A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689

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Title: A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689

Author: Samuel Rawson Gardiner

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, V. 2: 1509-1689 ***

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STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

VOL. II.

WORKS BY SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak
of the Civil War, 1603-1642. With Maps. 10 vols. crown 8vo. 5_s._
net each.

A HISTORY OF THE GREAT CIVIL WAR, 1642-1649. With Maps. 4 vols.
crown 8vo. 5_s._ net each.

A HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE PROTECTORATE. 1649-1656. With
Maps. 4 vols. crown 8vo. 5_s._ net each.

THE LAST YEARS OF THE PROTECTORATE, 1656-1658. By CHARLES HARDING
FIRTH, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of
Oxford. With 3 Plans. 2 vols. 8vo. 24_s._ net.

A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. From the Earliest Times to the Death
of King Edward VII.

Vol. I. B.C. 55-A.D. 1509. With 173 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 4_s._

Vol II. 1509-1689. With 96 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 4_s._

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A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

_FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE DEATH OF KING EDWARD VII_

SAMUEL R. GARDINER, D.C.L., LL.D.

LATE FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD ETC.

_NEW EDITION (1902)_

VOL. II.

A.D. 1509-1689

_NEW IMPRESSION (1912)_

REISSUE

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CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME

PART V

_THE RENASCENCE AND THE REFORMATION_ 1509-1603

CHAPTER XXIV

HENRY VIII. AND WOLSEY. 1509-1527

PAGE

1. The New King. 1509 361

2. Continental Troubles. 1508-1511 363

3. The Rise of Wolsey. 1512 363

4. The War with France. 1512-1513 364

5. Peace with France. 1514 364

6. Wolsey's Policy of Peace. 1514-1518 364

7. Wolsey and the Renascence 366

8. The Renascence in England 367

9. The Oxford Reformers 367

10. 'The Utopia.' 1515-1516 367

11. More and Henry VIII. 368

12. The Contest for the Empire. 1519 369

13. The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 1520 369

14. The Execution of the Duke of Buckingham. 1521 369

15. Another French War. 1522-1523 369

16. The Amicable Loan. 1525 372

17. Closing Years of Wolsey's Greatness. 1525-1527 372

CHAPTER XXV

THE BREACH WITH THE PAPACY. 1527-1534

1. The Papacy and the Renascence 374

2. Wolsey and the Papacy 375

3. Wolsey's Legatine Powers 375

4. Henry VIII. and the Clergy 377

5. German Lutheranism 377

6. Henry's Controversy with Luther 379

7. Queen Catharine and Anne Boleyn 379

8. Henry's Demand for a Divorce. 1527-1528 382

9. The Legatine Court. 1529 382

10. The Fall of Wolsey. 1529-1530 383

11. The House of Commons and the Clergy. 1529 385

12. The Universities Consulted. 1530 385

13. The Clergy under a Præmunire. 1530-1531 385

14. The King's Supreme Headship acknowledged by the
Clergy. 1531 386

15. The Submission of the Clergy. 1532 386

16. Sir Thomas More and the Protestants. 1529-1532 386

17. Resignation of Sir Thomas More. 1532 388

18. The First Act of Annates. 1532 388

19. The King's Marriage and the Act of Appeals. 1533 388

20. Archbishop Cranmer and the Court at Dunstable. 1533 389

21. Frith and Latimer. 1533 389

22. Completion of the Breach with Rome. 1533-1534 390

CHAPTER XXVI

THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1534-1547

1. The Act of Succession. 1534 392

2. The Acts of Treason and Supremacy. 1534 392

3. The Monks of the Charterhouse. 1534 393

4. Execution of Fisher and More. 1535 394

5. The Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. 1536 394

6. The Execution of Anne Boleyn. 1536 395

7. The Ten Articles. 1536 395

8. The Translation of the Bible authorised. 1536 396

9. The Pilgrimage of Grace. 1536-1537 396

10. Birth of a Prince. 1537 397

11. The Beginning of the Attack on the Greater Monasteries.
1537-1538 397

12. Destruction of Relics and Images. 1538 398

13. The Trial of Lambert. 1538 399

14. The Marquis of Exeter and the Poles. 1538 399

15. The Six Articles. 1539 399

16. Completion of the Suppression of the Monasteries.
1539-1540 400

17. Anne of Cleves and the Fall of Cromwell. 1539-1540 400

18. Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. 1540-1543 401

19. Ireland. 1534 401

20. The Geraldine Rebellion. 1534-1535 402

21. Lord Leonard Grey. 1536-1539 402

22. Henry VIII. King of Ireland. 1541 404

23. Solway Moss. 1542 404

24. War with Scotland and France. 1542-1546 405

25. The Litany and the Primer. 1544-1545 409

26. The Last Days of Henry VIII. 1545-1547 410

CHAPTER XXVII

EDWARD VI. AND MARY

EDWARD VI., 1547-1553. MARY, 1553-1558.

1. Somerset becomes Protector. 1547 412

2. The Scotch War. 1547-1548 412

3. Cranmer's Position in the Church of England. 1547 413

4. Ecclesiastical Reforms. 1547-1548 414

5. The First Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1549 415

6. The Insurrection in the West. 1549 415

7. Ket's Rebellion. 1549 415

8. The Fall of Somerset. 1549 416

9. Warwick and the Advanced Reformers. 1549 416

10. Latimer's Sermons. 1548-1550 417

11. Warwick and Somerset. 1550-1552 417

12. The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1552 418

13. The Forty-two Articles. 1553 419

14. Northumberland's Conspiracy. 1553 421

15. Lady Jane Grey. 1553 421

16. Mary restores the Mass. 1553 422

17. Mary's First Parliament. 1553 422

18. Wyatt's Rebellion. 1554 423

19. The Queen's Marriage 423

20. The Submission to Rome. 1554 424

21. The Beginning of the Persecution. 1555 424

22. Death of Cranmer. 1556 425

23. Continuance of the Persecution. 1556-1558 426

24. The Queen's Disappointment. 1555-1556 426

25. War with France and the Loss of Calais. 1557-1558 427

26. Death of Mary. 1558 427

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT IN CHURCH AND STATE. 1558-1570

1. Elizabeth's Difficulties. 1558 428

2. The Act of Uniformity and Supremacy. 1559 429

3. The new Bishops and the Ceremonies. 1559-1564 429

4. Calvinism 430

5. Peace with France. 1559 431

6. The Reformation in Scotland. 1559 432

7. The Claims of Mary Stuart. 1559 432

8. The Treaty of Edinburgh. 1560 433

9. Scottish Presbyterianism. 1561 434

10. Mary and Elizabeth. 1561 435

11. The French War. 1562-1564 436

12. End of the Council of Trent. 1563 436

13. The Jesuits 436

14. The Danger from Scotland. 1561-1565 437

15. The Darnley Marriage. 1565 438

16. The Murder of Rizzio. 1566 438

17. The Murder of Darnley. 1567 439

18. The Deposition and Flight of Mary. 1567-1568 439

19. Mary's Case before English Commissioners. 1568-1569 440

20. The Rising in the North. 1569 441

21. The Papal Excommunication. 1570 441

CHAPTER XXIX

ELIZABETH AND THE EUROPEAN CONFLICT. 1570-1587

1. The Continental Powers. 1566-1570 442

2. The Anjou Marriage Treaty and the Ridolfi Plot.
1570-1571 443

3. Elizabeth and the Puritans 444

4. Elizabeth and Parliament. 1566 444

5. A Puritan Parliament. 1571 445

6. The Duke of Norfolk's Plot and Execution. 1571-1572 445

7. The Admonition to Parliament. 1572 446

8. Mariners and Pirates 446

9. Westward Ho! 447

10. Francis Drake's Voyage to Panama. 1572 448

11. The Seizure of Brill, and the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew. 1572 449

12. The Growth of the Dutch Republic. 1572-1578 449

13. Quiet Times in England. 1572-1577 450

14. Drake's Voyage. 1577-1580 450

15. Ireland and the Reformation. 1547 451

16. Ireland under Edward VI. and Mary. 1547-1558 451

17. Elizabeth and Ireland. 1558-1578 452

18. The Landing at Smerwick, and the Desmond Rising.
1579-1583 452

19. The Jesuits in England. 1580 453

20. The Recusancy Laws. 1581 454

21. Growing Danger of Elizabeth. 1580-1584 454

22. The Association. 1584-1585 456

23. Growth of Philip's Power. 1584-1585 456

24. Babington's Plot, and the Trial of Mary Stuart. 1586 457

25. Execution of Mary Stuart. 1587 458

CHAPTER XXX

ELIZABETH'S YEARS OF TRIUMPH. 1587-1603

1. The Singeing of the King of Spain's Beard. 1587 458

2. The Approach of the Armada. 1588 458

3. The Equipment of the Armada. 1588 459

4. The Equipment of the English Fleet. 1588 460

5. The Defeat of the Armada. 1588 462

6. The Destruction of the Armada. 1588 462

7. Philip II. and France. 1588-1593 464

8. Maritime Enterprises. 1589-1596 464

9. Increasing Prosperity 464

10. Buildings 465

11. Furniture 465

12. Growing Strength of the House of Commons 468

13. Archbishop Whitgift and the Court of High Commission.
1583 468

14. The House of Commons and Puritanism. 1584 470

15. The Separatists 470

16. Whitgift and Hooker 472

17. Spenser, Shakspere, and Bacon 473

18. Condition of the Catholics. 1588-1603 475

19. Irish Difficulties. 1583-1594 475

20. O'Neill and the Earl of Essex. 1595-1600 475

21. Essex's Imprisonment and Execution. 1599-1601 476

22. Mountjoy's Conquest of Ireland. 1600-1603 478

23. Parliament and the Monopolies. 1601 478

24. The Last Days of Elizabeth. 1601-1603 479

PART VI

_THE PURITAN REVOLUTION._ 1603-1660

CHAPTER XXXI

JAMES I. 1603-1625

1. The Peace with Spain. 1603-1604 481

2. The Hampton Court Conference. 1604 481

3. James and the House of Commons 482

4. Gunpowder Plot. 1604-1605 483

5. The Post-nati. 1606-1608 483

6. Irish Difficulties. 1603-1610 483

7. Bate's Case and the New Impositions. 1606-1608 484

8. The Great Contract. 1610-1611 484

9. Bacon and Somerset. 1612-1613 486

10. The Addled Parliament. 1614 486

11. The Spanish Alliance. 1614-1617 488

12. The Rise of Buckingham. 1615-1618 488

13. The Voyage and Execution of Raleigh. 1617-1618 489

14. Colonisation of Virginia and New England. 1607-1620 489

15. The Beginning of the Thirty Years' War. 1618-1620 490

16. The Meeting of James's Third Parliament. 1621 490

17. The Royal Prerogative. 1616-1621 492

18. Financial Reform. 1619 492

19. Favouritism and Corruption 494

20. The Monopolies Condemned. 1621 494

21. The Fall of Bacon. 1621 495

22. Digby's Mission, and the Dissolution of Parliament.
1621 496

23. The Loss of the Palatinate. 1622 497

24. Charles's Journey to Madrid. 1623 497

25. The Prince's Return. 1623 498

26. The Last Parliament of James I. 1624 500

27. The French Alliance 501

28. Mansfeld's Expedition, and the Death of James I.
1624-1625 501

CHAPTER XXXII

THE GROWTH OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I. 1625-1634

1. Charles I. and Buckingham. 1625 502

2. Charles's First Parliament. 1625 502

3. The Expedition to Cadiz. 1625 502

4. Charles's Second Parliament. 1626 503

5. The Forced Loan. 1626 505

6. The Expedition to Ré. 1627 506

7. The Five Knights' Case. 1627 506

8. Wentworth and Eliot in the Third Parliament of Charles I.
1628 508

9. The Petition of Right. 1628 508

10. Tonnage and Poundage. 1628 509

11. Buckingham's Murder. 1628 510

12. The Question of Sovereignty. 1628 510

13. Protestantism of the House of Commons. 1625-1628 511

14. Religious Differences. 1625-1628 511

15. The King's Declaration. 1628 512

16. The Second Session of the Third Parliament of Charles I.
1629 512

17. Breach between the King and the Commons. 1629 513

18. The Constitutional Dispute. 1629 513

19. The Victory of Personal Government. 1629-1632 514

20. Star Chamber Sentences. 1630-1633 514

21. Laud's Intellectual Position. 1629-1633 515

22. Laud as the Upholder of Uniformity 516

23. The Beginning of Laud's Archbishopric. 1633-1634 517

24. Laud and Prynne. 1633-1634 519

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I. 1634-1641

1. The Metropolitical Visitation. 1634-1637 520

2. Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton. 1637 521

3. Financial Pressure. 1635-1637 521

4. Ship-money. 1634-1637 523

5. Hampden's Case. 1637-1638 523

6. Scottish Episcopacy. 1572-1612 524

7. The Scottish Bishops and Clergy. 1612-1637 525

8. The Riot at Edinburgh and the Covenant. 1637-1638 525

9. The Assembly of Glasgow, and the Abolition of Episcopacy.
1638 526

10. The First Bishops' War. 1639 526

11. Wentworth in Ireland. 1633-1639 527

12. The Proposed Plantation of Connaught 528

13. The Short Parliament. 1640 528

14. The Second Bishops' War. 1640 529

15. The Meeting of the Long Parliament. 1640 529

16. The Impeachment of Strafford. 1641 530

17. Strafford's Attainder and Execution 530

18. Constitutional Reforms. 1641 531

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES AND THE FIRST YEARS OF THE
CIVIL WAR. 1641-1644

