Chapter XVII.

The Royal Reform.

Personal Government Of Henry VIII. (1529 — 1547).

The fall of Wolsey was mainly due to the ascendancy of Anne Boleyn, the first victim, and the precursor of many other ruined fortunes, that were to spring from the guilty passions of Henry VIII. The new ministers that surrounded him were the great noblemen who had overthrown the cardinal; the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and Sir Thomas Boleyn, now become Viscount Rochford, and subsequently Earl of Wiltshire. Sir Thomas More had with regret accepted the onerous duties of chancellor, perhaps in the hope of serving the public welfare, perhaps through a weakness which he was to pay dearly for. All questions then resolved themselves into that of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon; all politics turned upon this pivot. The king had consulted all the universities of Europe, the theologians and lawyers; Oxford and Cambridge had taken sides, and opinions were there keenly discussed from each point of view; but the king had gained ground among the prelates; his agents were skilful and numerous. Cranmer, formerly a tutor in a wealthy family, now a chaplain to Henry VIII., had recently published a learned treatise in favour of the divorce, insisting that the word of God alone should decide the question without any appeal to the Pope, and maintaining that the Bible, interpreted by the Fathers of the Church, interdicted marriage with the widow of a brother. {211} The opinion of the two English universities in favour of the divorce was obtained. The Italian universities, Bologna, Padua, Ferrara, declared themselves for King Henry; it was a question of money. The Germans had still more fear of the Emperor than taste for English gold; they were all opposed to the divorce--the Protestant theologians were as outspoken as the Catholics. "It were better that the King of England should have two wives than be divorced from Catherine to marry another," said Luther. The Pope published, in the month of March, 1530, a brief, which formally forbade the King of England to conclude a second marriage, under pain of excommunication. A few days later, the Earl of Wiltshire presented himself at Bologna, where the Pope and the Emperor were at that time; people were shocked to see the father of Anne Boleyn employed in this mission. "Let your colleagues speak, my lord," said Charles V. to him, "for you are a party to this matter." The assurance of the earl, and his offers of money, completed the exasperation of the Emperor. "I will not sell the honour of my good aunt Catherine!" he exclaimed angrily. The embassy retired without having obtained anything, and the Earl of Wiltshire was compelled to confine his intrigues to the French universities, from which he contrived to secure several favourable opinions. But of what use were all the decisions of the faculties when the Pope refused his assent?

This assent was of supreme importance, for the time had come when the bonds which held the crown of England to Rome were about to be broken abruptly for bad and shameful reasons, but not without a certain assent from the mass of the people. {212} None among the prelates who surrounded the king had dared to advise him to brave the will of the Pope; Cranmer himself, who had secretly married the daughter of a German pastor, was too timid to break his lance in the face of the court of Rome; it was a servant of Wolsey, who had become a servant of the king, Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith at Putney, a man as bold as he was corrupt and skilful, who struck the great blow and opened up to Henry VIII. the path in which he was henceforth to walk. The king was troubled by the obstinate resistance of the Pope; he had hoped to obtain the divorce without great difficulty; he hesitated, and a rumour of the disgrace of Anne Boleyn was already circulated among the courtiers, when Cromwell approached his royal master. "The embarrassments of your Grace arise from the timidity of your ministers," he said; and he explained that with the favourable opinions of all the universities, and the assent of the English Parliament, which it was not difficult, to procure, it was easy to proceed without troubling the Pope. "The king could even," he added, "follow the example of the German princes, who had shaken off the yoke of the court of Rome, and declare himself purely and simply the head of the Church of England. The clergy thus depending solely upon the king, he would become the absolute master of his kingdom, instead of being only half king."

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This bold conception was designed to please King Henry VIII.; his vanity, his taste for power, and his avidity alike found satisfaction in it. Neither his conscience (such as it was), nor his convictions ever belonged to the new faith. Internally and by doctrine he remained a Catholic, but his policy and interest, like his passion impelled him in another direction; he accomplished in his country a religious reform--governmental as well as liberal, aristocratic and popular--the effects of which were immense and profoundly advantageous to England; but he accomplished all this without religious faith and without general principles, for the sake of his personal desires and with selfish aim. It was to God, through the hands of Henry VIII., that England owed this great step in her history; she has no obligation to be grateful to the despotic and corrupt monarch who severed his connexion with Rome in order to repudiate his wife and to dispose of the ecclesiastical benefices at his pleasure.

The door, however, had been opened, and Parliament, being at once convoked, received a communication detailing all the proceedings of the king for the purpose of surrounding himself with learned authorities upon the question of the legitimacy of his marriage. At the same time the clergy were assembled. Very uneasy at a royal act which involved them all in a common disgrace as guilty of having seconded and supported Cardinal Wolsey, by admitting his authority as legate--an authority which had been confirmed by Henry himself--the prelates, accustomed to the demands of the king, immediately offered a hundred thousand pounds sterling in order to appease his anger. Henry VIII. accepted the offering, but announced that he would grant the pardon only on condition of a vote of the ecclesiastical convention which should recognize him as "the protector and supreme head of the Church and the clergy of England." {214} Three days were occupied in discussion; the opposition was powerful and numerous, but timidity gained the ascendant; there was a disposition to admit the supremacy of the king, with this reservation: _Quantum per legem Christi liceat_ (as much as it is permitted by the law of Christ).

