CHAPTER VIII.

I. COLET PREACHES AGAINST THE CONTINENTAL WARS--THE FIRST CAMPAIGN (1512-13).

If Colet returned to his pulpit after a narrow escape of being burned for heresy, it was to continue to do his duty, and not to preach in future only such sermons as might escape the censure of his bishop. His honesty and boldness were soon again put to the test.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Continental wars.]

It was in the summer of 1512 that Henry VIII. for the first time mingled the blood of English soldiers in those Continental wars which now for some years became the absorbing object of attention.

European rulers had not yet accepted the modern notion of territorial sovereignty. Instead of looking upon themselves as the rulers of nations, living within the settled boundaries of their respective countries, they still thirsted for war and conquest, and dreamed of universal dominion. To how great an extent this was so, a glance at the ambitious schemes of the chief rulers of Europe at this period will show.

How Pope Julius II. was striving to add temporal to spiritual sovereignty, and desired to be the ‘lord and master of the game of the world,’ has been already noticed in mentioning how it called forth the satire of Erasmus, in his ‘Praise of Folly.’ This warlike Pope was still fighting in his old age. Side by side with Pope Julius was Cæsar Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, King of the Romans, Emperor of Germany, &c.--fit representative of the ambitious House of Hapsburg! Not contented with all these titles and dominions, Maximilian was intriguing to secure by marriages the restoration of Hungary and Bohemia, and the annexation of the Netherlands, Franche-Comté, and Artois, as well as of Castile and Arragon, to the titles and possessions of his royal house. And what he could not secure by marriages he was trying to secure by arms. Had his success equalled his lust of dominion, east and west would have been united in the one ‘Holy Empire’ of which he dreamed, independent even of Papal interference, and hereditary for ever in the House of Hapsburg. Then there was Louis XII., the ‘Most Christian’ King of France, laying claim to a great part of Italy, pushing his influence and power so far as to strike terror into the minds of other princes; assuming to himself the rank of the first prince in Christendom; his chief minister aspiring to succeed Julius II. in the Papal chair; his son Francis ready to become a candidate for the Empire on the death of Maximilian. And, lastly, there was Henry VIII. of England, eager to win his spurs, and to achieve military renown at the first opportunity; reviving old obsolete claims on the crown of France; ready to offer himself as a candidate for the Empire when it became vacant, and to plot to secure the election of Wolsey to the Papal chair! Throw all these rival claims and objects of ambition into a wild medley, consider to what plots and counterplots, leagues and breaches of them, all this vast entanglement of interests and ambitions must give rise, and some faint idea may be gained of the state of European politics.

[Sidenote: First English expedition.]

Already in December 1511, a Holy Alliance had been formed between Pope Julius, Maximilian, Ferdinand, and Henry VIII., to arrest the conquests and humble the ambition of Louis XII. How the clergy had been induced to tax themselves in support of this holy enterprise has already been seen. Parliament also had granted a subsidy of two fifteenths and tenths, and had made some needful provision for the approaching war. Everything was ready, and in the summer of 1512 the first English expedition sailed.

[Sidenote: Its complete failure.]

Ferdinand persuaded Henry VIII. to aid him in attacking Guienne, and, all unused to the stratagems of war, he fell into the snare. While his father-in-law was playing his selfish game, and reducing the kingdom of Navarre, Henry’s fleet and soldiers were left to play their part alone. The whole expedition, owing to delays and gross mismanagement, wofully miscarried. There were symptoms of mutiny and desertion; and at length the English army returned home utterly demoralised, and in the teeth of their commands. The English flag was disgraced in the eyes of Europe. French wits wrote biting satires ‘De Anglorum e Galliis Fugâ,’[426] and in bitter disappointment Henry VIII., to avoid further disgrace, was obliged to hush up the affair, allowing the disbanded soldiers to return to their homes without further inquiry.[427] It was in vain that More replied to the French wits with epigram for epigram, correcting their exaggerated satire, and turning the tables upon their own nation.[428] He laid the foundation of a controversy by which he was annoyed in after-years,[429] and did little at the time to remove the general feeling of national disgrace which resulted from this first trial of Henry VIII. at the game of war.