1. The King's Visit to Scotland. 1641 532

2. Parties formed on Church Questions. 1641 532

3. Irish Parties. 1641 533

4. The Irish Insurrection. 1641 533

5. The Grand Remonstrance. 1641 534

6. The King's Return. 1641 534

7. The Impeachment of the Bishops. 1641 535

8. The Impeachment of the Five Members. 1642 535

9. The Attempt on the Five Members. 1642 536

10. The Commons in the City. 1642 536

11. The Struggle for the Militia. 1642 536

12. Edgehill and Turnham Green. 1642 537

13. The King's Plan of Campaign. 1643 537

14. Royalist Successes. 1643 538

15. The Siege of Gloucester. 1643 538

16. The First Battle of Newbury. 1643 539

17. The Eastern Association. 1643 539

18. Oliver Cromwell. 1642-1643 539

19. The Assembly of Divines. 1643 540

20. The Solemn League and Covenant. 1643 540

21. The Irish War. 1641-1643 541

22. Winceby and Arundel. 1643-1644 542

23. The Committee of Both Kingdoms. 1644 542

24. The Campaign of Marston Moor. 1644 542

25. Presbyterians and Independents. 1644 543

26. Essex's Surrender at Lostwithiel. 1644 544

27. The Second Battle of Newbury. 1644 544

CHAPTER XXXV

THE NEW MODEL ARMY. 1644-1649

1. The Self-denying Ordinance and the New Model. 1645 545

2. Milton's 'Areopagitica.' 1644 545

3. The Execution of Laud. 1645 546

4. Montrose and Argyle. 1644 546

5. Montrose and the Highlands. 1644-1645 547

6. The New Model Army in the Field. 1645 547

7. The Battle of Naseby. 1645 548

8. The Results of Naseby. 1645 548

9. Charles's Wanderings. 1645 549

10. Glamorgan in Ireland. 1645-1646 549

11. The King's Flight to the Scots. 1646 550

12. Charles at Newcastle. 1646 551

13. The Removal of the King to Holmby. 1647 553

14. Dispute between the Presbyterians and the Army. 1647 553

15. Cromwell and the Army. 1647 554

16. The Abduction of the King. 1647 554

17. The Exclusion of the Eleven Members. 1647 555

18. The Heads of the Proposals. 1647 555

19. The King's Flight to the Isle of Wight. 1647 556

20. The Scottish Engagement, and the Vote of No Addresses.
1647-1648 556

21. The Second Civil War. 1648 556

22. Pride's Purge. 1648 557

23. The High Court of Justice. 1649 557

24. The King's Trial and Execution. 1649 559

25. Results of Charles's Execution. 1649 560

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE PROTECTORATE. 1649-1660

1. Establishment of the Commonwealth. 1649 561

2. Parties in Ireland. 1647-1649 562

3. Cromwell in Ireland. 1649-1650 562

4. Montrose and Charles II. in Scotland. 1650 563

5. Dunbar and Worcester. 1650-1651 563

6. The Navigation Act. 1651 564

7. The Dutch War. 1652-1653 565

8. Unpopularity of the Parliament. 1652-1653 565

9. Vane's Reform Bill. 1653 566

10. Dissolution of the Long Parliament by Cromwell. 1653 566

11. The so-called Barebone's Parliament. 1653 566

12. The Protectorate, and the Instrument of Government.
1653 568

13. Character of the Instrument of Government 568

14. Oliver's Government. 1653-1654 569

15. The First Protectorate Parliament. 1654-1655 570

16. The Major Generals. 1655 570

17. Oliver's Foreign Policy. 1654-1655 571

18. The French Alliance. 1655 572

19. Oliver's Second Parliament, and the Humble Petition and
Advice. 1656 572

20. The Dissolution of the Second Protectorate Parliament.
1658 573

21. Victory Abroad and Failure at Home. 1657-1658 573

22. Oliver's Death. 1658 574

23. Richard Cromwell. 1658-1659 574

24. The Long Parliament Restored. 1659 575

25. Military Government. 1659 575

26. Monk and the Rump. 1660 575

27. End of the Long Parliament. 1660 576

28. The Declaration of Breda. 1660 576

PART VII

_THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION._ 1660-1689

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHARLES II. AND CLARENDON. 1660-1667

1. Return of Charles II. 1660 578

2. King and Parliament. 1660 579

3. Formation of the Government. 1660 580

4. The Political Ideas of the Convention Parliament. 1660 580

5. Execution of the Political Articles of the Declaration
of Breda. 1660 581

6. Ecclesiastical Debates. 1660 583

7. Venner's Plot and its Results. 1661 584

8. The Cavalier Parliament and the Corporation Act. 1661 585

9. The Savoy Conference, and the Act of Uniformity.
1661-1662 585

10. The Dissenters. 1662 585

11. The Parliamentary Presbyterians. 1662 586

12. Profligacy of the Court. 1662 586

13. Marriage of Charles II. and Sale of Dunkirk. 1662 587

14. The Question of Toleration Raised. 1662-1663 587

15. The Conventicle Act. 1664 588

16. The Repeal of the Triennial Act. 1664 588

17. Growing Hostility between England and the Dutch.
1660-1664 589

18. Outbreak of the First Dutch War of the Restoration.
1664-1665 589

19. The Plague. 1665 590

20. The Five Mile Act. 1665 590

21. Continued Struggle with the Dutch. 1665-1666 590

22. The Fire of London. 1666 592

23. Designs of Louis XIV. 1665-1667 592

24. The Dutch in the Medway, and the Peace of Breda. 1667 593

25. Clarendon and the House of Commons. 1667 593

26. The Fall of Clarendon. 1667 594

27. Scotland and Ireland. 1660 595

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHARLES II. AND THE CABAL. 1667-1674

1. Milton and Bunyan. 596

2. Butler and the Dramatists. 596

3. Reason and Science. 598

4. Charles II. and Toleration. 1667 598

5. Buckingham and Arlington. 1667-1669 599

6. The Triple Alliance. 1668 599

7. Charles's Negotiations with France. 1669-1670 600

8. The Treaty of Dover. 1670 600

9. The Cabal. 1670 602

10. Ashley's Policy. 602

11. Buckingham's Sham Treaty. 1671 603

12. The Stop of the Exchequer. 1672 603

13. The Declaration of Indulgence. 1672 604

14. The Second Dutch War of the Restoration. 1672 605

15. 'Delenda est Carthago.' 1673 606

16. Withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence. 1673 606

17. The Test Act. 1673 606

18. Results of the Test Act. 1673 607

19. Continuance of the Dutch War. 1673 607

20. The Duke of York's Marriage and Shaftesbury's Dismissal.
1673 608

21. Peace with the Dutch. 1674 608

CHAPTER XXXIX

DANBY'S ADMINISTRATION AND THE THREE SHORT PARLIAMENTS. 1675-1681

1. Growing Influence of Danby. 1675 610

2. Parliamentary Parties. 1675 610

3. The Non-Resistance Bill. 1675 611

4. Charles a Pensionary of France. 1675-1676 611

5. Two Foreign Policies. 1677 612

6. The Marriage of the Prince of Orange. 1677 613

7. Danby's Position. 1677 613

8. The Peace of Nymwegen. 1678 614

9. The Popish Plot. 1678 615

10. Growing Excitement. 1678 615

11. Danby's Impeachment and the Dissolution of the Cavalier
Parliament. 1678-1679 616

12. The Meeting of the First Short Parliament. 1679 616

13. The Exclusion Bill and the Habeas Corpus Act. 1679 617

14. Shaftesbury and the King. 1679 617

15. Shaftesbury and Halifax. 1679 618

16. The Divine Right of Kings. 1679 619

17. The Highland Host. 1677-1678 619

18. Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge. 1679 619

19. Petitioners and Abhorrers. 1680 620

20. The Second Short Parliament. 1680-1681 620

21. The Third Short Parliament. 1681 621

CHAPTER XL

THE LAST YEARS OF CHARLES II. 1681-1685

1. Tory Reaction. 1681 622

2. 'Absolom and Achitophel.' 1681 623

3. The Scottish Test Act and the Duke of York's Return.
1681-1682 623

4. The City Elections. 1682 623

5. Flight and Death of Shaftesbury. 1682-1683 624

6. The Attack on the City. 1682-1683 624

7. The Remodelling of the Corporations. 1683-1684 625

8. The Rye House Plot. 1683 625

9. The Whig Combination. 1683 625

10. Trial and Execution of Lord Russell. 1683 625

11. Execution of Algernon Sidney. 1683 626

12. Parties at Court. 1684 626

13. Death of Charles II. 1685 627

14. Constitutional Progress. 1660-1685 627

15. Prosperity of the Country. 628

16. The Coffee Houses. 630

17. The Condition of London. 631

18. Painting. 631

19. Architecture. 631

20. Science. 632

21. Difficulties of Communication. 632

22. The Country Gentry and the Country Clergy. 633

23. Alliance between the Gentry and the Church. 633

CHAPTER XLI

JAMES II. 1685-1689

1. The Accession of James II. 1685 634

2. A Tory Parliament. 1685 636

3. Argyle's Landing. 1685 636

4. Monmouth's Landing. 1685 637

5. The Bloody Assizes. 1685 637

6. The Violation of the Test Act. 1685 638

7. Breach between Parliament and King. 1685 638

8. The Dispensing Power. 1686 638

9. The Ecclesiastical Commission. 1686 639

10. Scotland and Ireland. 1686-1687 639

11. The Fall of the Hydes. 1686-1687 640

12. The Declaration of Indulgence. 1687 640

13. The Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen. 1687 641

14. An Attempt to pack a Parliament. 1687 641

15. A Second Declaration of Indulgence. 1688 642

16. Resistance of the Clergy. 1688 642

17. The Trial of the Seven Bishops. 1688 643

18. Invitation to William of Orange. 1688 643

19. Landing of William. 1688 644

20. William's March upon London. 1688 645

21. A Convention Parliament Summoned. 1688 646

22. The Throne Declared Vacant. 1689 646

23. William and Mary to be Joint Sovereigns. 1689 647

24. Character of the Revolution. 647

_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS_

FIG. PAGE

174. Henry VIII. 368
(_From a painting by Holbein about 1536, belonging to
Earl Spencer_)

175. Cardinal Wolsey 365
(_From an original picture belonging to the
Hon. Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, K.C.B._)

176. The embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover, 1520 370
(_From the Society of Antiquaries' engraving
of the original picture at Hampton Court_)

177. Silver-gilt cup and cover, made at London in 1523; at
Barber Surgeons' Hall, London 371
(_From Cripps's_ 'College and Corporation Plate')

178. Part of Hampton Court; built by Cardinal Wolsey;
finished in 1526 373
(_From a photograph_)

179. Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury,
1503-1532, showing the ordinary episcopal dress, with
the mitre and archiepiscopal cross 376
(_From a painting by Holbein, belonging to Viscount
Dillon, F.S.A., dated 1527_)

180. Tower of Fountains Abbey church; built by Abbot Huby,
1494-1526 378
(_From a photograph by Valentine and Sons, Dundee_)

181. Catharine of Aragon 380
(_From a painting in the National Portrait
Gallery_)

182. The gatehouse of Coughton Court, Warwickshire; built
about 1530 381
(_From Niven's_ 'Illustrations of Old Warwickshire
Houses')