"I will have neither tantum nor quantam," replied the king, when Cromwell came to tell him how matters stood; "return to them, and let the vote be given without quantums or tantums." The reservation was, however, maintained, and the king consoled himself with his hundred thousand pounds sterling, augmented by a small gift of the clergy of the north.

After the prorogation of Parliament Henry VIII. endeavoured to intimidate Catherine, and to compel her to accept the decision of four prelates and four lay peers. She steadily refused; being transferred from Greenwich to Windsor, and from Windsor to Hertfordshire, she was at length sent to Ampthill, where she fixed her residence. "To whatever place I may be made to go, I remain the legitimate wife of the king," she said. In the main the nation was of her opinion, and no one was more convinced of it than the chancellor. Sir Thomas More; weary of serving as an instrument of a policy of which he disapproved, but which he could not modify, he asked permission to retire, and on the 16th of May, 1532, he returned peaceably to his mansion at Chelsea, delivered of a burden which had weighed him down, and free to devote himself to the learned studies which constituted the charm of his life.

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The Pope had made some overtures of reconciliation; but as the first condition was the dismissal of Lady Anne, and the recall of queen Catherine, they necessarily remained without result. The brief which excommunicated at the same time the king and Anne Boleyn, was signed on the 15th of November, but without being immediately promulgated, Henry VIII. had drawn closer his alliance with Francis I. during an interview which they had at Calais, and the King of France had undertaken to intercede with the Pope for his ally; but Anne Boleyn had not waited so long to seal her victory. On the 25th of January, 1533, one of the chaplains of the king, Dr. Lee, was summoned to celebrate mass in a small chamber in Whitehall Palace; there he found the king, Anne Boleyn, two noblemen, and a lady. Henry commanded the astonished prelate to celebrate his marriage. It is related that the chaplain hesitated; but the king asserted that he had in his closet the authorization of the Pope. The ceremony being completed, the party dispersed in silence; the court of France alone was informed of the marriage, which Henry promised to keep secret until the month of May, in order to give time to Francis I. to use his influence with the Pope.

Meanwhile the Parliament, under the influence of Cromwell, had suppressed the "annats" or first-fruits, a considerable portion of the revenues paid to the Pope in Catholic countries; the authority of the clergy in convocation had been abolished and conferred upon the crown; Cranmer, with strange inconsistency, had recently accepted the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, not only of the king, but of the Pope, who had signed, on the 22nd of February, 1533, the bull which confirmed his election, and had sent him the pallium. {216} The prelate had therefore made an oath of obedience to the pontiff which he counted upon violating, since he had been raised to this dignity with another object. The question of the divorce immediately took another flight; Parliament being assembled, voted the "Statute of Appeals," forbidding all recourse and appeal to Rome. At the same time, and by another act, the title of Queen of England was withdrawn from Catherine, who henceforth was to be called the Dowager Princess of Wales, in the character of widow of Prince Arthur. A court of the bishops was convoked on the 8th of May, at Dunstable, near Ampthill, where Catherine resided; she was called upon to appear there; but it was carefully concealed from her that the judgement was to be definitive. The queen did not appear, and was declared contumacious; during a fortnight the summons was repeated, then, on the 23rd of May, Cranmer solemnly declared the nullity of the marriage. On the 28th of May, he proclaimed the union already contracted between King Henry VIII. and the Lady Anne Boleyn, who was crowned at Westminster, with great pomp, on the 1st of June. The task was accomplished and the king had secured his wishes; he had worked unceasingly for this object during six years past.

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The consequences were not long in manifesting themselves; on the 11th of June, the Pope annulled the sentence of Cranmer, and published the excommunication of Henry and Anne, not without contriving another possibility of reconciliation; the decree was only to be definitive in the month of September; in the interval an interview was being prepared between Clement VII. and Francis I. at Marseilles. But the conduct of Henry VIII. was hesitating and inconsistent; the English ambassadors admitted to the conference at Marseilles, had no power to negotiate. Francis I. demanded that the question of the divorce should be again laid before a consistory, from which the Imperialist cardinals should be excluded; but an emissary of the king of England, Bonner, who arrived on the day upon which the term fixed by Clement expired, solemnly appealed from the Pope to a general council. The negotiations were interrupted, and the interview had no other result than the fatal treaty of marriage between the Duke of Orleans, the son of the King of France, and Catherine of Medicis, the niece of the Pope. Being renewed for a moment at the instance of Francis I., but by a new turn of the wishes of King Henry, the relations were definitively broken off on the 23rd of May, 1534, by the solemn declaration of the Sacred College assembled in consistory, loudly affirming the validity of the marriage of Henry VIII. with Catherine of Aragon. The king was requested to recall to his court his legitimate wife. The daughter of Anne Boleyn, she who was one day to be Queen Elizabeth, was already six months old; she had been born on the 7th of September, to the great disappointment of her father, who upon the prophecies of all the astrologers had hoped for a son.

