any sovereign authority with the Papal claims. On November 25 the Pope pronounced his excommunication. In the meantime Ridley and Latimer had been condemned by a court under the authority of the Legate, Cardinal Pole, on October 1, and on the 16th they suffered martyrdom--Cranmer, it is said, witnessing the scene from the roof of his prison.

Cranmer remained in prison, cut off from every sympathiser. It is easy to forget, but it should not be difficult to realise, the tremendous strain on a nature like his--sensitive, diffident, imaginative. All his life he had been surrounded and supported by the personal affection of friends. Now, every conceivable incentive to doubt whether he had been in the right after all was set to work on him simultaneously. Yet month followed month, and he remained steadfast--unless his expression of a desire to confer with Tunstal or Pole was a sign of weakening. Before he could be handed over to the secular arm, his ecclesiastical degradation was necessary. The sentence was carried out with every circumstance of public ignominy--Bonner, the principal performer, excelling himself in his coarse brutality. For a man with highstrung nerves, the thing must have been simply shattering.

At the ceremony (February 14) he had drawn from his sleeve an appeal from the Pope to a general council; and about this time he signed in close succession what are called four recantations. Two of them probably preceded the degradation; the other two Bonner extracted from him on February 15. None of them are recantations at all. They are submissions to the authority of the sovereign, to whom he had always taught that submission is due. He had obeyed his own conscience in contravention of his own theory hitherto; now, he returned to the theory, and owned that if the secular sovereign willed to establish Papal authority, obedience was still due. As to doctrine he recanted nothing. But this was not nearly enough for Mary and Pole, who were bent on extracting something which should altogether discredit the cause of the Reformation.

Within ten days the writ for his burning was issued. Then, before three more weeks had passed Cranmer broke down under the strain, writing first a full and complete recantation of every impugned doctrine, and then one more--dictated to him (March 18). No man ever repudiated his whole past in terms more ignominious. His enemies had what they wanted; if they had stopped there and pardoned him, the force of the blow would have been incalculable. But their thirst for his blood gave him the chance of salvation, changing their victory to hopeless rout. They did not pardon. They demanded from the victim the public confirmation from his own lips of the recantations he had written and signed. That one disastrous moment of weakness was to be gloriously redeemed.

Three days after his fall, on a morning of foul March weather, Cranmer was conveyed from his prison to listen himself to his own funeral discourse and then to play his own allotted part. No suspicion seems to have crossed the mind of his gaolers that there was anything for them to fear. The oration over--he had listened with frequent tears--he was bidden to make public avowal of his recantation. He arose; he confessed the grievousness of his sin, entreating pardon before the Throne of Omnipotence. And then he declared the nature of his sin. Before those about him could realise what was happening, he had recanted his recantation, declaring the truth of all he had before upheld, and proclaiming, “As my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished. For if I may come to the fire, it shall first be burned.” Hastily he was silenced, and hurried to the stake; but of his own will he moved so swiftly that the confessors could scarce keep pace with him. And when, indeed, he “came to the fire” he fulfilled his words. Men saw him thrust the offending right hand into the flame, and hold it there till it was consumed.

* * * * *

So tragically, so triumphantly, closed the drama of Cranmer’s life--surely a close fitted for “purging the passions through pity and fear.” A vase of fine porcelain whirled into the eddies in company with pots of brass and stoneware; a scholar, dragged from academic cloisters to control a revolution; a man with a receptive mind, when receptivity was about as dangerous a quality, for himself, as he could possess. A man whom men have ventured to call craven, yet who alone of his contemporaries dared to remonstrate with Cromwell in his policy and with the eighth Henry in the day of his wrath, and that not once, nor twice. A man who endured till the eleventh hour, and then--fell.

But a man who, ere the twelfth hour had struck, rose up the Victor.

WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY

I

THE MINISTERS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH

William Cecil was born in 1520. He lived to the age of seventy-eight, dying in the same year as Philip II. of Spain, who was five years his junior. His political connexion began before Henry VIII. was in his grave; and for more than fifty years it continued, except for his retirement from the public eye during the complete period of the Marian persecution. Even in his old age, when his son Robert was already becoming, in his own crafty fashion, the most important person in Queen Elizabeth’s Council, the father was still the adviser on whom she leaned in the last resort. For forty years he was, in fact, the mainstay of her Government. For twenty of those years--roughly from 1569 to 1589--a man of even higher ability, in some respects, than himself, Francis Walsingham, was his loyal colleague. They served the cleverest, the most successful, and the most exasperating princess who ever sat upon a throne. Both of them--especially Walsingham--told her home-truths on occasion; both of them--especially Walsingham--she on occasion abused like a Billingsgate fish-wife. But all three were unfailingly loyal to each other; and among them they raised England to the forefront of the nations of Christendom.