183. Hall of Christchurch, Oxford; built by Cardinal Wolsey;
finished in 1529 384
(_From a photograph by W. H. Wheeler, Oxford_)

184. Sir Thomas More, wearing the collar of SS. 387
(_From an original portrait painted by Holbein in 1527,
belonging to Edward Huth, Esq._)

185. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1504-1535 393
(_From a drawing by Holbein in the Royal Library,
Windsor Castle_)

186. Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour,
afterwards Duke of Somerset, known as 'the Protector,'
at the age of 28, 1507-1552 395
(_From a painting at Sudeley Castle_)

187. Henry VIII. 403
(_From a painting by Holbein, belonging to the Earl
of Warwick_)

188. Angel of Henry VIII., 1543 405
(_From an original example_)

189. Part of the encampment at Marquison, 1544, showing
military equipment in the time of Henry VIII. 406

190, 191. Part of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII.,
1544, showing military operations 407, 408
(_From the Society Of Antiquaries' engravings, by
Vertue, of the now destroyed paintings formerly at
Cowdray House, Sussex_)

192. Armour as worn in the reign of Henry VIII.; from the
brass of John Lymsey, 1545, in Hackney church 409

193. Margaret, wife of John Lymsey; from her brass in Hackney
church, showing the costume of a lady circa 1545 409
(_From Haines's_ 'Manual of Monumental Brasses')

194. Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, 1473(?)-1554 410
(_From a painting by Holbein at Windsor Castle_)

195. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556 414
(_From a painting by Holbein dated 1547, at Jesus
College, Cambridge_)

196. Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, 1550-1553 417
(_From the National Portrait Gallery_)

197. King Edward VI. 419
(_From a picture belonging to H. Hucks Gibbs, Esq._)

198. Queen Mary Tudor 422
(_From a painting by Lucas de Heere, dated 1554,
belonging to the Society of Antiquaries_)

199. Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, 1535-1539,
burnt 1555 425
(_From the National Portrait Gallery_)

200. A milled half-sovereign of Elizabeth, 1562-1568 435
(_From an original example_)

201. Silver-gilt standing cup made in London in 1569-70,
and given to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, by
Parker 440
(_From Cripps's_ 'College and Corporation Plate')

202. Sir Francis Drake in his forty-third year 448
(_From the engraving by Elstracke_)

203. Armour as worn during the reign of Elizabeth; from the
brass of Francis Clopton, 1577, at Long Melford,
Suffolk 451
(_From Haines's_ 'Manual of Monumental Brasses')

204. Hall of Burghley House, Northamptonshire, built about
1580 455
(_From Drummond's_ 'Histories of Noble British
Families')

205. Sir Martin Frobisher, died 1594 459
(_From a picture belonging to the Earl of Carlisle_)

206. The Spanish Armada. Fight between the English and Spanish
fleets off the Isle of Wight, July 25, 1588 461
(_From Pine's engravings of the tapestry formerly in
the House of Lords_)

207. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), and his eldest son Walter
at the age of eight 463
(_From a picture dated 1602, belonging to Sir J. F.
Lennard, Bart._)

208. A mounted soldier at the end of the sixteenth century 465
(_From a broadside printed in 1596, in the Society of
Antiquaries' collection_)

209. Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire; built by Thorpe for
Sir Francis Willoughby, about 1580-1588 466
(_From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby_)

210. Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire; built by Elizabeth,
Countess of Shrewsbury, about 1597 467
(_From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby_)

211. E-shaped house at Beaudesert, Staffordshire; built by
Thomas, Lord Paget, about 1601 469
(_From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby_)

212. Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire; built about 1601 471
(_From a photograph by R. Keene, Derby_)

213. Coaches in the reign of Elizabeth 473
(_From_ 'Archæologia,' vol. xx. pl. xviii.)

214. William Shakspere 474
(_From the bust on his tomb at Stratford-on-Avon_)

215. Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, K.G., 1567-1601 476
(_From a painting by Van Somer, dated 1599, belonging
to the Earl of Essex_)

216. Queen Elizabeth, 1558-1603 477
(_From a painting belonging to the University of
Cambridge_)

217. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, K.G., 1520-1591 479
(_From a painting in the Bodleian Library, Oxford_)

218. Royal arms borne by James I. and succeeding Stuart
sovereigns 482
(_From Boutell's_'English Heraldry')

219. North-west view of Hatfield House, Herts; built for
Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, between 1605 and
1611 485
(_From a photograph by Valentine and Sons, Dundee_)

220. An unknown gentleman 487
(_From a painting belonging to T. A. Hope, Esq._)

221. King James I. 491
(_From a painting by P. Van Somer, dated 1621, in the
National Portrait Gallery_)

222. Civil costume, about 1620 492
(_From a contemporary broadside in the collection of
the Society of Antiquaries_)

223. The banqueting-hall of the Palace of Whitehall (from the
north-east); built from the designs of Inigo Jones,
1619-1621 493
(_From a photograph_)

224. Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban, Lord Chancellor 495
(_From a painting by P. Van Somer in the National
Portrait Gallery_)

225. Costume of a lawyer 497
(_From a broadside dated 1623 in the collection of the
Society of Antiquaries_)

226. The Upper House of Convocation 498

227. The Lower House of Convocation 499
(_From a broadside dated 1623, in the collection of
the Society of Antiquaries_)

228. King Charles I. 504
(_From a painting by Van Dyck_)

229. Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. 505
(_From a painting by Van Dyck_)

230. Tents and military equipment in the early part of the
reign of Charles I. 507
(_From the monument of Sir Charles Montague (died in
1625), in the church of Barking, Essex_)

231. George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham, 1592-1628 509
(_From the painting by Gerard Honthorst in the
National Portrait Gallery_)

232. Sir Edward and Lady Filmer; from their brass at East
Sutton, Kent, showing armour and dress worn about 1630 515
(_From Waller's_ 'Monumental Brasses')

233. Archbishop Laud 517
(_From a copy in the National Portrait Gallery by
Henry Stone, from the Van Dyck at Lambeth_)

234. Silver-gilt tankard made at London in 1634-5; now
belonging to the Corporation of Bristol 518
(_From Cripps's_ 'College and Corporation Plate')

235. The 'Sovereign of the Seas,' built for the Royal Navy in
1637 522
(_From a contemporary engraving by John Payne_)

236. Soldier armed with a pike 527

237. Soldier with musket and crutch 527
(_From a broadside printed about 1630, in the
collection of the Society of Antiquaries_)

238-243. Ordinary civil costume, _temp._ Charles I., viz:--
A gentleman and a gentlewoman 550
A citizen and a citizen's wife 551
A countryman and a countrywoman 552
(_From Speed's map of_ 'The Kingdom of England,' 1646)

244. View of the west side of the Banqueting-House, Whitehall,
dated 1713, showing the window through which Charles I.
is said to have passed to the scaffold 558
(_From an engraving by Terasson_)

245. Execution of King Charles I., January 30, 1649 559
(_From a broadside in the collection of the late
Richard Fisher, Esq., F.S.A._)

246. A coach in the middle of the seventeenth century 564
(_From an engraving by John Dunstall_)

247. Oliver Cromwell 567
(_From the painting by Samuel Cooper, at Sidney Sussex
College, Cambridge_)

248. Charles II. 579
(_From the portrait by Sir Peter Lely in Christ's
Hospital, London_)

249. Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon, 1608-1674 581
(_From an engraving by Loggan_)

250. A mounted nobleman and his squire 582
(_From Ogilby's_ 'Coronation Procession of
Charles II.')

251. Dress of the Horseguards at the Restoration 583
(_From Ogilby's_ 'Coronation Procession of
Charles II.')

252. Yeoman of the Guard 583
(_From Ogilby's_ 'Coronation Procession of
Charles II.')

253. Shipping in the Thames, circa 1660 584
(_From Pricke's_ 'South Prospect of London')

254. Old St. Paul's, from the east, showing its condition
just before the Great Fire 591
(_From an engraving by Hollar_)

255. John Milton in 1669 597
(_From the engraving by Faithorne_)

256. Temple Bar, London, built by Sir Christopher Wren in
1670 601
(_From a photograph_)

257. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury,
1621-1683 604
(_From the painting by John Greenhill in the National
Portrait Gallery_)

258. Ordinary dress of gentlemen in 1675 611
(_From Loggan's_ 'Oxonia Illustrata')

259. Cup presented, 1676, by King Charles II. to the Barber
Surgeons' Company 612
(_From Cripps's_ 'College and Corporation Plate')

260. Steeple of the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, London,
built by Sir Christopher Wren between 1671 and 1680 614
(_From a photograph_)

261. Dress of ladies of quality 628
(_From Sandford's_ 'Coronation Procession of
James II.')

262. Ordinary attire of women of the lower classes 628
(_From Sandford's_ 'Coronation Procession of
James II.')

263. Coach of the latter half of the seventeenth century 629
(_From Loggan's_ 'Oxonia Illustrata')

264. Waggon of the second half of the seventeenth century 629
(_From Loggan's_ 'Oxonia Illustrata')

265. Reaping and harvesting in the second half of the
seventeenth century 630
(_From Loggan's_ 'Cantabrigia Illustrata')

266. Costume of a gentleman 632
(_From Sandford's_ 'Coronation Procession of
James II.')

267. James II. 635
(_From the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1684-5
in the National Portrait Gallery_)

268. Yeomen of the Guard 636
(_From Sandford's_ 'Coronation Procession of
James II.')

269. Dress of a bishop in the second half of the seventeenth
century 642
(_From Sandford's_ 'Coronation Procession of
James II.')

GENEALOGICAL TABLES

_KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND (AFTER 1541 OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND)
FROM HENRY VII. TO ELIZABETH._

_KINGS OF SCOTLAND AND GREAT BRITAIN, FROM JAMES IV. OF SCOTLAND TO
WILLIAM AND MARY._

III

_KINGS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND FROM JAMES I. TO GEORGE I._

_GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF FRANCE FROM LOUIS XII. TO LOUIS XIV.,
SHOWING THEIR DESCENT FROM LOUIS IX._

_GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF SPAIN FROM FERDINAND AND ISABELLA TO
CHARLES II._

_GENEALOGY OF THE GERMAN BRANCH OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA FROM
FERDINAND I. TO LEOPOLD I._

(The dates given are those during which an archduke was emperor.)

VII

_GENEALOGY OF THE PRINCES OF ORANGE FROM WILLIAM I. TO WILLIAM III._

_SHORTER AND SOMETIMES MORE DETAILED GENEALOGIES will be found in
the following pages._

PAGE

Genealogy of the Poles 399

" " children of Henry VIII. 411

" " Greys 421

" " last Valois kings of France 433

" " Guises 435

" of Mary and Darnley 438

" of the descendants of Charles I. 609

PART V

_THE RENASCENCE AND THE REFORMATION_ =1509-1603=

CHAPTER XXIV

HENRY VIII. AND WOLSEY. =1509-1527=

LEADING DATES

Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

Accession of Henry VIII. 1509
Henry's first war with France 1512
Peace with France 1514
Charles V. elected Emperor 1519
Henry's second French war 1522
Francis I. taken captive at Pavia 1525
The sack of Rome and the alliance between England and
France 1527

[Illustration: Henry VIII.; from a painting by Holbein about 1536,
belonging to Earl Spencer.]

1. =The New King. 1509.=--Henry VIII. inherited the handsome face,
the winning presence, and the love of pleasure which distinguished
his mother's father, Edward IV., as well as the strong will of his
own father, Henry VII. He could ride better than his grooms, and
shoot better than the archers of his guard. Yet, though he had a
ready smile and a ready jest for everyone, he knew how to preserve
his dignity. Though he seemed to live for amusement alone, and
allowed others to toil at the business of administration, he took
care to keep his ministers under control. He was no mean judge of
character, and the saying which rooted itself amongst his subjects,
that 'King Henry knew a man when he saw him,' points to one of the
chief secrets of his success. He was well aware that the great
nobles were his only possible rivals, and that his main support was
to be found in the country gentry and the townsmen. Partly because
of his youth, and partly because the result of the political
struggle had already been determined when he came to the throne, he
thought less than his father had done of the importance of
possessing stored up wealth by which armies might be equipped and
maintained, and more of securing that popularity which at least for
the purposes of internal government, made armies unnecessary. The
first act of the new reign was to send Empson and Dudley to the
Tower, and it was significant of Henry's policy that they were tried
and executed, not on a charge of having extorted money illegally
from subjects, but on a trumped up charge of conspiracy against the
king. It was for the king to see that offences were not committed
against the people, but the people must be taught that the most
serious crimes were those committed against the king. Henry's next
act was to marry Catharine. Though he was but nineteen, whilst his
bride was twenty-five, the marriage was for many years a happy one.

