Part 10

The Lutherans, however, looked askance. They feared the Greeks _et dona ferentes_; had not Henry taken the field conspicuously against their leader? German Lutheranism was deep-rooted in a genuine religious feeling; it could feel no confidence in the king of England as a convert to the Augsburg confession. Therefore the princes and the divines of Protestant Germany went warily. On the other hand, the isolation of England made Francis more than careless of an English alliance unless on terms extremely profitable to himself. The death of Katharine, however, in January 1536, changed the situation. It was no longer necessary for the emperor to range himself against England. It is noteworthy that the immediate effect on Cromwell was to make him desire an Imperial (which meant the old Burgundian) alliance, but he was promptly pulled up by the king, who had learnt once before that Wolsey had been right in his policy of holding the balance, and that he himself had erred in forcing an alliance with Charles. The emperor and Francis fell to fighting again, and for a while England was approximately in the old position of having each of the great Powers intriguing for her alliance, while she held aloof and coquetted with both. Then the combatants grew tired, and, with the improved prospect of their reconciliation, their ardour for English friendship cooled.

Just before this time, Henry’s third wife died. Neither his first nor his second spouse had provided him with a male heir; he had divorced the one, and cut off the head of the other. Jane Seymour did what was expected of her, but died in the execution of her duty. One not too sturdy baby boy, and two daughters who had been judicially pronounced illegitimate, gave room for uneasiness as to the succession. A fourth matrimonial venture was thus rendered advisable: providing opportunities for diplomatic intrigue. The royal ladies of Europe, however, do not seem to have coveted the position: “If I had two heads, one should be at the King of England’s disposal,” is said to have been the caustic comment of a suggested bride. Neither Francis nor Charles would be inveigled. On the contrary, they patched up a peace in the summer of 1538, and Henry’s policy of keeping them at odds with each other, while dangling an English alliance before both, broke down, as Cromwell’s previous attempt to join decisively with Charles had been frustrated. Cromwell fell back on the line which in his heart he would probably have preferred throughout, of alliance with the Lutherans: and at last he hoped--by finding a Lutheran bride for Henry--to attach his master decisively to that policy. Henry gave a half-hearted assent; the minister made his final throw. In the moment of seeming victory, his knell was sounded. Before we come to this, the last act in Cromwell’s drama, we may revert to his relations with the religious movement in England.

In the whole of his record, so far as we have at present reviewed it, there is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that Henry’s Vicar-General ever cared a straw about any properly religious question at all. We can be tolerably sure, no doubt, as to some of the things he did _not_ believe in. He did not believe that the Pope was the holder of the keys to heaven. He did not believe that the clergy were the divinely appointed channel through whom alone salvation must be obtained. He did not believe in the effectual sanctity of relics. Such beliefs would at least have been impossible to reconcile with his anti-Papal and anti-clerical campaigns. But it would be exceedingly difficult to find any positive dogma to which it would be possible to point as an article of faith with him. On the other hand, every circumstance of his life before 1529, known or surmised, was calculated to produce and to foster scepticism on the intellectual and carelessness on the emotional side of religion, generating a hardened materialism. The resulting attitude towards men who were actuated by strong religious convictions would be regulated entirely by policy.

Obviously, then, doctrines which weakened the hold of the Papacy, the priesthood, and the monks, on the popular imagination, would recommend themselves to his mind--not as particularly credible or true, but as deserving encouragement, weakening the spell of the great organisation whose power he desired, for reasons of policy, to reduce to the uttermost. Hence, it would be his wish to be at least on friendly terms with the reformers who were defying the Pope and setting ecclesiastical conventions at naught. More particularly, he would find the most dangerous opponents of his political design in that school of English Churchmen, headed by the Bishop of Winchester, who were determined to employ every instrument of intrigue to retain as much power as possible for the clergy, and he would seek as natural allies the men like Cranmer who were unqualified advocates of the Royal Supremacy. Further, he foresaw the ultimate necessity of a political understanding, if not the actual alliance which he would have preferred, with Continental Protestantism. On the other hand, he was thoroughly aware that the king plumed himself on his theological learning and orthodoxy; and it was no part of his scheme to run counter to the king. Hence, it became his business so far as he could to influence Henry in favour of the respectable reformers--not, of course, those who were tainted with Anabaptism or the suspicion thereof. But there is no hint anywhere in his conduct that he thought of the actual tenets of any reformers as in themselves worth any sacrifice. The king took a keen interest in theological controversies on their merits; his minister did not.

