History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. III
by James Anthony Froude · English · Gutenberg #39655 · 954,737 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. III
Author: James Anthony Froude
Release date: May 8, 2012 [eBook #39655]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH. VOL. III ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM
THE FALL OF WOLSEY
TO
THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH.
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M. A.
LATE FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD.
VOLUME III.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY
1872.
[Illustration:
Charles Scribner & Co of No 654
Broadway New York have authority
from me to publish all works which I
have already written or may hereafter
write. J A Froude
London, Jan 29. 1871]
CONTENTS OF VOLUME III.
CHAPTER XII.
FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC ASPECTS OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
PAGE
Spain and England 14
Animosity of the Emperor 15
Mission of Cardinal Granvelle 16
The Milan Temptation 17
Francis will join the Papal League 18
The Triple Cord 19
Effect of the Death of Catherine 20
Overtures to England 21
Reply to the Spanish Ambassador 22
The French invade Italy 24
The Emperor's Protest 25
Speech in the Consistory 26
Invasion of Provence 27
Attitude of England 28
Expectations formed at Rome 29
Paul's Message to Henry 30
Letter of Sir Gregory Cassalis 31
History of Reginald Pole 32
The King's Favour towards him 33
Residence Abroad 35
The Book of the Church 37
Opposes Conciliation 39
England seen from within 60
Convocation of 1536 61
Latimer's Sermon 62
Spirit of the Clergy 66
Complaints against the Growth of Heresy 68
Protestant Heresies 70
Peculiar Disposition of the King 71
First Articles of Religion 73
Judgment on General Councils 78
Injunctions of the Vicar-General 79
The English Bible 80
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE.
Causes of Popular Disaffection 88
Discontent in the House of Lords 89
The Statute of Uses 91
Enclosures of Commons 93
Encroachment upon Local Jurisdiction 95
The Three Commissions 97
Fantastic Rumours 99
Rising in Lincolnshire 100
The First of October at Louth 101
The Rebellion in Motion 103
The Articles of the Rebellion 105
The Rebels occupy Lincoln 107
Lord Hussey 109
The Duke of Suffolk 111
The King's Answer to the Petition 113
Scene in the Chapter-house at Lincoln 115
The Gentlemen separate from the Commons 117
The Great Insurrection 118
Account of Robert Aske 119
The Rising of the North 121
Scene at Beverley 123
Lord Darcy 125
The Rendezvous at Weighton 127
Aske enters York 129
Lord Darcy in Pomfret 131
Surrender of Pomfret 133
The Siege of Hull 135
Skipton Castle 137
Advance of the Duke of Norfolk 139
Henry's Instructions to Norfolk 141
Lancaster Herald at Pomfret 143
Lord Northumberland 145
Doncaster 147
The Doncaster Articles 151
The Conference on Doncaster Bridge 153
The Advice of the Council 155
Despatch of Heralds 157
State of the North 159
Proposal to betray Aske 161
Rebel Council at York 163
The Council of Pomfret 165
The King's Second Commission 167
Resolutions of the King 169
The Council of York 171
Aske goes to London 173
Fresh Danger 175
CHAPTER XIV.
THE COMMISSION OF CARDINAL POLE.
James the Fifth 176
Reginald Pole made a Cardinal 177
The Mission into Flanders 178
The Credentials 180
State of the North of England 181
Sir Francis Bigod 182
Second Insurrection 184
Failures at Scarborough and Hull 185
Arrival of the Duke of Norfolk 187
The Rebels attack Carlisle 189
Martial Law 191
Pole arrives in France 193
He is dismissed into the Netherlands 194
He retires to Liège 195
Arrests in England 196
Aske, Darcy, and Constable 197
Trials of the Prisoners 199
Executions 206
Aske and Constable 207
Death of Aske 209
The Children of Benjamin 211
Pole at Liège 212
Michael Throgmorton 213
Letter of Cromwell to Michael Throgmorton 214
Illustrative Sketches of the Time 219
The Sacraments 228
The Bishop's Book 229
Address of the King 230
State of the Navy 231
Piracy in the Channel 232
Battle in Falmouth Harbour 233
Outrages of Foreign Cruisers 234
Equipment of a Fleet 235
Action in the Downs 236
English Successes 237
Survey of the Coasts 238
The Revenue 239
Ill-health of the King 240
Birth of the Prince of Wales 241
Death of the Queen 243
Anxiety for the Prince 245
Creation of Peers 247
Proposal of a New Marriage 248
CHAPTER XV.
THE EXETER CONSPIRACY.
The European Powers 249
England and the Empire 250
Mission of Sir Thomas Wyatt 251
The Princess Mary 252
The Duchess of Milan 254
Interchange of Alliance 255
Doubts and Warnings 257
The Pacification of Nice 259
Doctor Bonner 261
The Religious Houses 263
Voluntary Surrenders 264
Images and Relics 265
Friar Forest 270
Novel Law of Heresy 272
Dderfel Gadern 273
The Shrines 275
St. Thomas of Canterbury 277
The King's Marriage 280
The Pope issues the Censures 282
Pole's Second Mission 283
England and Flanders 284
Pole's Apology 285
Irish Overtures to the Papacy 287
Contemplated Invasion of Ireland 289
The English Lords 291
Renewed Agitations 292
The Marquis of Exeter 293
The Banner of St. Kevern 295
The Cornish Conspiracy 297
Arrest of Holland 299
The Poles 301
Lady Salisbury 302
Circular to the Justices of the Peace 303
Westminster Hall 305
Lord Montague 306
Sir Edward Neville 307
Executions for Treason 308
Testimony of Events 309
England and the Lutherans 310
The Landgrave of Hesse 311
Prosecution of Lambert 312
Lambert dies at the Stake 315
Cromwell's Opinion of the Sentence 316
Reginald Pole in Spain 317
Rumour of the intended Invasion 318
The Flemish Fleet 319
Reports from Spain 320
The King at Dover 321
The Uncertainty 322
The Fleet in Flanders disperses 323
Despair of Pole 324
He is alarmed for the Emperor 325
The Muster in London 326
CHAPTER XVI.
THE SIX ARTICLES.
Religious Tolerance 331
Spirit of Persecution 332
State of Parties 333
The Privy Council 335
The Prospects of Cromwell 336
Appeal of the King to his Subjects 337
General Pardon 339
Difficulties of Protestantism 341
Marriage of the Clergy 342
An Execution at Ipswich 343
General Election 344
Meeting of Parliament 349
Religious Differences 350
Proposals for Union 351
Attainder of the Poles 352
The Six Articles 353
Act of Proclamations 355
Royal Address 357
Dissolution of the Monasteries 359
Extension of the Episcopate 360
Approbation of England 365
Protest of Melancthon 366
Moderation of the King 368
Development of the Statute 369
Second Pardon 370
The Vicar of Stepney 371
Henry and Prince Edward 372
The English Criminal Law 373
The Welsh Marches 381
Address to the Justices of the Peace 385
Issue of Special Commissions 388
The Three Abbots 390
The Abbot of Glastonbury. 391
CHAPTER XVII.
ANNE OF CLEVES, AND THE FALL OF CROMWELL.
Anne of Cleves 399
Cromwell and the Peers 404
Position of Cromwell 405
Cromwell and Gardiner 408
Cromwell and the Bishops 409
The Protestants 410
Prosecution of Dr. Watts 411
The Emperor comes to Paris 412
Reginald Pole 413
The Emperor at Paris 414
An English Traitor 415
Interview with Sir Thomas Wyatt 417
Anne of Cleves lands in England 420
The King's Sensations 422
Arrival of Anne at Greenwich 423
Reluctance of Henry. 425
Completion of the Marriage 426
Protestant Controversy 427
Attitude of the Emperor 431
Failure of Cromwell's Foreign Policy 434
Approach of the Crisis 436
Meeting of Parliament 437
Cromwell's Opening Speech 438
The Calm before the Storm 439
Progress of ordinary Legislation 440
A Subsidy Bill 441
Attainders of Romanists 442
The King's Marriage 443
Hints of a Divorce 445
The Fall of Cromwell 446
Intercession of Cranmer 454
The Attainder 456
The Six Articles 458
The King's Statement 461
Judgment of Convocation 463
Communication with the Duke 467
Opinion of Foreign Powers 469
Committee of Religion 471
The Calais Conspirators 472
Attainder of three Protestants 473
Parliament is Dissolved 474
The Fall of Cromwell 476
His Prayer on the Scaffold 477
Character of Cromwell 478
CHAPTER XII.
FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC ASPECTS OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
In the sensitive condition of Europe the effect of events was felt
beyond their natural consequence. The death of Catherine of Arragon led
to the renewal of the war between France and the Empire. Paul III., in
real or pretended reluctance to proceed to the last extremity, had for a
time suspended the Bull of Deposition which he had drawn against the
King of England.[1] It was idle to menace while he was unable to strike;
and the two great Catholic powers had declined, when his intention was
first made known to them, to furnish him with the necessary support.
Francis I., who trifled, as it suited his convenience, with the court of
London, the see of Rome, the Smalcaldic League, and the Divan at
Constantinople, had protested against a step which would have compelled
him to a definite course of action. The Emperor, so long as Solyman was
unchecked upon the Danube, and Moorish corsairs swept the Mediterranean
and ravaged the coasts of Italy, had shrunk from the cost and peril of a
new contest.
[Sidenote: Animosity of the Spaniards against the King of England]
[Sidenote: Fostered by English and Irish refugees,]
[Sidenote: And shared by the Emperor.]
A declaration of war, in revenge for the injuries of the divorced queen,
would indeed have been welcomed with enthusiasm by the gentlemen of
Spain. A London merchant, residing at Cadiz, furnished his government
with unwelcome evidence of the spirit which was abroad in the Peninsula:
"I have perceived," he wrote to Cromwell, "the views and manners of
these countries, and favour that these Spaniards do bear towards the
King's Grace and his subjects, which is very tedious in their hearts
both in word and deed, with their great Popish naughty slanderous words
in all parts. And truly the King's Grace hath little or no favour now.
We be all taken in derision and hated as Turks, and called heretics, and
Luterians, and other spiteful words; and they say here plainly they
trust shortly to have war with England, and to set in the Bishop of Rome
with all his disciples again in England."[2] The affront to a Castilian
princess had wounded the national honour; the bigotry of a people to
whom alone in Europe their creed remained a passion, was shocked by the
religious revolution with which that affront had been attended; and the
English and Irish refugees, who flocked to their harbours, found willing
listeners when they presented themselves as the missionaries of a
crusade.[3] Charles himself was withheld only by prudence from indulging
the inclination of his subjects. He shared to the full their haughty
sensitiveness; again and again in his private consultations with the
Pope he had spoken of the revenge which he would one day exact against
his uncle; and one of the best informed statesmen of the age, whose
memoirs have descended to us, declares that every person who understood
anything of the condition of Europe, believed assuredly that he would at
last execute his threat.[4]
[Sidenote: The Emperor returns from his successes in Africa,]
But as yet no favourable opportunity had offered itself. His arms were
occupied with other enemies; the Irish rebellion had collapsed; the
disaffection in England seemed unable to coalesce with sufficient
firmness to encourage an invasion in its support. It was not till the
close of the year 1535, when Charles returned to Naples covered with
glory from his first expedition into Africa, that means and leisure for
his larger object at length offered themselves. His power and his fame
were now at their zenith. He had destroyed the Moslem fleet; he had
wrested Tunis from the dreaded Barbarossa; he had earned the gratitude
of the Catholic world by the delivery of twenty thousand Christian
slaves. The last ornament might now be added to his wreath of glory, if
he would hush down the tumults of heresy as he had restored peace to the
waters of the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: And meditates a crusade against heresy.]
With this intention Charles remained in Italy for the winter. The Pope
again meditated the publication of the Bull of Deposition;[5] a circular
was issued from the Vatican, copies of which were sent even to the
Lutheran princes, inviting a crusade against England,[6] and Cardinal
Granvelle was instructed to sound the disposition of Francis, and
persuade his coöperation. The Emperor would be moderate in his demands;
an active participation would not be required of him;[7] it would be
sufficient if he would forget his engagement with an excommunicated
sovereign to whom promises were no longer binding, and would remain
passive.
[Sidenote: Dubious disposition of Francis.]
[Sidenote: Persecution of Protestants in Paris.]
There was reason to believe that Granvelle's mission would be
successful. The year preceding, Charles had played off a hope of Milan
as a bribe to disunite the French from England; he was ready now to make
a definite promise. With the first slight inducement Francis had
wavered; while again, in point of religion, his conduct was more
satisfactory than had been expected. He adhered in appearance to the
English alliance, but he had deceived Henry's hopes that he would unite
in a rupture with Rome; he had resisted all entreaties to declare the
independence of the Gallican church; he had laboured to win back the
Germans out of schism, partly to consolidate the French influence in
Europe as opposed to the Imperial, but partly also, as he had taken
pains to prove, that no doubt might be entertained of the position of
France in the great question of the Reformation. He had allowed himself,
indeed, as a convenience, to open negotiations for a treaty with
Solyman; but the Turks, in the eyes of devout Catholics, were less
obnoxious than heretics;[8] and the scandal was obscured by an open
repentance for past shortcomings, and a declaration that for the future
he would eschew the crime of toleration, and show no mercy to any
Protestant who might fall within his grasp. An English stranger saw
Francis of France march through the streets of Paris with the princes of
the blood, the queen, the princesses, the bishops, cardinals, dukes,
lords, counts, the "blue blood" of the nobility. They had torches, and
banners, and relics of the saints, the whole machinery of the faith: and
in the presence of the august assemblage six heretics were burnt at a
single fire; the king gave thanks to God that he had learnt his
obligations as a Christian sovereign; and, imploring the Divine
forgiveness because in past years he had spared the lives of some few of
these wretches whom it was his duty to have destroyed, he swore that
thenceforward they should go all, as many as he could discover, to the
flames.[9]
[Sidenote: The Emperor offers Milan to the Duke of Orleans.]
[Sidenote: Francis consents to the formation of a league against
England.]
Thus, therefore, good hopes were entertained of Francis; but inasmuch it
was known with what a passion he had set his heart on Milan, Charles
resolved not to trust too entirely to his zeal for orthodoxy; and,
either through Granvelle or through his ambassadors, he signified his
consent to an arrangement which would have consigned Italy conclusively
to a Gallican supremacy. Sforza, the last reigning duke, whose claims
had hitherto been supported by the Imperialists, had died childless in
the previous October. The settlement which had been made in the treaty
of Cambray had thus been rendered nugatory; and Francis desired the
duchy for his second son, the Duke of Orleans, who, in right of his
wife, Catherine de' Medici, would inherit also the dukedoms of Florence
and Urbino. If the Emperor was acting in good faith, if he had no
intention of escaping from his agreement when the observance of it
should no longer be necessary, he was making no common sacrifice in
acquiescing in a disposition the consequence of which to the House of
Austria he so clearly foresaw.[10] He, however, seemed for the present
to have surrendered himself to the interests of the Church;[11] and, in
return for the concession, Francis, who had himself advised Henry VIII.
to marry Anne Boleyn,--Francis, who had declared that Henry's resistance
to the Papacy was in the common interest of all Christian
princes,--Francis, who had promised to make Henry's cause his own, and,
three years previously, had signed a treaty, offensive and defensive,
for the protection of France and England against Imperial and Papal
usurpations,--sank before the temptation. He professed his willingness
to join hand and heart with the Emperor in restoring unity to
Christendom and crushing the Reformation. Anticipating and exceeding the
requests which had been proposed to him, he volunteered his services to
urge in his own person on Henry the necessity of submitting to the
universal opinion of Christendom; and, to excuse or soften the
effrontery of the demand, he suggested, that, in addition to the
censures, a formal notice should be served upon all Christian princes
and potentates, summoning them to the assistance of the Papacy to compel
the King of England with the strong hand to obey the sentence of the See
of Rome.[12] A Catholic league was now on the point of completion. The
good understanding so much dreaded by English ministers, between France,
the Empire, and the Papacy, seemed to be achieved. A council, the
decision of which could not be doubtful, would be immediately convoked
by Paul, under the protectorate of the two powers; and the Reformation
would become a question no longer of argument, but of strength.
[Sidenote: January. The death of Queen Catherine is known in Italy.]
[Sidenote: New hopes are formed of a reconciliation.]
[Sidenote: March. The Emperor withdraws his offer of Milan.]
[Sidenote: Advances of the Pope and the Catholic powers to Henry]
Happily, the triple cord was not yet too secure to be broken by an
accident. The confederacy promised favourably till the new year. At the
end of January it became known in Italy that the original cause of the
English quarrel existed no longer--that Queen Catherine was no more. On
the first arrival of the news there was an outburst of indignation.
Stories of the circumstances of her death were spread abroad with
strange and frightful details. Even Charles himself hinted his
suspicions to the Pope that she had been unfairly dealt with, and fears
were openly expressed for the safety of the Princess Mary.[13] But, in a
short time, calmer counsels began to prevail. Authentic accounts of the
queen's last hours must have been received early in February from the
Spanish ambassador, who was with her to the end; and as her decease gave
no fresh cause for legitimate complaint, so it was possible that an
embarrassing difficulty was peacefully removed. On both sides there
might now, it was thought, be some relaxation without compromise of
principle; an attempt at a reconciliation might at least be made before
venturing on the extremity of war. Once more the Pope allowed the
censures to sleep.[14] The Emperor, no longer compelled by honour to
treat Henry as an enemy, no longer felt himself under the necessity of
making sacrifices to Francis. He allowed his offer of Milan to the Duke
of Orleans to melt into a proposal which would have left uninjured the
Imperial influence in Italy; and Francis, who had regarded the duchy at
last as his own, was furious at his disappointment, and prepared for
immediate war. So slight a cause produced effects so weighty. Henry, but
a few weeks before menaced with destruction, found himself at once an
object of courteous solicitation from each of the late confederates.
The Pope found a means of communicating to him the change in his
sentiments.[15] Francis, careless of all considerations beyond revenge,
laboured to piece together the fragments of a friendship which his own
treachery had dissolved: and Charles, through his resident at the court
of London, and even with his own hand in a letter to Cromwell,
condescended to request that his good brother would forget and forgive
what was past. The occasion of their disagreement being removed, he
desired to return to the old terms of amity. The Princess Mary might be
declared legitimate, having been at least born _in bonâ fide parentum_;
and as soon as this difficulty should have been overcome, he promised to
use his good offices with the Pope, that, at the impending council, his
good brother's present marriage should be declared valid, and the
succession arranged as he desired.[16] Finally, that he might lose no
time in reaping the benefit of his advances, he reminded Henry that the
old treaties remained in force by which they had bound themselves to
assist each other in the event of invasion; that he looked to his good
offices and his assistance in the now imminent irruption of the French
into Italy.
The English government lavished large sums as secret service money in
the European courts. Though occasionally misled in reports from other
quarters, they were always admirably informed by their agents at
Rome.[17] Henry knew precisely the history of the late coalition against
him, and the value which he might attach to these new professions. He
had no intention of retracing any step which he had taken. For his
separation from the rest of Christendom, Rome and the other powers were
alone responsible.
[Sidenote: The Spanish ambassador has an audience at Greenwich.]