2. =Continental Troubles. 1508-1511.=--For some time Henry lived as
though his only object in life was to squander his father's treasure
in festivities. Before long, however, he bethought himself of aiming
at distinction in war as well as in sport. Since Louis XII. had been
king of France (see p. 354) there had been constant wars in Italy,
where Louis was striving for the mastery with Ferdinand of Aragon.
In =1508= the two rivals, Ferdinand and Louis, abandoning their
hostility for a time, joined the Emperor Maximilian (see pp. 337,
348) and Pope Julius II. in the League of Cambrai, the object of
which was to despoil the Republic of Venice. In =1511= Ferdinand
allied himself with Julius II. and Venice in the Holy League, the
object of which was to drive the French out of Italy. After a while
the new league was joined by Maximilian, and every member of it was
anxious that Henry should join it too.

3. =The Rise of Wolsey. 1512.=--England had nothing to gain by an
attack on France, but Henry was young, and the English nation was,
in a certain sense, also young. It was conscious of the strength
brought to it by restored order, and was quite ready to use this
strength in an attack on its neighbours. In the new court it was
ignorantly thought that there was no reason why Henry VIII. should
not take up that work of conquering France which had fallen to
pieces in the feeble hands of Henry VI. To carry on his new policy
Henry needed a new minister. The best of the old ones were Fox, the
Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who, great
nobleman as he was, had been contented to merge his greatness in the
greatness of the king. The whole military organisation of the
country, however, had to be created afresh, and neither Fox nor
Surrey was equal to such a task. The work was assigned to Thomas
Wolsey, the king's almoner, who, though not, as his enemies said,
the son of a butcher, was of no exalted origin. Wolsey's genius for
administration at once manifested itself. He was equally at home in
sketching out a plan of campaign, in diplomatic contests with the
wariest and most experienced statesmen, and in providing for the
minutest details of military preparation.

4. =The War with France. 1512-1513.=--It was not Wolsey's fault that
his first enterprise ended in failure. A force sent to attack France
on the Spanish side failed, not because it was ill-equipped, but
because the soldiers mutinied, and Ferdinand, who had promised to
support it, abandoned it to its fate. In =1513= Henry himself landed
at Calais, and, with the Emperor Maximilian serving under him,
defeated the French at Guinegatte in an engagement known, from the
rapidity of the flight of the French, as the Battle of the Spurs.
Before the end of the autumn he had taken Terouenne and Tournai. War
with France, as usual, led to a war with Scotland. James IV., during
Henry's absence, invaded Northumberland, but his army was destroyed
by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden, where he himself was slain.

5. =Peace with France. 1514.=--Henry soon found that his allies were
thinking exclusively of their own interests. In =1512= the French
were driven out of Italy, and Ferdinand made himself master of
Navarre. In =1513= the warlike Pope, Julius II., died, and a fresh
attempt of Louis to gain ground in Italy was decisively foiled.
Henry's allies had got what they wanted, and in =1514= Henry
discovered that to conquer France was beyond his power. Louis was
ready to come to terms. He was now a widower. Old in constitution,
though not in years, he was foolish enough to want a young wife.
Henry was ready to gratify him with the hand of his younger sister
Mary. The poor girl had fallen in love with Henry's favourite,
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, a man of sturdy limbs and weak
brain, and pleaded hard against the marriage. Love counted for
little in those days, and all that she could obtain from her brother
was a promise that if she married this time to please him, she
should marry next time to please herself. Louis soon relieved her by
dying on January 1, =1515=, after a few weeks of wedlock, and his
widow took care, by marrying Suffolk before she left France, to make
sure that her brother should keep his promise.

[Illustration: Cardinal Wolsey: from an original picture belonging
to the Hon. Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, K.C.B.]

6. =Wolsey's Policy of Peace. 1514-1518.=--In =1514= the king made
Wolsey Archbishop of York. In =1515= the Pope made him a Cardinal.
Before the end of the year he was Henry's Chancellor. The whole of
the business of the government passed through his hands. The
magnificence of his state was extraordinary. To all observers he
seemed to be more a king than the king himself. Behind him was
Henry, trusting him with all his power, but self-willed and
uncontrollable, quite ready to sacrifice his dearest friend to
satisfy his least desire. As yet the only conflict in Henry's mind
was the conflict about peace or war with France. Henry's love of
display and renown had led him to wish to rival the exploits of
Edward III. and Henry V. Wolsey preferred the old policy of Richard
II. and Henry VI., but he knew that he could only make it palatable
to the king and the nation by connecting the idea of peace with the
idea of national greatness. He aspired to be the peacemaker of
Europe, and to make England's interest in peace the law of the
world. In =1515= the new king of France, Francis I., needed peace
with England because he was in pursuit of glory in Italy, where he
won a brilliant victory at Marignano. In =1516= Ferdinand's death
gave Spain to his grandson, Charles, the son of Philip and Juana
(see p. 358), and from that time Francis and Charles stood forth as
the rivals for supremacy on the Continent. Wolsey tried his best to
maintain a balance between the two, and it was owing to his ability
that England, thinly populated and without a standing army, was
eagerly courted by the rulers of states far more powerful than
herself. In =1518= a league was struck between England and France,
in which Pope Leo X., the Emperor Maximilian, and Charles, king of
Spain, agreed to join, thus converting it into a league of universal
peace. Yet Wolsey was no cosmopolitan philanthropist. He believed
that England would be more influential in peace than she could be in
war.

7. =Wolsey and the Renascence.=--In scheming for the elevation of
his own country by peace instead of by conquest, Wolsey reflected
the higher aspirations of his time. No sooner had internal order
been secured, than the best men began to crave for some object to
which they could devote themselves, larger and nobler than that of
their own preservation. Wolsey gave them the contemplation of the
political importance of England on the Continent. The noblest minds,
however, would not be content with this, and an outburst of
intellectual vigour told that the times of internal strife had
passed away. This intellectual movement was not of native growth.
The Renascence, or new birth of letters, sprung up in Italy in the
fourteenth century, and received a further impulse through the
taking of Constantinople by the Turks in =1453=, when the dispersal
of Greek teachers from the East revived the study of the Greek
language. It was not merely because new teachers landed in Italy
that the literature of the ancient world was studied with avidity.
Men were weary of the mediæval system, and craved for other ideals
than those of the devotees of the Church. Whilst they learnt to
admire the works of the Greek and Latin authors as models of
literary form, they caught something of the spirit of the ancient
world. They ceased to look on man as living only for God and a
future world, and regarded him as devoting himself to the service of
his fellow-men, or even--in lower minds the temptation lay
perilously near--as living for himself alone. Great artists and
poets arose who gave expression to the new feeling of admiration for
human action and human beauty, whilst the prevailing revolt against
the religion of the middle ages gave rise to a spirit of criticism
which refused belief to popular legends.

8. =The Renascence in England.=--The spirit of the Renascence was
slow in reaching England. In the days of Richard II. Chaucer visited
Italy, and Italian influence is to be traced in his Canterbury
Tales. In the days of Henry VI. the selfish politician, Humphrey,
Duke of Gloucester, purchased books, and gave to Oxford a collection
which was the foundation of what was afterwards known as the
Bodleian Library. Even in the Wars of the Roses the brutal John
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, and the gentle Earl Rivers, the brother
of Elizabeth Woodville, were known as patrons of letters. The
invention of printing brought literature within reach of those to
whom it had hitherto been strange. Edward IV. patronised Caxton, the
first English printer. In the peaceful reign of Henry VII. the seed
thus sown sprang into a crop. There was, however, a great difference
between the followers of the new learning in England and in Italy.
In Italy, for the most part, scholars mocked at Christianity, or
treated it with tacit contempt. In England there was no such breach
with the religion of the past. Those who studied in England sought
to permeate their old faith with the new thoughts.

9. =The Oxford Reformers.=--Especially was this the case with a
group of Oxford Reformers, Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet, who were
fighting hard to introduce the study of Greek into the University.
Among these Colet specially addicted himself to the explanation of
the epistles of St. Paul, insisting on following their plain meaning
instead of the mystical interpretations then in vogue. In =1510= he
founded St. Paul's School, that boys might be there taught without
being subjected to the brutal flogging which was in those days the
lot even of the most diligent of schoolboys. The most remarkable
member of this group of scholars was Thomas More. Young More, who
had hoped much from the accession of Henry VIII., had been
disappointed to find him engaging in a war with France instead of
cultivating the arts of peace. He meditated deeply over the miseries
of his fellow-men, and longed for a time when governments would
think it to be their highest duty to labour for those who are too
weak to help themselves.

10. ='The Utopia.' 1515-1516.=--In =1515= and =1516= More produced a
book which he called _Utopia_, or Nowhere, intending it to serve as
a satire on the defects of the government of England, by praising
the results of a very different government in his imaginary country.
The Utopians, he declared, fought against invaders of their own land
or the land of their allies, or to deliver other peoples from
tyranny, but they made no wars of aggression. In peace no one was
allowed either to be idle or overworked. Everyone must work six
hours a day, and then he might listen to lectures for the
improvement of his mind. As for the religion of Utopia, no one was
to be persecuted for his religious opinions, as long as he treated
respectfully those who differed from him. If, however, he used
scornful and angry words towards them, he was to be banished, not as
a despiser of the established religion, but as a stirrer up of
dissension. Men of all varieties of opinion met together in a common
temple, the worship in which was so arranged that all could take
part in it. Amongst their priests were women as well as men. More
practical was the author's attack on the special abuses of the
times. England swarmed with vagrants, who easily passed into
robbers, or even murderers. The author of _Utopia_ traced the evil
to its roots. Soldiers, he said, were discharged on their return
home, and, being used to roving and dissolute habits, naturally took
to vagrancy. Robbery was their only resource, and the law tempted a
robber to murder. Hanging was the penalty both for robbing and
murder, and the robber, therefore, knowing that he would be hanged
if he were detected, usually killed the victim whom he had plundered
in order to silence evidence against himself; and More consequently
argued that the best way of checking murder would be to abolish the
penalty of death for robbery. Another great complaint of More's was
against the ever-growing increase of inclosures for pasturage.
"Sheep," he said, "be become so great devourers and so wild that
they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume,
destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities." More saw the
evil, but he did not see that the best remedy lay in the
establishment of manufactures, to give employment in towns to those
who lost it in the country. He wished to enforce by law the
reversion of all the new pasturage into arable land.

11. =More and Henry VIII.=--Henry VIII. was intolerant of those who
resisted his will, but he was strangely tolerant of those who
privately contradicted his opinions. He took pleasure in the society
of intelligent and witty men, and he urged More to take office under
him. More refused for a long time, but in =1518=--the year of the
league of universal peace--believing that Henry was now a convert to
his ideas, he consented, and became Sir Thomas More and a Privy
Councillor. Henry was so pleased with his conversation that he tried
to keep him always with him, and it was only by occasionally
pretending to be dull that More obtained leave to visit his home.

12. =The Contest for the Empire. 1519.=--In January =1519= the
Emperor Maximilian died. His grandson Charles was now possessed of
more extensive lands than any other European sovereign. He ruled in
Spain, in Austria, in Naples and Sicily, in the Netherlands, and in
the County of Burgundy, usually known as Franche Comté. Between him
and Francis I. a struggle was inevitable. The chances were
apparently, on the whole, on the side of Charles. His dominions,
indeed, were scattered, and devoid of the strength given by national
feeling, whilst the smaller dominions of Francis were compact and
united by a strong national bond. In character, however, Charles had
the superiority. He was cool and wary, whilst Francis was impetuous
and uncalculating. Both sovereigns were now candidates for the
Empire. The seven electors who had it in their gift were open to
bribery. Charles bribed highest, and being chosen became the Emperor
Charles V.

13. =The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 1520.=--Wolsey tried hard to
keep the peace. In =1520= Henry met Francis on the border of the
territory of Calais, and the magnificence of the display on both
sides gave to the scene the name of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
In the same year Henry had interviews with Charles. Peace was for a
time maintained, because both Charles and Francis were still too
much occupied at home to quarrel, but it could hardly be maintained
long.

[Illustration: The embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover, 1520: from
the original painting at Hampton Court.]