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While the Pope was hurling from the Vatican his spiritual thunders, and before the news could have arrived in London, Parliament had completed the severing of the bonds which for so long a time had connected England with the court of Rome. All payments as well as all appeals to the Pope were interdicted; the king was recognized as the Supreme Head of the Church, he alone being entrusted to bestow the bishoprics or to decide ecclesiastical questions. The royal assent was given on the 30th of March to these acts, as well as to that which excluded from the succession to the throne, the Princess Mary, the daughter of Catharine of Aragon, as illegitimate, in favour of the children of Queen Anne. All the subjects of the crown of the age of discretion were to take the oath in favour of the new order of things; every word, deed, or pamphlet against the second marriage was placed among acts of high treason.

All these precautions and prohibitions did not prevent public opinion from being favourable to the repudiated wife. Two monks of the order of the Observants even dared to reprimand the king publicly; the popular movement encouraged the revelations of a young prophetess, Elizabeth Barton, who was called the "Holy maid of Kent," and who had hitherto predicted future events without danger to her person or her friends. She had numerous partisans, dupes or intriguers, and her rhapsodies soon bore upon State matters. She had been much opposed to the divorce, declaring that if the king should repudiate Catharine, he would die within seven months a shameful death, and would be replaced upon the throne by the Princess Mary. The prophecies were printed and published; Elizabeth Barton and a certain number of her partisans were arrested and compelled to confess their imposture, on a Sunday in November, 1533, at St. Paul's Cross. {219} Since then they had remained in prison: but on the 25th of April, 1534, by order of Parliament, the holy maid of Kent, her confessor, and five other persons compromised in her cause, were executed and quartered at Tyburn. "I was but a poor woman without knowledge," said Elizabeth Barton while proceeding to execution, "but people persuaded me that I spoke through the Holy Ghost, which drew me into vanity and confusion of mind, for my ruin and that of the persons who are going to suffer with me."

These obscure victims did not suffice for the absolute power and despotic tyranny of Henry VIII. Everything had bent before his will, and the isolated opposition which he encountered in two illustrious persons astonished as much as it exasperated him. Sir Thomas More, formerly chancellor of England, and Fisher, bishop of Rochester, were called upon to take the oath of allegiance to the children born and to be born of Queen Anne. Neither had any objection to the political part of the oath; they willingly recognized the Princess Elizabeth as heiress to the the throne, to the exclusion of Mary; but neither one nor the other could consent to declare unlawful the marriage of Catharine of Aragon, nor to legitimatize that of Anne Boleyn. Both refused the oath, explaining their reasons with more or less tact and humility, and both were sent to the Tower. Fisher was seventy-five years of age; he was ill; he was denied medical assistance and clothing. Sir Thomas More was not alone in the world like the old prelate; his daughter, mistress Margaret Roper, ministered to his wants, while all classes of society, rich or poor, humble or great, frightened at the fate which awaited the two prisoners, unhesitatingly made the required oath, as modified by the king, and rendered more than ever adverse to the previous instructions of the clergy. {220} At the same time, and as though for compensation, Henry VIII. caused the trial of "those people who are vulgarly called heretics," sending to the stake with indifference the Lollards, Lutherans, and Anabaptists, melancholy witnesses of the royal orthodoxy. Some monks who had refused to take the oath of supremacy were executed and quartered at Tyburn. Acts of Parliament succeeded each other, tending to make the king a kind of lay Pope, whose office it was to define and prosecute heresies, and assigning to the crown all the revenues formally collected by the court of Rome, while entrusting to the royal wisdom the care of foundling and supporting the ecclesiastical government which should seem suitable to him. Amidst the general adulation, Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher were shortly to suffer for their courageous resistance.