[Sidenote: Colet preaches against the war.]

Meanwhile Colet, ever prone to speak out plainly what he thought, had publicly from his pulpit expressed his strong condemnation of the war. And the old Bishop of London, ever lying in wait, like the persecuting Pharisees of old, to find an occasion of evil against him, eagerly made use of this pretext to renew the attempt to get him into trouble. He had failed to bring down upon the Dean the terrors of ecclesiastical authority, but it would answer his purpose as well if he could provoke against him royal displeasure. He therefore informed the King, now eagerly bent upon his Continental wars, that Colet had condemned them; that he had publicly preached, in a sermon, that an unjust peace was ‘to be preferred before the justest war.’ While the Bishop was thus whispering evil against him in the royal ear, others of his party were zealously preaching up the war, and launching out invectives against Colet and ‘_the poets_,’ as they designated those who were suspected of preferring classical Latin and Greek to the ‘_blotterature_,’ as Colet called it, of the monks. By these means they appear to have hoped to bring Colet into disgrace, and themselves into favour, with the King.

But it would seem that they watched and waited in vain for any visible sign of success. The King appeared strangely indifferent alike to the treasonable preaching of the Dean and to their own effervescent loyalty.

[Sidenote: The King supports Colet against his enemies.]

Unknown to them, the King sent for Colet, and privately encouraged him to go on boldly reforming by his teaching the corrupt morals of the age, and by no means to hide his light in times so dark. He knew full well, he said, what these bishops were plotting against him, and also what good service he had done to the British nation both by example and teaching. And he ended by saying, that he would put such a check upon the attempts of these men, as would make it clear to others that if any one chose to meddle with Colet it would not be with impunity!

Upon this Colet thanked the King for his kind intentions, but, as to what he proposed further, beseeched him to forbear. ‘He had no wish,’ he said, ‘that any one should be the worse on his account; he had rather resign his preferment than it should come to that.’[430]

II. COLET’S SERMON TO HENRY VIII. (1513).

[Sidenote: Preparations for another campaign.]

The spring of 1513 was spent by Henry VIII. in energetic preparations for another campaign, in which he hoped to retrieve the lost credit of his arms. The young King, in spite of his regard for better counsellors, was intent upon warlike achievements. His first failure had made him the more eager to rush into the combat again. Wolsey, the only man amongst the war party whose energy and tact were equal to the emergency, found in this turn of affairs the stepping-stone to his own ambitious fortune. The preparations for the next campaign were entrusted to his hands.

Rumours were heard that the French would be likely to invade England if Henry VIII. long delayed his invasion of France. To meet this contingency, the sheriffs of Somerset and Dorset had been already ordered to issue proclamations, that every man between sixty and sixteen should be ready in arms[431] to defend his country. Ever and anon came tidings that the French navy was moving restlessly about on the opposite shore,[432] in readiness for some unknown enterprise. Diplomatists were meanwhile weaving their wily webs of diplomacy, deceiving and being deceived. Even between the parties to the League there were constant breaches of confidence and double-dealing. The entangled meshes of international policy were thrown into still greater confusion, in February, by the death of Julius II., the head of the Holy Alliance. The new Pope might be a Frenchman, instead of the leader of the league against France, for anything men knew. The moment was auspicious for the attempt to bring about a peace. But Henry VIII. was bent upon war. He urged on the equipment of the fleet, and was impatient of delay. On March 17 he conferred upon Sir Edward Howard the high-sounding title of ‘Admiral of England, Wales, Ireland, Normandy, Gascony, and Aquitaine.’[433] On Saturday, the 21st, he went down to Plymouth to inspect the fleet in person, and left orders to the Admiral to put to sea. He had set his heart upon his fleet, and in parting from Howard commanded him to send him word ‘how every ship did sail.’[434] With his royal head thus full of his ships and sailors, and eagerly waiting for tidings of the result of their first trial-trip in the Channel, Henry VIII. entered upon the solemnities of Holy Passion Week.