Events would now work for him. He had only to stand still. To the Pope
he sent no answer; but he allowed Sir Gregory Cassalis to hold an
indirect commission as his representative at the Papal court. To Francis
he remained indifferent. The application on the part of the Emperor had
been the most elaborate, and to him his answer was the most explicit. He
received the Spanish ambassador in an audience at Greenwich, and, after
a formal declaration had been made of Charles's message, he replied with
the terms on which he would consent to forget the events of the
preceding years. The interruption of friendly relations between England
and Spain was the fault wholly and entirely, he said, of the Emperor.
When the crown of the Cæsars was last vacant, it had been at the
disposal of himself; and he it was who had permitted the choice to fall
on its present wearer. In Charles's difficulties he had lent him money:
to him Charles was indebted for his power, his influence, and his fame;
and, in return, he had met only with ingratitude. To remember injuries,
however, was not in his nature. "We can continue our displeasure to no
man," he said, "if he do once remove the cause thereof; so if he which
is a prince of honour, and a personage whom we once chose and thought
worthy for his virtue and qualities to be advanced, will, by his express
writings, either desire us to put his doings towards us in oblivion, or
by the same purge himself and declare that such things wherein we have
noted unkindness at his hands have been unjustly imputed to him, we
shall gladly embrace his offer touching the reconciliation." Being the
injured party, he could receive no advance and treat of no conditions
unless with this necessary preliminary. Let the Emperor deal with him
frankly, and he should receive a reasonable answer to all his reasonable
requests.
"For the Bishop of Rome, he had not," he continued, "proceeded on so
slight grounds as he would alter any one piece of his doings. In all his
causes he had laid his foundation upon the laws of God, nature, and
honesty, and established his works made upon the same with consent of
the states of the realm in open and high court of parliament." The
Bishop, however, had himself made known his desire for a return to a
better understanding with him, and he did not think it expedient that a
third party should interfere.[18]
[Sidenote: Anxiety of Henry to be on good terms with the Emperor.]
The haughty answer concealed a less indifferent feeling. Henry was
seriously conscious of the danger of the isolation of the country; and
though he chose in words to defend his self-respect, though he saw,
perhaps, in a high bearing the surest means to command the respect of
others, he was anxious from his heart to resume his old relations with
Spain and Flanders, so important for English commerce, and still more
important for the tacit sanction of his past conduct, which would be
implied in a renewed treaty with the nephew of Catherine. He directed
the English resident at the Imperial court to report the manner in which
his reply had been received: he desired him at the same time to lose no
opportunity of impressing, both on Charles and on his ministers, the
benefits which would accrue to all Christendom, as well as to
themselves, if they were again on good terms.[19]
[Sidenote: War between France and the Empire.]
So matters hung uncertain through the spring. The court of Rome
continued hopeful,[20] although at that very time the English
parliaments were debating the contents of the Black Book, and decreeing
the dissolution of the smaller monasteries. Rumour was still favourable
to a reconciliation, when, for the moment, all other considerations were
absorbed in the breaking out of the French war.
[Sidenote: D'Annebault overruns Piedmont.]
Francis had not waited for the declaration of a change of policy on the
part of Charles to collect an army. On the first hint of a difficulty he
saw what was intended. Milan, after all, was not to be surrendered. His
chief military successes had been gained by a suddenness of movement
which approached to treachery. Instantly that he knew Charles to be
hesitating, he took advantage of some trifling Border differences to
open a quarrel; and he declared war and struck his first blow at the
same moment. His troops entered Savoy, and the brilliant D'Annebault,
who commanded in chief, sweeping all before him, had overrun Piedmont
and had secured and fortified Turin, before a man had been raised to
oppose him.
[Sidenote: April 17. Charles denounces Francis in the consistory at
Rome.]
[Sidenote: And challenges him to single combat.]
This unwelcome news found the Emperor at Naples in the middle of March.
Report slightly, but only slightly, anticipating the reality, brought
information at the same time of a Franco-Turkish alliance, and of the
approach of a fresh Ottoman fleet; and in the first burst of anger and
mortification Charles swore that this time he would not lay down his
arms till either he or his rival had ceased to wear a crown.[21] Antonio
de Leyva was left to collect and equip an army; Charles himself went in
the first week in April to Rome, to make a public protest against the
French aggression. On the seventeenth of that month, Pope, prelates,
cardinals, and foreign ambassadors being all assembled in the
consistory, he rose, and with his bonnet in his hand poured out in
Spanish a long and passionate invective, denouncing the King of France
as the enemy of God and man--the wanton and wicked disturber of the
world. When peace was necessary before all things to compose schism, and
to repel the Turks, Francis was breaking that peace--was bringing in the
Turks--was confounding heaven and earth only for his own ambition. In
the interests of Europe, even now he would give Milan to the Duke of
Angoulesme; the union of the duchies was too formidable a danger to
allow him to bestow it on the Duke of Orleans. This was his last
concession: if it was refused, he challenged Francis to decide their
differences in single combat, laying Burgundy in gage against Lombardy,
the victor to have both in undisputed possession.
Explosions of passion were not unfrequent with Charles, and formed the
most genuine feature in his character. His audience, however, were
fluttered by his violence. His own prudence taught him the necessity of
some explanation. On the following day the consistory reassembled, when,
in calmer tones, he reaffirmed his accusations, and renewed his
proposals.
"I am not against peace," he said; "those who so accuse me slander me.
The Pope is the common friend of myself and the King of France. Without
his Holiness's permission I should not have spoken as I spoke yesterday.
I bear no personal malice. I received the sacrament before I entered
your assembly, and many as are my errors and infirmities, I am not so
bad a Christian as to communicate while in mortal sin. But a confederate
of the Empire is attacked--it is my duty to defend him. The Duke of
Savoy is my near relative; but were he a stranger, so long as he is one
of my lieges, I must expose my life for him, as he would expose his life
for me. I have challenged the King of France to mortal combat; but not
in malice, not in vain bravado or appetite for glory. Wise men do not
thrust themselves into desperate duels, least of all with an antagonist
so strong and skilful. I offered him the alternative of this combat only
if peace was impossible, that the terrible evils which menace
Christendom might be thus avoided. For here I say it, and while I say it
I do but claim my proper privilege as an honest sovereign, not only
would I expose my person to peril, but gladly would I sacrifice my life
for the welfare of the Christian world."[22]
The challenge might naturally have touched Francis, whose one sound
quality was personal courage; but on this occasion the competitors had
exchanged their characters. Francis had the start in the field: he had
twelve thousand picked troops in Turin; the remainder of the invading
force was distributed in impregnable positions over Piedmont and
Savoy.[23] For once he determined to win a reputation for prudence as
well as daring, and he left Charles to seek his remedy where he could
find it. The Pope entreated, but in vain; and the campaign followed
which was so disastrous to the Empire, which for a time reversed so
signally the relative position of the two princes, and defeated the
expectations of the keenest statesmen.
[Sidenote: June. Charles invades Provence.]
[Sidenote: He finds the country wasted.]
[Sidenote: He is unable to advance.]
[Sidenote: August. He loses 30,000 men and retreats.]
Finding himself too late, without delay and difficulty, to expel the
French out of their Italian conquests, Charles, in spite of the
remonstrance of his generals, and relying, as was thought, on a
repetition of the treason of the Duke of Bourbon, by one or more of the
Gallican nobility,[24] led his army into Provence. He trusted either
that he would find the country undefended, or that the French chivalry,
when attacked in their homes, would, with their usual recklessness, risk
a decisive battle; or, at least, that in a fertile district he would
find no difficulty in procuring provisions. In each of his calculations
he found himself fatally mistaken. The inhabitants of Provence had
themselves destroyed their crops, and driven away their cattle. In his
front, Montmorency lay intrenched at Avignon, and Francis between Lyons
and Valence, in fortified camps. Time and necessity had on this occasion
been enlisted as the allies of France; and with the garrison of
Marseilles in his rear intercepting his supplies, unable to advance, and
shut up in a country which had been left barren as an Arabian desert,
the Emperor sate still in the sultry summer heats, while his army melted
away from him with famine and disease. De Leyva, his ablest commander,
and thirty thousand veterans, miserably perished. He escaped only from
being driven into the sea by a retreat; and crept back into Italy with
the broken remnant of his forces, baffled and humiliated in the only
European war into which no fault of his own had plunged him.
[Sidenote: Indifferent attitude of England.]
Of the feelings with which these events were regarded by Henry, we have
little evidence. No positive results followed from the first interchange
of messages, but Charles so far endured the tone in which his advances
had been received, that fresh communications of moderate friendliness
were interchanged through Sir Gregory Cassalis at the beginning of the
summer.[25] In July Henry offered his services as a mediator with the
court of France both to the Emperor and to the Queen Regent of the
Netherlands.[26] At the same time English engineers were in the French
camp in Provence, perhaps as professional students of the art of war,
perhaps as volunteers indirectly countenanced by the government.[27] The
quarrel, in reality, admitted of no solution except by the sword; and if
the English felt no absolute satisfaction in seeing two powers crippling
each other's strength, who, a few months previously, were in league for
their own ruin, the government at least saw no reason to co-operate with
either side, in a cause which did not concern them, or assist in
bringing a dispute to a close which had broken out so opportunely for
themselves.
Meanwhile the probabilities of a reunion with Rome had for a moment
brightened. It was stated at the close of the last volume that, on the
discovery of the adulteries of the queen, a panic arose among the
Reformers, lest the king should regard her crime as a judgment upon the
divorce, and in the sudden revulsion retrace his steps. It was seen,
too, that after her punishment their fears were allayed by an act of
parliament against the Papal usurpations, the most emphatic which had
yet been passed, and that the country settled back into an equilibrium
of permanent hostility. There are circumstances remaining to be
explained, both with respect to the first alarm and to the statute by
which it was dispelled.
[Sidenote: May. Expectations formed at Rome on the disgrace of Queen
Anne.]
[Sidenote: May 27. The Pope entreats Sir Gregory Cassalis to intercede
with Henry for a reconciliation.]
The partial advances which had been made by the Pope had been neither
accepted nor rejected, when, on the 20th of May, a courier from England
brought the news of Anne's misdemeanours to Rome. The consistory would
have been more than mortal if they had not been delighted. From the
first they had ascribed the king's conduct to the infatuating beauty of
Catherine's rival. It was she who, tigress-like, had thirsted for the
blood of their martyrs, and at her shrine they had been sacrificed.[28]
Her character appeared at last in its true colours; the enchantment was
broken, and the abhorrence with which Henry's name had so lately been
regarded was changed throughout Italy to a general feeling of pity.[29]
The precious sheep who had been lost to the Church would now return to
the fold, and the Holy Father would welcome back his erring child with
paternal affection.[30] This seems to have been the general expectation;
unquestionably it was the expectation of the Pope himself. Paul sent
again for Sir Gregory Cassalis, and after expressing his delight that
God had delivered the king from his unhappy connexion, he told him that
he waited only for the most trifling intimation of a desire for reunion
to send a nuntio to England to compose all differences and to grant
everything which the king could reasonably demand.[31] Limiting, like a
man of business, the advantages which he had to offer to the present
world, the Pope suggested that Henry, in connexion with himself, might
now become the arbiter of Europe, and prescribe terms to the Empire as
well as to France. For himself and for his office he said he had no
ambition. The honour and the profit should alike be for England. An
accession of either to the pontificate might prove its ruin.[32] He
lauded the king's early character, his magnanimity, his generous
assistance in times past to the Holy See, his devotion to the Catholic
faith. Forgetting the Holy League, glossing over the Bull of Deposition
as an official form which there had been no thought of enforcing, he
ventured to say that for himself he had been Henry's friend from the
beginning. He had urged his predecessor to permit the divorce; at
Bologna he had laboured to persuade the Emperor to consent to it.[33] He
had sent a red hat to the Bishop of Rochester only that he might have
the benefit of his assistance at the approaching council; and when he
heard of his death, being surrounded by solicitations and clamours for
vengeance, he had but seemed for a time to consent to measures which
would never have been executed.
[Sidenote: The consistory are confident of success,]
[Sidenote: And possibly not without some reason.]
A warmer overture could scarcely have been conceived, and Cassalis
ventured to undertake that it was made in good faith.[34] It was true
that, as Cardinal of Ravenna, Paul III. had been an advocate for Henry;
and his abrupt change on his election to the see proves remarkably how
the genius of the Papacy could control the inclination of the
individual. Now, however, the Pope availed himself gladly of his earlier
conduct, and for a month at least nothing transpired at Rome to damp his
expectation. On the 5th of June Cardinal Campeggio wrote to the Duke of
Suffolk to feel his way towards the recovery of his lost bishopric of
Salisbury.[35] As late as St. John's day (June 24th) the Papal council
were rejoicing in the happy prospect which seemed to be reopened.
Strange it was, that so many times in this long struggle some accident
or some mistake occurred at a critical contingency to ruin hopes which
promised fairly, and which, if realized, would have changed the fortunes
of England. Neither the king nor the country would have surrendered
their conquered liberties; the Act of Appeals would have been
maintained, and, in substance if not in name, the Act of Supremacy. It
is possible, however, that, if at this juncture the Pope would have
relinquished the high pretensions which touched the allegiance of
subjects, Henry, for the sake of peace, would have acknowledged in the
Bishop of Rome a titular primacy.
Many times a good cause has been ruined by the over-zeal of its friends.
If there really existed such a danger, England may thank a young
nobleman for its escape, who was permitted to do his country a service
far different from his intentions. Once already we have seen Reginald
Pole in reluctant employment in Paris, receiving opinions on the
divorce. Henceforth for some years he will fill a prominent place in
this history, and he must be introduced with a brief account of his
life.
[Sidenote: History of Reginald Pole.]
Reginald, second son of Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, was
born in the year 1500. His mother, so long as the first of the Tudor
princes was on the throne, remained in obscurity. The titles and estates
of the Nevilles being afterwards restored to her and to her eldest son,
Reginald shared the benefits of the revival of his family, and was
selected by Henry VIII. for particular favour.
[Sidenote: He is educated by Henry for the Church.]
[Sidenote: Studies at Paris and Padua.]
He was educated under the king's eye, and at the king's expense; he was
pensioned and endowed, according to the fashion of the time, while
still a boy, with an ecclesiastical benefice; and he was designed,
should his inclination permit him, for the highest office in the English
church. These general kindnesses he himself gratefully acknowledges; and
he professes to have repaid Henry's care with a child's affection. He
says that he loved the king for his generosity to himself and his
family; that he loved him for his own high and noble qualities, his
liberality, his gentleness, his piety, his princely illustrious
nature.[36] Nor did he fail to profit by the advantages which were
heaped upon him. He studied industriously at Paris and at Padua,
acquiring, as he believed, all knowledge which living teachers could
impart to him; and he was himself so well satisfied with the result,
that at the mature age of thirty-six he could describe himself to Henry
as one who, although a young man, "had long been conversant with old
men; had long judged the eldest man that lived too young for him to
learn wisdom from."[37] Many ambitious youths have experienced the same
opinion of themselves; few have ventured on so confident an expression
of it. But for his family's sake as much as for his own, the king
continued to regard him with favour; and could he have prevailed upon
himself to acquiesce in the divorce of Queen Catherine, it is possible
that he would have succeeded Warham in the English primacy.
[Sidenote: He opposes the divorce.]
[Sidenote: Exertions are made to gain him over.]
[Sidenote: He wavers, but recovers his firmness].
[Sidenote: And writes a remonstrance.]
[Sidenote: He goes abroad with leave of absence, and is exempted from
the obligation of the oath of allegiance.]
From conviction, however, or from the tendency to contradiction
characteristic of a peculiar kind of talent, Pole was unable to adopt an
opinion so desirable for his interests. First doubtfully, and afterwards
emphatically and positively, he declared his dissent from the
resolutions of parliament and convocation. He had witnessed with his own
eyes the means by which the sentences had been obtained of the
universities abroad. He was satisfied of the injustice of the cause. He
assured himself that to proceed in it would be perilous to the realm.
His birth and the king's regard for him gave an importance to his
judgment which it would not otherwise have obtained. Repeated efforts
were made to gain him. His brother, Lord Montague, the Duke of Norfolk,
even Henry himself, exerted all their powers of persuasion. On the death
of Wolsey the archbishopric of York was held out to him as the reward of
compliance.[38] Once only he wavered. He had discovered, as he imagined,
a means of making a compromise with his conscience, and he went down to
Whitehall to communicate his change. But, as he rather theatrically
relates, when he found himself in the presence-chamber he could not
utter the words which he had intended to use; either he was restrained
by a Higher Power, or the sight of that Henry whom he loved so tenderly
paralysed his tongue; he burst into tears, and the king left him in
displeasure.[39] On retiring from the palace he wrote a letter of
apology; accompanying it, perhaps, with the formal statement of the
grounds of his opposition, which about this time he submitted to the
government.[40] His defence was received kindly; but, though clever, it
was little to the purpose. The arguments were chiefly political; and
Henry, who listened patiently to any objection on the ground of
principle, paid no very high respect to the opinion of a university
student in matters of state. Pole, finding his position increasingly
uneasy, in 1532 applied for and obtained permission to reside for a time
at Avignon. In his absence the divorce was completed; and England
becoming more than ever distasteful to him, he removed to the monastery
of Carpentras, and thence to his old quarters at Padua. Meantime Henry's
personal kindness towards him remained undiminished. His leave of
absence was indefinitely extended. His pension was continued to him; the
revenues of the deanery of Exeter were regularly paid to his account;
and he was exempted specially from the general condition required of all
holders of ecclesiastical benefices, the swearing allegiance to the
children of Queen Anne. He could himself neither have desired nor
expected a larger measure of forbearance.[41]
[Sidenote: His opinion is required on the supremacy of the see of Rome,]
This was his position in the year 1535, when, in common with all other
English noblemen and gentlemen, he was requested to send in his opinion
on the authority in foreign countries claimed by the see of Rome, and at
the same time to state whether his sentiments on the previous question
remained unchanged. The application was not formally made through the
council. A civilian, a Mr. Starkey, a personal acquaintance, was
entrusted with the commission of sending it; and Starkey took the
opportunity of advising his friend to avoid the errors into which he had
previously fallen. Pole's opinion on political perils, foreign
invasions, internal commotions, was not wanted. "As touching the
_policy_ of the separation from Rome, and the divorce, and of the
bringing them to effect, whether it were done well or ill," Starkey
ironically wrote, "his Grace requireth no judgment of you, as of one
that of such things hath no great experience as yet. Whether it should
be _convenient_ that there should be one head in the Church, and that
the Bishop of Rome ... set this aside, ... and in the matrimony, whether
the policy he hath used therein be profitable to the realm or no ...
leave that aside ... only shew you whether the supremacy which the
Bishop of Rome has for many ages claimed be of Divine right or no ...
and if the first matrimony see of Rome, were to make, you would approve
it then or no ... and the cause why you would not."
[Sidenote: And he is warned to answer sincerely.]
Finally, as Pole once before had been tempted to give an opinion against
his conscience, Starkey warned him to reply sincerely and honestly; to
think first of God and the truth; and only when his conscience would
permit him, to consider how he could satisfy the king. "His Grace said
to me," the letter concluded, "that he would rather you were buried
there than you should, for any worldly promotion or profit to yourself,
dissemble with him in these great and weighty causes."[42]
[Sidenote: He composes the book "De Unitate Ecclesiæ," and submits it to
Cardinal Contarini.]