The old prelate was accused of having "maliciously and treasonably affirmed that in spiritual matters the king could not be the Head of the Church." The new Pope, Paul III., had recently sent him a cardinal's hat. "Ah!" cried Henry, angrily, "I will take care that he shall not have a head to wear it," and the bishop, being condemned as a traitor, was beheaded on the 22nd of June, 1535. His head was placed upon London Bridge, turned in the direction of the diocese where he left so many to regret his loss, and his body, being first exposed to the sight of the people, was thrown without a coffin into an obscure grave. {221} The trial of Sir Thomas More, more prolonged, produced the same result. Often timid, sometimes inconsistent in his conduct, More had arrived at a point at which a man of honour, and a Christian no longer listens to aught but to the voice of his conscience. The long months of his captivity had ruined his health, whitened his hair, and bent his form; but his soul remained firm, and his eloquence before the servile tribunal appointed to try him still caused the docile instrument of the king to shudder. More had been deprived of all his books; the means of writing had been taken from him; his farewell to his daughter was traced with a piece of charcoal upon a paper which he had secretly procured; but before losing his pen, he had written this touching proof of gentle firmness: "I am the faithful subject of the king, and every day his interceder. I pray for his Majesty, for his, and for all the kingdom. I do no wrong, I say no wrong, I think no wrong; if that is not sufficient to preserve the life of a man, I have no wish to live. I have been dying since I came to this place; I have several times been at the point of death; and thanks be to our Lord, I did not regret it, but rather I grieved to see my suffering abate. Thus my poor body is at the mercy of the king. Might it please God that my death should do him some good!" Before the council, More replied to offers of pardon by the assurance that he had done nothing against the marriage with Anne Boleyn. Although he disapproved of the step he had never spoken of it but to the king himself; he had even contented himself with preserving silence upon the new title of the king as Supreme Head of the Church; now silence did not constitute treason. {222} His accusers desired to produce witnesses to the contrary, but they failed in their undertaking, and the judges were compelled to declare silence to be treason. More, was condemned. He no longer persevered in silence, and loudly declared that the new oath of supremacy was unlawful. He was led from the hall with the edge of the axe turned towards him; his son threw himself in his path, to ask for his blessing. On approaching the Tower, he perceived his well-beloved daughter, Margaret Roper; she opened up a passage for herself between the guards, and threw herself upon his neck, weeping. Twice she retraced her steps, and could not possibly be driven from that loved father whose head she afterwards carried away from the coffin. The bitterness of death had passed for Sir Thomas More after this separation; upon the scaffold he appeared to have regained something of that caustic gaiety which had formerly placed him in favour with the king. When he learnt that Henry VIII., had commuted the horrible sentence of traitors into the penalty of decapitation, he smiled sweetly. "May God preserve all my friends from royal favours," he exclaimed. He tottered upon the steps of the scaffold. "Assist me to ascend, Master Lieutenant," he said, "I shall easily descend without aid." He was not permitted to speak to those present. "I die a faithful subject and a true Catholic," he said simply; then thrusting aside his beard, he said to the executioner, "My beard has not committed any treason." His head fell on the 6th of July, 1535, to the indignation of all Europe. {223} "I learn that your master has put to death his faithful servant, his good and wise councillor, Sir Thomas More," said the emperor to Sir Thomas Elliot, the English ambassador. "I have not heard it, sire," replied Elliot. "It is true, nevertheless," replied Charles V., "and let me tell you that if we had been master of such a servant, of whose merit we have had experience for so many years past, we would rather have lost our best city than so worthy a councillor."

The King of France was both grieved and shocked. The pens of the greatest writers of the time celebrated the virtues of More; Erasmus with whom he had been connected, has related the life and death of his friend; but no one has more eloquently celebrated the virtues of the former chancellor of England, no one has better exposed to public contempt the cruelty of his persecutor than a relative of Henry VIII. himself, Reginald Pole, grandson of the Duke of Clarence, educated partly at the expense of the crown, so much had the king been charmed by the intelligence and talents of his cousin. But Pole had a conscience as intractable as that of Sir Thomas More; he refused to support the cause of the divorce, and thus voluntarily renounced the ecclesiastical dignities which the king intended for him. He had retired into the north of Italy, and it was from there that he made all Europe familiar with the infamy of the murder of Sir Thomas More, while at the same time he published his great work upon _The Union of the Church_, in which he freely unveiled the base conduct and ignoble motives of Henry VIII. No attack more profoundly exasperated the tyrant, henceforth carried away by the dangerous intoxication of absolute power.

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Indignation was nowhere more violent than at Rome, and the councillors of the Pope urged him to issue a bull summoning Henry VIII. to appear at Rome within ninety days, in person or by deputies. If he should fail to respond to this appeal, he was declared to have forfeited his crown; his children by Anne Boleyn, and the children of his children, were incapable of succeeding; his subjects were relieved of their oaths of allegiance, and were to take arms against him; all priests were to quit his dominions: treaties of alliance with foreign princes were dissolved, and all monarchs called upon to fight against him, until he should have submitted to the Church. The bull being drawn up, the Pope did not consider the time opportune for sending it forth, and the thunderbolt still slept in the arsenal of the Vatican; but its terms were known in England, which increased the exasperation of the king. Henry VIII. opened up negotiations with the Protestant princes of Germany, endeavouring to draw the King of France and the young King of Scotland into the same alliances. The functions of Supreme Head of the Church involved Henry VIII., in so much business, that he created a commission specially entrusted to provide for it; at the head of this new council he placed the secretary of state, Cromwell, to the secret indignation of the clergy, who were little accustomed to see themselves governed by a layman; but the _Vicar-General_, as he called himself, taking, in this capacity, precedence of all the great noblemen of the kingdom, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, did not falter in the accomplishment of his duties, for the day had come for executing his promises and for filling the coffers of the king. {225} No one knew better than Cromwell the needs of the royal treasury, for he was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as Vicar-General in the Church. A great number of monks had refused the oath of supremacy; this opportunity was seized upon in order to decide upon the reform of all the monasteries. Complaints were made of the morals of the monks, of their avidity; Cromwell organized a series of domiciliary visits, intended, it was said, to discover all abuses; servants, neighbours, and enemies of the religious houses were interrogated; an absolute renunciation of the authority of the Pope was demanded of the monks; finally, an inventory of the riches of each house was made, and the commissaries retired, carrying on their tablets the condemnation of the monastery. Many abbots and priors, in alarm, offered considerable sums in the hope of purchasing exemption from ruin; the money was taken, but the names were not effaced from the fatal list. The vicar-general had expected to see many monks anxious to re-enter the world, but seven small monasteries alone voluntarily opened their gates. The report prepared by Parliament especially condemned the houses of little importance, and those of which the abbots did not take rank among the peers of the kingdom; it was there, it was said, that the disorder was intolerable. The twenty-seven abbots of the great religious houses, did not defend their brothers who were threatened. All seemed smitten with stupor; some superiors prudently resigned before the crash; the royal commissioners continued their work, and when Parliament voted the bill proposed by Cromwell, three hundred and eighty religious houses found themselves included in the act which gave to the king and his descendants all the monasteries of which the net revenue did not exceed two-hundred pounds sterling, to dispose of them according to his good pleasure, upon the one condition, that those he should endow, should maintain an honest residence there, and cultivate every year the extent of land tilled by the monks. {226} A revenue of thirty-two thousand pounds sterling was thus assigned to the crown; the money and plate of the suppressed monasteries were valued at more than a hundred thousand pounds sterling. After this last proof of submission, Parliament, which had modified the succession to the throne, voted the separation of England from the Holy See, and doubled the prerogatives, found itself dissolved at the end of six years of servile existence, without having even secured the good graces of the king, for the House of Commons had hesitated for some time to pronounce the suppression of the monasteries. It is related that the king sent for the principal leaders, warning them that he would have either the law or their heads; the bill was then voted. Commissioners were entrusted to proceed with the suppression of the monasteries; a hundred obtained compromises, and, crippled and impoverished, were founded afresh by letters patent of Henry VIII.; the others were invaded by the royal commissioners; monks under twenty-four years of age were sent into the world to earn their livelihood: the others were divided into two classes; those who elected for a monastic existence were dispersed in the great monasteries; it was promised that occupation should be found for the others. {227} The nuns were abandoned to their own resources; the royal charity allowed only a secular gown when they were driven from their retreats and cast into a world of which they were ignorant. The first act of the drama had been played; the turn of the great houses had yet to come.