14. =The Execution of the Duke of Buckingham. 1521.=--Henry was
entirely master in England. In =1521= the Duke of Buckingham, son of
the Buckingham who had been beheaded by Richard III., was tried and
executed as a traitor. His fault was that he had great wealth, and
that, being descended from the Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son
of Edward III., he had not only cherished some idea of claiming the
throne after Henry's death, but had chattered about his prospects.
In former days justice was not to be had by those who offended the
great lords. Now, one despot had stepped into the place of many, and
justice was not to be had by those who offended the king. The legal
forms of trial were now as before observed. Buckingham was indeed
tried before the court of the Lord High Steward, which consisted of
a select number of peers, and which had jurisdiction over peers when
Parliament was not sitting. These, however, were no more than forms.
It was probably a mingled feeling of gratitude and fear which made
peers as well as ordinary juries ready to take Henry's word for the
guilt of any offender.

[Illustration: Cup and Cover, 1523, at Barber Surgeons' Hall,
London.]

15. =Another French War. 1522-1523.=--The diplomacy of those days
was a mere tissue of trickery and lies. Behind the falsehood,
however, Wolsey had a purpose of his own, the maintenance of peace
on the Continent. Yet, in =1521= war broke out between Charles and
Francis, both of whom laid claim to the Duchy of Milan, and it was
evident that Wolsey would be unable to keep England out of the
struggle. If there was to be fighting Henry preferred to fight
France rather than to fight Charles. In =1522=, in conjunction with
Charles, he invaded France. There was burning and ravaging enough,
but nothing of importance was done. Nevertheless in =1523= Henry was
in high spirits. A great French noble, the Duke of Bourbon, provoked
by ill-treatment, revolted against Francis, and Henry and Charles
fancied that he would open a way to them into the heart of France.
If Henry was to be crowned at Paris, which was the object on which
he was bent, he must have a supply of money from his subjects.
Though no Parliament had been summoned for nearly eight years, one
was summoned now, of which More was the Speaker. Wolsey asked for an
enormous grant of 800,000_l._, nearly equal to 12,000,000_l._ at the
present day. Finding that the Commons hesitated, he swept into the
House in state to argue with them. Expecting a reply, and finding
silence, he turned to More, who told him that it was against the
privilege of the House to call on it for an immediate answer. He had
to depart unsatisfied, and after some days the House granted a
considerable sum, but far less than that which had been demanded.
Wolsey was now in a position of danger. His own policy was pacific,
but his master's policy was warlike, and he had been obliged to
make himself the unquestioning mouthpiece of his master in demanding
supplies for war. He had long been hated by the nobles for thrusting
them aside. He was now beginning to be hated by the people as the
supposed author of an expensive war, which he would have done his
best to prevent. He had not even the advantage of seeing his master
win laurels in the field. The national spirit of France was roused,
and the combined attack of Henry and Charles proved as great a
failure in =1523= as in =1522=. The year =1524= was spent by Wolsey
in diplomatic intrigue.

16. =The Amicable Loan. 1525.=--Early in =1525= Europe was startled
by the news that Francis had been signally defeated by the
Imperialists at Pavia, and had been carried prisoner to Spain.
Wolsey knew that Charles's influence was now likely to predominate
in Europe, and that unless England was to be overshadowed by it,
Henry's alliance must be transferred to Francis. Henry, however, saw
in the imprisonment of Francis only a fine opportunity for
conquering France. Wolsey had again to carry out his master's wishes
as though they were his own. Raking up old precedents, he suggested
that the people should be asked for what was called an Amicable
Loan, on the plea that Henry was about to invade France in person.
He obtained the consent of the citizens of London by telling them
that, if they did not pay, it might 'fortune to cost some their
heads.' All over England Wolsey was cursed as the originator of the
loan. There were even signs that a rebellion was imminent. In
Norfolk when the Duke of Norfolk demanded payment there was a
general resistance. On his demanding the name of the captain of the
multitude which refused to pay, a man told him that their captain's
'name was Poverty,' and 'he and his cousin Necessity' had brought
them to this. Wolsey, seeing that it was impossible to collect the
money, took all the unpopularity of advising the loan upon himself.
'Because,' he wrote, 'every man layeth the burden from him, I am
content to take it on me, and to endure the fame and noise of the
people, for my goodwill towards the king ... but the eternal God
knoweth all.' Henry had no such nobility of character as to refuse
to accept the sacrifice. He liked to make his ministers scapegoats,
to heap on their heads the indignation of the people that he might
himself retain his popularity. For three centuries and a half it was
fully believed that the Amicable Loan had originated with Wolsey.

[Illustration: Hampton Court; built by Cardinal Wolsey, finished in
1526.]

17. =Closing Years of Wolsey's Greatness. 1525-1527.=--All idea of
continuing the war being now abandoned, Wolsey cautiously
negotiated for an alliance with France, and in the autumn of
=1525= peace was signed between France and England. In February
=1526= Charles set Francis at liberty on his promising to abandon to
him large tracts of French territory. As soon as he was out of Spain
Francis declared that, without the consent of his subjects, such
promises were not binding on him. An Italian league, jealous of
Charles's power, gathered round the Pope, Clement VII., to oppose
him. In May =1527= the exiled Duke of Bourbon, who was now one of
Charles's generals, took Rome by assault. He was himself slain as he
mounted the wall, but his followers took prisoner the Pope, and
sacked Rome with horrible barbarity. Wolsey was too worldly-minded
to be shocked at the Pope's misfortunes; but he had much to fear
from the enormous extension of the Emperor's power. For some weeks
he had been negotiating a close alliance with France on the basis of
a marriage between Henry's only surviving child, Mary, and the
worn-out voluptuary Francis. Suddenly the scheme was changed to a
proposal for a marriage between Mary, who was ten years old, and the
second son of Francis, who was but six. The bargain was concluded,
and for a time there was some thought of carrying it out. At all
events when the news of the sack of Rome arrived, England and France
were already in close alliance. Wolsey's position was, to all
outward appearance, secure.

CHAPTER XXV

THE BREACH WITH THE PAPACY. 1527-1534

LEADING DATES

Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

Henry seeks for a divorce 1527
His suit before a Legatine Court 1529
Fall of Wolsey 1529
The clergy acknowledge Henry to be Supreme Head of the
Church of England 1531
The first Act of Annates 1532
The king's marriage to Anne Boleyn and the Act of
Appeals 1533
Cranmer's sentence of divorce 1533
The final separation from Rome 1534

1. =The Papacy and the Renascence.=--The Renascence alone could not
make the world better, and in many respects it made it worse. The
respect which it paid to humanity, which was its leading
characteristic, allied itself in More with a reverence for God,
which led him to strive to mellow the religious teaching of the
Middle Ages, by fitting it for the needs of the existing world. Too
many threw off all religious restraints, and made it their first
thought to seek their own enjoyment, or the triumphs of their own
intellectual skill. Sensual delights were pursued with less brutal
directness, but became more seductive and more truly debasing by the
splendour and gracefulness of the life of which they formed a part.
In Italy the Popes swam with the current. Alexander VI.
(=1492-1503=) gave himself up to the most degrading vices. Julius
II. (=1503-1513=) was a passionate warrior struggling for the
extension of his temporal possessions. Leo X. (=1513-1521=) was a
polished lover of art, perfectly indifferent to religious duty. "Let
us enjoy the Papacy," he said when he was elected, "since God has
given it to us." Amidst the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, the Popes became as other Italian princes, no
better and no worse. Spiritual guidance was no longer to be expected
of them.

2. =Wolsey and the Papacy.=--By Wolsey and his master the Papacy was
respected as a venerable and useful institution, the centre of a
religious organisation which they believed to be of divine origin,
though when it came in conflict with their own projects they were
quite ready to thwart it. In =1521= Leo X. died, and Wolsey, having
some hopes of being himself elected, asked Charles V. to send troops
to compel the cardinals to choose him, promising to pay the expenses
of the armament. Charles, though, in the previous year, he had
offered to support Wolsey's candidature at the next vacancy, now
deserted him, and the new Pope was Adrian VI., who in =1523= was
succeeded by Clement VII. (see p. 374).

[Illustration: Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury,
1503-1532 showing the ordinary episcopal dress, with the mitre and
archiepiscopal cross: from a painting belonging to Viscount Dillon,
dated 1527.]

3. =Wolsey's Legatine Powers.=--It is unlikely that Wolsey was much
disappointed. His chief sphere of action was England, where since
=1518= he had held unwonted authority, as in that year he had been
appointed Legate _a latere_[1] by Leo X. at Henry's request, and the
powers of a Legate _a latere_ were superior even to those of Warham,
the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wolsey was therefore clothed with all
the authority of king and Pope combined. His own life was, indeed,
like those of many churchmen in his day, very far from the ideal of
Christianity; but for all that he had that respect for religious
order which often lingers in the hearts of men who break away from
the precepts of religion, and he was too great a statesman to be
blind to the danger impending over the Church. The old order was
changing, and Wolsey was as anxious as More, though from more
worldly motives, that the change should be effected without
violence. He knew that the Church was wealthy, and that wealth
tempted plunderers, and he also knew that, with some bright
exceptions, the clergy were ignorant, and even when not absolutely
dissolute were remiss and easy-going in their lives. He was,
therefore, anxious to make them more worthy of respect, and, with
the consent of king and Pope, he began in =1524= to dissolve several
small monasteries, and to apply their revenues to two great
colleges, the one founded by him at Oxford and the other at Ipswich.
He hoped that without any change of doctrine or organisation the
Church would gradually be purified by improved education, and would
thus once more command the respect of the laity.

[Footnote 1: _i.e._ a Legate sent from the Pope's side, and
therefore having power to speak almost with full Papal authority.]

4. =Henry VIII. and the Clergy.=--With Wolsey's object Henry, being
himself well educated and well read, fully sympathised. For many
years there had been a tacit understanding between the king and the
Pope, and now that both the king and the Pope supported Wolsey's
action there seemed to be less danger than ever of any disturbance
of the friendly relations between Church and State. Yet though Henry
was on good terms with the Pope, he had made up his mind that
whenever there was a conflict of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical
matters his own will, and not that of the clergy, was to be
predominant. As early as in =1515=, when a question of this kind was
moved, Wolsey asked on behalf of the clergy that it might be
referred to the Pope. "We," said Henry proudly, "are by God's grace
king of England, and have no superior but God; we will maintain the
rights of the crown like our predecessors; your decrees you break
and interpret at your pleasure, but we will not consent to your
interpretation of them any more than our predecessors have done."
Henry VIII., in short, took up the position which Henry II. had
assumed towards the clergy of his day, and he was far more powerful
to give effect to his views than Henry II. had ever been. Such an
act of self-assertion would probably have caused a breach with the
great Popes of the middle ages, such as Gregory VII. or Innocent
III. Leo X. was far too much a man of the world to trouble himself
about such matters.

[Illustration: Tower of Fountains Abbey church; built by Abbot Huby.
1494-1526.]

5. =German Lutheranism.=--Before many years had passed the
beginnings of a great religious revolution which appeared in Germany
served to bind Henry and Leo more closely together. Martin Luther, a
Saxon friar, had been disgusted by the proceedings of a hawker of
indulgences, who extracted small sums from the ignorant by the sale
of the remission of the pains of purgatory. What gave world-wide
importance to Luther's resistance was that he was not only an
eloquent preacher of morality, but the convinced maintainer of a
doctrine which, though not a new one, had long been laid aside. He
preached justification by faith, and the acceptance of his teaching
implied even more than the acceptance of a new doctrine. For
centuries it had been understood that each Christian held
intercourse with God through the sacraments and ordinances of the
Church. His individuality was, as it were, swallowed up in the vast
community to which he belonged. Luther taught each of his hearers
that the important thing was his faith, that is to say his immediate
personal relation with God, and that the intervention of human
beings might, indeed, be helpful to him, but could be no more. Such
a doctrine touched all human activity. The man who in religion
counted his own individual faith as the one thing necessary was
likely to count his own individual convictions in social or
political matters as worth more to him than his obedience to the
authority of any government. In Luther's teaching was to be found
the spirit of political as well as of religious liberty. This side
of it, however, was not likely to reveal itself at once. After a
time Luther shook off entirely the claims of the Papacy upon his
obedience, but he magnified the duty of obeying the princes who gave
him their support in his struggle with the Pope.