The tone of this concluding passage teaches us not to rely too
absolutely on Pole's own version of the attempts which had before been
made upon his constancy. Perhaps the admonition, perhaps the irony, of
his correspondent galled him. At any rate, the king desired the truth,
and the truth he should have. Other things had been in rapid development
since Pole left England. He, too, had chosen his course, and his mind
had not stood still. It was now the winter of 1535, when the scheme of
the crusade was first taking shape. At this juncture he sat down to
comply with the king's demands. Instead of brief answers to brief
questions, he composed a considerable volume; and as the several parts
were completed, they were submitted to the inspection of Cardinal
Contarini. Had the project of war gone forward, and had other matters
remained unchanged, it is possible that Contarini would have found no
fault with a composition which afterwards was regarded in the Catholic
world with so much complacency. Under the actual circumstances, his
language alarmed by its violence. The cardinal protested against an
invective which could only irritate, and entreated Pole to reconsider
what he had written.
[Sidenote: Contarini protests, and Pole tells him that the book is
chiefly intended for the English nation.]
If Pole had been honest--if he had desired only the interests of the
Catholic church--he would have listened to advice; but he replied that
he well knew the king's character, and that the evil had risen to its
present height because no one had ventured to speak the truth to him.
Henry was not a man who could be moved by gentleness. Long ago the
heaviest censures of the Church ought to have been launched upon him,
and by that time he would have returned to his obedience. He said also
(and this is especially to be noticed), that he was not so much
addressing the king as addressing the English nation, who were impassive
and hard to move. He was determined to open their eyes to the delusion
into which they were betrayed, and he must go beyond the matter and
beside it, and insinuate when he was unable to assert.[43]
In this mood, and while the book was still unsent, he learnt with utter
mortification of the relinquishment of the Emperor's intended
enterprise, and the possible peaceful close of the quarrel. He had
proposed to himself a far different solution. It may be that he was
convinced that no such peaceful close could lead to good. It may have
been, that the white rose was twining pure before his imagination, with
no red blossoms intermixed, round the pillars of a regenerated church.
Or, perhaps, many motives, distinct and indistinct, were working upon
him. Only the fact is certain, that he might have mediated, but that he
was determined rather to make mediation impossible; the broken limb
should not be set in its existing posture.
[Sidenote: He considers that Henry must not be reconciled to]
[Sidenote: the Church, except on his unconditional submission.]
In March he heard that the Pope was softening. He wrote, urgently
entreating that his Holiness would commit himself in nothing till in
possession of secrets which he could communicate.[44] Contarini having
desired that he might show the book to Paul, he refused, under the plea
that others might see it, and that he was bound to give Henry the first
perusal; an honourable answer, if his other insincerity allowed us to
accept his word. We may believe, with no want of charity, that his real
fear was, lest Paul should share the feelings of Contarini, and for the
present discourage its despatch.[45] His letters at this time display an
unveiled anxiety for immediate open hostility. His advice to the Pope
was to send out his bull without more delay. He passionately deplored
the change which the death of Catherine had worked upon Charles. "Alas!"
he said, "that the interests of the Church should be affected by the
life or death of a single woman! Oh that his Holiness could but convince
the Emperor of his blessed privileges as the champion of the Catholic
faith!"[46] "The Emperor preferred to fight against the Turks. What were
the Turks compared with the antichrist of England? What advantages would
be gained if the Crescent were driven out of Europe, and England were
lost? Let him strike at once while the wound was green: it would soon
gangrene and mortify, and then it would be too late."
This language, under some aspects, may appear pardonable--may, perhaps,
be admired as the expression of a fine enthusiasm. Those whose sympathy
with sentimental emotions is restrained within the prosaic limits of
ordinary law, would call it by a harder name. High treason, if it be not
a virtue, is the worst of crimes; and for a subject to invite a foreign
power to invade his country is the darkest form of treason. An unjust
exile might be pleaded as a faint palliation--a distinct religious
obligation might convert the traitor into a patriot. Neither of these
pretexts could be urged at the existing crisis in defence of Reginald
Pole.
The book was completed in the middle of the winter; the correspondence
connected with it extended through February, March, and April. In May
came the news of Anne Boleyn's crimes, and the fresh impulse which I
have described to the hopes of the Pope and his more moderate advisers.
The expectation of a reconciliation was approaching to a certainty, and
if he waited longer it might be too late. That particular time he
selected to despatch his composition, and rouse again (it is idle to
suppose that he was blind to the inevitable consequence) the full storm
of indignation and suspicion.[47]
[Sidenote: May. He sends his book to England.]
A production, the effect of which was so considerable, requires some
analysis. It shall be as brief as is consistent with the due
understanding of the feeling which the book created.[48]
[Sidenote: He writes as a faithful servant to his sick master.]
"Whether to write or not to write," commenced the youthful champion of
the faith, "I cannot tell; when to write has cost the lives of so many
and so noble men, and the service of God is counted for the worst of
crimes. Duty urges me to write; yet what shall I write? The most
faithful servant may hesitate in what language to address his sick
master, when those who so far have approached his bed have forfeited
their lives. Yet speak I will--I will cry in your ears as in the ears of
a dead man--dead in your sins. I love you--wicked as you are, I love
you. I hope for you, and may God hear my prayer. You desire the truth; I
should be a traitor, then, did I conceal from you the truth. I owe my
learning to your care. I will use against yourself the weapons with
which yourself have armed me.
[Sidenote: He will show Henry his crimes.]
"You have done no wrong, you say. Come, then, I will show you your
wrong. You have changed the constitution of your country, and that is
wrong. When the Church had but one head, you have made her a monster
with a separate head in every realm, and that is wrong. You, of all
princes (bad and impious as many of them have been), are the first who
has ventured so enormous an impiety. Your flatterers have filled your
heart with folly; you have made yourself abhorred among the rulers of
Christendom. Do you suppose that in all these centuries the Church has
failed to learn how best she should be governed? What insolence to the
bride of Christ! What insolence to Christ Himself! You pretend to follow
Scripture! So say all heretics, and with equal justice. No word in
Scripture makes for you, except it be the single sentence, 'Honour the
king.' How frail a foundation for so huge a superstructure!"
Having thus opened the indictment, he proceeded to dissect a book which
had been written on the Supremacy by Dr. Sampson. Here he for some time
expatiated, and having disposed of his theological antagonist, opened
his parallels upon the king by a discussion of the principles of a
commonwealth.
[Sidenote: His theory of the constitution of a state.]
"What is a king?" he asked. "A king exists for the sake of his people;
he is an outcome from Nature in labour;[49] an institution for the
defence of material and temporal interests. But inasmuch there are
interests beyond the temporal, so there is a jurisdiction beyond the
king's. The glory of a king is the welfare of his people; and if he
knew himself, and knew his office, he would lay his crown and kingdom at
the feet of the priesthood, as in a haven and quiet resting place. To
priests it was said, 'Ye are gods, and ye are the children of the Most
High.' Who, then, can doubt that priests are higher in dignity than
kings. In human society are three grades--the people--the priesthood,
the head and husband of the people--the king, who is the child, the
creature, and minister of the other two."[50]
From these premises it followed that Henry was a traitor, a rebel
against his true superior; and the first section closed with a fine
rhetorical peroration.
[Sidenote: The king is the man of sin and the prince of pride.]
"Oh, Henry!" he exclaimed, "more wicked than Ozias, who was smitten with
leprosy when he despised the warnings of Azariah--more wicked than Saul,
who slew the priests of the Lord--more wicked than Dathan and Abiram,
who rose in rebellion against Aaron--what hast thou done? What! but that
which is written in the Scripture of the prince of pride--'I will climb
up into heaven; I will set my throne above the stars; I will sit me down
on the mount of the covenant; I will make myself even with the Most
High.' . . . He shall send his vengeance upon thee--vengeance sudden,
swift, and terrible. It shall come; nor can I pray that it may longer
tarry. Rather may it come and come quickly, to the glory of his name. I
will say, like Elijah, 'Oh, Lord! they have slain thy prophets with the
edge of the sword; they have thrown down thine altars; and I only am
left, and they seek my life to take it away. Up, Lord, and avenge the
blood of thy holy ones.'"
[Sidenote: The English bishops are the robber Cacus; the Pope is the
sleeping Hercules.]
He now paused for a moment in his denunciation of Henry, and took up his
parable against the English bishops, who had betrayed the flock of
Christ, and driven them into the den of the villain king. "You thought,"
he said to these learned prelates, "that the Roman pontiff slept--that
you might spoil him with impunity, as the robber Cacus spoiled the
sleeping Hercules. Ah! but the Lord of the sheep sees you. He sees you
from his throne in heaven. Not we only who are left yet alive tell, with
our bleating voices, whither you have driven us; but, in louder tones
than ours, the blood of those whom ye have slain, because they would not
hear your hireling voices, cries out of the dust to Christ. Oh,
horrible!--most horrible! No penalty which human justice could devise
can reach your crimes. Men look to see when some unwonted vengeance
shall light upon you, like that which fell on Korah and his company, in
whose footsteps ye now are following. If the earth open her mouth and
swallow you up quick, every Christian man will applaud the righteous
judgment of the Almighty."
[Sidenote: Responsibility of sovereigns to their subjects.]
Again he passed back to the king, assailing him in pages of alternate
argument and reprobation. In most modern language he asserted the
responsibility of sovereigns, calling English history to witness for him
in the just rebellions provoked by tyranny; and Henry, he said, had
broken his coronation oath and forfeited his crown. This and similar
matter occupied the second part. It had been tolerably immoderate even
so far, but the main torrent had yet to flow.
The third and most important section divides itself into an address,
first to the king and then to England; finally to the foreign
powers--the Emperor particularly, and the Spanish army.
[Sidenote: He will be the king's physician, and unfold his wicked heart
to him.]
[Sidenote: The king a thief and a robber.]
"I have spoken," he commenced, "but, after all, I have spoken in vain.
Wine turns to vinegar in a foul vessel; and to little purpose have I
poured my truth into a mind defiled with falsehood and impurity. How
shall I purify you? How, indeed! when you imagine that yourself, and not
I, are in possession of the truth; when you undertake to be a teacher of
others; when, forsooth, you are head of a church. But, come, listen to
me. I will be your physician. I will thrust a probe into those envenomed
wounds. If I cause you pain, believe that it is for your good. You do
not know that you have a wound to probe. You pretend that you have only
sought to do the will of God. You will say so. I know it. But, I beseech
you, listen to me. Was it indeed your conscience which moved you? Not
so. You lusted after a woman who was not your wife. You would make the
Word of God bear false witness for you; and God's providence has
permitted you to overwhelm yourself in infamy. I say, you desired to
fulfil your lusts. And how, you ask, do I know this? How can I see your
heart? Who but God can read those secrets? Yes, oh prince; he also
knows--to whom God will reveal the heart. And I tell you that I am he to
whom God has revealed yours. You will cry out against my arrogance. How
should God open your heart to me? But contain yourself a little. I do
not say that God has shewn more to me than he has shewn to any man who
will use his understanding.[51] You think that the offspring of your
harlot will be allowed to sit on the throne, that the pure blood of
England will endure to be her subjects. No, truly. If you dream thus,
you have little of your father's wisdom. There is not a peer in all the
land who will not hold his title better than the title of a harlot's
bastard. Like Cadmus, you have flung a spear among your people, and
armed them for mutual slaughter. And you--you, the vilest of
plunderers--a thief--a robber--you call yourself supreme head of the
Church! I acquit the nation of the infamy of their consent. They have
not consented. The few suffrages which you can claim have been extorted
by terrour. Again, how do I know this? I, who was absent from my
country? Yes, I was absent. Nor have I heard one word of it from any
creature. And yet so it is. I have a more sure testimony than the
testimony of eyes and ears, which forbids me to be mistaken."
The witness was the death of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the
Charterhouse monks; and the story of their martyrdom was told with some
power and passion.
[Sidenote: He calls on England to rise in rebellion.]
The remedy for all its evils rested with England. England must rebel. He
called on it, with solemn earnestness, to consider its position: its
church infected with heresy, its saints slaughtered, its laws uprooted,
its succession shattered; sedition within, and foreign war imminent from
without; and the single cause of these accumulated miseries a licentious
tyrant. "And oh! my country," he exclaimed, "if any memory remains to
you of your antient liberties, remember--remember the time when kings
who ruled over you unjustly were called to account by the authority of
your laws. They tell you that all is the king's. I tell you that all is
the commonwealth's. You, oh! my country, are all. The king is but your
servant and minister. Wipe away your tears, and turn to the Lord your
God."
[Sidenote: He will invite the King of France to depose Henry.]
Of his own conduct he would give Henry fair warning. "I myself," he
said, once more addressing him, "I myself shall approach the throne of
your last ally, the King of France. I shall demand that he assist you no
longer; that, remembering the honour of his father, with his own past
fidelity to the Church of Christ, he will turn against you and strike
you down. And think you that he will refuse my petition? How long dream
you that God will bear with you? Your company shall be broken up. The
scourge shall come down upon you like a wave. The pirates who waste the
shores of the Mediterranean are less the servants of Satan than you. The
pirates murder but the bodies of men. You murder their souls. Satan
alone, of all created beings, may fitly be compared with you."
So far I have endeavoured to condense the voluminous language into a
paraphrase, which but languidly approaches the blaze and fury of the
original. Vituperation, notwithstanding, would have been of trifling
consequence; and the safe exhortations of refugees, inciting domestic
rebellions the dangers of which they have no intention of sharing, are a
form of treason which may usually be despised. But it is otherwise when
the refugee becomes a foreign agent of his faction, and not only
threatens to invite invasion, but converts his menace into act. When the
pages which follow were printed, they seemed of such grave moment that
they were extracted and circulated as a pamphlet in the German States.
The translation, therefore, will now adhere closely to the text.
[Sidenote: The invocation of the Emperor.]
[Sidenote: Who are the true enemies of Christendom?]
[Sidenote: Not Turks, but heretics.]
[Sidenote: Heresy in Germany.]
[Sidenote: Deeper heresy in England,]
[Sidenote: Which will grow inveterate if it be not nipped in the bud.]
"I call to witness," he went on, "that love of my country which is
engrafted in me by nature--that love of the Church which is given to me
by the Son of God--did I hear that the Emperor was on the seas, on his
way against Constantinople, I would know no rest till I was at his
feet--I would call to him were he in the very narrows of the
Bosphorus--I would force myself into his presence--I would address him
thus: 'Cæsar,' I would say, 'what is this which you are doing? Whither
are you leading this mighty army? Would you subdue the enemies of
Christendom? Oh! then, turn, turn your sails. Go where a worse peril is
threatening--where the wound is fresh, and where a foe presses more
fearful far than the Turk. You count it a noble thing to break the
chains of Christian captives: and noble, indeed, it is. But more
glorious is it to rescue from eternal damnation the many thousand souls
who are torn from the Church's bosom, and to bring them back to the
faith of Christ. What will you have gained when you have driven back the
Turks, if other Turks be sprung up meanwhile amidst ourselves? What are
Turks save a sect of Christians revolted from the Church? The beginning
of the Turks is the beginning of all heretics. They rejected the Head
which was set over them by Christ, and thus by degrees they fell away
from the doctrine of Christ. What then? See you not the seed of these
self-same Turks scattered at home before your doors? Would, indeed, it
were so scanty that there was any difficulty in discerning its presence!
Yes; you see it, sad to say, in your own Germany. The disease is there,
though not as yet in its worst form. It is not yet set forth by
authority. The German church may even now cast forth the seed of the
adulterers, and bear again the true fruit of Catholic truth. But for
England! Alas! in England that seed is sown thick and broad; and by the
sovereign's hand. It is sown, and it is quickening, and the growing
blade is defended by the sword. The sword is the answer to all
opponents. Nay, even silence is an equal crime. Thomas More, the wisest,
the most virtuous of living men, was slain for silence. Among the monks,
the more holy, the more devout they be, the greater is the peril. All
lips are closed by fear of death. If these fine beginnings do not prove
to you what it is to forsake the head of the Church, what other evidence
do you desire? The Turks might teach you: they, too, forsook him--they,
too, brought in the power of the sword; by the sword these many ages
they have maintained themselves, and now the memory of their mother has
perished, and too late the Church cries to her lost children to return
to her.[52] Or, again, Germany may teach you. How calm, how tranquil,
how full of piety was Germany! How did Germany flourish while it held
steadfast by the faith! How has it been torn with wars, distracted with
mutinies, since it has revolted from its allegiance! There is no hope
for Germany, unless, which God grant, it return to the Church--our
Supreme Head. This is the Church's surest bulwark; this is the first
mark for the assaults of heretics; this is the first rallying point of
true Catholics; this, Cæsar, those heroic children of the Church in
England have lately died to defend, choosing rather to give their naked
bodies to the swords of their enemies than desert a post which was the
key to the sanctuary.
[Sidenote: The venom of heresy has reached a king.]
[Sidenote: The servants of Christ cry to Charles to help them.]
[Sidenote: Legions of the faithful in England will rally to his
banners.]
"'That post was stormed--those valiant soldiers were slain. What wonder,
when the champion of the foemen's host was a king! Oh, misery! worse
than the worst which ever yet has befallen the spouse of Christ! The
poison of heresy has reached a king, and, like the Turk, he shakes his
drawn sword in the face of all who resist him. If he affect now some
show of moderation, it is but to gain time and strength, that he may
strike the deadlier blows; and strike he will, doubt it not, if he
obtain his desire. Will you then, Cæsar--you who profess that you love
the faith--will you grant him that time? When the servants of Christ cry
to you, in their agony, for help,--when you must aid them now, or your
aid will be for ever useless,--will you turn your arms on other foes?
will you be found wanting to the passionate hope of your friends, when
that hope alone, that simple hope, has held them back from using their
own strength and striking for themselves? Dream not, Cæsar, that all
generous hearts are quenched in England--that faith and piety are dead.
Judge rather those who are alive by the deaths of those who have gone to
the scaffold for religion's sake. If God reserved for Himself seven
thousand in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal, when Ahab and his
cursed Jezebel slew his prophets, think not that, in these days of
greater light, our Jezebel, with all her scent for blood, has destroyed
the whole defenders of the truth. There are legions in England yet
unbroken who have never yet bent their knees. Go thither, and God, who
has been their Saviour, will bid them rally to your banners. They are
the same English, Cæsar, who, unaided, and in slighter causes, have
brought their princes to their judgment bar--have bidden them give
account for moneys wasted to the prejudice of the commonwealth, and when
they could not pass their audit, have stripped them of crown and
sceptre. They are the same; and long ago, in like manner, would they
have punished this king also, but that they looked to you. In you is
their trust--in your noble nature, and in your zeal for God. Their cause
is yours, peculiarly yours; by you they think the evil can be remedied
with less hurt to England than by themselves. Wisely, therefore, they
hold their hand till you shall come.
[Sidenote: Catherine of Arragon appeals to her Spaniards.]