While this violent and arbitrary work was being accomplished, under a specious veil of reform, Queen Catherine was dying in her retirement. She had obstinately refused to leave England, notwithstanding the entreaties of the emperor; she would do nothing which would be prejudicial to the interests of her daughter, whose rehabilitation she still hoped for. She had also refused, for the same reason, to accept the title of Princess of Wales, which degraded her as a woman. She lived a sad and lonely life, separated from her daughter, who might, it was said, become imbued with her principles. Even the approach of death could not obtain for her the favour of seeing her again. The last words of the unhappy queen were, however, words of forgiveness to that cruel husband who had afflicted her with so many evils. "I forgive you all," she said, "and I ask God to do likewise; I recommend our daughter Mary to you, begging you to be a good father to her, as I have always desired. I vow to you that my eyes long for you beyond all things." It is said that the king shed a tear upon this touching message, and that he entrusted the Spanish ambassador to assure the dying queen of his affection; but Catherine had already breathed her last. She died on the 8th of January, 1536, and was interred with honour, at Peterborough. {228} Her husband went into mourning, but Anne Boleyn appeared before the court in a yellow silk gown. "Now I _am_ queen," she said on learning the death of her whom she had outraged and overcome.

The day of retribution, however, was approaching; the same passions which had raised her to the throne in defiance of all laws, human and divine, were about to hurl her from it. Henry had already cast his eyes upon Jane Seymour, a maid of honour of Anne Boleyn, as Anne had formerly been the maid of honour of Catherine. She was the daughter of a Wiltshire gentleman; was beautiful, amiable, and of great gentleness of character. It is related that the queen perceived the great familiarity which already existed between Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour and the grief which she experienced therefrom was so violent that she brought into the world, prematurely, a still-born child; it was a son, and the vexation of the king was no less violent than his disappointment. Anne now felt that she was ruined; the king left her suddenly amidst a grand _fete_ which she gave in Greenwich Park, and returned to London. On the morrow, the 2nd of May, she was arrested at Greenwich as she was sailing down the river; she was accused of adultery and immediately taken to the Tower. At the first word of accusation against her Anne fell upon her knees, exclaiming aloud, "Lord, my God, help me, as I am innocent of this crime!" Her brother. Lord Rochford, three noblemen of the king's household and a musician were imprisoned at the same time.

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Grief and anxiety appeared to have impaired the reason of the unhappy Anne; at times she would appeal for Divine mercy, at others, amidst outbursts of laughter, mingled with tears, she would exclaim, "Why am I here? My mother will die of grief; I shall perish without obtaining justice." The Lieutenant of the Tower assured her that justice was administered to the poorest of the subjects of the king; Anne laughed bitterly; she knew better than any one else what royal justice was worth.

She had been conducted to the same apartment in which she had formerly slept on the eve of her coronation, when the king and his courtiers were equally eager to do her honour; women had been placed around her, charged to listen to all her words; being excited by the misfortune which had befallen her, Anne spoke a great deal; all that she said was reported to the king, and that contributed to her ruin. She was accused of the most degrading corruption of morals and conduct; in vain did she defend herself; the lightness of her manners, the familiar tone which she had learnt, it was said, at the court of France, attested against her more than all the depositions and interrogatories of the trial. On the 6th of May, she wrote a touching letter to the king, the authenticity of which has been contested, perhaps without reason, reminding him of the affection which he had manifested towards her, protesting her innocence, and demanding a lawful trial.