_From a Portrait by_ MARC GHEERAEDTS (?) _in the National Portrait Gallery_]

To establish orderly government at home, to settle a religious _modus vivendi_, to avoid war, and to prevent the succession of Mary Stewart or any pronounced Catholic--these were the main aims on which Elizabeth and her two great ministers were united. Of the three, Walsingham--a Puritan--was the least devoted to the Peace policy, Elizabeth the most determined on that policy; yet it was Elizabeth who habitually endangered it. The Queen’s tortuous methods, pursued in defiance of her counsellors, more than once seemed to have brought her to a point where war was inevitable; yet time after time her ingenuity, or her lucky star, or a return just in time to Cecil’s guidance, saved the situation. Never has a sovereign been better served; never has there been a reign in which rulers and ruled worked in more essential concord. Idealism and common sense were united in the conduct of affairs with a completeness which has rarely, if ever, been paralleled--never have the toils of the men of counsel and the men of action been more effectively combined. And England was peculiarly fortunate in this--that the great antagonist whom finally she fought and overthrew could be thoroughly relied on always to miss the opportunity for which he was always waiting, always to move only when the moment had passed irrevocably. So England was the victor in the great duel; and the Stewarts found her might established on a basis so firm that even they were unable to pull it down.

That result was not due to any one mind--to any single guide. Elizabeth, her ministers, her seamen, and her people, all contributed their share; and the work was crowned by the glory of her poets. Burghley may not have been personally a statesman of the highest rank, though if he is not included in that category it is a little difficult to name any Englishman who is entitled to that honour. There is a certain commonplace, _bourgeois_ touch about him; he stands for the common sense, not the idealist, side, in the combination which made England great. His virtues were those of the successful pursuers of the _via media_. He did not organise revolution: he did not dream of an empire on which the sun should never set. But he played the political game with unfailing loyalty to his sovereign and his country, with level-headed shrewdness, with imperturbable resolution. There are few men to whom England owes so much; and if there be those to whom she owes more, their deeds but for him would yet have been impossible.

II

CECIL UNDER EDWARD VI. AND MARY

In the reign of Henry VII., Richard Sitsilt, affirmed by tradition to be of an ancient Welsh family long established among the gentry of the Marches, owned broad acres in the counties of Monmouth and Herefordshire. One of his sons, David, who elected to modify his name into Cecil, transferred himself to Lincolnshire, where he prospered greatly. He and his son Richard became very large landed proprietors, and held a variety of offices connected with the Court under Henry VIII. So it would appear that the present Marquess of Salisbury is not unconnected by descent with the “Celtic fringe.” It must be admitted, however, that the notable qualities of his great ancestor are not those usually associated with what is supposed to be the Celtic temperament. Still in that connexion a rather curious point may be touched on. A critic has recently remarked that there is a type of statesmanship which we are in the habit of regarding as peculiarly English (_à propos_ of l’Hôpital), naming in a brief list both Burghley and Cromwell--Oliver, apparently, not Thomas. Now Oliver was descended from the sister of Thomas, whose husband was a Welshman, and whose son chose to adopt the maternal patronymic instead of his father’s name, which was Williams. So Wales has some title to claim the Tudors, the Cecils, and the great Oliver among her contributions to “English” celebrities.

William Cecil was born in 1520, and when in due course he went to Cambridge, he became a member of a distinguished group of scholars which included Roger Ascham, afterwards tutor of Lady Jane Grey and of Elizabeth; John Cheke, who became the tutor of Edward VI., and whose sister was Cecil’s first wife; and Nicholas Bacon, who married the sister of Cecil’s second wife. William Cecil married Mary Cheke in 1541: she died in less than two years, after bearing him one son, Thomas, afterwards Lord Exeter. Nearly three years later he married Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, the “governor” of Prince Edward--a young lady of portentous learning, whose name Roger Ascham coupled with that of Jane Grey. Thus Cecil himself was not only well versed in the most progressive learning of his time, but his chosen associates, including both the first and the second wife, were all distinguished for erudition--and all, it may be remarked, tinged with the “New Learning” in the specific ecclesiastical sense of the term.