"'And you--you will leave them desolate; you turn your back upon this
glorious cause; you waste yourself in a distant enterprise. Is it that
your soldiers demand this unhappy preference? are your soldiers so eager
to face their old eastern enemies? But what soldiers, Cæsar! Your
Spaniards?--your own Spaniards? Ah! if they could hear the noble
daughter of Isabella, wasted with misery, appealing in her most
righteous cause to their faithful hearts! The memory of that illustrious
lady, well I know, is not yet so blotted from their recollection that a
daughter worthy of so great a mother could pray to them in vain. Were
they told that a princess of Spain, child of the proudest sovereign of
that proud empire, after twenty years of marriage, had been driven out
as if she had been the bastard of some clown or huckster that had crept
from her filth into the royal bed, and to make room for a vile
harlot--think you they would tamely bear an injury which the basest of
mankind would wash out in blood? Think you that, when there scarce
breathes a man so poor of soul who would not risk his life to requite so
deep an indignity, the gentlemen of Spain will hesitate to revenge the
daughter of their sovereign? Shall it go out among the nations to your
shame and everlasting ignominy, that Spain sits down under the insult
because she is faint-hearted--because she is feeble, and dares not move?
It cannot be. Gather them together, Cæsar. Call your musters; I will
speak to them--I will tell them that the child and grandchild of
Isabella of Castile are dishonoured and robbed of their inheritance, and
at the mention of that name you shall see them reverse their sails, and
turn back of themselves their vessels' prows.
[Sidenote: Not for herself, but for the Church, for the faith, for
England.]
"'But not for Catherine's sake do I now stand a suitor either to you or
them. For herself she desires nothing; she utters no complaint over her
most unrighteous fate. You are now in the meridian of your glory, and
some portion of its lustre should be hers; yet she is miserable, and she
endures her misery. Each fresh triumph of your arms entails on her some
fresh oppression; but hers is no selfish sorrow for herself or for her
cause. She implores you, Cæsar, for the sake of England, of that England
into which from her own noble stem she was once engrafted, which she
loves and must love as her second country. Her private interests are
nothing to her; but if it so happen that the cause of this illustrious
and most dear land is so bound up in hers--that if she be neglected,
England must forfeit her place among the nations--must be torn with
civil distractions, and be plunged in ruin and disaster
irretrievable--if the cause of religion be so joined to her cause that
her desertion is the desertion of the Holy Church, that the ancient
faith will be destroyed, new sects will spring up, not in that island
only, which at her coming she found so true to its creed, but spreading
like contagion, and bringing to confusion the entire communion of the
faithful (and this is no conjectural danger: it is even now come--it is
among us; already, in England, to be a friend to the old customs of the
Church is fraught with deadly peril)--finally, if in this matter there
be every motive which ought to affect a prince who loves the name of
Christ--then--then she does entreat you not to delay longer in hastening
to deliverance of the Christian commonwealth, because it happens that
the common cause is her cause--because Ferdinand of Spain was her
father--because Isabella was her mother--because she is your own
aunt--because her most ruthless enemies have never dared to hint that in
word or deed she has been unworthy of her ancestors, or of the noble
realm from which she sprang.
[Sidenote: By all which Charles holds dear she implores him to come to
her assistance.]
"'She implores you, if God has given you strength to defy so powerful an
enemy as the Turk, in that case, not to shrink from marching against a
foe more malignant than the Turk, where the peril is nothing, and
victory is sure. By the ties of blood, which are so close between you
and her--by the honour of Spain which is compromised--by the welfare of
Christendom, which ought to be so dear to us all--she beseeches you, on
her knees, that you will permit no mean object to divert you from so
holy, so grand, so brilliant an enterprise, when you can vindicate at
once the honour of your family and the glory of that realm which has
made you famous by so many victories, and simultaneously you can shield
the Christian commonwealth from the worst disasters which have menaced
it for centuries.'"
Here terminated this grand apostrophe, too exquisite a composition to be
lost--too useful when hereafter it was to be thrown out as a firebrand
into Europe, although Catherine, happily for herself, had passed away
before her chivalrous knight flung down his cartel for her. A few more
words were, however, in reserve for Henry.
[Sidenote: Concluding anathemas against Henry.]
"I have spoken of Cæsar," he turned and said to him; "I might have
spoken of all Christian princes. Do you seriously think that the King of
France will refuse obedience when the Pope bids him make peace with the
Emperor, and undertake your chastisement? He will obey, doubt it not;
and when you are trampled down under their feet there will be more joy
in Christendom than if the Turks were driven from Constantinople. What
will you do? What will become of your subjects when the ports of the
Continent are closed, as closed they will be, against them and their
commerce? How will they loathe you then? How will you be cast out among
the curses of mankind?[53] When you die you shall have no lawful burial,
and what will happen to your soul I forbear to say. Man is against you;
God is against you; the universe is against you. What can you look for
but destruction?"
The hurricane had reached its height; it spent its fury in its last
gusts. The note changed, the threats ceased, and the beauty of
humiliation and the promises of forgiveness to the penitent closed the
volume.
[Sidenote: Pole's central error.]
[Sidenote: The witness of fact.]
Thus wrote an English subject to his sovereign, and professed afterwards
to be overwhelmed with astonishment when he learnt that his behaviour
was considered unbecoming. As Samuel to Saul, as Nathan to David, as
Elijah to Ahab, so was Reginald Pole to Henry the Eighth, the immediate
messenger of Heaven, making, however, one central and serious error:
that, when between Henry the Eighth and the Papacy there lay to be
contended for, on the one side, liberty, light, and justice--on the
other, tyranny, darkness, and iniquity, in this great duel the Pope was
God's champion, and Henry was the devil's. No pit opened its mouth to
swallow the English bishops; no civil wars wrecked the prosperity of the
country; no foreign power overwhelmed it; no dishonour touched its arms,
except in the short interval when Catherine's daughter restored the
authority of the Papacy, and Pole was Archbishop of Canterbury, and the
last relic of the empire of the Plantagenets in France was lost for
ever. He was pleased with his composition, however. He determined, in
spite of Contarini, to send it. He expected the English council to
believe him when he declared that he had no sinister intention, that he
seriously imagined that a monarch who had taken the Pope by the beard
and hurled him out of the kingdom, would be frightened by the lectures
and threats of a petulant youth.
[Sidenote: Cuthbert Tunstall is desired to undertake the first perusal
of the book.]
On the 27th of May the book was despatched to England by a messenger
from Venice, and with it Pole sent two letters, one to the king, the
other to his friend Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham. The first
contained little more than the credentials of the bearer. The letter to
Tunstall, as well as a verbal message by which it was accompanied, was
to the effect, that the book was long, too long for the king himself to
read; he desired his friend to undertake, and the king to permit him to
undertake, the first perusal. The contents were to be looked upon as a
secret communication between himself and his Majesty; no eye had seen
more than a small portion of what he had written, and that against his
own will. The addresses and apostrophes inserted here and there, which
might seem at first sight questionable, were dramatically introduced
only to give effect to his argument.[54] These statements seem somewhat
adventurous when we think of the correspondence with Cardinal Contarini,
and of Pole's assertion that he was writing less for the king than to
undeceive the English people; nor do we readily acquiesce in the belief
that the invocation to Charles was not intended for Charles's eyes, when
the writer very soon after submitted it to those eyes, and devoted the
energies of years to bring the Spaniards into England.
[Sidenote: Effect of the book in England.]
[Sidenote: Pole is required to return to England and explain himself.]
The messenger arrived early in June. Parliament had just met to receive
the report of the queen's crimes and execution, and the king, occupied
with other business, gladly complied with Pole's request, and left to
others the examination of so bulky a volume. It was placed in the hands
of Tunstall and Starkey. Whether Henry ever read it is not certain. If
he saw it at all, it was at a later period.[55] At once, if any hope or
thought had existed of a return to communion with the Papacy, that hope
was at an end. Written from Italy, the book was accepted as representing
the feeling if not dictated by the instructions of the Ultra-Catholics;
and in such a mood they could only be treated as enemies. So much of its
character as was necessary was laid before Henry, and, on the 14th of
June, within a day or two therefore of its receipt, a courier was
despatched with replies both from Henry himself, from the Bishop of
Durham, Starkey, and Cromwell. If Pole expected to be regarded as a
formidable person, his vanity was seriously mortified. The substance of
what he had written was seen to be sufficiently venomous, but the writer
himself was treated rather as foolish than as wicked, and by the king
was regarded with some kind of pity. Henry wrote (it would seem briefly)
commanding him on his allegiance, all excuses set apart, to return to
England and explain himself.[56]
[Sidenote: Remonstrances of Pole's friends.]
[Sidenote: The king will forgive the book if his forgiveness is asked.]
The summons was more fully explained by Starkey and Tunstall. The former
declared that at the first reading of the book he was so much amazed
and astonished that he knew not what to think except that he was in a
dream.[57] The Bishop of Durham, on whose support Pole seems to have
calculated, condescended to his arguments, and replied in formal
Anglican language, that to separate from the Pope was not to separate
from the unity of the Church: the Head of the Church was Christ, and
unity was unity of doctrine, to which England adhered as truly as Rome:
Pole had made a preposterous mistake, and it had led him into conduct
which at present, if properly atoned for, might be passed over as folly,
and covered and forgotten: if persevered in it would become a crime; but
it was a secret so far, and if promptly repented of, should remain a
secret from all eyes for ever.[58] He was commanded by the government,
he was implored by his friends to return to England, to make his peace
in person, and entreat the king's forgiveness.
[Sidenote: July. Pole protests that his book is a private letter, and
that he meant no harm.]
[Sidenote: The king accepts his declaration, and will overlook his
conduct.]
But neither his friends nor the king understood Pole's character or
comprehended his purpose. He was less foolish, he was more malicious
than they supposed. When the letters reached him, he professed to be
utterly surprised at the reception which his book had met with. He
regretted that the Supremacy Act made it impossible for him to comply
with a command to present himself in England; but he protested so loudly
that he had meant neither injury nor disrespect, he declared so
emphatically that his book was a _bonâ fide_ letter addressed to the
king only, and written for his own eyes and no other's, that at last
Henry believed him, accepted his assurance, and consented to pass over
his impertinence. In July or August he was informed by Starkey "that the
king took the intolerable sharpness of his writings even as they that
most friendly could interpret them. He thought, as few would think, that
the exaggerations, the oft-returning to the same faults, the vehement
exclamations, the hot sentences, the uncomely bitings, the despiteful
comparisons, and likenings, all came of error and not of evil intent.
His Grace supposed his benefits not forgotten, and Pole's love towards
his Highness not utterly quenched. His Majesty was one that forgave and
forgot displeasure, both at once." For his own part, however, Starkey
implored his friend, as he valued his country, his honour, his good
name, to repent himself, as he had desired the king to repent; the king
would not press him or force his conscience; if he could be brought to
reconsider his conduct, he might be assured that it would not be
remembered against him.[59] Simultaneously with, or soon after this
letter, the Bishop of Durham wrote also by the king's order, saying
that, as he objected to return, it should not be insisted on; inasmuch,
however, as he had affirmed so positively that his book was a private
communication, there could be no further reason for preserving any other
copies of it, and if he had such copies in his possession he was called
upon to prove his sincerity by burning them. On his compliance, his
property, which would be forfeited under the Supremacy Act, should
remain in his hands, and he was free to reside in any country which he
might choose.[60]
Pole did not burn his book, nor was it long before he gave the
government reason to regret their forbearance towards him. For the time
he continued in receipt of his income, and the stir which he had created
died away.
There are many scenes in human life which, as a great poet teaches us,
are either sad or beautiful, cheerless or refreshing, according to the
direction from which we approach them.[61] If, on a morning in spring,
we behold the ridges of a fresh-turned ploughed field from their
northern side, our eyes, catching only the shadowed slopes of the
successive furrows, see an expanse of white, the unmelted remains of the
night's hailstorm, or the hoarfrost of the dawn. We make a circuit, or
we cross over and look behind us, and on the very same ground there is
nothing to be seen but the rich brown soil swelling in the sunshine,
warm with promise, and chequered perhaps here and there with a green
blade bursting through the surface. Both images are true to the facts of
nature. Both pictures are created by real objects really existing. The
pleasant certainty, however, remains with us, that the winter is passing
away and summer is coming; the promise of the future is not with the ice
and the sleet, but with the sunshine, with gladness, and hope.
[Sidenote: Other aspects of the condition of England.]
Reginald Pole has shown us the form in which England appeared to him,
and to the Catholic world beyond its shores, bound under an iron yoke,
and sinking down in despair and desolation. To us who have seen the
golden harvests waving over her fields, his loud raving has a sound of
delirium: we perceive only the happy symptoms of lengthening daylight,
bringing with it once more the season of life, and health, and
fertility. But there is a third aspect--and it is this which we must now
endeavour to present to ourselves--of England as it appeared to its own
toiling children in the hour of their trial, with its lights and
shadows, its frozen prejudices and sunny gleams of faith; when day
followed day, and brought no certain change, and men knew not whether
night would prevail or day, or which of the two was most divine--night,
with its starry firmament of saints and ceremonies, or day, with the
single lustre of the Gospel sun. It is idle to try to reproduce such a
time in any single shape or uniform colour. The reader must call his
imagination to his aid, and endeavour, if he can, to see the same object
in many shapes and many colours, to sympathize successively with those
to whom the Reformation was a terror, with those to whom it was the
dearest hope, and those others--the multitude--whose minds could give
them no certain answer, who shifted from day to day, as the impulse of
the moment swayed them.
[Sidenote: Sunday, June 9. Opening of convocation.]
[Sidenote: The gathering of the clergy in St. Paul's.]
When parliament met in June, 1536, convocation as usual assembled with
it. On Sunday, the ninth of the month, the two houses of the clergy were
gathered for the opening of their session in the aisles of St.
Paul's--high and low, hot and cold, brave and cowardly. The great
question of the day, the Reformation of the Church, was one in which
they, the spiritualty of England, might be expected to bear some useful
part. They had as yet borne no part but a part of obstruction. They had
been compelled to sit impatiently, with tied hands, while the lay
legislature prescribed their duties and shaped their laws for them.
Whether they would assume a more becoming posture, was the problem which
they were now met to solve. Gardiner was there, and Bonner, Tunstall,
and Hilsey, Lee, Latimer, and Cranmer; mitred abbots, meditating the
treason for which, before many months were passed, their quartered
trunks would be rotting by the highways; earnest sacramentaries, making
ready for the stake: the spirits of the two ages--the past and the
future--were meeting there in fierce collision; and above them all, in
his vicar-general's chair, sate Cromwell, proud and powerful, lording
over the scowling crowd. The present hour was his. His enemies' turn in
due time would come also.
The mass had been sung, the roll of the organ had died away. It was the
time for the sermon, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, rose into
the pulpit. Nine-tenths of all those eyes which were then fixed on him
would have glistened with delight, could they have looked instead upon
his burning. The whole multitude of passionate men were compelled, by a
changed world, to listen quietly while he shot his bitter arrows among
them.
[Sidenote: Latimer in the pulpit.]
We have heard Pole; we will now hear the heretic leader. His object on
the present occasion was to tell the clergy what especially he thought
of themselves; and Latimer was a plain speaker. They had no good opinion
of him. His opinion of them was very bad indeed. His text was from the
sixteenth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel: "The children of this world are
wiser in their generation than the children of light."
[Sidenote: The convocation had sat for seven years.]
[Sidenote: What had the convocation done?]
The race and parentage of all living things, he said, were known by
their fruits. He desired by this test to try the parentage of the
present convocation. They had sat--the men that he saw before him--for
seven years, more or less, session after session. What measures had come
from them? They were the spiritualty--the teachers of the people,
divinely commissioned; said to be and believed to be, children of light;
what had they done?... Mighty evils in those years had been swept away
in England ... but whose hands had been at the work?--was it theirs? For
his part, he knew that they had burned a dead man's bones; he knew that
they had done their best to burn the living man who was then speaking to
them.... What else they had done he knew not.
[Sidenote: England is reformed, but have the clergy reformed England or
has the King?]
The end of your convocation shall show what ye are, he said, turning
direct upon them; the fruit of your consultations shall show what
generation ye be of. What now have ye engendered? what have ye brought
forth? What fruit has come of your long and great assembly? What one
thing that the people have been the better of a hair? That the people be
better learned and taught now than they were in time past, should we
attribute it to your industry, or to the providence of God and the
foreseeing of the King's Grace? Ought we to thank you or the King's
Highness? Whether stirred the other first?--you the king, that ye might
preach, or he you, by his letters, that ye should preach more often? Is
it unknown, think you, how both ye and your curates were in manner by
violence enforced to let books be made, not by you, but by profane and
lay persons? I am bold with you; but I speak to the clergy, not to the
laity. I speak to your faces, not behind your backs.
[Sidenote: Certain things they had produced, but were they good or
evil?]
If, then, they had produced no good thing, what had they produced? There
was false money instead of true. There were dead images instead of a
living Saviour. There was redemption purchased by money, not redemption
purchased by Christ. Abundance of these things were to be found among
them ... and all those pleasant fictions which had been bred at Rome,
the canonizations and expectations, the tot-quots and dispensations, the
pardons of marvellous variety, stationaries and jubilaries, manuaries
and oscularies, pedaries, and such other vanities--these had gracious
reception; these were welcomed gladly in all their multiplicity. There
was the ancient purgatory pick-purse--that which was suaged and cooled
with a Franciscan's cowl laid upon a dead man's back, to the fourth part
of his sins; that which was utterly to be spoiled, but of none other but
the most prudent father the Pope, and of him as oft as he listed--a
pleasant invention, and one so profitable to the feigners, that no
emperor had taken more by taxes of his living subjects than those truly
begotten children of the world obtained by dead men's tributes.
[Sidenote: The parentage of the English spiritualty,]
[Sidenote: And the future which they are to expect.]
This was the modern Gospel--the present Catholic faith,--which the
English clergy loved and taught as faithfully as their brothers in
Italy. "Ye know the proverb," the preacher continued, "'An evil crow an
evil egg.' The children of this world that are known to have so evil a
father the world, so evil a grandfather the devil, cannot choose but be
evil--the devil being such an one as never can be unlike himself. So of
Envy, his well-beloved leman, he begot the World, and left it with
Discord at nurse; which World, after it came to man's estate, had of
many concubines many sons. These are our holy, holy men, that say they
are dead to the world; and none are more lively to the world. God is
taking account of his stewards, as though he should say, 'All good men
in all places accuse your avarice, your exactions, your tyranny. I
commanded you that ye should feed my sheep, and ye earnestly feed
yourselves from day to day, wallowing in delights and idleness. I
commanded you to teach my law; you teach your own traditions, and seek
your own glory. I taught openly, that he that should hear you should
hear Me; he that should despise you should despise Me. I gave you also
keys--not earthly keys, but heavenly. I left my goods, that I have
evermore esteemed, my Word and sacraments, to be dispensed by you. Ye
have not deceived Me, but yourselves: my gifts and my benefits shall be
to your greater damnation. Because ye have despised the clemency of the
Master of the house, ye have deserved the severity of the Judge. Come
forth; let us see an account of your stewardship.'