"But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death but an infamous slander must bring you the joying of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin herein, and likewise my enemies the instruments thereof; and that He will not call you to a straight account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me at His general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear, and in whose judgment, I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me), mine innocence shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared. {230} My last and only request shall be that myself may only bear the burden of your grace's displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen who, as I understand, are likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight--if ever the name of Anne Bullen have been pleasing in your ears--then let me obtain this request; and so I will leave to trouble your grace any further, with mine earnest prayer to the Trinity to have your Grace in His good keeping and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, your loyal and faithful wife,

"Ann Bulen."

In vain did Anne demand justice for herself and mercy for her companions in misfortune; she had been condemned beforehand, and her dishonour was the price of her condemnation. Within four months Henry had received the forgiveness of his two wives; one the irreproachable victim of his guilty passions; the other, who had been his accomplice, and who was suffering for her crime the most terrible reverses. The documents of the proceedings are no longer in existence, and it is now impossible to determine the question of the guilt of the unhappy Anne; she was condemned and died because the king her husband desired to marry Jane Seymour; that is what appears clearly from the facts transmitted to us by history. {231} On the 15th of May, the sentence upon the queen was pronounced; her brother, Lord Rochford, and the four other accused persons, had been condemned since the 13th of May. A crowning affliction awaited Anne Boleyn before her supreme agony: Cranmer was compelled to declare the nullity of the marriage which he himself had formerly supported, and the Princess Elizabeth was stigmatized with illegitimacy like her sister Mary. The day on which the archbishop in agony of soul thus yielded tremblingly to the royal will, the accomplices or companions of the unhappy queen suffered their punishment on Tower Hill. The musician Smeaton was hanged; Lord Rochford and the three noblemen were beheaded; all had constantly protested their innocence, with the exception of the musician, who failed however to purchase his life by his confessions or falsehoods.

On the 19th of May, in the morning, less than three weeks after the day on which she had reigned triumphant over the festivities at Greenwich, Anne Boleyn was led out upon the Tower Green. The spectators were crowded together in the narrow space. Anne had, on the previous evening, entrusted one of the women among her attendants to go on her behalf and kneel before the Princess Mary, to beg her forgiveness. She walked courageously to her death. "I have a little neck," she said to the Lieutenant of the Tower; "it is said that the executioner is skillful; he will not have much trouble." She said a few words to those who came to see her die, without bitterness towards her judges, and full of affection and respect for the king who sent her to the scaffold. {232} "Christ have mercy on my soul! Jesus receive my soul!" she repeated on placing her beautiful head up on the block. Three years had elapsed since Henry had married Anne Boleyn, moving heaven and earth to place her upon the throne, when a blow from the axe of the executioner ended her life on Tower Green. The king waited impatiently for the signal which was to announce to him the execution of the sentence. "It is done," he exclaimed, on hearing the cannon; "that is an end of the matter. Unleash the dogs, and let us follow the stag!" He returned gaily in the evening from Epping Forest, and on the morrow morning married Jane Seymour. He had not rendered to the unhappy Anne the honour which his conscience had compelled him to pay to the virtuous Catherine: no mourning garments saddened the court of the new queen. Henry VIII. was clad in white on the day of his marriage, and on the 29th of May, Jane appeared at the court decked with the royal ornaments, but she did not obtain the favour of solemnly receiving the crown; after Anne Boleyn, none of the wives of King Henry was deemed worthy of that ceremony. The Princess Mary had been received into favour by her father, not without having reluctantly signed a humiliating letter; she obtained a suitable establishment, and even appears to have been entrusted with the care of her sister, the little Princess Elizabeth. Not content with assuring the succession to the children of Jane Seymour, the king caused an act to be passed by Parliament which authorized him to dispose of his crown according to his own good will and pleasure. This exorbitant measure was destined to favour the Duke of Richmond, an illegitimate son of the king, eighteen years of age, whom he passionately loved. {233} The young duke died before the act had received the royal sanction, and the king to his great grief, found himself deprived of male children, and with two daughters whom he had himself branded with the stigma of illegitimacy.

Meanwhile the dissolution of the monasteries had inundated the country with the poor people whom they had formerly relieved; the disaffection was great, especially in the northern counties, which were particularly attached to the old faith, from which the king was separating himself more and more. The irritation, however, was not exclusively concentrated in the lower classes; the great noblemen and gentlemen, former patrons of the monasteries, considered that the property of which they had been deprived should be returned to the families which had formerly bestowed it upon them, rather, than to the royal treasury; but it was the people of Lincolnshire who first set the example of insurrection. The king sent some forces against the insurgents, under the orders of the Duke of Suffolk. The latter found the insurrection so serious, that he determined to try negotiations. _The Men of Lincoln_ presented six requests, complaining particularly of the sudden destruction of the monasteries, so prejudicial, they said, to the poor of the entire country; of the excessive taxes, of the vesting of the annats and tithes in the crown, and of the agitation which certain bishops, designated by their names, had brought about in the Church of Christ by altering the faith. Upon which they prayed the king to dismiss the treacherous counsellors who thought of nothing but enriching themselves at the expense of the poor people.