[Sidenote: Good Friday.]

On Good Friday, the 27th, the King attended Divine service in the Chapel Royal. Dean Colet was the preacher for the day. It must have been especially difficult and even painful for Colet, after the kindness shown to him so recently by the King, again to express in the royal presence his strong condemnation of the warlike policy upon which Henry VIII. had entered in the previous year, and in the pursuit of which he was now so eagerly preparing for a second campaign. The King too, coming directly from his fleet full of expectation, was not likely to be in a mood to be thwarted by a preacher. But Colet was firm in his purpose, and as, when called to preach before Convocation, he had chosen his text expressly for the bishops, so now in the royal presence he preached his sermon to the King.

[Sidenote: Colet’s sermon to Henry VIII.]

‘He preached wonderfully’ (says Erasmus) ‘on the _victory of Christ_, exhorting all Christians to fight and conquer under the banner of their King. He showed that when wicked men, out of hatred and ambition, fought with and destroyed one another, they fought under the banner, not of Christ, but of the devil. He showed, further, how hard a thing it is to die a Christian death [on the field of battle]; how few undertake a war except from hatred or ambition; how hardly possible it is for those who really have that brotherly love without which “no one can see the Lord” to thrust their sword into their brother’s blood; and he urged, in conclusion, that instead of imitating the example of Cæsars and Alexanders, the Christian ought rather to follow the example of Christ his Prince.’[435]

[Sidenote: Renewed attempts to get Colet into trouble.]

[Sidenote: The King again supports Colet.]

So earnestly had Colet preached, and with such telling and pointed allusion to the events of the day, that the King was not a little afraid that the sermon might damp the zeal of his newly enlisted soldiers. Thereupon, like birds of evil omen, the enemies of Colet hovered round him as though he were an owl, hoping that at length the royal anger might be stirred against him. The King sent for Colet. He came at the royal command. He dined at the Franciscan monastery adjoining the Palace at Greenwich. When the King knew he was there, he went out into the monastery garden to meet him, dismissing all his attendants. And when the two were quite alone, he bade Colet to cover his head and be at ease with him. ‘I did not call you here, Dean,’ he said to him, ‘to interrupt your holy labours, for of these I altogether approve, but to unburden my conscience of some scruples, that by your advice I may be able more fully to do my duty.’ They talked together nearly an hour and a half; Colet’s enemies, meanwhile, impatiently waiting in the court, scarcely able to contain their fury, chuckling over the jeopardy in which they thought Colet at last stood with the King. As it was, the King approved and agreed with Colet in everything he said. But he was glad to find that Colet had not intended to declare absolutely that there could be no just war, no doubt persuading himself that his own was one of the very few just ones. The conversation ended in his expressing a wish that Colet would some time or other explain himself more clearly, lest the raw soldiers should go away with a mistaken notion, and think that he had really said that _no_ war is lawful to Christians.[436] ‘And thus’ (continues Erasmus) ‘Colet, by his singular discretion and moderation, not only satisfied the mind of the King, but even rose in his favour.’ When he returned to the palace at parting, the King graciously drank to his health, embracing him most warmly, and, promising all the favours which it was in the power of a most loving prince to grant, dismissed him. Colet was no sooner gone than the courtiers flocked again round the King, to know the result of his conference in the convent garden. Whereupon the King replied, in the hearing of all: ‘Let every one have his own doctor, and let every one favour his own; this man is the doctor for me.’ Upon this the hungry wolves departed without their bone, and thereafter no one ever dared to meddle with Colet. This is Erasmus’s version[437] of an incident which, especially when placed in its proper historical setting, may be looked upon as a jewel in the crown both of the young King and of his upright subject. It has been reported that Colet complied with the King’s wish, and preached another sermon in favour of the war against France, of the necessity and justice of which, as strictly _defensive_, the King had convinced him. But with reference to this second sermon, if ever it was preached, Erasmus is silent.[438]