This view of his attitude, or of what we should have expected his attitude to be, tallies precisely with what we know of his actions. When called upon to intervene in clerical controversies, he habitually backed up Cranmer as against Gardiner, working in concert with him, except when he perceived that Cranmer wanted to go farther than Henry was willing to accompany him. Cranmer was a useful ally, who never lost his place in the royal favour: and the archbishop’s greatest enemy was his own also. But when the Six Articles Act was introduced, and he knew the king’s mind on the subject, he promptly left his ally in the lurch; though no doubt his influence was exerted, when it had been passed, to check its active enforcement. The passing of the Act--the crack of the “whip with six strings”--sufficiently served Henry’s immediate purpose, which was to make a display of rigid orthodoxy for the benefit of the emperor and King Francis. Cromwell, who had just committed himself to the Lutherans too deeply to retract, must have viewed the Act itself with painful feelings; but he could not afford to resist. Compliance offered the one chance of bringing his master round.

VII

CROMWELL’S FALL

The Act of the Six Articles, the Royal Proclamations Act, and that for the final suppression of the monasteries, were all passed in the early summer--May or June--of 1539, when Cromwell was already fully involved in his scheme for creating a matrimonial bond between Henry and the German Protestants. In 1538, when peace between Charles and Francis seemed imminent, he had succeeded in persuading Henry to invite a visit from the Lutherans with a view to arriving at a mutual understanding on the theological questions: but even the reconciliation of the French king and the emperor failed to make the English king at all cordial, and the envoys went back to Germany in the autumn with nothing accomplished. As the year drew to a close, however, there were ominous signs of a league being formed to threaten England--which perhaps was one of Cromwell’s incentives to the destruction of Exeter and the Poles, by way of a hint to the Continental Powers that the government was far too strong to be endangered by any domestic discontents. The warnings from abroad had their effect on Henry, who began to think that a counter-alliance might be really necessary. Thus, immediately after the New Year, Cromwell opened negotiations with the intention of obtaining Anne of Cleves, sister of the young duke, as a bride for King Henry. Yet even this concession to his policy was only, so to speak, a half-loaf: since Cleves was not actually in the League of Schmalkald, or irrevocably bound to Lutheranism, though the duke happened to have his own quarrel with the emperor.

In April, another embassy from the League was in England; but so also was an ambassador from France, bent on placating Henry--and about the same time, intelligence arrived that the emperor and the League had come to terms. So very cold water was poured on the Lutheran envoys, to whom the Six Articles Act was virtually a direct snub: as it was to Cromwell, whose policy it signified that Henry meant to desert.

Yet once more the prospect seemed to right itself for the minister. It appeared that the king had been deluded by the diplomatists, and that after all the chance of a coalition against England was by no means dissolved. Before the summer was fairly over, the politest of overtures were passing between Francis and Charles; while the Duke of Cleves, who had been to some degree holding off, again became urgent for the marriage, being, like Henry, threatened with danger from the restoration of amity between the two great rivals. Henry was beguiled into believing that the lady of his minister’s choice would make him a charming and attractive spouse; negotiations were pushed forward apace, and in the last days of December, Anne of Cleves landed in England. On January 6 the marriage was celebrated.

But fate was against Cromwell. In the first place, the king took a violent antipathy to his bride: and though, for an adequate political end, he would have accepted the situation, his soul was wroth with the man who had brought him into it. Moreover, so far as concerned domestic affairs, the minister had done all that Henry needed of him. He had so handled the Church that she lay defenceless under the king’s hand. He had brought to the block every one who could be made a figure-head for insurrection, and had made organised rebellion an impossibility. He had done all that there was to be done in the way of despoiling the king’s subjects for the king’s benefit. Finally, he had just placed in the king’s hand the last administrative instrument of despotism in the Royal Proclamations Act, as he had before provided an irresistible weapon in the Treasons Act. He was not required for any further religious reforms, since his master had already gone as far as he meant to travel in that direction. There was left only one reason why the royal anger should be restrained--a demonstration that his foreign policy was right; that he was needed as foreign minister. And ere many weeks were passed, conclusive reasons appeared for judging that the theory to which Henry had endeavoured to cling was right after all, that a lasting coalition between Francis and Charles was a mere bugbear, that there had never been any need for the Cleves marriage. Moreover, the demonstration was effected by one of Cromwell’s two most determined rivals, the Duke of Norfolk, who at any rate got the credit for bringing about the open rupture which promptly succeeded the fraternal embraces of the emperor and the French king. At last the game was in the hands of Gardiner and Norfolk. On June 10 the bolt fell. Absolutely without warning, Cromwell was arrested for treason at the Council, and sent forthwith to the Tower. His own weapons were turned against him, his own interpretation of treason, his own favourite process of attainder. Like Wolsey, he had served his master only too well; and his master rewarded him as pitilessly as he had rewarded the Cardinal. The only man in England who dared to plead on his behalf was--Cranmer. On July 28, Cromwell’s head was hacked from his shoulders. With what measure he meted, it had been measured to him again.