6. =Henry's Controversy with Luther.=--Luther, when once he was
engaged in controversy with the Papacy, assailed other doctrines
than those relating to justification. In =1521= Henry, vain of his
theological learning, wrote a book against him in defence of the
seven sacraments. Luther, despising a royal antagonist, replied with
scurrilous invective. Pope Leo was delighted to have found so
influential a champion, and conferred on Henry the title of Defender
of the Faith. If Henry had not been moved by stronger motives than
controversial vanity he might have remained the Pope's ally till the
end of his life.

[Illustration: Catharine of Aragon: from a painting in the National
Portrait Gallery.]

7. =Queen Catharine and Anne Boleyn.=--It was a great disappointment
to Henry that he had no surviving male children. England had never
been ruled by a queen, and it was uncertain whether Henry's
daughter, Mary, would be allowed to reign. Henry had already begun
to ask himself whether he might not get rid of his wife, on the plea
that a marriage with his brother's wife was unlawful, and this
consideration had the greater weight with him because Catharine was
five years older than himself and was growing distasteful to him.
When in =1521=, in his book against Luther, he assigned a divine
origin to the Papacy, he told More of a secret reason for this
exaltation of the Pope's power, and it is possible that this reason
was his desire to obtain from the Pope a divorce under the pretext
that it would secure a peaceful succession. At all events his
scruples regarding his marriage with Catharine were quickened in
=1522= by the appearance at court of Anne Boleyn, a sprightly
black-eyed flirt in her sixteenth year, who took his fancy as she
grew into womanhood. Flirt as she was, she knew her power, and
refused to give herself to him except in marriage. The king, on his
part, being anxious for a legitimate son, set his heart on a divorce
which would enable him to marry Anne. Wolsey, knowing the obstacles
in the way, urged him to abandon the project; but it was never
possible to turn Henry from his course, and Wolsey set himself, in
this as in all things else, to carry out his master's wishes, though
he did so very reluctantly. Moral scruples had little weight with
Wolsey, but in =1525=, when he learnt the king's design, there were
strong political reasons against its execution, as England was in
alliance with Catharine's nephew, the Emperor, Charles V., and a
divorce would be certain to endanger the alliance.

[Illustration: The Gatehouse of Coughton Court, Warwickshire; built
about 1530.]

8. =Henry's Demand for a Divorce. 1527-1528.=--Two years later, in
=1527=, as Henry was veering round towards a French alliance (see p.
374), he had no longer much reason to consider the feelings of the
Emperor. On the other hand, the strong position which Charles
occupied in Italy after the sack of Rome made it improbable that
Clement VII. who was then Pope, and who thought more of his
political than of his ecclesiastical position, would do anything to
thwart the Emperor. An attempt made by Henry in =1527= to draw
Clement to consent to the divorce failed, and in =1528= Wolsey sent
to Rome his secretary, Stephen Gardiner, an adroit man of business,
to induce Clement to appoint legates to decide the question in
Henry's favour. Clement, anxious to please all parties, appointed
Wolsey and another cardinal, Campeggio, as his legates, but took
care to add that nothing done by them should be valid until it had
received his own approval.

9. =The Legatine Court. 1529.=--The court of the two legates was
opened at Blackfriars in =1529=. Before proceeding to business they
tried hard to induce either Henry to abstain from asking for a
divorce or Catharine to abstain from resisting his demand. In such a
matter Catharine was as firm as the self-willed Henry. Even if she
could consent to leave the throne, she could not, if she retained
any sense of womanly dignity, acknowledge that she had never been a
wife to Henry, or suffer her daughter to be branded with
illegitimacy. When king and queen were at last cited to appear
Catharine knelt before her husband. She had, she said been his true
and obedient wife for twenty years, and had done nothing to deserve
being put to open shame. As it was, she appealed to Rome. The
queen's cause was popular with the masses, who went straight to the
mark, and saw in the whole affair a mere attempt to give a legal
covering to Henry's lust. The legates refused to consider the
queen's appeal, but when they came to hear arguments on the merits
of the case they were somewhat startled by the appearance of the
aged Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, one of the holiest and most
learned prelates of the day, who now came voluntarily, though he
knew that Henry's wrath was deadly, to support the cause of
Catharine. Campeggio took advantage of the strong feeling which was
growing against the king to interpose delays which he knew to be
well-pleasing to Clement, and before these delays were at an end
Clement annulled all the proceedings in England and revoked the
cause to Rome. Most probably he was alarmed at the threats of the
Emperor, but he had also reasons of his own for the course which he
took. Henry did not ask for a divorce on any of the usual grounds,
but for a declaration that his marriage had been null from the
beginning. As, however, his marriage had been solemnised with a
Papal dispensation, Clement was asked to set aside the dispensation
of one of his predecessors, a proceeding to which no Pope with any
respect for his office could reasonably be expected to consent.

10. =The Fall of Wolsey. 1529-1530.=--Henry was very angry and made
Wolsey his victim. Wolsey's active endeavours to procure the divorce
counted as nothing. It was enough that he had failed. He was no
longer needed to conduct foreign affairs, as Henry cared now only
for the divorce, and raised no objection when Charles and Francis
made peace at Cambrai without consulting his interests. The old
nobility, headed by the Duke of Norfolk, the son of the victor of
Flodden, had long hated Wolsey bitterly, and the profligate
courtiers, together with the friends and relatives of Anne, hated
him no less bitterly now. Before the end of the year proceedings
under the Statute of Præmunire (see pp. 258, 382) were taken against
him on the ground that he had usurped legatine powers. It was
notorious that he had exercised them at the king's wish, and he
could have produced evidence to show that this had been the case. In
those days, however, it was held to be a subject's duty not to
contest the king's will, and Wolsey contented himself with an abject
supplication for forgiveness. He was driven from his offices, and
all his goods and estates seized. The college which he had founded
at Ipswich was sold for the king's use, and his college at Oxford,
then known as Cardinal College, was also seized, though it was
afterwards refounded under the name of Christchurch by the robber
king. Wolsey was reduced to extreme poverty. In =1530= he was
allowed to return to the possession of the archbishopric of York;
but he imprudently opened communications with the French ambassador,
and harmless as they were, they gave a handle to his enemies. Henry
ordered him to be charged with treason. The sufferings of his mind
affected his body, and on his way to London he knew that he was a
dying man. "Father Abbot," he said, in taking shelter in Leicester
Abbey, "I am come hither to leave my bones among you." "If I had
served my God," he acknowledged as he was passing away, "as
diligently as I have done my king, He would not have given me over
in my grey hairs."

[Illustration: Hall of Christchurch, Oxford; built by Cardinal
Wolsey, and finished in 1529.]

11. =The House of Commons and the Clergy. 1529.=--No king ever felt
the importance of popularity like Henry, and the compassion which
had been freely given to Catharine by the crowd, on her appearance
in the Legatine Court, made it necessary for him to find support
elsewhere. It had been Wolsey's policy to summon Parliament as
seldom as possible. It was to be Henry's policy to summon it as
frequently as possible. He no longer feared the House of Lords, and
either he or Wolsey's late servant, Thomas Cromwell, an able and
unscrupulous man, who rose rapidly in Henry's favour, perceived the
use which might be made of the House of Commons. By his influence
the king could carry the elections as he pleased, and when
Parliament met in =1529= it contained a packed House of Commons
ready to do the king's bidding. The members were either lawyers or
country gentlemen, the main supports of the Tudor monarchy, and
Henry strengthened his hold upon them by letting them loose on the
special abuses which had grown up in the ecclesiastical courts.
Lawyers and country gentlemen were very much what they had been in
the fifteenth century, without large political ideas or fine
spiritual perceptions; but now that they were relieved of the
oppression of the great nobles they turned upon the clergy, who
claimed fees and dues which they disliked paying, and who used the
powers of the ecclesiastical tribunals to exact heavy payments for
moral and spiritual offences.

12. =The Universities Consulted. 1530.=--Henry had as yet no thought
of breaking with the Pope. He wanted to put pressure on him to make
him do what he had come to regard as right. In =1530= he sent to the
universities of Europe to ask their opinion on the question whether
a marriage with a brother's widow was contrary to the law of God.
The whole inquiry was a farce. Wherever Henry or his allies could
bribe or bully the learned doctors, an answer was usually given in
the affirmative. Wherever the Emperor could bribe or bully, then the
answer was usually given in the negative. That the experiment should
have been tried, however, was a proof of the strength of the spirit
of the Renascence. A question of morals which the Pope hesitated to
decide was submitted to the learning of the learned.

13. =The Clergy under a Præmunire. 1530-1531.=--Towards the end of
=1530= Henry charged the whole clergy of England with a breach of
the Statute of Præmunire by their submission to Wolsey's legatine
authority. A more monstrous charge was never brought, as when that
authority was exercised not a priest in England dared to offend the
king by resisting it. When the Convocation of Canterbury met in
=1531=, it offered to buy the pardon of the clergy by a grant of
100,000_l._, to which was afterwards added 18,000_l._ by the
Convocation of York. Henry refused to issue the pardon unless the
clergy would acknowledge him to be supreme head of the Church of
England.

14. =The King's Supreme Headship acknowledged by the Clergy.
1531.=--The title demanded by Henry was conceded by the clergy, with
the qualification that he was Supreme Head of the English Church and
clergy so far as was allowed by the law of Christ. The title thus
given was vague, and did not bar the acknowledgment of the Papal
authority as it had been before exercised, but its interpretation
would depend on the will of the stronger of the two parties. As far
as the Pope was concerned, Henry's claim was no direct invasion of
his rights. The Pope had exercised authority and jurisdiction in
England, but he had never declared himself to be Supreme Head of the
Church either in England or anywhere else. Henry indeed alleged that
he asked for nothing new. He merely wanted to be known as the
supreme authority in the relations between the clergy and the laity.
Nevertheless it was a threat to the Pope, who might well fear lest
the clergy, after giving way to the assumption of a title which
implied authority over themselves, might give way to the widening of
that same authority over matters on which the Pope's claims had
hitherto been undoubted.

15. =The Submission of the Clergy. 1532.=--Everything done by Henry
at this crisis was done with a view to the securing of his purposed
divorce. In the Parliament which sat in =1532= the Commons were
again let loose upon the clergy, and Henry, taking their side,
forced Convocation[2] to sign a document known as the submission of
the clergy. In this the clergy engaged in the first place neither to
meet in Convocation nor to enact or execute new canons without the
king's authority, and, secondly, to submit all past ecclesiastical
legislation to examination with a view to the removal of everything
prejudicial to the royal prerogative. The second article was never
carried into effect, as the first was enough for Henry. He was now
secure against any attempt of the clergy in Convocation to protest
against any step that he might take about the divorce, and he was
none the less pleased because he had incidentally settled the
question of the relations between the clerical legislature and the
Crown.

[Footnote 2: There were two Convocations, of the two provinces of
Canterbury and York, but the former was so much more important that
it is usually spoken of simply as Convocation.]

[Illustration: Sir Thomas More, wearing the collar of SS: from an
original portrait painted by Holbein in 1527, belonging to Edward
Huth, Esq.]

16. =Sir Thomas More and the Protestants. 1529-1532.=--The
submission of the clergy cost Henry the services of the best and
wisest of his statesmen. Sir Thomas More had been appointed
Chancellor on Wolsey's fall in =1529=. When More wrote the _Utopia_,
Luther had not yet broken away from the Papacy, and the tolerant
principles of the author of that book had not been put to the test.
Even in the _Utopia_ More had confined his tolerance to those who
argued in opposition to the received religion without anger or
spite, and when he came to be in office he learnt by practical
experience that opposition is seldom carried on in the spirit of
meekness. Protestantism, as the Lutheran tenets began to be called
in =1529=, spread into England, though as yet it gained a hold only
on a few scattered individuals. Here and there thoughtful men,
dissatisfied with the teaching given to them and with the lives of
many of their teachers, embraced the Lutheran doctrine of
justification by faith. Even the best of them could hardly be
expected to treat with philosophic calm the doctrines which they had
forsaken; whilst some of their converts took a pleasure in reviling
the clergy and the common creed of the vast majority of Englishmen.
With many again the doctrine of justification by faith slipped into
the condemnation of the merit of good works, and even into a light
estimation of good works themselves. For this bitterness of speech
and mind More had no tolerance, and while he pursued his antagonists
with argument and ridicule, he also used his authority to support
the clergy in putting down what they termed heresy by the process of
burning the obstinate heretic.