"And He will visit you; in his good time God will visit you. He will
come; He will not tarry long. In the day in which we look not for Him,
and in the hour which we do not know, He will come and will cut us in
pieces, and will give us our portion with the hypocrites. He will set
us, my brethren, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth; and here,
if ye will, shall be the end of our tragedy."[62]
Our glimpses into these scenes fall but fitfully. The sermon has reached
us; but the audience--the five hundred fierce vindictive men who
suffered under the preacher's irony--what they thought of it; with what
feelings on that summer day the heated crowd scattered out of the
cathedral, dispersing to their dinners among the taverns in Fleet-street
and Cheapside--all this is gone, gone without a sound. Here no friendly
informer comes to help us; no penitent malcontent breaks confidence or
lifts the curtain. All is silent.
[Sidenote: Sullen temper of the clergy.]
[Sidenote: Their hopes and prospects.]
Yet, although the special acts of this body were of no mighty moment,
although rarely have so many men been gathered together whose actual
importance has borne so small a proportion to their estimate of
themselves, yet not often, perhaps, has an assembly collected where
there was such heat of passion, such malignity of hatred. For the last
three years the clergy had remained torpid and half stunned, doggedly
obeying the proclamations for the alterations of the service, and
keeping beyond the grasp of the law. But, although too demoralized by
their defeat to attempt resistance, the great body of them still
detested the changes which had been forced upon their acceptance, and
longed for a change which as yet they had not dared to attempt actively
to compass.[63] The keener among the leaders had, however, by this time,
in some degree collected themselves. They had been already watching
their enemies, to strike, if they could see a vulnerable point, and had
masked batteries prepared to unveil. Latimer taunted them with their
inefficiency: he should find, perhaps to his cost, that their arms had
not wholly lost their ancient sinew. To keep clear of suspicion of
favouring heresy, in their duel with the Pope and Papal idolatries, they
knew to be essential to the position of the government. When taunted
with breaking the unity of the Church, the Privy Council were proud of
being able to point to the purity of their doctrines; and although
fighting against a stream too strong for them--contending, in fact,
against Providence itself--the king, Cromwell, and Cranmer struggled
resolutely to maintain this phantom stronghold, which they imagined to
be the key of their defences. The moving party, on the other hand,
inevitably transgressed an unreal and arbitrary boundary; and through
the known sensitiveness of the king on the real presence, with the
defence of which he regarded himself as especially entrusted by the
supremacy, the clergy hoped to recover their advantage, and in striking
heresy to reach the hated vicar-general.
[Sidenote: June 23.]
The sermon was preached on the 9th of June; on the 23d the lower house
of convocation indirectly replied to it, by presenting a list of
complaints on the doctrines which were spreading among the people, the
open blasphemy of holy things, and the tacit or avowed sanction extended
by certain members of the council to the circulation of heretical books.
As an evidence of the progress in the change of opinion, this document
is one of the most remarkable which has come down to us.[64]
[Sidenote: The lower house present a list of heresies commonly taught
among the people.]
After a preface, in which the clergy professed their sincere allegiance
to the crown, the renunciation, utter and complete, of the Bishop of
Rome and all his usurpations and injustices, the abuses which they were
going to describe had, nevertheless, they said, created great disquiet
in the realm, and required immediate attention.
To the slander of this noble realm, the disquietness of the people, and
damage of Christian souls, it was commonly preached, thought, and spoke,
that the sacrament of the altar was lightly to be esteemed.
Lewd persons were not afraid to say, "Why should I see the sacring of
the high mass? Is it anything but a piece of bread or a little pretty
piece Round Robin?"
Of baptism it was said that "It was as lawful to baptize in a tub of
water at home or in a ditch by the wayside as in a font of stone in the
church. The water in the font was but a thing conjured."
[Sidenote: Heresy on the sacraments.]
[Sidenote: Heresy on purgatory.]
Priests, again, were thought to have no more authority to minister
sacraments than laymen. Extreme unction was not a sacrament at all, and
the hallowed oil "no better than the Bishop of Rome's grease and
butter." Confession, absolution, penance, were considered neither
necessary nor useful. Confession "had been invented" (here a stroke was
aimed at Latimer) "to have the secret knowledge of men's hearts and to
pull money out of their purses." "It were enough for men each to confess
his own sins to God in public." The sinner should allow himself to be a
sinner and sin no more. The priest had no concern with him. Purgatory
was a delusion. The soul went straight from the body to heaven or to
hell. Dirige, commendations, masses, suffrages, prayers, almsdeeds,
oblations done for the souls departed out of the world, were vain and
profitless. All sins were put away through Christ. If there were a place
of purgatory, Christ was not yet born.
[Sidenote: On the intersession of saints.]
[Sidenote: On the priesthood.]
The Church was the congregation of good men, and prayer was of the same
efficacy in the air as in a church or chapel. The building called the
church was made to keep the people from the rain and wind, a place where
they might assemble to hear the Word of God. Mass and matins were but a
fraud. The saints had no power to help departed souls. To pray to them,
or to burn candles before their images, was mere idolatry. The saints
could not be mediators. There was one Mediator, Christ. Our Lady was but
a woman, "like a bag of saffron or pepper when the spice was out."[65]
It was as much available to pray to saints "as to whirl a stone against
the wind." "Hallowed water, hallowed bread, hallowed candles, hallowed
ashes, were but vanities. Priests were like other men, and might marry
and have wives like other men."[66]
"The saying and singing of mass, matins, and evensong, was but roaring,
howling, whistling, mumming, conjuring, and juggling," and "the playing
of the organs a foolish vanity." It was enough for a man to believe what
was written in the Gospel--Christ's blood was shed for man's redemption,
let every man believe in Christ and repent of his sins. Finally, as a
special charge against Cromwell, the convocation declared that these
heresies were not only taught by word of mouth, but were set out in
books which were printed and published _cum privilegio_, under the
apparent sanction of the crown.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of toleration.]
[Sidenote: Toleration a principle unknown to rulers or subjects.]
[Sidenote: Obligation of the magistrates to maintain truth.]
[Sidenote: Peculiar disposition of the king.]
Thus were the two parties face to face, and the king had either to make
his choice between them, or with Cromwell's help to coerce them both
into moderation. The modern reader may imagine that he should have left
both alone, have allowed opinion to correct opinion, and truth to win
its own victory. But this "remedy for controversy," so easy now, was
then impossible,--it would have been rejected equally by the governors
and the governed. Deep in the hearts of all Englishmen in that century
lay the conviction, that it was the duty of the magistrate to maintain
truth, as well as to execute justice. Toleration was neither understood
nor desired. The protestants clamoured against persecution, not because
it was persecution, but because truth was persecuted by falsehood; and,
however furiously the hostile factions exclaimed each that the truth was
with them and the falsehood with their enemies, neither the one nor the
other disputed the obligation of the ruling powers to support the truth
in itself. So close the religious convictions of men lay to their hearts
and passions, that, if opinion had been left alone in their own hands,
they would themselves have fought the battle of their beliefs with
sharper weapons than argument. Religion to them was a thing to die for,
or it was nothing. It was therefore fortunate, most fortunate, for the
peace of England, that it possessed in the king a person whose mind, to
a certain extent, sympathized with both parties; to whom both, so long
as they were moderate, appeared to be right; to whom the extravagances
of both were wrong and to be repressed. Protestant and Anglican alike
might look to him with confidence--alike were obliged to fear him;
neither could take him for their enemy, neither for their partisan. He
possessed the peculiarity which has always distinguished practically
effective men, of being advanced, as it is called, only slightly beyond
his contemporaries. The giddy or imaginative genius soars on its own
wings, it may be to cleave its course into the sunlight, and be the
wonder of after times, but more often to fall like Icarus. The man of
working ability tempers his judgment by the opinion of others. He leads
his age--he bears the brunt of the battle--he wins the victory; but the
motive force which bears him forward is not in himself, but in the great
tidal wave of human progress. He is the guide of a great movement, not
the creator of it; and he represents in his own person the highest
average wisdom, combined necessarily in some measure with the mistakes
and prejudices of the period to which he belongs.[67]
[Sidenote: He draws the first articles of religion.]
On receiving the list of grievances, the king, then three weeks married
to Jane Seymour, in the first enjoyment, as some historians require us
to believe, of a guilty pleasure purchased by an infamous murder, drew
up with his own hand,[68] and submitted to the two houses of
convocation, a body of articles, interesting as throwing light upon his
state of mind, and of deeper moment as the first authoritative statement
of doctrine in the Anglican church.
By the duties of his princely office, he said, he held himself obliged,
not only to see God's Word and commandment sincerely believed and
reverently kept and observed, but to prevent also, as far as possible,
contentions and differences of opinion. To his regret he was informed
that there was no such concord in the realm as he desired, but violent
disagreement, not only in matters of usage and ceremony, but in the
essentials of the Christian faith. To avoid the dangerous unquietness,
therefore, which might, perhaps, ensue, and also the great peril to the
souls of his subjects, he had arrived at the following resolutions, to
which he required and commanded obedience.
[Sidenote: On the three creeds.]
I. As concerning the faith, all things were to be held and defended as
true which were comprehended in the whole body and canon of the Bible,
and in the three creeds or symbols. The creeds, as well as the
Scripture, were to be received as the most holy, most sure and
infallible words of God, and as such, "neither to be altered nor
convelled" by any contrary opinion. Whoever refused to accept their
authority "was no member of Christ, or of his spouse the Church," "but a
very infidel, or heretic, or member of the devil, with whom he should
be eternally damned."
[Sidenote: On the sacraments.]
II. Of sacraments generally necessary to all men there were
three--baptism, penance, and the sacrament of the altar.[69]
[Sidenote: Baptism.]
[_a_] Of baptism the people were to be taught that it was ordained in
the New Testament as a thing necessary for everlasting salvation,
according to the saying of Christ, "No man can enter into the kingdom of
heaven except he be born again of water and the Holy Ghost." The
promises of grace attached to the sacrament of baptism appertained not
only to such as had the use of reason, but also to infants, innocents,
and children, who, therefore, ought to be baptized, and by baptism
obtain remission of sin, and be made thereby sons and children of God.
[Sidenote: Penance.]
[_b_] Penance was instituted in the New Testament, and no man who, after
baptism, had fallen into deadly sin, could, without the same, be saved.
As a sacrament it consisted of three parts--contrition, confession, and
amendment. Contrition was the acknowledgment of the filthiness and
abomination of sin, a sorrow and inward shame for having offended God,
and a certain faith, trust, and confidence in the mercy and goodness of
God, whereby the penitent man must conceive certain hope that God would
forgive him his sins, and repute him justified, of the number of his
elect children, not for any worthiness of any merit or work done by the
penitent, but for the only merits of the blood and passion of Jesus
Christ. This faith was strengthened by the special application of
Christ's words and promises, and therefore, to attain such certain
faith, the second part of penance was necessary; that is to say,
confession to a priest (if it might be had), for the absolution given by
a priest was instituted of Christ, to apply the promises of God's grace
to the penitent. Although Christ's death was a full, sufficient
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for which God forgave sinners
their sin, and the punishment of it; yet all men ought to bring forth
the fruits of penance, prayer, fasting, and almsdeeds, and make
restitution in will and deed to their neighbour if they had done him any
wrong, and to do all other good works of mercy and charity.
[Sidenote: The altar.]
[_c_] In the sacrament of the altar, under the form and figure of bread
and wine, was verily, substantially, and really contained and
comprehended the very self-same body and blood of our Saviour Christ,
which was born of the Virgin Mary, and suffered upon the cross for man's
redemption; and under the same form and figure of bread and wine was
corporeally, really, and in very substance exhibited, distributed, and
received of all them which receive the said sacrament.
[Sidenote: Justification.]
III. By justification was signified remission of sin and acceptance into
the favour of God; that is to say, man's perfect renovation in Christ.
Sinners obtained justification by contrition and faith, joined with
charity; not as though contrition, or faith, or works proceeding
therefrom, could worthily merit the said justification, for the only
mercy and grace of the Father promised freely unto us for the Son's
sake, and the merits of his blood and passion, were the only sufficient
and worthy causes thereof; notwithstanding God required us to show good
works in fulfilling his commands, and those who lived after the flesh
would be undoubtedly damned.
[Sidenote: Custom and ritual.]
In these articles, which exhausted the essential doctrines of the faith,
the principles of the two religions are seen linked together in
connexion, yet without combination, a first effort at the compromise
between the old and the new which was only successfully completed in the
English Prayer-book. The king next went on to those matters of custom
and ritual, which, under the late system, had constituted the whole of
religion, and which the Reformers were now trampling upon and insulting.
Under mediæval Catholicism the cycle of life had been enveloped in
symbolism; each epoch from birth to death was attended with its
sacrament, each act of every hour with its special consecration: the
days were all anniversaries; the weeks, the months, the seasons, as they
revolved, brought with them their sacred associations and holy memories;
and out of imagery and legend, simply taught and simply believed,
innocent and beautiful practices had expanded as never-fading flowers by
the roadside of existence.
[Sidenote: Obligation of ceremonies long established.]
[Sidenote: Which be not lightly contemned,]
[Sidenote: Yet have no virtue or power in themselves.]
Concerning these, Henry wrote: "As to having vestments in doing God's
service, such as be and have been most part used--the sprinkling of holy
water to put us in remembrance of our baptism, and the blood of Christ
sprinkled for our redemption on the cross--the giving of holy bread, to
put us in remembrance of the sacrament of the altar, that all Christians
be one body mystical in Christ, as the bread is made of many grains, and
yet but one loaf--the bearing of candles on Candlemas-day, in memory of
Christ the spiritual light--the giving of ashes on Ash-Wednesday, to put
in remembrance every Christian man in the beginning of Lent and penance
that he is but ashes and earth, and thereto shall return--the bearing of
palms on Palm Sunday, in memory of the receiving of Christ into
Jerusalem a little before his death, that we may have the same desire to
receive Him into our hearts--creeping to the cross, and humbling
ourselves on Good Friday before the cross, and there offering unto
Christ before the same, and kissing of it in memory of our redemption by
Christ made upon the cross--setting up the sepulture of Christ, whose
body, after his death, was buried--the hallowing of the font, and other
like exorcisms and benedictions by the ministers of Christ's Church, and
all other like laudable customs, rites, and ceremonies,--they be not to
be contemned and cast away, but to be used and continued as good and
laudable, to put us in remembrance of those spiritual things that they
do signify, not suffering them to be forgot, or to be put in oblivion,
but renewing them in our memories. But none of these ceremonies have
power to remit sin, but only to stir and lift up our minds unto God, by
whom only our sins be forgiven."
So, too, of the saints. "The saints may be honoured because they are
with Christ in glory; and though Christ be the only Mediator, yet we may
pray to the saints to pray for us and with us unto Almighty God; we may
say to them, 'All holy angels and saints in heaven, pray for us and with
us unto the Father, that for his dear Son Jesus Christ's sake we may
have grace of Him and remission of our sins, with an earnest purpose to
keep his holy commandments, and never to decline from the same again
unto our lives' end.'"
[Sidenote: Purgatory to be received in a general sense,]
[Sidenote: But special interpretation as far as possible to be avoided.]
Finally, on the great vexed question of purgatory. "Forasmuch as the due
order of charity requireth, and the books of Maccabees and divers
antient doctors plainly shew, that it is a very good, charitable deed to
pray for souls departed; and forasmuch as such usage hath continued in
the Church for many years, no man ought to be grieved with the
continuance of the same. But forasmuch as the place where they be, the
name thereof, and kind of pains there, be to us uncertain by Scripture,
therefore this with all other things we remit unto Almighty God, unto
whose mercy it is meet and convenient for us to commend them, trusting
that God accepteth our prayers for them. Wherefore it is much necessary
that such abuses be clearly put away, which, under the name of
purgatory, hath been advanced; as to make men believe that through the
Bishop of Rome's pardons men might be delivered out of purgatory and all
the pains of it, or that masses said at any place or before any image
might deliver them from their pain and send them straight to
heaven."[70]
We have now before us the stormy eloquence of Pole, the iconoclasm of
Latimer, the superstitions of the complaining clergy--representing three
principles struggling one against the other, and the voice of the pilot
heard above the tempest. Each of these contained some element which the
other needed; they were to fret and chafe till the dust was beaten off,
and the grains of gold could meet and fuse.
[Sidenote: The articles pass convocation, but create dissatisfaction.]
The articles were debated in convocation, and passed because it was the
king's will. No party were pleased. The Protestants exclaimed against
the countenance to superstition; the Anglo-Catholics lamented the
visible taint of heresy, the reduced number of the sacraments, the
doubtful language upon purgatory, and the silence--dangerously
significant--on the nature of the priesthood. They were signed, however,
by all sides; and by Cromwell, now Lord Cromwell, lord privy seal, and
not vicar-general only, but appointed vicegerent of the king in all
matters ecclesiastical, they were sent round through the English
counties, to be obeyed by every man at his peril.[71]
[Sidenote: Convocation decree that the Pope has no power to call general
councils.]
The great matters being thus disposed of, the business of the session
concluded with a resolution passed on the 20th of July, respecting
general councils. The Pope, at the beginning of June, had issued notice
of a council to be assembled, if possible, at Mantua, in the following
year. The English government were contented to recognise a council
called _ad locum indifferentem_, with the consent of the great powers of
Europe. They would send no delegates to a petty Italian principality,
where the decrees would be dictated by the Pope and the Emperor. The
convocation pronounced that the Pope had gone beyond his authority: a
general council could not legally be called without the consent of all
Christian princes; to princes the right belonged of determining the time
and place of such an assembly, of appointing the judges, of fixing the
order of proceeding, and of deciding even upon the doctrines which might
lawfully be allowed and defended.[72]
This was the last act of the year; immediately after, the convocation
was prorogued. From the temper which had been displayed, it was easy to
see that trouble was impending. The form which it would assume was soon
to show itself.
Meanwhile, an event occurred of deeper importance than decrees of
councils, convocation quarrels, and moves and counter-moves on the
political chessboard; an event not to be passed by in silence, though I
can only glance at it.
The agitation caused by the queen's trial had suspended hitherto the
fate of the monasteries. On the dispersion of the clergy a commission
was appointed by Cromwell, to put in force the act of dissolution;[73]
and a series of injunctions were simultaneously issued, one of which
related to the articles of faith, another to the observance of the order
diminishing the number of holy-days; a third forbade the extolling the
special virtue of images and relics, as things which had caused much
folly and superstition; the people should learn that God would be better
pleased to see them providing for their families by honest labour, than
by idling upon pilgrimages; if they had money to spare, they might give
it in charity to the poor.
[Sidenote: Directions issued for the education of the people.]
The paternoster, the apostles' creed, and the ten commandments had been
lately published in English. Fathers of families, schoolmasters, and
heads of households were to take care that these fundamental elements of
the Christian faith should be learnt by the children and servants under
their care; and the law of the land was to be better observed, which
directed that every child should be brought up either to learning or to
some honest occupation, "lest they should fall to sloth and idleness,
and being brought after to calamity and misery, impute their ruin to
those who suffered them to be brought up idly in their youth."
[Sidenote: A Bible in English to be provided in every parish.]
An order follows, of more significance: "Every parson or proprietary of
every parish church within this realm shall, on this side of the feast
of St. Peter ad Vincula next coming,[74] provide a book of the whole
Bible, both in Latin and also in English, and lay the same in the quire,
for every man that will to read and look therein; and shall discourage
no man from reading any part of the Bible, but rather comfort, exhort,
and admonish every man to read the same, as the very word of God and the
spiritual food of man's soul; ever gently and charitably exhorting them,
that using a sober and modest behaviour in the reading and inquisition
of the true sense of the same, they do in nowise stiffly or eagerly
contend or strive one with another about the same, but refer the
declaration of those places that be in controversy to the judgment of
the learned."