HENRY VIII

I

APPRECIATIONS

Of both More and Cromwell it has been observed that historians do not greatly vary in their estimates, when a reasonable allowance is made for Protestant and anti-Protestant bias. That remark does not hold good of King Henry. The popular idea of him is more intimately associated with that of Bluebeard than of any other hero of fiction or history. Mr. Froude has created a legend of his own, wherein the only doubt seems to be whether Henry quite passed the dividing line between the mere hero and the demi-god. Most commonly, he appears as a brutal tyrant. Among the best informed living authorities in England on the sixteenth century, one distinguishes him as the most remarkable man who ever sat on the English throne, and another has characterised him as a weak-willed bully, always depending for support on some stronger will than his own; yet neither the one nor the other shows signs of having been led to his conclusion by any marked bias. The data for his reign, in the form of documents calendared with exceptional skill, are peculiarly ample; but the opportunities for drawing divergent inferences therefrom are extensive. It would be too much to call them unique, in a century which gave birth also to Elizabeth and to Mary Queen of Scots.

About the fourth year of Henry’s reign, Thomas Wolsey came to the front and remained there for sixteen years. For another ten years, Thomas Cromwell was in the king’s service. During this period of something exceeding a quarter of a century, did Henry or his ministers control policy? Great events happened. Did he, in dealing with them, show himself a great statesman? Or did he merely play the part of a selfish and greedy libertine? One can only express a personal opinion. The view which seems most consonant with the facts may be broadly stated thus. Like his daughter Elizabeth, he had a keen eye for character and ability; he could appreciate statesmanship in a servant, and he knew how to get the utmost value out of the men he chose to trust. In the main, he let them carry out their designs in their own way; but he remained watchful, and saw to it that if he happened to want anything not included in their programme, the programme should be altered. He did not initiate, but he did adopt and make his own, the principles of Wolsey’s foreign and Cromwell’s domestic policy. A time came when he wanted from Wolsey something which his minister’s genius was not adapted to provide; and Wolsey vanished. By slow degrees Cromwell emerged. A time came when Cromwell had given him all that he could give, and was seeking to draw his master into paths he did not choose to tread. Cromwell went to the scaffold. In his remaining years, the king showed no power of striking out for himself a strong policy for good or for evil; he had no minister whom he trusted to pilot the ship; his own pilotage proved crude, and left to the succeeding government a crop of difficulties with which it was quite incompetent to cope. His father’s policy had been his own creation; his ministers had never been much more than clerks. The eighth Henry chose ministers to create and carry out a policy for him, but always under his own control. The peculiarity of the Tudor genius, which he shared with his father and his daughter, lay in the unfailing skill with which they judged men, and their intuitive appreciation of popular feeling, which kept them from passing the bounds of acquiescence. Hence, whatever we may think of their policy itself or of particular acts, whether our moral judgment condemns or applauds, whether we account their measures far-sighted or short-sighted, they stand out as great rulers, accomplishing what they meant to accomplish, and displaying their activities on a great scale.

II

THE CARDINAL RULES

Henry was his father’s second son. Tradition says that his sire, ever thoughtful of economy, destined him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and had him educated accordingly. As the boy, however, became, through his elder brother’s death, heir apparent to the throne at the age of eleven, the remarkable theological erudition which he displayed in later years can hardly be attributed to his early school-room studies--even if the tradition had any more basis of fact than that it was at least _ben trovato_. Whatever career was anticipated for him, the utmost pains were bestowed on his education, and he learnt to take a keen interest in intellectual pursuits. Erasmus gives an agreeable picture of him at the age of nine, and remarks on the extraordinary intelligence of his letters a little later--an intelligence which made the learned man believe that the boy’s tutor wrote or revised them, till ocular demonstration convinced him of the contrary. Intellectual pursuits, however, did not absorb the Prince of Wales. His father was not endowed with any very striking physique, but the boy rather took after his grandfather Edward IV., being decidedly handsome, of very athletic frame, and excelling in the sports of vigorous and healthy youth.