III. THE SECOND CAMPAIGN OF HENRY VIII. (1513).

While the King was trying to pacify his conscience, and allay the scruples raised in his mind by Colet’s preaching, his ambassador (West) was listening to a Good Friday sermon at the Chapel Royal of Scotland, and using the occasion to urge upon the Queen to use her influence with the Scotch king in favour of peace with England. There were rumours that the Scotch king was playing into the hands of the King of France--that he was going to send a ‘great ship’ to aid him in his wars. A legacy happened to be due from England to the Queen of Scotland, and West was instructed to threaten to withhold payment unless James would promise to keep the peace with England. James gave shuffling and unsatisfactory replies. There were troubles ahead in that quarter![439]

[Sidenote: Leo X. in favour of peace.]

The news sent by West from Scotland must have raised some forebodings in Henry’s mind. The chance of finding one enemy behind him, if he attempted to invade France, in itself was not encouraging. As to any scruples raised by Colet’s preaching, his head was probably far too full of the approaching campaign, and his heart too earnestly set upon the success of his fleet, to admit of his impartially considering the right and the wrong of the war in which he was already involved, or the evils it would bring upon his country. Meanwhile, probably only a few days after Colet’s sermon was preached, the anxiously expected news reached England of the election to the Papal chair of Cardinal de’ Medici, an acquaintance of Erasmus, and the fellow-student of his friend Linacre, under the title of Leo X. The letter which conveyed the news to Henry VIII. spoke of the ‘gentleness, innocence, and virtue’ of the new Pope, and his anxiety for a ‘_universal peace_.’ He had declared that he would abide by the League, but the writer expressed his opinion that ‘he would not be fond of war like Julius--that he would favour literature and the arts, and employ himself in building [St. Peter’s], but not enter upon any war except from compulsion, unless it might be against the infidels.’[440]

[Sidenote: Henry VIII. will not listen to it.]

Henry--just then receiving reports from his fleet, dating to April 5,[441] full of eager expectation and confidence on the part of the Admiral, ‘that an engagement with the French might be looked for in five or six days, and that by the aid of God and of St. George they hoped to have a fair day with them’--was not at all in a humour to hear of a general peace. So on April 12, all good advice of Colet’s forgotten, he wrote to his minister at Rome,[442] instructing him to express his joy that Leo X. had adhered to the Holy League, and to state that he (Henry) could not think of entertaining any propositions for peace, considering the magnitude and vast expense of his preparations, at all events without the consent of all parties. A fleet of 12,000 soldiers, the minister was to say, was already at sea, and Henry was preparing to invade France himself with 40,000 more, and powerful artillery. It would be most expedient to cripple the power of the King of France _now_, and prevent his ambition for the future.[443]

This letter was written on April 12. On the 17th Sir Arthur Plantagenet came with letters from the fleet, under leave of absence. He could ill be spared, wrote the Admiral; but his ship had struck upon a rock, and in great peril he had made a vow that, if it pleased God to deliver him, he would not eat flesh or fish till he had made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham;[444] and accordingly thither he was bound.

[Sidenote: Admiral Howard lost.]

This was only the beginning of troubles. On April 25, Admiral Howard, with a personal bravery and daring which immortalised his name, boarded the ship of the French admiral with sixteen companions, but, in the struggle which ensued, was thrust overboard with ‘morris pykes’ and lost. The English fleet, disheartened by the loss of its brave admiral, returned to Plymouth without proper orders, and without having inflicted any considerable blow upon the French fleet.[445]

The King, just then preparing to cross over to Calais with his main army, to invade France in person, hastily appointed Thomas Lord Howard admiral in the place of his brother; and in letters to the captains, gave vent to his royal displeasure at their return to Plymouth without his orders--letters which disheartened still more an army which the new Admiral found ‘very badly ordered, more than half on land, and a great number stolen away.’[446]

[Sidenote: Henry VIII. invades France in person.]