Before the death of Henry VIII. the young man was already the recipient of Court favour, and in the good graces of the Earl of Hertford, to whose personal service we find him definitely attached in the early days of the Protectorship. He accompanied the Protector on his Scottish invasion, was present at Pinkie, and was made Somerset’s secretary about a year later. His assiduity and his immense capacity for mastering laborious detail must have been of infinite value to his chief, whose woeful lack of practicality must, on the other hand, have intensified his secretary’s inborn tendency to rate common sense in method a long way higher than visionary idealism of aim. All his life long, nothing ever induced Cecil to deviate from safe precedent and respectable courses--bold enough, when his foresight satisfied him that boldness was the better part of prudence, but never rash. Every step was always carefully calculated, and a path for retreat kept open if there was the remotest risk of retreat being necessary. In the service of the most impulsive and sentimental of statesmen, he learnt--if he needed to learn--never to act upon sentiment or impulse.

When Somerset fell in 1549 Cecil was still some way short of thirty; but he had an old head on his young shoulders--and he had every intention of keeping it there. He had no personal devotion to Somerset or to his policy, and had carefully avoided quarrelling with anybody. When he perceived that the ship was scuttled, he had no compunction about making sure of leaving it in a decent and orderly manner before it sank. He did not quite desert; he remained with the Protector in the discharge of his duties, while very nearly every one else was making a parade of sympathy with the cabal who obviously held the winning cards; but he remained there in careful obscurity--the personal secretary, not the partisan. He did not escape a brief imprisonment in the Tower; no doubt he had counted on that. But Warwick was perfectly aware of his power of making himself useful, and saw no possible reason why he should not avail himself thereof--nor did Cecil. Competent officials were few, and of these some had already put themselves out of court, in Warwick’s eyes, either by having supported Somerset too boldly or by displaying doubtful religious leanings. The former secretary of Somerset had not made himself obnoxious in any quarter; and in the following September (1550) he emerged again into public life in a more responsible position than before, as Secretary of State.

The political waters were, to say the least, unquiet; there was no telling when squalls might be coming. Personal intrigues were rife. Cecil had no ambition to grasp the tiller under these conditions. He was ready to give advice to the best of his ability; he was ready to carry out instructions, whether they accorded with his advice or not; but he was not disposed to give orders on his own account--his ambition was not of the vaulting sort. His business was to keep his own footing, whether others did so or no; he would take no risks unless his own life were endangered by refusing them--every man must take care of himself. If Warwick chose to insist on a policy which the secretary disapproved--alliance with France abroad, or debasement of coinage at home--that was Warwick’s business, not the secretary’s: what he had to do was to carry out the policy imposed on him, with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of friction, without allowing himself to be identified with the policy or with antagonism to it.

So when Warwick made up his mind that Somerset must be finally removed, it was Cecil’s cue to avoid, so far as he could, taking an active part in so ungracious a business as his old patron’s destruction--but certainly not to invite destruction for himself by injudicious partisanship. He did not scruple even to give Warwick information injurious to Somerset; though it was probably only because he knew it would reach that cunning schemer’s ears sooner or later--and when it came to a choice between profiting or suffering by the inevitable, he had no qualms about profiting. Still, he managed to be too much occupied with foreign negotiations to have much to do with the Somerset affair. As for the foreign negotiations themselves, he did not make any attempt to counteract the policy which, against his own judgment, he was called upon to carry out, but he was very seriously and not unsuccessfully engaged in minimising the untoward consequences which he foresaw.

As the young king’s death drew manifestly near, the intrigues of Northumberland, as Warwick had now become, thickened. Sir William--he had been knighted at the end of 1551--did not like intrigues; but in spite of seasonable illness, which may have been genuine, he could not altogether avoid being dragged in, and was obliged--like all the rest of the Council--to append his signature to the document nominating Lady Jane Grey heir to the throne. He averred afterwards that he signed only as a witness--a statement more ingenious than ingenuous. Still, he took care that there should be evidence from unofficial quarters that he would have avoided signing if he could, and that so far as he was formally a participator in Northumberland’s plot it was with no goodwill to its success--which, indeed, was the attitude of several other signatories, who did their best to upset the scheme the moment they felt safe in doing so. Cranmer, however, the most reluctant of any of them, had no such double-dealing in his mind, and made no attempt to evade the responsibility when he had once assumed it, though he had been tricked into acquiescence by a lie.