Two months before Henry completed his eighteenth year, his father’s death placed him on the throne of England--successor to a king whose later years had been conspicuously sordid and gloomy. Spring with its pulsing, generous life, followed the sapless dreariness of winter. So men dreamed, and so probably Henry reckoned, himself. Ugly things like Empson and Dudley were to vanish into limbo; the king would celebrate his marriage royally--and follow that up by some splendid martial achievement. It was still permitted to dream mediæval dreams; might not the Crescent be once more rolled back before the advancing Cross? Still, at eighteen there was no great hurry about that, and meanwhile life might be very much enjoyed. Kings have servants about them to take the dull drudgery of politics off their hands.

A most excellent state of things, in the eyes of the veterans Ferdinand and Maximilian. The old king’s martial ardour had resolved itself into occasional campaigns on which no money was wasted, and in which no blood was shed, but which somehow had a trick of resulting in the transfer of hard cash from somebody’s pocket to that of the English monarch. But surely this open-hearted boy could be persuaded that Henry V. set a more attractive precedent than Henry VII., and that France was a good deal nearer than Constantinople. To simplify matters he had beside him a comely and capable wife, devoted to the Spanish interest, and all the more likely to influence him, at his age, for being a few years the elder: and no young prince could have an adviser half so shrewd as his quite disinterested father-in-law of Aragon. So the unsophisticated Henry was carefully manœuvred into war with France. From which he learned two lessons: one that there was frequently a very marked difference between the words of kings and their deeds; the other, that military glory or political success cannot be achieved without close attention to detail. Incidentally, the young king made another discovery; namely that the comparatively insignificant ecclesiastic whom old Bishop Fox had introduced into the Council was as sharp-witted as Ferdinand himself, could do the work of ten ordinary men, and always knew what he was about.

Before the end of 1514, Ferdinand and Maximilian were made painfully aware that Henry was not going to be anybody’s tool, by the unexpected alliance of England and France. The diplomatist who had beaten them with their own weapons had won the English king’s entire confidence, and there was only one possible rival to him, in the person of Henry’s brother-in-arms, Charles Brandon, newly created Duke of Suffolk; nor was it long before it became patent that the brother-in-arms, having made himself brother-in-law into the bargain by marrying the princess Mary, might remain the favourite companion in the hunting field, and the favourite antagonist in the tournament, but would have very little to say to the king’s politics. Wolsey had not only thoroughly impressed his master by his immense administrative ability, his capacity for hard work, and his astuteness; he had also succeeded in giving a new turn to the king’s ambitions, making them political rather than martial. The campaigns of 1513 had restored the prestige of English soldiers at least in a respectable degree; the outwitting of the craftiest prince in Europe next year showed that there was a worthy successor to Henry VII.; that monarch was reputed to have left in the royal coffers wealth so enormous as to be almost inexhaustible; Scotland had suffered such a blow at Flodden that she could not, for the time at least, hamper English action. Henry therefore could now hold the balance between the potentates of Europe, and become the controlling factor in international affairs. Such a position was much better worth working for than reconquests of French soil, or even the recovery of the French crown, which Henry V. had won but had not lived long enough to wear. As for crusades, Henry was old enough now to know that in the eyes of a practical politician they were out of date.

Schemes for dominating Europe were much affected by the fact that in 1514 many important changes in the personality of the rulers were obviously impending. Henry, twenty-three years old, was the only young man among them. But on the next New Year’s Day, France was to pass from Louis XII. to young Francis of Angoulême, aged twenty. In 1516, Ferdinand was to be succeeded by his grandson Charles, aged sixteen. In 1519, Maximilian was to disappear; and, inasmuch as the Empire was not technically hereditary, much would depend on the Imperial election, in which, however, the chances were that Ferdinand’s heir would prove to be Maximilian’s heir also.

From 1514, the figure of Wolsey--very shortly to become a Cardinal--completely dominated English politics. The king resigned himself wholly to his guidance, and for many years there was no more talk of Henry leading victorious armies over the Continent. The rival ambitions of Francis, Maximilian, and others, chiefly concerned with the annexation of Italian States by one potentate or another, the playing off of rivals, the paying and withholding of subsidies, were the main business in hand till the demise of the emperor, early in 1519, opened the great question, who was to wear the Imperial crown?