But still Henry was determined to press on with his enterprise. He wrote to his ambassadors to urge the King of Spain at once to invade Guienne or Gascony, as the English navy, though amounting to 10,000 men, was not sufficient to meet the combined forces of the enemy without Ferdinand’s aid. Yet for all this, they were to say, ‘he would not forbear the invasion of France.’[447] He was not even deterred by receipt of intelligence, before he set sail, that his treacherous father-in-law had already forsaken him, and made a year’s truce with France.[448] On June 30 the watchers on the walls of Calais beheld the King, with ‘such a fleet as Neptune never saw before,’ approaching amid ‘great firing of guns from the ships and towers,’ to commence in good earnest his invasion of France.

Little as did the ‘Oxford Reformers’ sympathise with the war, they were no indifferent spectators. Even Erasmus for the time could not but share the feelings of an Englishman, though he had many friends in France, and hated the war. From the list of the ships of the navy, in the handwriting of Wolsey, it appears that one or more of them had been christened ‘_Erasmus_.’[449] Some of his intimate friends followed the army in the King’s retinue. Ammonius, the King’s Latin secretary, was one of them; and Erasmus was kept informed by his letters of what was going on, and amused by his quaint sketches of camp-life.[450] He was even ready himself with an epigram upon the flight of the French after the Battle (or rather the no-battle) of Spurs. He could not resist the temptation to turn the tables upon the French poets, who had indulged their vein of satire at the expense of the English during the last year’s campaign, and had thereby so nettled the spirit of More and his friends. To the ‘_De Anglorum e Galliis fugâ_’ of the French poet, Erasmus was now ready with a still more biting satire, ‘_In fugam Gallorum insequentibus Anglis_.’[451] More also wrote an epigram, in which he contrasted the bloody resistance of the Nervii to Cæsar with the feeble opposition offered by their modern French successors to Henry VIII.[452]

[Sidenote: Success of the campaign.]

It would be out of place here to follow the details of the campaign. Suffice it to say that, like the first game of a child, it was carelessly and blunderingly played,--not, however, without buoyant spirit, and that air of exaggerated grandeur which betokens the inexperienced hand. The towns of Terouenne and Tournay were indeed taken, and that without much bloodshed; but they were taken under the selfish advice of Maximilian, who throughout never lost sight of his own interest, and was pleased enough to use the lavish purse and the ardent ambition of his young ally to his own advantage. The power of France was not crippled by the taking of these unimportant towns. The whole enterprise was confined within the narrow limits of so remote a corner of France that her soil could hardly be regarded as really invaded. So small a portion of the French army was engaged in opposing it, that it was scarcely a war with Louis XII. Henry VIII. himself spent more time in tournaments and brilliant pageants than in actual fighting. He was emphatically playing at the game of war.

[Sidenote: Scotch invasion of England.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Flodden.]

But while Henry was thus engaged in France, King James of Scotland, in spite of treaties and promises, treacherously took opportunity to cross the borders, and recklessly to invade England with a large but ill-trained army. Queen Katherine, whom Henry had appointed Regent during his absence, sharing his love of chivalrous enterprise, zealously mustered what forces were left in England; and thus it came about, that just as Henry was entering Tournay, the news arrived of the Battle of Flodden. From 500 to 1,000 English and about 10,000 Scotch, it was reported, lay dead upon that bloody field. The King of Scots fell near his banner, and at his side Scotch bishops, lords, and noblemen, amongst whom was the friend and pupil of Erasmus--the young Archbishop of St. Andrew’s. Queen Katherine wrote, with a thankful heart, to her royal husband, giving an account of the great victory, and informing him that she was about to go on pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, in performance of past promises, and to pray for his return.