[Sidenote: Translations existing before the Reformation.]
The publication of the English translation of the Bible, with the
permission for its free use among the people--the greatest, because the
purest victory so far gained by the Reformers--was at length
accomplished; a few words will explain how, and by whom. Before the
Reformation, two versions existed of the Bible in English--two
certainly, perhaps three. One was Wicliffe's; another, based on
Wicliffe's, but tinted more strongly with the peculiar opinions of the
Lollards, followed at the beginning of the fifteenth century; and there
is said to have been a third, but no copy of _this_ is known to
survive, and the history of it is vague.[75] The possession or the use
of these translations was prohibited by the Church, under pain of death.
They were extremely rare, and little read; and it was not till Luther's
great movement began in Germany, and his tracts and commentaries found
their way into England, that a practical determination was awakened
among the people, to have before them, in their own tongue, the book on
which their faith was built.
[Sidenote: Tyndal's New Testament.]
[Sidenote: Rapid sale in England.]
I have already described how William Tyndal felt his heart burn in him
to accomplish this great work for his country; how he applied for
assistance to a learned bishop; how he discovered rapidly that the
assistance which he would receive from the Church authorities would be a
speedy elevation to martyrdom; how he went across the Channel to Luther,
and thence to Antwerp; and how he there, in the year 1526, achieved and
printed the first edition of the New Testament. It was seen how copies
were carried over secretly to London, and circulated in thousands by the
Christian Brothers. The council threatened; the bishops anathematized.
They opened subscriptions to buy up the hated and dreaded volumes. They
burnt them publicly in St. Paul's. The whip, the gaol, the stake, did
their worst; and their worst was nothing. The high dignitaries of the
earth were fighting against Heaven, and met the success which ever
attends such contests. Three editions were sold before 1530; and in that
year a fresh instalment was completed. The Pentateuch was added to the
New Testament; and afterwards, by Tyndal himself, or under Tyndal's
eyes, the historical books, the Psalms and Prophets. At length the
whole canon was translated, and published in separate portions.
[Sidenote: The bishops' protest.]
[Sidenote: The king commands them to prepare a new translation.]
[Sidenote: Exertions of Cranmer.]
[Sidenote: The bishops are immoveable.]
All these were condemned with equal emphasis--all continued to spread.
The progress of the work of propagation had, in 1531, become so
considerable as to be the subject of an anxious protest to the crown
from the episcopal bench. They complained of the translations as
inaccurate--of unbecoming reflections on themselves in the prefaces and
side-notes. They required stronger powers of repression, more frequent
holocausts, a more efficient inquisitorial police. In Henry's reply they
found that the waters of their life were poisoned at the spring. The
king, too, was infected with the madness. The king would have the Bible
in English; he directed them, if the translation was unsound, to prepare
a better translation without delay. If they had been wise in their
generation they would have secured the ground when it was offered to
them, and gladly complied. But the work of Reformation in England was
not to be accomplished, in any one of its purer details, by the official
clergy; it was to be done by volunteers from the ranks, and forced upon
the Church by the secular arm. The bishops remained for two years
inactive. In 1533, the king becoming more peremptory, Cranmer carried a
resolution for a translation through convocation. The resolution,
however, would not advance into act. The next year he brought the
subject forward again; and finding his brother prelates fixed in their
neglect, he divided Tyndal's work into ten parts, sending one part to
each bishop to correct. The Bishop of London alone ventured an open
refusal; the remainder complied in words, and did nothing.[76]
[Sidenote: Miles Coverdale publishes the first complete version with the
king's sanction.]
Finally, the king's patience was exhausted. The legitimate methods
having been tried in vain, he acted on his own responsibility. Miles
Coverdale, a member of the same Cambridge circle which had given birth
to Cranmer, to Latimer, to Barnes, to the Scotch Wishart, silently went
abroad with a licence from Cromwell; with Tyndal's help he collected and
edited the scattered portions; and in 1536[77] there appeared in London,
published _cum privilegio_ and dedicated to Henry VIII., the first
complete copy of the English Bible. The separate translations, still
anomalously prohibited in detail, were exposed freely to sale in a
single volume, under the royal sanction. The canon and text-book of the
new opinions--so long dreaded, so long execrated--was thenceforth to lie
open in every church in England; and the clergy were ordered not to
permit only, but to exhort and encourage, all men to resort to it and
read.[78]
In this act was laid the foundation-stone on which the whole later
history of England, civil as well as ecclesiastical, has been reared;
the most minute incidents become interesting, connected with an event of
so mighty moment.
[Sidenote: Coverdale's preface and dedication.]
"Caiphas," said Coverdale in the dedicatory preface, "being bishop of
his year, prophesied that it was better to put Christ to death than that
all the people should perish: he meaning that Christ was a heretic and a
deceiver of the people, when in truth he was the Saviour of the world,
sent by his Father to suffer death for man's redemption.
"After the same manner the Bishop of Rome conferred on King Henry VIII.
the title of Defender of the Faith, because his Highness suffered the
bishops to burn God's Word, the root of faith, and to persecute the
lovers and ministers of the same; where in very deed the Bishop, though
he knew not what he did, prophesied that, by the righteous
administration of his Grace, the faith should be so defended that God's
Word, the mother of faith, should have free course through all
Christendom, but especially in his own realm.
"The Bishop of Rome has studied long to keep the Bible from the people,
and specially from princes, lest they should find out his tricks and his
falsehoods, lest they should turn from his false obedience to the true
obedience commanded by God; knowing well enough that, if the clear sun
of God's Word came over the heat of the day, it would drive away the
foul mist of his devilish doctrines. The Scripture was lost before the
time of that noble king Josiah, as it hath also been among us unto the
time of his Grace. Through the merciful goodness of God it is now found
again as it was in the days of that virtuous king; and praised be the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, world without end, which so
excellently hath endowed the princely heart of his Highness with such
ferventness to his honour and the wealth of his subjects, that he may be
compared worthily unto that noble king, that lantern among princes, who
commanded straitly, as his Grace doth, that the law of God should be
read and taught unto all the people.
"May it be found a general comfort to all Christian hearts--a continual
subject of thankfulness, both of old and young, unto God and to his
Grace, who, being our Moses, has brought us out of the old Ægypt, and
from the cruel hands of our spiritual Pharaoh. Not by the thousandth
part were the Jews so much bound unto King David for subduing of great
Goliah as we are to his Grace for delivering us out of our old
Babylonish captivity. For the which deliverance and victory I beseech
our only Mediator, Jesus Christ, to make such mean with us unto his
heavenly Father, that we may never be unthankful unto Him nor unto his
Grace, but increase in fear of God, in obedience to the King's Highness,
in love unfeigned to our neighbours, and in all virtue that cometh of
God, to whom, for the defending of his blessed Word, be honour and
thanks, glory and dominion, world without end."[79]
[Sidenote: The frontispiece.]
Equally remarkable, and even more emphatic in the recognition of the
share in the work borne by the king, was the frontispiece.
This was divided into four compartments.
In the first, the Almighty was seen in the clouds with outstretched
arms. Two scrolls proceeded out of his mouth, to the right, and the
left. On the former was the verse, "the word which goeth forth from me
shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish whatsoever I will
have done." The other was addressed to Henry, who was kneeling at a
distance bareheaded, with his crown lying at his feet. The scroll said,
"I have found me a man after my own heart, who shall fulfil all my
will." Henry answered, "Thy word is a lantern unto my feet."
Immediately below, the king was seated on his throne, holding in each
hand a book, on which was written "the Word of God." One of these he was
giving to Cranmer and another bishop, who with a group of priests were
on the right of the picture, saying, "Take this and teach;" the other on
the opposite side he held to Cromwell and the lay peers, and the words
were, "I make a decree that, in all my kingdom, men shall tremble and
fear before the living God." A third scroll, falling downwards over his
feet, said alike to peer and prelate, "Judge righteous judgment. Turn
not away your ear from the prayer of the poor man." The king's face was
directed sternly towards the bishops, with a look which said, "Obey at
last, or worse will befal you."
In the third compartment, Cranmer and Cromwell were distributing the
Bible to kneeling priests and laymen; and, at the bottom, a preacher
with a benevolent beautiful face was addressing a crowd from a pulpit in
the open air. He was apparently commencing a sermon with the text, "I
exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers,
intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men--for kings"--and
at the word "kings" the people were shouting "Vivat Rex!--Vivat Rex!"
children who knew no Latin lisping "God save the King!" and, at the
extreme left, at a gaol window, a prisoner was joining in the cry of
delight, as if he, too, were delivered from a worse bondage.
[Sidenote: The entire translation substantially the work of Tyndal.]
This was the introduction of the English Bible--this the seeming
acknowledgment of Henry's services. Of the translation itself, though
since that time it has been many times revised and altered, we may say
that it is substantially the Bible with which we are all familiar. The
peculiar genius--if such a word may be permitted--which breathes through
it--the mingled tenderness and majesty--the Saxon simplicity--the
preternatural grandeur--unequalled, unapproached, in the attempted
improvements of modern scholars--all are here, and bear the impress of
the mind of one man--William Tyndal. Lying, while engaged in that great
office, under the shadow of death, the sword above his head and ready at
any moment to fall, he worked, under circumstances alone perhaps truly
worthy of the task which was laid upon him--his spirit, as it were
divorced from the world, moved in a purer element than common air.
[Sidenote: Tyndal's martyrdom.]
His work was done. He lived to see the Bible no longer carried by
stealth into his country, where the possession of it was a crime, but
borne in by the solemn will of the king--solemnly recognised as the word
of the Most High God. And then his occupation in this earth was gone.
His eyes saw the salvation for which he had longed, and he might depart
to his place. He was denounced to the regent of Flanders; he was enticed
by the suborned treachery of a miserable English fanatic beyond the town
under whose liberties he had been secure; and with the reward which, at
other times as well as those, has been held fitting by human justice for
the earth's great ones, he passed away in smoke and flame to his rest.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE.
[Sidenote: Condition of society.]
The Nun of Kent's conspiracy, the recent humour of convocation, the
menaces of Reginald Pole, alike revealed a dangerous feeling in the
country. A religious revolution in the midst of an armed population
intensely interested in the event, could not be accomplished without an
appeal being made at some period of its course to arms; and religion was
at this time but one out of many elements of confusion. Society, within
and without, from the heart of its creed to its outward organization,
was passing through a transition, and the records of the Pilgrimage of
Grace cast their light far down into the structure and inmost
constitution of English life.
[Sidenote: Waning influence of the House of Lords.]
[Sidenote: Their jealousy of Cromwell.]
[Sidenote: Conservative confederacy to check the Reformation.]
[Sidenote: Displeasure of the country families at the suppression of the
abbeys.]
[Sidenote: Who missed the various conveniences which the abbeys had
furnished.]
The organic changes introduced by the parliament of 1529 had been the
work of the king and the second house in the legislature; and the peers
had not only seen measures pass into law which they would gladly have
rejected had they dared, but their supremacy was slipping away from
them; the Commons, who in times past had confined themselves to voting
supplies and passing without inquiry such measures as were sent down to
them, had started suddenly into new proportions, and had taken upon
themselves to discuss questions sacred hitherto to convocation. The
upper house had been treated in disputes which had arisen with
significant disrespect; ancient and honoured customs had been
discontinued among them against their desire;[80] and, constitutionally
averse to change, they were hurried powerless along by a force which was
bearing them they knew not where. Hating heretics with true English
conservatism, they found men who but a few years before would have been
in the dungeons of Lollards' Tower, now high in court favour, high in
office, and with seats in their own body. They had learnt to endure the
presence of self-raised men when as ecclesiastics such men represented
the respectable dignity of the Church; but the proud English nobles had
now for the first time to tolerate the society and submit to the
dictation of a lay peer who had been a tradesman's orphan and a homeless
vagabond. The Reformation in their minds was associated with the
exaltation of base blood, the levelling of ranks, the breaking down the
old rule and order of the land. Eager to check so dangerous a movement,
they had listened, some of them, to the revelations of the Nun. Fifteen
great men and lords, Lord Darcy stated, had confederated secretly to
force the government to change their policy;[81] and Darcy himself had
been in communication for the same purpose with the Spanish ambassador,
and was of course made aware of the intended invasion in the preceding
winter.[82] The discontent extended to the county families, who shared
or imitated the prejudices of their feudal leaders; and these families
had again their peculiar grievances. On the suppression of the abbeys
the peers obtained grants, or expected to obtain them, from the
forfeited estates. The country gentlemen saw only the desecration of the
familiar scenes of their daily life, the violation of the tombs of their
ancestors, and the buildings themselves, the beauty of which was the
admiration of foreigners who visited England, reduced to ruins.[83] The
abbots had been their personal friends, "the trustees for their children
and the executors of their wills;"[84] the monks had been the teachers
of their children; the free tables and free lodgings in these houses had
made them attractive and convenient places of resort in distant
journeys; and in remote districts the trade of the neighbourhood, from
the wholesale purchases of the corndealer to the huckstering of the
wandering pedlar, had been mainly carried on within their walls.[85]
[Sidenote: The Statute of Uses another grievance.]
[Sidenote: Difficulty of providing for younger children under the old
common law.]
[Sidenote: The objects and the evils of the system of Uses.]
"The Statute of Uses," again, an important but insufficient measure of
reform, passed in the last session of parliament but one,[86] had
created not unreasonable irritation. Previous to the modification of the
feudal law in the year 1540, land was not subject to testamentary
disposition and it had been usual to evade the prohibition of direct
bequest, in making provision for younger children, by leaving estates in
"use," charged with payments so considerable as to amount virtually to a
transfer of the property. The injustice of the common law was in this
way remedied, but remedied so awkwardly as to embarrass and complicate
the titles of estates beyond extrication. A "use" might be erected on a
"use"; it might be extended to the descendants of those in whose behalf
it first was made; it might be mortgaged, or transferred as a security
to raise money. The apparent owner of a property might effect a sale,
and the buyer find his purchase so encumbered as to be useless to him.
The intricacies of tenure thus often passed the skill of judges to
unravel;[87] while, again, the lords of the fiefs were unable to claim
their fines or fees or liveries, and the crown, in cases of treason,
could not enforce its forfeitures. The Statute of Uses terminated the
immediate difficulty by creating, like the recent Irish Encumbered
Estates Act, parliamentary titles. All persons entitled to the use of
lands were declared to be to all intents and purposes the lawful
possessors, as much as if such lands had been made over to them by
formal grant or conveyance. They became actual owners, with all the
rights and all the liabilities of their special tenures. The embarrassed
titles were in this way simplified; but now, the common law remaining as
yet unchanged, the original evil returned in full force. Since a trust
was equivalent to a conveyance, and land could not be bequeathed by
will, the system of trusts was virtually terminated. Charges could not
be created upon estates, and the landowners complained that they could
no longer raise money if they wanted it; their estates must go wholly to
the eldest sons; and, unless they were allowed to divide their
properties by will, their younger children would be left
portionless.[88]
Small grievances are readily magnified in seasons of general disruption.
A wicked spirit in the person of Cromwell was said to rule the king, and
everything which he did was evil, and every evil of the commonwealth was
due to his malignant influence.
[Sidenote: Grievances of the commons.]
[Sidenote: Local limitation of English country life.]
[Sidenote: Each district self-supporting.]
The discontent of the noblemen and gentlemen would in itself have been
formidable. Their armed retinues were considerable. The constitutional
power of the counties was in their hands. But the commons, again, had
their own grounds of complaint, for the most part just, though arising
from causes over which the government had no control, from social
changes deeper than the Reformation itself. In early times each petty
district in England had been self-supporting, raising its own corn,
feeding its own cattle, producing by women's hands in the cottages and
farmhouses its own manufactures. There were few or no large roads, no
canals, small means of transport of any kind, and from this condition of
things had arisen the laws which we call short-sighted, against
engrossers of grain. Wealthy speculators, watching their opportunity,
might buy up the produce not immediately needed, of an abundant harvest,
and when the stock which was left was exhausted, they could make their
own market, unchecked by a danger of competition. In time no doubt the
mischief would have righted itself, but only with the assistance of a
coercive police which had no existence, who would have held down the
people while they learnt their lesson by starvation. The habits of a
great nation could only change slowly. Each estate or each township for
the most part grew its own food, and (the average of seasons
compensating each other) food adequate for the mouths dependent upon it.
[Sidenote: Suffering occasioned by the introduction of large grazing
farms.]
The development of trade at the close of the fifteenth century gave the
first shock to the system. The demand for English wool in Flanders had
increased largely, and holders of property found they could make their
own advantage by turning their corn-land into pasture, breaking up the
farms, enclosing the commons, and becoming graziers on a gigantic
scale.
I have described in the first chapter of this work the manner in which
the Tudor sovereigns had attempted to check this tendency, but interest
had so far proved too strong for legislation. The statutes prohibiting
enclosures had remained, especially in the northern counties,
unenforced; and the small farmers and petty copyholders, hitherto
thriving and independent, found themselves at once turned out of their
farms and deprived of the resource of the commons. They had suffered
frightfully, and they saw no reason for their sufferings. From the Trent
northward a deep and angry spirit of discontent had arisen which could
be stirred easily into mutiny.[89]
[Sidenote: The rough character of the Yorkshire gentleman.]
[Sidenote: Encroachment upon local jurisdiction increases the expense of
justice.]
Nor were these the only grievances of the northern populace. The
Yorkshire knights, squires, sheriffs, and justices of the peace, intent,
as we see, on their own interests, had been overbearing and tyrannical
in their offices. The Abbot of York, interceding with Cromwell in behalf
of some poor man who had been needlessly arrested and troubled, declared
that "there was such a company of wilful gentlemen within Yorkshire as
he thought there were not in all England besides,"[90] and Cromwell in
consequence had "roughly handled the grand jury." Courts of arbitration
had sate from immemorial time in the northern baronies where disputes
between landlords and tenants had been equitably and cheaply adjusted.
The growing inequality of fortunes had broken through this useful
custom. Small farmers and petty leaseholders now found themselves sued
or compelled to sue in the courts at Westminster, and the expenses of a
journey to London, or of the employment of London advocates, placed them
virtually at the mercy of their landlords. Thus the law itself had been
made an instrument of oppression, and the better order of gentlemen,
who would have seen justice enforced had they been able, found
themselves assailed daily with "piteous complaints" which they had no
power to satisfy.[91] The occupation of the council with the larger
questions of the Church had left them too little leisure to attend to
these disorders. Cromwell's occasional and abrupt interference had
created irritation, but no improvement; and mischiefs of all kinds had
grown unheeded till the summer of 1536, when a fresh list of grievances,
some real, some imaginary, brought the crisis to a head.
[Sidenote: Papal leanings of the northern clergy.]
The convocation of York, composed of rougher materials than the
representatives of the southern counties, had acquiesced but tardily in
the measures of the late years. Abuses of all kinds instinctively
sympathize, and the clergy of the north, who were the most ignorant in
England, and the laity whose social irregularities were the greatest,
united resolutely in their attachment to the Pope, were most alarmed at
the progress of heresy, and most anxious for a reaction. The deciding
act against Rome and the king's articles of religion struck down the
hopes which had been excited there and elsewhere by the disgrace of
Queen Anne. Men saw the Papacy finally abandoned, they saw heresy
encouraged, and they were proportionately disappointed and enraged.