It is only fair, in judging Cecil’s conduct through these years, to remember that he was only in his twenty-seventh year when Somerset became Protector, and in his thirty-third year when Queen Mary succeeded. Warwick made him Secretary of State eight days before his thirtieth birthday. Of course, if the errors he committed had been errors of youth, he would have won easy forgiveness; yet in some respects his excessive caution may reasonably be attributed to his youth. He had every excuse for arguing that a real control must be out of his reach for many years, and that till it came within his reach he was not called upon to insist on his own views. In those days the servants of the State did not resign--the remark has been made before--they carried out the policy imposed on them from above. He was content, therefore, to bide his time, and for the present to do the political drudgery for Somerset or Northumberland, while he avoided committing himself personally to anybody or anything. This course was not one which permitted the exercise of generosity or magnanimity; it completely eschewed the idea of self-sacrifice; but it was a course which he could and did pursue without ever fairly laying himself open to the charge of treachery, or incurring the faintest suspicion of what is called corruption. If he was guided by considerations of personal advantage, it was not in the sense that any one could bid successfully for his support.

So when Northumberland’s plot collapsed ignominiously, Cecil, although a Protestant and officially opposed to Gardiner, had no difficulty in making his peace with the new Government. Only, the political seas being stormier than ever, he had no inclination either to head an Opposition or to take a prominent place among the queen’s ministers. He was too much of a Protestant for that, though not too much so to conform and “bow himself in the House of Rimmon.” In short, he courted an obscurity from which the Government had no desire to extract him--though it is probable that if he had chosen to offer himself as an instrument for Mary’s use, she would have availed herself of him readily enough. But it was one thing to pass from Somerset’s employ to Warwick’s, and another to pass from Northumberland’s to Mary’s. Besides, by keeping in the background now he could quietly establish himself in the confidence of the probable successor to the throne, the Princess Elizabeth. Being a member of the Parliament of 1556, he therein openly opposed sundry Government measures which were hotly resisted by the House of Commons, but even then he behaved with circumspection and did not suffer for his conduct. His real business was with Elizabeth; and when the crisis came, and Mary died, the members of the Council who hastened to Hatfield found Cecil already installed as her Prime Minister elect, with the scheme for carrying on the Government completely organised.

III

FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT ELIZABETH’S ACCESSION

Sir William had bided his time, and that time had arrived. On the throne was a young woman of five-and-twenty, who had already shown a skill akin to Cecil’s own in the avoidance of fatally compromising words or acts under circumstances when the utmost wariness had been the constant condition of safety. She had maintained her Protestantism in precisely the same way and in very much the same degree as he had done; moreover, she was bound for her own sake to maintain it, since her personal claim to legitimate birth was bound up with the rejection of Papal authority. Cecil had received her confidence, it may be, in part, because she was aware that she could afford to indulge her own waywardness more freely while she had so eminently safe a counsellor as a stand-by. He, for his part, was doubtless fully satisfied that she had intelligence enough to recognise that he was indispensable to her, and that in the main their views of policy would harmonise. The young man had held aloof from intrigues and had declined all temptations to grasp at dangerous power, not from lack of ambition or of patriotism, but because the power would have been too dearly bought and its foundations too unstable. Now, while he was still in the prime of life, yet of ripe experience, power lay ready for him to grasp--power to guide England in the courses which he believed would serve her best interests; power to cure the evils from which she had been suffering for many a year past; power to avert those which menaced her in the future; power which, once achieved, he was not likely to lose unless by his own blundering. He knew his own capacity. To refuse power under such conditions would have been not caution but pusillanimity.