{234}

Time had been gained by listening to the grievances of the insurgents. Discord began to penetrate into their ranks; the king was enabled, without danger, to reply to them with the haughtiness which was natural to him when his supreme will was opposed. He rejected all the requests of the insurgents, demanding that a hundred of the more important among them should be delivered to him, in order that he might make an example of them. No fighting had taken place; a sufficiently large number of the insurgents still remained united; a second letter from the king commanded them to lay down their arms in the market-place at Lincoln, if they did not wish to bring down a terrible vengeance upon their wives and children. Before the rebels of Lincolnshire had returned home, about the 30th of October, a violent insurrection had broken out on the other side of the Trent, and this movement was spreading over the whole of Yorkshire, as well as in Durham, Northumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire; while the fifteen hostages of the insurgents of Lincolnshire were being executed, as well as some inhabitants of the environs of London, accused of having countenanced them, the rebels of the north wanted but a chief in order to stir up a veritable civil war. They marched in the name of God, they said, for the love of Jesus Christ, of the faith and the Holy Church, to the destruction of the heretics; they assumed the name of _Pilgrims of Grace_, and carried a crucifix upon their standard; nearly all obeyed the orders of a gentleman of Yorkshire, Robert Aske, who was wanting neither in ability nor character. {235} The Duke of Norfolk was entrusted to march against him; the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury watched over other positions; the towns of Hull, York, and Pontefract had opened their gates to the Pilgrims of Grace before the arrival of the royal troops, and a certain number of gentlemen had joined them, when the Duke of Norfolk checked their progress before Doncaster. Negotiations were entered into at the outset as in Lincolnshire; the demands of the insurgents were almost the same, though more precise and detailed. They demanded the destruction of the heresies of Wycliffe, Huss, Luther and Melancthon, the restitution of the Pope to the religious supremacy, the rehabilitation of the Princess Mary, and the re-establishment of Parliament in all its ancient privileges. The king treated with contempt such of these requests as he deigned to answer. "You are very bold," he said, "to think that after having reigned so long I do not know better than you what laws are agreeable to the commoners. The affairs of the Church do not concern you, and it is strange that you should prefer to see some few villains fatten in the monasteries, rather than allow your prince to have them, in discharge of all the expenses which he has undertaken in order to defend you." Henry promised no other concession but the pardon of the rebels, with the exception of the ten leaders, who were to be delivered up to him immediately. The insurgents rejected without hesitation the offers of the royal clemency, and the Duke of Norfolk, who was not sufficiently powerful to fight, found himself compelled to retreat to the southern bank of the Trent, fortifying and defending all the passes in his rear. Time was being lost; the winter was approaching, the temperature and the suspension of agricultural labour were counted upon for dispersing the insurgents.

{236}

At length the king authorized the Duke of Norfolk to make overtures to the two principal chiefs of the rebels, Lord Darcy and Robert Aske; he even expressed a desire to see them. They did not respond to this gracious invitation, but the idea of betraying their partisans began to enter their minds. The soldiers perceived this; everywhere this proclamation was seen: "Commons, be of good cheer and remain faithful to your cause; the gentlemen betray you, but you will not want leaders, if there is need of them." In the month of February the numbers assembled were still very great, but the royal army had received reinforcements, the insurgent forces collapsed before the castles and towns which they were besieging; discouragement began to creep into their ranks. Lord Darcy, Robert Aske, and the greater number of the leaders were captured and sent to London, where they were executed, notwithstanding the good disposition they had manifested. The rebels now formed only scattered bodies, and martial law was proclaimed in the northern counties. Upon the express order of the king, a great number of the inhabitants of each town, borough, and village that had taken part in the revolt were hanged or quartered, in the public squares, and their bodies affixed to trees, in order to terrify the remainder of the population. The monks, who had ardently embraced the cause of the insurrection, were treated with especial rigour; the insurgent counties were everywhere strewn with bloody heads and disfigured corpses. {237} When the amnesty was at length proclaimed and peace re-established, visitations of the religious houses still continued; nearly all the monasteries of the north were destined to be closed, and to have their property confiscated, before the royal vengeance and avidity could be satisfied. The anger of Henry had increased when he had learnt that Reginald Pole, installed a short time since in Rome upon the urgent solicitations of Pope Paul III., and against the advice of his relatives in England, had been nominated cardinal and legate beyond the Alps. The aim of the Pope was, no doubt, to take advantage of the insurrection of the Catholic counties in order to influence the king and bring him back into the bosom of the Church; but Francis I. and Charles V. deemed the moment ill-chosen; the cardinal was unable to see the king of France while crossing his kingdom, and the Emperor did not even allow him to enter his dominions. Pole learnt at the same time that a price had been placed upon his head by Henry; Cromwell asserted that the cardinal would be brought thereby to break his heart with grief. Pending this happy result, for the bringing about of which the master and the minister were not to spare their efforts, the legate was compelled to return to Rome, without having been able to accomplish his mission of sending money and encouragement to the rebels of England; the insurrection had been stifled before Pole had set foot in Flanders.