17. =Resignation of Sir Thomas More. 1532.=--More had no ground for
fearing that the increase of the king's authority over the clergy
would at once encourage revolt against the Church. Henry was a
representative Englishman, and neither he nor the House of Commons
had the least sympathy with heresy. They wanted to believe and act
as their fathers had done. More, however, was sufficiently prescient
to foresee that a lay authority could not for ever maintain this
attitude. Laymen were certain to be moved by the current of thought
which prevailed in their age, and it was only, he believed, the
great Papal organisation which could keep them steady. Though Henry
had not yet directly attacked that organisation, he might be
expected to attack it soon, and, in =1532=, More retired from all
connection with Henry's government rather than take part in that
attack.

18. =The First Act of Annates. 1532.=--Having secured himself, as it
were, in the rear by the submission of the clergy, Henry proceeded
to deal with the Pope. He still wished if possible to win him to his
side, and before the end of =1532= he obtained from Parliament an
Act of Annates. Annates were the first-fruits or first year's income
of ecclesiastical benefices, and by this Act the first-fruits of
bishoprics, which had hitherto been paid to the Pope, were to be
kept back. The Act was not, however, to come into force till the
king had ratified it, and Henry refused for a time to ratify it
hoping to reduce Clement to submission by suspending over his head a
threat upon his purse.

19. =The King's Marriage and the Act of Appeals. 1533.=--Henry,
however, found that Clement was not to be moved, and his patience
coming at last to an end, he was secretly married to Anne Boleyn on
January 25, =1533=. Now that he had reluctantly given up hope of
obtaining a favourable decision from the Pope, he resolved to put an
end to the Papal jurisdiction in England. Otherwise if he obtained a
sentence in an English ecclesiastical court declaring his marriage
with Catharine to be null from the beginning, his injured wife might
appeal to the superior court of the Pope. He accordingly obtained
from Parliament the Act of Appeals, declaring that the king held the
supreme authority in England, and that as under him all temporal
matters were to be decided by temporal judges, and all spiritual
matters by spiritual judges, no appeals should hereafter be suffered
to any authority outside the realm. Henry was capable of any
meanness to serve his ends, but he also knew how to gain more than
his immediate ends by connecting them with a large national policy.
He almost made men forget the low design which prompted the Act of
Appeals by fixing their eyes on the great object of national
independence.

20. =Archbishop Cranmer and the Court at Dunstable. 1533.=--Henry
found a convenient instrument for his personal as well as for his
national policy in Thomas Cranmer, whom he appointed Archbishop of
Canterbury in the spring of =1533=. Cranmer was intellectually
acute, and took a worthy part in the further development of the
English Church; but he was morally weak, and inclined to carry out
orders whatever they might be, especially if they came from a king
as strong-willed as Henry. He had already thrown himself as an
active agent into the cause of Henry's divorce, and he was now
prepared as archbishop to give effect to his arguments. In March
Convocation was half persuaded, half driven to declare Catharine's
marriage to be void, and in May Cranmer, sitting at Dunstable in his
archiepiscopal court, pronounced sentence against her. In accordance
with the Act of Appeals the sentence was final, but both Henry and
Cranmer feared lest Catharine should send her counsel to make an
appeal to Rome, and they were therefore mean enough to conceal from
her the day on which sentence was to be given. The temporal benefits
which the Pope derived from England were now to come to an end as
well as his spiritual jurisdiction, and in July the king ratified
the Act of Annates.

21. =Frith and Latimer. 1533.=--When a man of special intellectual
acquirements like Cranmer could descend to the trick which he had
played at Dunstable, it was time that some one should be found who,
in the steadfastness of his faith, would refuse to truckle to the
king, and would maintain the rights of individual conscience as well
as those of national independence. The teaching of Zwingli, a Swiss
reformer, who held that the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper was a mere sign of the Body and Blood of the Redeemer,
was beginning to influence the English Protestants, and its
reception was one more reason for the mass of Englishmen to send to
prison or the stake those who maintained what was, in their eyes, so
monstrous a heresy. Amongst the noblest of the persecuted was John
Frith, who whilst he stoutly held to the belief that the doctrine of
transubstantiation was untrue, begged that men should be left 'to
think thereon as God shall instil in any man's mind, and that
neither part condemn other for this matter, but receive each other
in brotherly love, reserving each other's infirmity to God.' Frith
was in advance of his time as the advocate of religious liberty as
well as of a special creed, and he was burnt alive. Henry meant it
to be understood that his supreme headship made it easier, and not
harder, to suppress heresy. He might have succeeded if he had had
merely to deal with a few heroes like Frith. That which was beyond
his control was the sapping process of the spirit of the Renascence,
leading his bishops, and even himself, to examine and explain
received doctrines, and thus to transform them without knowing what
they were doing. Hugh Latimer, for instance, a favourite chaplain of
the king, was, indeed, a preacher of righteousness, testing all
things rather by their moral worth than by their conformity to an
intellectual standard. The received doctrines about Purgatory, the
worship of the saints, and pilgrimages to their images seemed to him
to be immoral; but as yet he wished to purify opinion, not to change
it altogether, and in this he had the support of the king, who, in
=1535=, made him Bishop of Worcester.

22. =Completion of the Breach with Rome. 1533-1534.=--Before =1533=
was over Henry appealed from the Pope to a General Council. Clement
not only paid no heed to his appeal, but gave sentence in favour of
Catharine. When Parliament met in =1534=, therefore, Henry was
obliged to strengthen his position of hostility to the Pope. He
procured from it three Acts. The first of these was a second Act of
Annates, which conferred on him absolutely not only the
first-fruits of bishoprics which had been the subject of the
conditional Act of Annates in =1532= (see p. 388), but also the
first-fruits of all the beneficed clergy, as well as a tenth of each
year's income of both bishops and beneficed clergy, all of which
payments had been hitherto made to the Pope. Incidentally this Act
also regulated the appointment of bishops, by ordering that the king
should issue a _congé d'élire_ to the chapter of the vacant see,
together with a letter missive compelling the choice of his nominee.
The second was an Act concerning Peter's pence, abolishing all minor
payments to the Pope, and cutting away all interference of the Pope
by transferring his right to issue licences and dispensations to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. The third confirmed the submission of the
clergy and enacted that appeals from the courts of the Archbishop
should be heard by commissioners appointed by the King, and known as
the delegates of Appeals. It was by these Acts that the separation
between the Churches of England and Rome was finally effected. They
merely completed the work which had been done by the great Act of
Appeals in =1533=. The Church of England had indeed always been a
national Church with its own ecclesiastical assemblies, and with
ties to the Crown which were stretched more tightly or more loosely
at various times. It had, however, maintained its connection with
the Continental Churches by its subordination to the Pope, and this
subordination had been made real by the subjection of its courts to
appeals to Rome, and by the necessity of recurring to Rome for
permission to do certain things prohibited by English ecclesiastical
law. All this was now at an end. The old supremacy of the king was
sharpened and defined. The jurisdiction of the Pope was abolished.
Nominally the English ecclesiastical authorities became more
independent; more capable of doing what seemed to them to be best
for the Church of the nation. Such at least was the state of the
law. In practice the English ecclesiastical authorities were
entirely at Henry's bidding. In theory and in sentiment the Church
of England was still a branch of the Catholic Church, one in
doctrine and in discipline with the Continental Churches.
Practically it was now, in a far more unqualified sense than before,
a national Church, ready to drift from its moorings and to accept
new counsels whenever the tide of opinion should break strongly
upon it.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1534-1547

LEADING DATES

Reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547

The Acts of Succession and Supremacy 1534
Execution of Fisher and More 1535
Dissolution of the smaller monasteries and the Pilgrimage
of Grace 1536
Destruction of relics and images 1538
The Six Articles and the Act granting to the king the
greater monasteries 1539
Fall of Cromwell 1540
Henry VIII. king of Ireland 1541
Solway Moss 1542
Death of Henry VIII. 1547

1. =The Act of Succession. 1534.=--In September =1533= Anne had
given birth to a daughter, who was afterwards Queen Elizabeth. In
=1534= Parliament passed an Act of Succession. Not only did it
declare Anne's marriage to be lawful and Catharine's unlawful, and
consequently Elizabeth and not Mary to be heir to the crown, but it
required all subjects to take an oath acknowledging their approval
of the contents of the Act. More and Fisher professed themselves
ready to swear to any succession which might be authorised by Act of
Parliament; but they would not swear to the illegality of
Catharine's marriage. It was on this point that Henry was most
sensitive, as he knew public opinion to be against him, and he threw
both More and Fisher into the Tower. In the year before the language
held in the pulpit on the subject of Henry's marriage with Anne in
his wife's lifetime had been so strong that Cranmer had forbidden
all preaching on the subject of the king's laws or the succession to
the throne. Of the clergy, the friars were still the most resolute.
Henry now sent commissioners to visit the friaries, and those in
which the oath was refused were summarily suppressed.

2. =The Acts of Treason and Supremacy. 1534.=--In =1534= Parliament
also passed a new Act of Treasons which made it high treason to wish
or practise harm to the king, the queen, and their heirs, to use
words denying their titles, or to call the king a 'heretic,
schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown.' Later in the
same year, but in a fresh session, Parliament passed the Act of
Supremacy, which confirmed the title of Supreme Head on earth of the
Church of England, a title very similar to that to which the king
had obtained the qualified assent of the clergy in =1531= (see p.
386). From that time anyone who denied the king to be the Supreme
Head of the Church of England was liable to a traitor's death.

[Illustration: John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1504-1535; from a
drawing by Holbein in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle.]

3. =The Monks of the Charterhouse. 1534.=--It can hardly be doubted
that Henry's chief adviser in these tyrannical measures was the able
and unscrupulous Cromwell. It was Cromwell's plan to exalt the royal
authority into a despotism by means of a subservient Parliament. He
was already Henry's secretary; and in =1535= was appointed the
king's Vicar-General in ecclesiastical matters. He was quite ready
to push the Acts of Parliament which had recently been passed to
their extreme consequences. His first object was to get rid of the
Friars Observant, who had shown themselves most hostile to what they
called in plainness of speech the king's adultery. All their houses
were suppressed, and some of the inmates put to death. Then Cromwell
fell on the London Charterhouse,[3] the inmates of which had been
imprisoned in the year before simply for a refusal to take the oath
of the Act of Succession, though they had not uttered a word against
the king's proceedings. They could now be put to death under the new
Treason Act, for denying the king's supremacy, and many of them were
accordingly executed after the usual barbarous fashion, whilst
others perished of starvation or of diseases contracted in the
filthy prisons in which they were confined. "I profess," said the
Prior, Houghton, "that it is not out of obstinate malice or a mind
of rebellion that I do disobey the king, but only for the fear of
God, that I offend not the Supreme Majesty; because our Holy Mother
the Church hath decreed and appointed otherwise than the king and
Parliament hath ordained." Houghton and his fellows were as truly
martyrs as Frith had been. They at least had sown no seeds of
rebellion, and they died because a tyrannical king insisted on
ruling over consciences as well as over bodily acts.

[Footnote 3: The Charterhouse here means the house of the
Carthusians.]

4. =Execution of Fisher and More. 1535.=--Fisher and More were the
next to suffer on the same charge, though their sentences were
commuted to death by beheading. More preserved his wit to the last.
"I pray you," he said as he mounted the scaffold, "see me safe up,
and for my coming down I will shift for myself." After he had knelt
to place his head on the block, he raised it again to move his beard
aside. "Pity," he muttered, "that should be cut that has not
committed treason."

5. =The Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries. 1536.=--Money never
came amiss to Henry, and Cromwell now rooted himself firmly in his
master's favour by pointing out to him fresh booty. The English
monasteries were rich and weak, and it was easy to trump up or
exaggerate charges against them. Cromwell sent commissioners to
inquire into their moral state (=1535=), and the commissioners, who
were as unscrupulous as himself, rushed round the monasteries in
such a hurry that they had no time to make any real inquiry, but
nevertheless returned with a number of scandalous tales. These tales
referred to some of the larger monasteries as well as the smaller,
but, when Parliament met in =1536=, Henry contented himself with
asking that monasteries having property worth less than 200_l._ a
year should be dissolved, and their estates given to himself, on the
ground that whilst the smaller ones were dens of vice the larger
ones were examples of virtue. Parliament granted his request, and
the work of spoliation began. There can be no doubt that vice did
exist in the monasteries, though there was not so much of it as the
commissioners asserted. It would have been indeed strange if
innocence had been preserved in communities living in enforced
celibacy, with no stress of work to occupy their thoughts, and with
the high ideals of their profession neglected or cast aside. On the
other hand, the monks were easy landlords, were hospitable to the
stranger and kindly to the poor, whilst neither the king himself nor
those to whom he gave or sold the lands which he acquired cared for
more than to make money. The real weakness of the monks lay in
their failure to conciliate the more active minds of the age, or to
meet its moral needs. The attack upon the vast edifice of Henry's
despotism in Church and State could only be carried on successfully
by the combined effort of men like the scholars of the Renascence,
whose thoughts were unfettered, and of those who, like the
Protestants, were full of aggressive vigour, and who substituted for
the duty of obedience the duty of following their own convictions.