It may be that the account of Cecil’s public life during the reigns of Edward and Mary gives an impression merely that he was an exceedingly astute young man with no principles to speak of. If so, that view must be corrected. He valued himself on his own complete integrity, and would have done nothing which he recognised as inconsistent therewith. He had principles, but not enthusiasms. In politics, as in religion, he had his own opinions, but in both he admitted a very large body of _adiaphora_, things which were not questions of principle, though regarded as such by persons afflicted with enthusiasms. On all such matters, passive or even active conformity to the policy of _de facto_ rulers was permissible. He was ready to go to Mass, but not to take a part in the suppression of Protestantism. He would assent to Northumberland’s plot, but he would not further it. His integrity drew a line--lower than a person of finer moral susceptibilities would have drawn it, but with sufficient firmness and decision, and higher than most of his more prominent contemporaries. He did not feel called upon to swim against a stream which would overwhelm him if he did so; but he made for a backwater. It is often difficult to judge when and where courage becomes rashness, and prudence cowardice. On the whole, he was more inclined to be too prudent than too bold; but it was not because he lacked courage. His conduct might on occasion, though rarely, be charged as disloyal; it could never fairly be called treacherous. He was convinced that as a general rule honesty is the best policy, and justice is the best policy; but in the exceptional cases where he thought they were not, he chose--the best policy. The principles of his mistress were the same; but she deviated from the mean of resolute caution more markedly and more erratically than her minister; she was more readily rash and more easily frightened; her criterion of justice was lax, and her sense of honesty very nearly non-existent.

There was this very important difference between the state of affairs on Queen Elizabeth’s accession and their position between 1546 and 1558. Hitherto a statesman, even if perfectly secure of power, would still have had a difficult course to steer; but security being wanting, the lack of it was the gravest of all the difficulties. The course of safety now was not less intricate; but, in spite of appearances, there was no longer the same risk of incalculable irregular forces wrecking the ship. To retain a useful illustration or analogy; it was one thing to be responsible for bringing the ship home “through billows and through gales,” and another to carry her through a narrow and devious channel infested with reefs and sandbanks, in fair weather. The pilot who judged that he knew every inch of the reefs and sandbanks might feel that the business was an anxious one; to the less discerning passenger, he would often seem to be heading his vessel straight for the rocks; but the pilot himself would not feel any fear of finding himself helpless. As long as he made no mistakes he would be safe; and if he made mistakes, it would be his own fault.

After the event, when the developments of a particular situation have taken place, it is always difficult to realise the aspect the situation itself presented to the statesman who had to deal with it. Still, the attempt has to be made.

Almost from time immemorial until the reign of Henry VIII. antagonism between England and France was traditional; through great part of that period, alliance between England and the House of Burgundy had also been traditional, being largely based on the immense importance of the commercial intercourse between the Low Countries and England. During Henry VIII.’s reign, Wolsey and the king had broken away from the theory of animosity to France, but neither of them had held the Burgundian friendship cheap, and popular sentiment had lost very little of its anti-Gallic flavour. Further, we are apt not to bear in mind that, for forty years past, Spain, Burgundy, and the Empire had been combined under one head; the importance of Burgundy as a factor in the relations with Charles escapes our attention. More or less unconsciously, we think almost exclusively of France and the Empire; as in the coming period we think almost exclusively of France and Spain.

Now in 1558 the dominions of Charles V. were divided between his brother who became Emperor and his son who was lord of Spain and Burgundy. Philip, not the Emperor, is the rival of the French monarchy. The old grounds for seeking friendship with Philip as lord of Burgundy remain. The new reasons for hostility to Philip as King of Spain have not yet developed. The reigning Pope had been elected by French influence. The Council of Trent had not yet defined permanently the line of cleavage between so-called Catholics and Protestants; Philip had not assumed the position of the Church’s champion and the scourge of heretics; his influence in England was understood to have been exerted, so far as it was exercised at all, in mitigation of persecution.

On the other hand, antagonism between French and English interests was acute. England, drawn into a French war in Mary’s reign, had just lost her last foothold on French soil--Calais, which she had held for three hundred years; and though the loss might not be of great political or strategical consequence, its importance was magnified by popular sentiment. But apart from this: the young Queen of Scots had married the French Dauphin, only in this same year; and as a mere question of legitimacy, there was no possible doubt that her title to the throne of England was very much better than that of Elizabeth, who had been declared illegitimate by the English Courts of Justice, which judgment had never been formally reversed. The natural outcome of this marriage would be to bind France and Scotland together in all and more than all the intimacy of that ancient alliance between them which for three centuries had been a thorn in the side of English kings. Beyond that, the future Queen of France and Scotland would have a very much more tenable claim to the throne of England than ever an English king had had to the throne of France. Moreover, there was a special danger threatening under the existing circumstances. Mary was half a Guise by birth; her Guise mother was now Regent in Scotland; she was almost wholly Guise by breeding. The presumption was enormous that the ascendency of that powerful and ambitious family in France and their influence in Scotland would become more dominant than ever; the Guises were strongly anti-English, and it was the head of that house who had just achieved the galling triumph at Calais; while the fanatical Catholics looked to them as their leaders. A more active animosity, therefore, towards Protestantism was to be anticipated from France than from Spain.