Before the end of October the King, finding nothing better to do, amid great show of triumph returned to England. Thus ended this second campaign, with just sufficient success to induce the King and Wolsey to prepare for a third.[453]

IV. ERASMUS VISITS THE SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM (1513).

While Sir Arthur Plantagenet and Queen Katherine were going on pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, to give thanks, the one for the defeat of the Scots, and the other for deliverance from shipwreck, Erasmus took it into his head to go on pilgrimage also. He had told his friend Ammonius, in May, that he meant to visit the far-famed shrine to pray for the success of the Holy League, and to hang up a _Greek Ode_ as a votive offering.[454] He appears to have made the pilgrimage from Cambridge in the autumn of 1513, accompanied by his young friend Robert Aldridge,[455] afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. It was probably this visit which Erasmus so graphically described many years afterwards in his Colloquy of the ‘_Religious Pilgrimage_.’

[Sidenote: Erasmus visits the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.]

The College of Canons, under their Sub-prior, maintained chiefly by the offerings left by pilgrims upon the Virgin’s altar; the Priory Church, a relic of which still stands to attest its architectural beauty; the small unfinished chapel of the Virgin herself, the sea-winds whistling through its unglazed windows; the inner windowless wooden chapel, with its two doors for pilgrims’ ingress and egress; the Virgin’s shrine, rich in jewels, gold and silver ornaments, lit up by burning tapers; the dim religious light and scented air; the Canon at the altar, with jealous eye watching each pilgrim and his gift, and keeping guard against sacrilegious theft; the little wicket in the gateway through the outer wall, so small that a man must stoop low to pass through it, and yet through which, by the Virgin’s aid, an armed knight on horseback once escaped from his pursuer; the plate of copper, on which the knight’s figure was engraved in ancient costume with a beard like a goat, and his clothes fitting close to his body, with scarcely so much as a wrinkle in them; the little chapel towards the east, containing the middle joint of St. Peter’s finger, so large, the pilgrims thought, that Peter must needs have been a very lusty man; the house hard by, which it was said was ages ago brought suddenly, one winter time, when all things were covered with snow, from a place a great way off (though to the eyes of Erasmus its thatch, timber, walls, and everything about it, seemed of modern date); the concreted milk of the Holy Virgin, which looked like beaten chalk tempered with the white of an egg; the bold request of Erasmus, to be informed what evidence there was of its really being the milk of the Virgin; the contracted brows of the verger, as he referred them to the ‘authentic record’ of its pedigree, hung up high against the wall,--all this is described with so much of the graphic detail of an eyewitness, that one feels, in reading the ‘Colloquy,’ that it must record the writer’s vivid recollections of his own experience.

[Sidenote: The Greek Ode of Erasmus.]

The concluding incident of the ‘Colloquy,’ whether referring to a future visit, or only an imaginary one, evidently alludes to the Greek Ode mentioned in the letter to Ammonius. It tells how that, before they left the place, the Sub-prior, with some hesitation, modestly ventured to ask whether his present visitor was the same man who, about two years before, had hung up a votive tablet inscribed in _Hebrew_ letters: for Erasmus remarks, they call everything Hebrew which they cannot understand. The Sub-prior is then made to relate what great pains had been taken to read the Greek verses; what wiping of glasses; how one wise man thought they were written in Arabic letters, and another in altogether fictitious ones; how at length one had been able to make out the title, which was Latin written in Roman capitals--the verses themselves being in Greek, and written in Greek capitals. In reward for the explanation and translation of the Ode, the ‘Colloquy’ goes on to relate that the Sub-prior pulled out of his bag, and presented to his visitors a piece of wood cut from a beam on which the Virgin mother had been seen to rest.

Whether this concluding incident related in the ‘Colloquy’ was a real occurrence or not, it, at all events, confirms the testimony of the ‘Colloquy’ itself to the fact that Erasmus made this pilgrimage in a satirical and unbelieving mood, and that his votive ode was rather a joke played upon the ignorant canons, than any proof that he himself was a worshipper of the Virgin, or a believer in the efficacy of pilgrimages to her shrine.