{238}

Jane Seymour had, on the 12th of October, 1537, given birth to a son, and had died shortly afterwards thus escaping the sad fate of the wives of Henry VIII. Grief for his loss had scarcely weighed in the scale against satisfaction at the birth of a male heir to the throne; the little Edward immediately received the title of Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester; the national rejoicing was mingled with the lamentations of the monks on all sides, driven from their refuges under the pretext of complicity in the recent insurrection. When nothing remained but the great abbeys, the king caused their destruction to be voted by the Parliament, notwithstanding some feeble efforts of the abbots who sat in the House of Lords. A few only escaped the wreck, at the entreaty of the population, or were consigned to the descendants of their founders. The work of spoliation was accomplished; the rich chapels, the gothic monuments, the learned libraries, the delicate sculptures, everything was delivered up to the destructive hands of the royal agents; none dared to intervene, and treasures of science, marvels of art, were for ever lost to posterity. The lands were divided among the courtiers; the valuables were nearly all reserved for the king, who contrived to remain poor notwithstanding so great an accession of riches. He was not content with plundering the living, he even went so far as to plunder the dead. From a singular animosity against the memory of Thomas Becket--of that inflexible man who would have resisted him to the death, as he had resisted Henry II.--Henry VIII. had conceived a violent dislike to his shrine at Canterbury; but he did not rest here. Becket was summoned to appear at Westminster to answer for his rebellions, and the tomb of the martyr was broken for this purpose, as though to open the prison which confined him. {239} In presence of the silent sepulchre, the king carried on his ghastly comedy; the attorney-general spoke against the dead saint, to whom an advocate had been granted. Becket, being judged by default, was deprived of his riches and honours; two large coffers, filled with jewels deposited upon his altar, were sent to London; festivals and pilgrimages celebrated in his honour were solemnly forbidden, the portraits of the saint were destroyed, and a royal proclamation commanded the people to believe henceforth that Thomas Becket had been killed in a quarrel caused by his own obstinacy, that he had been canonized by the Bishop of Rome as the champion of an usurped authority, but that he was but a rebel and a traitor to his king, and that the faithful servants of his Majesty were to guard themselves against honouring him as a saint. Thomas Becket thus twice had the notable honour of bringing down all the royal fury; even in his tomb he was proclaimed defender of the liberties of the Church for whose sake he had yielded up his life.

So vast an amount of wealth diverted from the pious objects to which it had been originally consecrated troubled the conscience of Cranmer, feeble and vacillating in his conduct, but honest and sincere, notwithstanding his numerous backslidings. He endeavoured to found in his diocese some pious establishments to replace those which had been so abruptly destroyed; but the diocese was poor, he had not profited by the spoils of St. Thomas Becket, and the hospitals, the asylums for the poor and travelers, the schools for children which were formerly afforded by the convents, left a void from which the unfortunate suffered painfully. The public cry reached the king. {240} The treasures of the monasteries had melted in his prodigal hands; he addressed himself to Parliament, boldly demanding subsidies to indemnify him for the expenses which he had incurred for the Reformation. The two tenths and the two fifteenths which were granted him did not suffice for his requirements, still less for those of the new bishoprics, deaneries, and colleges which Parliament had decreed. These establishments should have been endowed with the ecclesiastical property, but there was no longer any property. Six bishoprics were founded, so poorly provided for that the prelates scarcely had sufficient to live upon. A certain number of abbeys became cathedral churches; but the king was careful before appointing the dean and chapter to confiscate a portion of the lands, so that the new dignitaries of the Church ran no risk of allowing themselves to be drawn into effeminacy by the temptations of opulence. The plain parish priests, deprived of their livings, led such a miserable existence that none would any longer enter the Church. "We have ten thousand students less in the universities than there were formerly," wrote Latimer, when asking assistance for the university of Cambridge; and it was found necessary to seek for a priest to preach from St. Paul's Cross, an honour formerly sought after by the highest dignitaries.

When the entire kingdom thus remained silent and was suffering, Henry VIII. occupied his leisure in interrogating and judging a poor schoolmaster, named John Lambert, who had adopted the views of the German reformers upon the doctrine of the real presence. All the arguments of the royal theologian, reinforced by those of the bishops whom he had called to his aid, could not shake the conviction of Lambert. {241} "Resign thy soul to God," said Henry angrily. "I resign my soul to God," said the accused man, "and my body to the mercy of your Grace." "Thou shalt die then," exclaimed the king, "for I am not the patron of heretics," and Lambert was burned alive, on the 20th of November, 1538. Henry VIII. alone had found a means of combining the twofold persecution of the Roman Catholics and the reformers; he plundered and closed the convents while he burnt the heretics. Cranmer shared in the main, the opinions of the unhappy Lambert, but he dared not protest, and contented himself with favouring the translation of the Bible into English, a task which had just been accomplished by Miles Coverdale; the price of the book was, unhappily, very high, and the circulation consequently somewhat limited.

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.

{247}

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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