The Spanish Minister in England, naturally enough under these conditions, took it for granted that the countenance of Philip was what the new Government would most urgently need--that he would merely have to speak and his instructions would be humbly obeyed. To his extreme astonishment, he discovered that nothing was further from Cecil’s mind. Cecil and his mistress signified quite clearly that they would judge for themselves whether they would take his advice or not. At any rate, they were going to do a good many things entirely regardless of their being in flat opposition to his wishes. The Spaniard declared to his master that Queen and Minister were rushing headlong to destruction; but they were doing nothing of the kind. What Cecil saw was that Philip could not at any price afford to withdraw his countenance from Elizabeth; because the only alternative to Elizabeth was Mary Stewart, and in that case Mary would unite the crowns of France, England, and Scotland. If France moved against England to the danger of Elizabeth’s throne, Philip would have no choice but to interfere on behalf of the Queen--she need not buy support which he could not afford to withhold. He might call the tune, but she need not dance to it unless it suited her.

Within a short period, the French King, Henry II., was mortally injured in a tournament. The Dauphin succeeded, and his wife became Queen of France, as well as of Scotland. Then the situation was modified by the death of Francis and the accession of Charles IX. to the throne, and to power of the Queen-Mother, Catherine de Medici, and the middle party who came to be known by the title of the “Politiques.” With them the Guises were out of favour, and could no longer count on wielding the power of France to advance Mary’s interests; yet their popularity and strength in the country were still sufficient to keep the chance of their recovering their ascendency as a menace which Philip could not disregard. The change, in short, cut both ways: it was not quite so imperative for Philip that he should support Elizabeth, but then it was not so necessary for Elizabeth to have his support.

Thus throughout the first decade of the reign Cecil calculated with perfect accuracy that Philip would not attack Elizabeth, whatever she might do, because he could not risk the accession of Mary Stewart in her place; and that France would not make a direct attack, because that would compel the intervention of Philip. Hence he could go his own way safely in dealing both with domestic affairs and with the everlasting problem of Scotland. There was another matter, that of the Queen’s marriage, in which Cecil might judge and advise as he thought fit, but the Queen herself never had the slightest intention of following any but her own counsel, or of revealing even to her most trusted minister what that counsel might really be.

IV

DOMESTIC AND SCOTTISH POLICY

Now, as concerned domestic affairs, two matters were of first-rate importance. One was religion; the other finance.

It was evidently quite necessary that a definite religious settlement should be arrived at, and that it must be one in which there was a reasonable prospect of the majority of Englishmen concurring. There were fervent adherents of the Papacy as restored by Mary; these were not very numerous. There were fervent adherents of extreme Swiss doctrines, Calvinistic or Zwinglian; these were also few. There were many who, like Gardiner in early days, had no love for the Papacy, but clung to traditional doctrines and ritual; there were not quite so many who might be called perhaps moderately evangelical; there were a very great many more who troubled their heads very little one way or another, and were what we should describe as High or Low, pretty much according to their environment. The extreme reformers had very nearly but not quite succeeded in carrying the day during Northumberland’s ascendency; the extreme Catholics had just had their turn under Mary. The extremists on both sides were intolerant, and it was quite obvious that the triumph of either would drive many moderates into joining the other extreme, and would keep the country in a state of violent unrest, or, at the best, of sullen submission. The experiment of trying to maintain traditional doctrine and ritual with the minimum of modification, while repudiating the Roman authority, had been tried under Henry; and it was fairly clear that a simple return to Henry’s standards was impracticable. The course which Cecil laid down was to adopt a compromise in which the great majority could at any rate acquiesce; a compromise which, while insisting on conformity, allowed of a very considerable latitude of interpretation; which would still pass, in many quarters where it did not satisfy; which was in short politically adequate. Cecil himself would probably have had no quite insuperable objection either to attending Mass or to sitting at Communion; but a compromise which allowed of either course would also probably have found a less general acceptance than one which excluded both.