[Sidenote: Three commissions issued by the crown.]
At this moment three commissions were issued by the crown, each of which
would have tried the patience of the people, if conducted with greatest
prudence, and at the happiest opportunity.
[Sidenote: A subsidy commission.]
The second portion of the subsidy (an income-tax of two and a half per
cent. on all incomes above twenty pounds a year), which had been voted
in the autumn of 1534, had fallen due. The money had been required for
the Irish war, and the disaffected party in England had wished well to
the insurgents, so that the collectors found the greatest difficulty
either in enforcing the tax, or obtaining correct accounts of the
properties on which it was to be paid.
[Sidenote: A commission to carry out the Act of Suppression,]
[Sidenote: And a commission for the examination of the character and
qualifications of the clergy.]
Simultaneously Legh and Layton, the two most active and most unpopular
of the monastic visitors, were sent to Yorkshire to carry out the Act of
Suppression. Others went into Lincolnshire, others to Cheshire and
Lancashire, while a third set carried round the injunctions of Cromwell
to the clergy, with directions further to summon before them every
individual parish priest, to examine into his character, his habits and
qualifications, and eject summarily all inefficient persons from their
offices and emoluments.
[Sidenote: Complaints against the monastic commissioners.]
[Sidenote: The complaints were perhaps exaggerated,]
[Sidenote: But were not wholly without justice.]
The dissolution of the religious houses commenced in the midst of an
ominous and sullen silence. The act extended only to houses whose
incomes were under two hundred pounds a year, and among these the
commissioners were to use their discretion. They were to visit every
abbey and priory, to examine the books, examine the monks; when the
income fell short, or when the character of the house was vicious, to
eject the occupants, and place the lands and farm-buildings in the hands
of lay tenants for the crown. The discharge of an unpopular office,
however conducted, would have exposed those who undertook it to great
odium. It is likely that those who did undertake it were men who felt
bitterly on the monastic vices, and did their work with little scruple
or sympathy. Legh and Layton were accused subsequently of having borne
themselves with overbearing insolence; they were said also to have taken
bribes, and where bribes were not offered, to have extorted them from
the houses which they spared. That they went through their business
roughly is exceedingly probable; whether needlessly so, must not be
concluded from the report of persons to whom their entire occupation was
sacrilege. That they received money is evident from their own reports to
the government; but it is evident also that they did not attempt to
conceal that they received it. When the revenues of the crown were
irregular and small, the salaries even of ministers of state were
derived in great measure from fees and presents; the visitors of the
monasteries, travelling with large retinues, were expected to make their
duties self-supporting, to inflict themselves as guests on the houses to
which they went, and to pay their own and their servants "wages" from
the funds of the establishments. Sums of money would be frequently
offered them in lieu of a painful hospitality; and whether they took
unfair advantage of their opportunities for extortion, or whether they
exercised a proper moderation, cannot be concluded from the mere fact
that there was a clamour against them. But beyond doubt their other
proceedings were both rash and blameable. Their servants, with the hot
puritan blood already in their veins, trained in the exposure of the
impostures and profligacies of which they had seen so many, scorning and
hating the whole monastic race, had paraded their contempt before the
world; they had ridden along the highways, decked in the spoils of the
desecrated chapels, with copes for doublets, tunics for
saddle-cloths,[92] and the silver relic-cases hammered into sheaths for
their daggers.[93] They had been directed to enforce an abrogation of
the superfluous holy-days; they had shown such excessive zeal that in
some places common markets had been held under their direction on
Sundays.[94]
Scenes like these working upon tempers already inflamed, gave point to
discontent. Heresy, that word of dread and horror to English ears, rang
from lip to lip. Their hated enemy was at the people's doors, and their
other sufferings were the just vengeance of an angry God.[95]
Imagination, as usual, hastened to assist and expand the nucleus of
truth. Cromwell had formed the excellent design, which two years later
he carried into effect, of instituting parish registers. A report of his
intention had gone abroad, and mingling with the irritating inquiries of
the subsidy commissioners into the value of men's properties, gave rise
to a rumour that a fine was to be paid to the crown on every wedding,
funeral, or christening; that a tax would be levied on every head of
cattle, or the cattle should be forfeited; "that no man should eat in
his house white meat, pig, goose, nor capon, but that he should pay
certain dues to the King's Grace."
[Sidenote: Expectation that the parish churches were to be destroyed
with the abbeys.]
In the desecration of the abbey chapels and altar-plate a design was
imagined against all religion. The clergy were to be despoiled; the
parish churches pulled down, one only to be left for every seven or
eight miles; the church plate to be confiscated, and "chalices of tin"
supplied for the priest to sing with.[96]
[Sidenote: Divided interests of the rich and poor.]
Every element necessary for a great revolt was thus in motion,--wounded
superstition, real suffering, caused by real injustice, with their
attendant train of phantoms. The clergy in the north were disaffected to
a man;[97] the people were in the angry humour which looks eagerly for
an enemy, and flies at the first which seems to offer. If to a spirit of
revolt there had been added a unity of purpose, the results would have
been far other than they were. Happily, the discontents of the nobility,
the gentlemen, the clergy, the commons, were different, and in many
respects opposite; and although, in the first heat of the commotion, a
combination threatened to be possible, jealousy and suspicion rapidly
accomplished the work of disintegration. The noble lords were in the
interest of Pole, of European Catholicism, the Empire, and the Papacy;
the country gentlemen desired only the quiet enjoyment of a right to do
as they would with their own, and the quiet maintenance of a Church
which was too corrupt to interfere with them. The working people had a
just cause, though disguised by folly; but all true sufferers soon
learnt that in rising against the government, they had mistaken their
best friends for foes.
[Sidenote: September. Uneasy movement among the clergy.]
[Sidenote: The commissioner is coming to Louth.]
It was Michaelmas then, in the year 1536. Towards the fall of the
summer, clergy from the southern counties had been flitting northward,
and on their return had talked mysteriously to their parishioners of
impending insurrections, in which honest men would bear their part.[98]
In Yorkshire and Lincolnshire the stories of the intended destruction of
parish churches had been vociferously circulated; and Lord Hussey, at
his castle at Sleford, had been heard to say to one of the gentlemen of
the county, that "the world would never mend until they fought for
it."[99] September passed away; at the end of the month, the nunnery of
Legbourne, near Louth, was suppressed by the visitors, and two servants
of Cromwell were left in the house, to complete the dissolution. On
Monday, the 2d of October, Heneage, one of the examiners under the
clerical commission, was coming, with the chancellor of the Bishop of
Lincoln, into Louth itself, and the clergy of the neighbourhood were to
appear and submit themselves to inspection.
[Sidenote: Sunday, October 1.]
[Sidenote: Procession of the people of Louth on Sunday evening.]
The evening before being Sunday, a knot of people gathered on the green
in the town. They had the great silver cross belonging to the parish
with them; and as a crowd collected about them, a voice cried, "Masters,
let us follow the cross; God knows whether ever we shall follow it
hereafter or nay." They formed in procession, and went round the
streets; and after vespers, a party, headed "by one Nicholas Melton,
who, being a shoemaker, was called Captain Cobler," appeared at the
doors of the church, and required the churchwardens to give them the
key of the jewel chamber. The chancellor, they said, was coming the next
morning, and intended to seize the plate. The churchwardens hesitating,
the keys were taken by force. The chests were opened, the crosses,
chalices, and candlesticks "were shewed openly in the sight of every
man," and then, lest they should be stolen in the night, an armed watch
kept guard till daybreak in the church aisles.
[Sidenote: October 2. Burst of the insurrection.]
[Sidenote: The commissioner is received with the alarm-bell.]
[Sidenote: He is sworn to the commons.]
At nine o'clock on Monday morning Heneage entered the town, with a
single servant. The chancellor was ill, and could not attend. As he rode
in, the alarm-bell pealed out from Louth Tower. The inhabitants swarmed
into the streets with with bills and staves; "the stir and the noise
arising hideous." The commissioner, in panic at the disturbance, hurried
into the church for sanctuary; but the protection was not allowed to
avail him. He was brought out into the market-place, a sword was held to
his breast, and he was sworn at an extemporized tribunal to be true to
the commons, upon pain of death. "Let us swear! let us all swear!" was
then the cry. A general oath was drawn. The townsmen swore--all
strangers resident swore--they would be faithful to the king, the
commonwealth, and to Holy Church.
In the heat of the enthusiasm appeared the registrar of the diocese, who
had followed Heneage with his books, in which was enrolled Cromwell's
commission. Instantly clutched, he was dragged to the market-cross. A
priest was mounted on the stone steps, and commanded to read the
commission aloud. He began; but the "hideous clamour" drowned his voice.
The crowd, climbing on his shoulders, to overlook the pages, bore him
down. He flung the book among the mob, and it was torn leaf from leaf,
and burnt upon the spot. The registrar barely escaped with his life: he
was rescued by friends, and hurried beyond the gates.
Meanwhile, a party of the rioters had gone out to Legbourne, and
returned, bringing Cromwell's servants, who were first set in the
stocks, and thrust afterwards into the town gaol.
[Sidenote: The township of Louth in motion to Castre.]
[Sidenote: Furious demeanour of the clergy]
[Sidenote: The gentlemen take the oath.]
So passed Monday. The next morning, early, the common bell was again
ringing. Other commissioners were reported to be at Castre, a few miles
distant; and Melton the shoemaker, and "one great James," a tailor, with
a volunteer army of horse and foot, harnessed and unharnessed, set out
to seize them. The alarm had spread; the people from the neighbouring
villages joined them as they passed, or had already risen and were in
marching order. At Castre they found the commissioners fled; but a
thousand horse were waiting for them, and the number every moment
increasing. Whole parishes marched in, headed by their clergy. A
rendezvous was fixed at Rotherwell; and at Rotherwell, on that day, or
the next, besides the commons, "there were priests and monks" (the
latter fresh ejected from their monasteries--pensioned, but furious) "to
the number of seven or eight hundred."[100] Some were "bidding their
bedes," and praying for the Pope and cardinals; some were in full
harness, or armed with such weapons as they could find: all were urging
on the people. They had, as yet, no plans. What would the gentlemen do?
was the question. "Kill the gentlemen," the priests cried; "if they
will not join us, they shall all be hanged."[101] This difficulty was
soon settled. They were swept up from their halls, or wherever they
could be found. The oath was offered them, with the alternative of
instant death; and they swore against their will, as all afterwards
pretended, and as some perhaps sincerely felt; but when the oath was
once taken, they joined with a hearty unanimity, and brought in with
them their own armed retainers, and the stores from their houses.[102]
Sir Edward Madyson came in, Sir Thomas Tyrwhit and Sir William Ascue.
Lord Borough, who was in Ascue's company when the insurgents caught him,
rode for his life, and escaped. One of his servants was overtaken in the
pursuit, was wounded mortally, and shriven on the field.
[Sidenote: October 3. Meeting at Horncastle.]
So matters went at Louth and Castre. On Tuesday, October 3d, the country
rose at Horncastle, in the same manner, only on an even larger scale. On
a heath in that neighbourhood there was "a great muster"; the gentlemen
of the county came in, in large numbers, with "Mr. Dymmock," the
sheriff, at their head. Dr. Mackarel, the Abbot of Barlings, was
present, with his canons, in full armour; from the abbey came a
waggon-load of victuals; oxen and sheep were driven in from the
neighbourhood and a retainer of the house carried a banner, on which was
worked a plough, a chalice and a host, a horn, and the five wounds of
Christ.[103] The sheriff, with his brother, rode up and down the heath,
giving money among the crowd; and the insurrection now gaining point,
another gentleman "wrote on the field, upon his saddlebow," a series of
articles, which were to form the ground of the rising.
[Sidenote: Articles of the rebels' petition.]
Six demands should be made upon the crown: 1. The religious houses
should be restored. 2. The subsidy should be remitted. 3. The clergy
should pay no more tenths and first-fruits to the crown. 4. The Statute
of Uses should be repealed. 5. The villein blood should be removed from
the privy council. 6. The heretic bishops, Cranmer and Latimer, Hilsey
Bishop of Rochester, Brown Archbishop of Dublin, and their own Bishop
Longlands the persecuting Erastian, should be deprived and punished.
[Sidenote: Messengers are despatched to the king.]
The deviser and the sheriff sate on their horses side by side, and read
these articles, one by one, aloud, to the people. "Do they please you or
not?" they said, when they had done. "Yea, yea, yea!" the people
shouted, waving their staves above their heads; and messengers were
chosen instantly and despatched upon the spot, to carry to Windsor to
the king the demands of the people of Lincolnshire. Nothing was
required more but that the rebellion should be cemented by a common
crime; and this, too, was speedily accomplished.
[Sidenote: The Chancellor of the Bishop of Lincoln is murdered.]
The rebellion in Ireland had been inaugurated with the murder of
Archbishop Allen; the insurgents of Lincolnshire found a lower victim,
but they sacrificed him with the same savageness. The chancellor of
Lincoln had been the instrument through whom Cromwell had communicated
with the diocese, and was a special object of hatred. It does not appear
how he fell into the people's hands. We find only that "he was very
sick," and in this condition he was brought up on horseback into the
field at Horncastle. As he appeared he was received by "the parsons and
vicars" with a loud long yell--"Kill him! kill him!" "Whereupon two of
the rebels, by procurement of the said parsons and vicars, pulled him
violently off his horse, and, as he knelt upon his knees, with their
staves they slew him," the parsons crying continually, "Kill him! kill
him!'"
As the body lay on the ground it was stripped bare, and the garments
were parted among the murderers. The sheriff distributed the money that
was in the chancellor's purse. "And every parson and every vicar in the
field counselled their parishioners, with many comfortable words, to
proceed in their journey, saying unto them that they should lack neither
gold nor silver."[104] These, we presume, were Pole's seven thousand
children of light who had not bowed the knee to Baal--the noble army of
saints who were to flock to Charles's banners.[105]
The same Tuesday there was a rising at Lincoln. Bishop Longlands' palace
was attacked and plundered, and the town occupied by armed bodies of
insurgents. By the middle of the week the whole country was in
movement--beacons blazing, alarm-bells ringing; and, pending the reply
of the king, Lincoln became the focus to which the separate bodies from
Castre, Horncastle, Louth, and all other towns and villages, flocked in
for head quarters.
[Sidenote: The duty and the conduct of Lord Hussey of Sleford.]
The duty of repressing riots and disturbances in England lay with the
nobility in their several districts. In default of organized military or
police, the nobility _ex officio_ were the responsible guardians of the
peace. They held their estates subject to these obligations, and
neglect, unless it could be shown to be involuntary, was treason. The
nobleman who had to answer for the peace of Lincolnshire was Lord Hussey
of Sleford. Lord Hussey had spoken, as I have stated, in unambiguous
language, of the probability and desirableness of a struggle. When the
moment came, it seems as if he had desired the fruits of a Catholic
victory without the danger of fighting for it, or else had been
frightened and doubtful how to act. When the first news of the commotion
reached him, he wrote to the mayor of Lincoln, commanding him, in the
king's name, to take good care of the city; to buy up or secure the
arms; to levy men; and, if he found himself unable to hold his ground,
to let him know without delay.[106] His letter fell into the hands of
the insurgents; but Lord Hussey, though he must have known the fate of
it, or, at least, could not have been ignorant of the state of the
country, sate still at Sleford, waiting to see how events would turn.
Yeomen and gentlemen who had not joined in the rising hurried to him for
directions, promising to act in whatever way he would command; but he
would give no orders--he would remain passive--he would not be false to
his prince--he would not be against the defenders of the faith. The
volunteers who had offered their services for the crown he called "busy
knaves"--"he bade them go their own way as they would;" and still
uncertain, he sent messengers to the rebels to inquire their intentions.
But he would not join them; he would not resist them; at length, when
they threatened to end the difficulty by bringing him forcibly into
their camp, he escaped secretly out of the country; while Lady Hussey,
"who was supposed to know her husband's mind," sent provisions to a
detachment of the Lincoln army.[107] For such conduct the commander of a
division would be tried by a court-martial, with no uncertain sentence;
but the extent of Hussey's offence is best seen in contrast with the
behaviour of Lord Shrewsbury, whose courage and fidelity on this
occasion perhaps saved Henry's crown.
[Sidenote: Wednesday, Oct. 4. Lord Shrewsbury raises a force,]
[Sidenote: Friday, October 6. And entreats Lord Hussey to join him.]
[Sidenote: But without effect.]
[Sidenote: He takes a position at Nottingham.]
The messengers sent from Horncastle were Sir Marmaduke Constable and Sir
Edward Madyson. Heneage the commissioner was permitted to accompany
them, perhaps to save him from being murdered by the priests. They did
not spare the spur, and, riding through the night, they found the king
at Windsor the day following. Henry on the instant despatched a courier
to Lord Hussey, and another to Lord Shrewsbury, directing them to raise
all the men whom they could muster; sending at the same time private
letters to the gentlemen who were said to be with the insurgents, to
recall them, if possible, to their allegiance. Lord Shrewsbury had not
waited for instructions. Although his own county had not so far been
disturbed, he had called out his tenantry, and had gone forward to
Sherwood with every man that he could collect, on the instant that he
heard of the rising. Expecting the form that it might assume, he had
sent despatches on the very first day through Derbyshire, Stafford,
Shropshire, Worcester, Leicester, and Northampton, to have the powers of
the counties raised without a moment's delay.[108] Henry's letter found
him at Sherwood on the 6th of October. The king he knew had written also
to Lord Hussey; but, understanding the character of this nobleman better
than his master understood it, and with a foreboding of his possible
disloyalty, he sent on the messenger to Sleford with a further note from
himself, entreating him at such a moment not to be found wanting to his
duty. "My lord," he wrote, "for the old acquaintance between your
lordship and me, as unto him that I heartily love, I will write the
plainness of my mind. Ye have always been an honourable and true
gentleman, and, I doubt not, will now so prove yourself. I have no
commandment from the king but only to suppress the rebellion; and I
assure you, my lord, on my truth, that all the king's subjects of six
shires will be with me to-morrow at night, to the number of forty
thousand able persons; and I trust to have your lordship to keep us
company."[109] His exhortations were in vain; Lord Hussey made no
effort; he had not the manliness to join the rising--he had not the
loyalty to assist in repressing it. He stole away and left the country
to its fate. His conduct, unfortunately, was imitated largely in the
counties on which Lord Shrewsbury relied for reinforcements. Instead of
the thirty or forty thousand men whom he expected, the royalist leader
could scarcely collect three or four thousand. Ten times his number were
by this time at Lincoln, and increasing every day; and ominous news at
the same time reaching him of the state of Yorkshire, he found it
prudent to wait at Nottingham, overawing that immediate neighbourhood
till he could hear again from the king.
[Sidenote: Musters are raised in London.]
[Sidenote: Monday, October 9. Sir John Russell reaches Stamford.]
Meanwhile Madyson and Constable had been detained in London. The
immediate danger was lest the rebels should march on London before a
sufficient force could be brought into the field to check them. Sir
William Fitzwilliam, Sir John Russell, Cromwell's gallant nephew
Richard, Sir William Parr, Sir Francis Brian, every loyal friend of the
government who could be spared, scattered south and west of the
metropolis calling the people on their allegiance to the king's service.
The command-in-chief was given to the Duke of Suffolk. The stores in the
Tower, a battery of field artillery, bows, arrows, ammunition of all
kinds, were sent on in hot haste to Ampthill; and so little time had
been lost, that on Monday, the 9th of October, a week only from the
first outbreak at Louth, Sir John Russell with the advanced guard was at
Stamford, and a respectable force was following in his rear.
Alarming reports came in of the temper of the north-midland and eastern
counties. The disposition of the people between Lincoln and London was
said to be as bad as possible.[110] If there had been delay or trifling,
or if Shrewsbury had been less promptly loyal, in all likelihood the
whole of England north of the Ouse would have been in a flame.
[Sidenote: The Duke of Suffolk follows two days after.]
[Sidenote: Wednesday, October 11. The rebels begin to disperse from want
of provisions.]
From the south and the west, on the other hand, accounts were more
reassuring; Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire,
Buckinghamshire, all counties where the bishops had found heaviest work
in persecuting Protestants, had answered loyally to the royal summons.
Volunteers flocked in, man and horse, in larger numbers than were
required; on Tuesday, the 10th, Suffolk was able to close his muster
rolls, and needed only adequate equipment to be at the head of a body of
men as large as he could conveniently move. But he had no leisure to
wait for stores. Rumours were already flying that Russell had been
attacked, that he had fought and lost a battle and twenty thousand
men.[111] The security against a spread of the conflagration was to
trample it out upon the spot. Imperfectly furnished as he was, he
reached Stamford only two days after the first division of his troops.
He was obliged to pause for twenty-four hours to provide means for
crossing the rivers, and halt and refresh his men. The rebels on the
Monday had been reported to be from fifty to sixty thousand strong. A
lost battle would be the loss of the kingdom. It was necessary to take
all precautions. But Suffolk within a few hours of his arrival at
Stamford learnt that time was doing his work swiftly and surely. The
insurrection, so wide and so rapid, had been an explosion of loose
powder, not a judicious economy of it. The burst had been so
spontaneous, there was an absence of preparation so complete, that it
was embarrassed by its own magnitude. There was no forethought, no
efficient leader; sixty thousand men had drifted to Lincoln and had
halted there in noisy uncertainty till their way to London was
interrupted. They had no commissariat: each man had brought a few days'
provisions with him; and when these were gone, the multitude dissolved
with the same rapidity with which it had assembled. On the Wednesday at
noon, Richard Cromwell reported that the township of Boston, amounting
to twelve thousand men, were gone home. In the evening of the same day
five or six thousand others were said to have gone, and not more than
twenty thousand at the outside were thought to remain in the camp. The
young cavaliers in the royal army began to fear that there would be no
battle after all.[112]
[Sidenote: The king's answer to the rebels' petition.]
Suffolk could now act safely, and preparatory to his advance he sent
forward the king's answer to the articles of Horncastle.
"Concerning choosing of councillors," the king wrote, "I have never
read, heard, nor known that princes' councillors and prelates should be
appointed by rude and ignorant common people. How presumptuous, then,
are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute
and beastly of the whole realm, and of least experience, to take upon
you, contrary to God's law and man's law, to rule your prince whom ye
are bound to obey and serve, and for no worldly cause to withstand.
[Sidenote: The suppression of the abbeys was by act of parliament, and
in consequence of their notorious vice.]
"As to the suppression of religious houses and monasteries, we will that
ye and all our subjects should well know that this is granted us by all
the nobles, spiritual and temporal, of this our realm, and by all the
commons of the same by act of parliament, and not set forth by any
councillor or councillors upon their mere will and fantasy as ye falsely
would persuade our realm to believe: and where ye allege that the
service of God is much thereby diminished, the truth thereof is
contrary, for there be none houses suppressed where God was well served,
but where most vice, mischief, and abomination of living was used; and
that doth well appear by their own confessions subscribed with their own
hands, in the time of our visitation. And yet were suffered a great many
of them, more than we by the act needed, to stand; wherein if they
amend not their living we fear we have more to answer for than for the
suppression of all the rest."
Dismissing the Act of Uses as beyond their understanding, and coming to
the subsidy,--
[Sidenote: The subsidy is granted by parliament, and shall be paid.]
"Think ye," the king said, "that we be so faint-hearted that perforce ye
would compel us with your insurrection and such rebellious demeanour to
remit the same? Make ye sure by occasion of this your ingratitude,
unnaturalness, and unkindness to us now administered, ye give us cause
which hath always been as much dedicate to your wealth as ever was king,
not so much to set our study for the setting forward of the same, seeing
how unkindly and untruly ye deal now with us:
[Sidenote: Let the rebels surrender their leaders and disperse to their
homes.]
"Wherefore, sirs, remember your follies and traitorous demeanour, and
shame not your native country of England. We charge you eftsoons that ye
withdraw yourselves to your own houses every man, cause the provokers of
you to this mischief to be delivered to our lieutenant's hands or ours,
and you yourselves submit yourselves to such condign punishment as we
and our nobles shall think you worthy to suffer. For doubt ye not else
that we will not suffer this injury at your hands unrevenged; and we
pray unto Almighty God to give you grace to do your duties; and rather
obediently to consent amongst you to deliver into the hands of our
lieutenant a hundred persons, to be ordered according to their demerits,
than by your obstinacy and wilfulness to put yourselves, lives, wives,
children, lands, goods, and chattels, besides the indignation of God, in
the utter adventure of total destruction."[113]
[Sidenote: Thursday, October 12. Disputes between the gentlemen and the
commons.]
When the letter was brought in, the insurgent council were sitting in
the chapter-house of the cathedral. The cooler-headed among the
gentlemen, even those among them who on the whole sympathized in the
rising, had seen by this time that success was doubtful, and that if
obtained it would be attended with many inconveniences to themselves.
The enclosures would go down, the cattle farms would be confiscated. The
yeomen's tenures would be everywhere revised. The probability, however,
was that, without concert, without discipline, without a leader, they
would be destroyed in detail; their best plan would be to secure their
own safety. Their prudence nearly cost them their lives.
"We, the gentlemen," says one of them, when the letters came, thought
"to read them secretly among ourselves; but as we were reading them the
commons present cried that they would hear them read or else pull them
from us. And therefore I read the letters openly; and because there was
a little clause there which we feared would stir the commons, I did
leave that clause unread, which was perceived by a canon there, and he
said openly the letter was falsely read, by reason whereof I was like to
be slain."[114]
[Sidenote: The gentlemen are nearly murdered.]
The assembly broke into confusion. The alarm spread that the gentlemen
would betray the cause, as in fact they intended to do. The clergy and
the leaders of the commons clamoured to go forward and attack Suffolk,
and two hundred of the most violent went out into the cloister to
consult by themselves. After a brief conference they resolved that the
clergy had been right from the first: that the gentlemen were no true
friends of the cause, and they had better kill them. They went back
into the chapter-house, and, guarding the doors, prepared to execute
their intention, when some one cried that it was wiser to leave them
till the next day. They should go with them into action, and if they
flinched they would kill them then. There was a debate. The two hundred
went out again--again changed their minds and returned; but by this time
the intended victims had escaped by a private entrance into the house of
the murdered chancellor, and barricaded the door. It was now evening.
The cloisters were growing dark, and the mob finally retired to the
camp, swearing that they would return at daybreak.
[Sidenote: The yeomen and villagers join the gentlemen.]
The gentlemen then debated what they should do. Lincoln cathedral is a
natural fortress. The main body of the insurgents lay round the bottom
of the hill on which the cathedral stands; the gentlemen, with their
retinues, seem to have been lodged in the houses round the close, and to
have been left in undisputed possession of their quarters for the night.
Suffolk was known to be advancing. They determined, if possible, to cut
their way to him in the morning, or else to hold out in their present
position till they were relieved. Meanwhile the division in the council
had extended to the camp. Alarmed by the desertions, surprised by the
rapidity with which the king's troops had been collected, and with the
fatal distrust of one another which forms the best security of
governments from the danger of insurrection, the farmers and villagers
were disposed in large numbers to follow the example of their natural
leaders. The party of the squires were for peace: the party of the
clergy for a battle. The former in the darkness moved off in a body and
joined the party in the cathedral. There was now no longer danger. The
gentry were surrounded by dependents on whom they could rely; and though
still inferior in number, were better armed and disciplined than the
brawling crowd of fanatics in the camp. When day broke they descended
the hill, and told the people that for the present their enterprise must
be relinquished. The king had said that they were misinformed on the
character of his measures. It was, perhaps, true, and for the present
they must wait and see. If they were deceived they might make a fresh
insurrection.[115]
[Sidenote: Friday, October 13. The Duke of Suffolk enters Lincoln.]
They were heard in sullen silence, but they were obeyed. There was no
resistance; they made their way to the king's army, and soon after the
Duke of Suffolk, Sir John Russell, and Cromwell rode into Lincoln. The
streets, we are told, were crowded, but no cheer saluted them, no bonnet
was moved. The royalist commanders came in as conquerors after a
bloodless victory, but they read in the menacing faces which frowned
upon them that their work was still, perhaps, to be done.
[Sidenote: The ringleaders are surrendered, and the commotion ceases.]
For the present, however, the conflagration was extinguished. The
cathedral was turned into an arsenal, fortified and garrisoned;[116] and
the suspicion and jealousy which had been raised between the spiritualty
and the gentlemen soon doing its work, the latter offered their services
to Suffolk, and laboured to earn their pardon by their exertions for the
restoration of order. The towns one by one sent in their submission.
Louth made its peace by surrendering unconditionally fifteen of the
original leaders of the commotion. A hundred or more were taken
prisoners elsewhere, Abbot Mackarel and his canons being of the
number;[117] and Suffolk was informed that these, who were the worst
offenders, being reserved for future punishment, he might declare a free
pardon to all the rest "without doing unto them any hurt or damage in
their goods or persons."[118]
In less than a fortnight a rebellion of sixty thousand persons had
subsided as suddenly as it had risen. Contrived by the monks and parish
priests, it had been commenced without concert, it had been conducted
without practical skill. The clergy had communicated to their
instruments alike their fury and their incapacity.
But the insurrection in Lincolnshire was but the first shower which is
the herald of the storm.
On the night of the 12th of October there was present at an inn in
Lincoln, watching the issue of events, a gentleman of Yorkshire, whose
name, a few weeks later, was ringing through every English household in
accents of terror or admiration.
[Sidenote: September. A party of foxhunters at Yorkyswold.]
[Sidenote: The family of the Askes.]
Our story must go back to the beginning of the month. The law vacation
was drawing to its close, and younger brothers in county families who
then, as now, were members of the inns of court, were returning from
their holidays to London. The season had been of unusual beauty. The
summer had lingered into the autumn, and during the latter half of
September young Sir Ralph Ellerkar, of Ellerkar Hall in "Yorkyswold,"
had been entertaining a party of friends for cub-hunting. Among his
guests were his three cousins, John, Robert, and Christopher Aske. John,
the eldest, the owner of the old family property of
Aughton-on-the-Derwent, a quiet, unobtrusive gentleman, with two sons,
students at the Temple: Robert, of whom, till he now emerges into light,
we discover only that he was a barrister in good practice at
Westminster; and Christopher, the possessor of an estate in Marshland in
the West Riding. The Askes were highly connected, being cousins of the
Earl of Cumberland,[119] whose eldest son, Lord Clifford, had recently
married a daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and niece therefore of the
king.[120]
[Sidenote: October 3. Robert Aske's going to London is stopped by the
rebels in Lincolnshire.]
[Sidenote: October 4. He takes the command.]
[Sidenote: Crosses back into Yorkshire,]
The hunting-party broke up on the 3d of October, and Robert, if his own
account of himself was true, left Ellerkar with no other intention than
of going direct to London to his business. His route lay across the
Humber at Welton, and when in the ferry he heard from the boatmen that
the commons were up in Lincolnshire. He wished to return, but the state
of the tide would not allow him; he then endeavoured to make his way by
by-roads and bridle-paths to the house of a brother-in-law at Sawcliffe;
but he was met somewhere near Appleby by a party of the rebels. They
demanded who he was, and on his replying, they offered him the popular
oath. It is hard to believe that he was altogether taken by surprise; a
man of so remarkable powers as he afterwards exhibited could not have
been wholly ignorant of the condition of the country, and if his loyalty
had been previously sound he would not have thrown himself into the
rising with such deliberate energy. The people by whom he was "taken,"
as he designated what had befallen him,[121] became his body-guard to
Sawcliffe. He must have been well known in the district. His brother's
property lay but a few miles distant, across the Trent, and as soon as
the news spread that he was among the rebels, his name was made a
rallying cry. The command of the district was assigned to him from the
Humber to Kirton, and for the next few days he remained endeavouring to
organize the movement into some kind of form; but he was doubtful of the
prospects of the rebellion, and doubtful of his own conduct. The commons
of the West Riding beginning to stir, he crossed into Marshland; he
passed the Ouse into Howdenshire, going from village to village, and
giving orders that no bells should be rung, no beacon should be lighted,
except on the receipt of a special message from himself.
[Sidenote: And again returns into Lincolnshire.]
[Sidenote: October 12. And is at Lincoln when Suffolk enters.]
Leaving his own county, he again hastened back to his command in
Lincolnshire; and by this time he heard of Suffolk's advance with the
king's answer to the petition. He rode post to Lincoln, and reached the
town to find the commons and the gentlemen on the verge of fighting
among themselves. He endeavoured to make his way into the cathedral
close, but finding himself suspected by the commons, and being told that
he would be murdered if he persevered, he remained in concealment till
Suffolk had made known the intentions of the government; then, perhaps
satisfied that the opportunity was past, perhaps believing that if not
made use of on the instant it might never recur, perhaps resigning
himself to be guided by events, he went back at full speed to Yorkshire.
And events had decided: whatever his intentions may have been, the
choice was no longer open to him.
[Sidenote: October 13. The beacons lighted in Yorkshire.]
As he rode down at midnight to the bank of the Humber, the clash of the
alarm-bells came pealing far over the water. From hill to hill, from
church-tower to church-tower, the warning lights were shooting. The
fishermen on the German Ocean watched them flickering in the darkness
from Spurnhead to Scarborough, from Scarborough to Berwick-upon-Tweed.
They streamed westward, over the long marshes across Spalding Moor; up
the Ouse and the Wharf, to the watershed where the rivers flow into the
Irish Sea. The mountains of Westmoreland sent on the message to Kendal,
to Cockermouth, to Penrith, to Carlisle; and for days and nights there
was one loud storm of bells and blaze of beacons from the Trent to the
Cheviot Hills.
[Sidenote: October 9. An address bearing Aske's signature invites the
commons of Yorkshire to rise.]
All Yorkshire was in movement. Strangely, too, as Aske assures us, he
found himself the object of an unsought distinction. His own name was
the watchword which every tongue was crying. In his absence an address
had gone out around the towns, had been hung on church-doors, and posted
on market crosses, which bore his signature, though, as he protested, it
was neither written by himself nor with his consent.[122] Ill composed,
but with a rugged eloquence, it called upon all good Englishmen to make
a stand for the Church of Christ, which wicked men were destroying, for
the commonwealth of the realm, and for their own livings, which were
stolen from them by impositions. For those who would join it should be
well; those who refused to join, or dared to resist, should be under
Christ's curse, and be held guilty of all the Christian blood which
should be shed.
Whoever wrote the letter, it did its work. One scene out of many will
illustrate the effect.
[Sidenote: Scene at Beverley.]
[Sidenote: October 8. Priests, women, and families.]
[Sidenote: William Stapleton made captain of Beverley.]
William Stapleton, a friend of Aske, and a brother barrister, also bound
to London for the term, was spending a few days at the Grey Friars at
Beverley, with his brother Christopher. The latter had been out of
health, and had gone thither for change of air with his wife. The young
lawyer was to have set out over the Humber on the 4th of October. At
three in the morning his servant woke him, with the news that the
Lincolnshire beacons were on fire, and the country was impassable.
Beverley itself was in the greatest excitement; the sick brother was
afraid to be left alone, and William Stapleton agreed for the present to
remain and take care of him. On Sunday morning they were startled by the
sound of the alarm-bell. A servant who was sent out to learn what had
happened, brought in word that an address had arrived from Robert Aske,
and that a proclamation was out, under the town seal, calling on every
man to repair to Westwood Green, under the walls of the Grey Friars, and
be sworn in to the commons.[123] Christopher Stapleton, a sensible man,
made somewhat timid by illness, ordered all doors to be locked and
bolted, and gave directions that no one of his household should stir.
His wife, a hater of Protestants, an admirer of Queen Catherine, of the
Pope, and the old religion, was burning with sympathy for the
insurgents. The family confessor appeared on the scene, a certain Father
Bonaventure, taking the lady's part, and they two together "went forth
out of the door among the crowd."--"God's blessing on ye," William
Stapleton heard his sister-in-law cry.--"Speed ye well," the priest
cried; "speed ye well in your godly purposes." The people rushed about
them. "Where are your husband and his brother?" they shouted to her. "In
the Freers," she answered. "Bring them out!" the cry rose. "Pull them
out by the head; or we will burn the Freers and them within it." Back
flew the lady in haste, and perhaps in scorn, to urge forward her
hesitating lord--he wailing, wringing his hands, wishing himself out of
the world; she exclaiming it was God's quarrel--let him rise and show
himself a man. The dispute lingered; the crowd grew impatient; the doors
were dashed in; they rushed into the hall, and thrust the oath down the
throat of the reluctant gentleman, and as they surged back they swept
the brother out with them upon the green. Five hundred voices were
crying, "Captains! captains!" and presently a shout rose above the rest,
"Master William Stapleton shall be our captain!" And so it was to be:
the priest Bonaventure had willed it so; and Stapleton, seeing worse
would follow if he refused, consented.
It was like a contagion of madness--instantly he was wild like the rest.
"Forward!" was the cry--whither, who knew or cared? only "Forward!" and
as the multitude rocked to and fro, a splashed rider spurred through the
streets, "like a man distraught,"[124] eyes staring, hair streaming,
shouting, as he passed, that they should rise and follow, and flashing
away like a meteor.
So went Sunday at Beverley, the 8th of October, 1536; and within a few
days the substance of the same scene repeated itself in all the towns of
all the northern counties, the accidents only varying. The same spirit
was abroad as in Lincolnshire; but here were strong heads and strong
wills, which could turn the wild humour to a purpose,--men who had
foreseen the catastrophe, and were prepared to use it.
[Sidenote: Lord Darcy of Templehurst a known opponent of the
Reformation.]
Lord Darcy of Templehurst was among the most distinguished of the
conservative nobility. He was an old man. He had won his spurs under
Henry VII. He had fought against the Moors by the side of Ferdinand, and
he had earned laurels in the wars in France against Louis XII. Strong in
his military reputation, in his rank, and in his age, he had spoken in
parliament against the separation from the see of Rome; and though sworn
like the rest of the peers to obey the law, he had openly avowed the
reluctance of his assent--he had secretly maintained a correspondence
w
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