[Illustration: Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane
Seymour, afterwards Duke of Somerset, known as 'the Protector', at
the age of 28 (1535), 1507-1552: from a painting at Sudeley Castle.]

6. =The Execution of Anne Boleyn. 1536.=--Before the end of =1536=
there was a new queen. Henry became tired of Anne, as he had been
tired of Catharine, and on a series of monstrous charges, so
monstrous as to be hardly credible, he had her tried and executed.
Her unpardonable crime was probably that her only living child was a
daughter, and not a son. Ten days after Anne's death Henry married a
third wife, Jane Seymour. As Catharine was now dead, there could be
no doubt of the legitimacy of Jane's offspring, but to make
assurance doubly sure, a new Parliament passed an Act settling the
succession on Jane's children, and declaring both Mary and Elizabeth
illegitimate.

7. =The Ten Articles. 1536.=--It is probable that when Henry took
the title of Supreme Head he intended to maintain the doctrines and
practices of the Church exactly as he found them. In =1536= the
clergy were crying out not merely against attacks on their faith,
but against the ribaldry with which these attacks were often
conducted. One assailant, for instance, declared the oil used in
extreme unction to be no more than the Bishop of Rome's grease or
butter, and another that it was of no more use to invoke a saint
than it was to whirl a stone against the wind. Many of the clergy
would have been well pleased with mere repression. Henry, however,
and the bishops whom he most trusted wished repression to be
accompanied with reasonable explanations of the doctrines and
practices enforced. The result was seen in the Ten Articles which
were drawn up by Convocation, and sent abroad with the authority of
the king. There was to be uniformity, to be obtained by the
circulation of a written document, in which the old doctrines were
stripped of much that had given offence, and their acceptance made
easy for educated men. Of the seven sacraments, three only, Baptism,
Penance, and the Sacrament of the Altar, were explained, whilst the
other four--those of Marriage, Orders, Confirmation, and Extreme
Unction--were passed over in silence. On the whole the Ten Articles
in some points showed a distinct advance in the direction of
Lutheranism, though there was also to be discerned in them an
equally distinct effort to explain rather than to reject the creed
of the mediæval Church.

8. =The Translation of the Bible authorised. 1536.=--The same
tendency to appeal to educated intelligence showed itself in the
sanction given by the king and Cromwell in =1536= to a translation
of the Bible which had been completed in =1535= by Miles Coverdale,
whose version of the New Testament was founded on an earlier one by
Tyndale. It is probable that Henry, in authorising the circulation
of this version, thought of the support which he might derive from
the silence of the Bible on the Papal claims. The circulation of the
Bible was, however, likely to work in a direction very different
from that of the Ten Articles. The Ten Articles were intended to
promote unity of belief. The Bible, once placed in the hands of
everyone who could read, was likely to promote diversity. It would
be the storehouse in which Lutherans, Zwinglians, and every
divergent sect would find weapons to support their own special
ideas. It would help on the growth of those individual opinions
which were springing up side by side with the steady forward
progress of the clergy of the Renascence. The men who attempted to
make the old creed intellectually acceptable and the men who
proclaimed a new one, under the belief that they were recurring to
one still older, were together laying the foundations of English
Protestantism.

9. =The Pilgrimage of Grace. 1536-1537.=--Slight as these changes
were, they were sufficient to rouse suspicion that further change
was impending. The masses who could neither read nor write were
stirred by the greed and violence with which the dissolution of the
smaller monasteries was carried on, and by the cessation of the
kindly relief which these monasteries had afforded to the wants of
the poor. A rumour spread that when Cromwell had despoiled the
monasteries he would proceed to despoil the parish churches. In the
autumn of =1536= there was a rising in Lincolnshire, which was
easily suppressed, but was followed by a more formidable rising in
Yorkshire. The insurgents, headed by Robert Aske, called it the
Pilgrimage of Grace, and bore a banner embroidered with the five
wounds of Christ. They asked among other things for the restoration
of the monasteries, the punishment of Cromwell and his chief
supporters, the deprivation of the reforming bishops, the
extirpation of heresy, and the restoration of the Papal authority in
a modified form. Their force grew so large that the Duke of Norfolk,
who was sent to disperse it, did not venture to make the attempt,
and the king found himself obliged to issue a general pardon and to
promise that a Parliament should meet in the North for the redress
of grievances. On this the insurgents returned home. Early in =1537=
Henry, who had no intention of keeping his word, took advantage of
some new troubles in the North to declare that his engagement was no
longer binding, and seized and executed, not merely the leaders, but
many of the lesser supporters of the insurrection. Of the Parliament
in the North nothing more was heard, but a Council of the North was
established to keep the people of those parts in order, and to
execute justice in the king's name.

10. =Birth of a Prince. 1537.=--In =1537= Jane Seymour gave birth to
a boy, who was afterwards Edward VI. Henry had at last a male heir
of undoubted legitimacy, but in a few days his wife died.

11. =The Beginning of the Attack on the Greater Monasteries.
1537-1538.=--The failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace brought in fresh
booty to Henry. Abbots and priors who had taken part in it, or were
accused of doing so, were hanged, and their monasteries confiscated.
Where nothing could be proved against the greater monasteries, which
had been declared by Parliament to be free from vice, their heads
were terrified into an appearance of voluntary submission. Cromwell
had his spies and informers everywhere, and it was as easy for them
to lie as to speak the truth. In =1537= and =1538= many abbots bowed
before the storm, and, confessing that they and their monks had been
guilty of the most degrading sins, asked to be allowed to surrender
their monasteries to the king. Cromwell's commissioners then took
possession, sold the bells, the lead on the roof, and every article
which had its price, and left the walls to serve as a quarry for
the neighbourhood. The lands went to the king. It not unfrequently
happened that Henry promoted to ecclesiastical benefices those monks
who had been most ready to confess themselves sinners beyond other
men. There is no doubt that the confessions were prepared beforehand
to deceive contemporaries, and there is therefore no reason why they
should deceive posterity.

12. =Destruction of Relics and Images. 1538.=--The attack on the
monasteries was accompanied by an attack on relics and such images
as attracted more than ordinary reverence. The explanation of the
zeal with which they were hunted down is in many cases to be found
in the gold and jewels with which they were adorned. Some of them
were credited with miraculous powers. The figure of the Saviour on
the rood at Boxley, in Kent, moved its head and eyes. A phial at
Hales, in Worcestershire, contained a substance which had been
brought from Germany in the thirteenth century, and was said to be
the blood of the Saviour. Pilgrims thronged in numbers to adore, and
their offerings brought in no small profit to the monks who owned
such treasures. What was fondly believed by the common people was
derided by critical spirits, and Henry was well pleased to destroy
all reverence for anything which brought credit to the monks. The
rood of Boxley was exhibited in London, where the Bishop of
Rochester pulled the wires which caused its motions, and the blood
in the phial of Hales was declared to be no more than a coloured
gum. An ancient wooden figure, worshipped in Wales under the name of
Darvel Gathern, served to make a fire which burned Friar Forest, who
maintained that in spiritual things obedience was due to the Pope
and not to the king. Instead of hanging him under the Treason Act
(see p. 392) Henry had him burnt as a heretic. It was the first and
only time when the denial of the royal supremacy was held to be
heresy. When war was made against superstition, the shrine of St.
Thomas of Canterbury could hardly be allowed to escape. Thomas was a
saint who had bearded a king, and his shrine, which had attracted
such crowds of pilgrims that the marks which they left as they
shuffled forward on their knees towards it are still to be seen on
the stone floor, was smashed, and the bones of the saint burnt.
Shrines were usually covered with gold and jewels, and all shrines
shared the fate of that of St. Thomas.[4] The images in parish
churches, not being attractive to the covetous, and being valued by
the people for ordinary purposes of devotion, were still left
untouched.

[Footnote 4: Shrines were receptacles above ground of the bodies of
saints. That of Edward the Confessor at Westminster was rebuilt by
queen Mary, and that of St. Alban at St. Albans in recent times.
These two are the only shrines now to be seen in England.]

13. =The Trial of Lambert. 1538.=--Henry's violence against
monasticism and superstition made him extremely anxious to show his
orthodoxy. The opinion held by Zwingli, the reformer of Zürich, that
the Body and Blood of Christ were in no way present in the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper was now spreading in England, and those who
held it were known as Sacramentaries. One of these, John Lambert,
was tried before Henry himself. Henry told Lambert scornfully that
the words of Christ, 'This is My Body,' settled the whole question,
and Lambert was condemned and burnt.

14. =The Marquis of Exeter and the Poles. 1538.=--Amongst the
descendants of the Duke of Clarence was Reginald Pole.[5] He had
been scandalised by the divorce, had left England, had been made a
Cardinal in =1536=, and had poured out a torrent of invective
against the wickedness of Henry. In the end of =1538= Henry, having
been informed that some of Pole's kinsfolk had been muttering
dissatisfaction, sent them to execution together with his own
cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, the son of his mother's sister.

[Footnote 5: Genealogy of the de la Poles and Poles:--

15. =The Six Articles. 1539.=--Cruel and unscrupulous as Henry was,
he was in many respects a representative Englishman, sympathising
with the popular disgust at the spread of ideas hitherto unheard of.
In a new Parliament which met in =1539= he obtained the willing
consent of both Houses to the statute of the Six Articles. This
statute declared in favour of: (1) the real presence of 'the natural
Body and Blood of Christ' in the Lord's Supper; (2) the sufficiency
of communion in one kind; (3) clerical celibacy; (4) the perpetual
obligation of vows of chastity; (5) private masses; and (6)
auricular confession. Whoever spoke against the first was to be
burnt; whoever spoke against the other five was to suffer
imprisonment and loss of goods for the first offence, and to be
hanged for the second. By those who suffered from the Act it was
known as 'The Whip with Six Strings.' Cranmer, who was a married
archbishop, was forced to dismiss his wife. Bishops Latimer and
Shaxton, whose opinions had gradually advanced beyond the line at
which Henry's orthodoxy ended, were driven from their sees; but the
number of those put to death under the new Act was not great.

16. =Completion of the Suppression of the Monasteries.
1539-1540.=--So completely was the statute of the Six Articles in
accordance with public opinion, that Henry had no difficulty in
obtaining the consent of Parliament to an Act giving to his
proclamations the force of law, and to another Act securing to him
the whole of the monasteries whether they had been already
suppressed or not. Before the end of =1540= not a single monastery
was left. Three abbots, those of Glastonbury, Colchester, and
Reading, had been hanged the year before after the mere semblance of
a trial. The disappearance of the abbots from the House of Lords
made the lay peers, for the first time, more numerous than the
ecclesiastical members of the House. The lay peers, on the other
hand, were reinforced by new creations from amongst Henry's
favourites, whom he had enriched by grants of abbey lands. The new
peers and the more numerous country gentlemen who had shared in the
spoil were interested in maintaining the independence of the English
Church, lest the Pope, if his jurisdiction were restored, should
insist on their disgorging their prey. Of that which fell into the
hands of the king, a small portion was spent on the foundation of
five new bishoprics, whilst part of the rest was employed on
shipbuilding and the erection of fortifications on the coast, part
in meeting the general expenditure of the Crown.

17. =Anne of Cleves and the Fall of Cromwell. 1539-1540.=--In all
that had been done Cromwell had been the leading spirit. It had been
his plan to erect an absolute despotism, and thereby to secure his
own high position and to enrich himself as well as his master. He
was naturally hated by the old nobility and by all who suffered from
his extortions and cruelty. In the summer of =1539= he was eager for
an alliance with the German Protestants against the Emperor Charles
V., and suggested to Henry a fourth marriage with a German princess,
Anne of Cleves. Holbein, a great German painter settled in England,
was sent to take a portrait of the lady, and Henry was so pleased
with it that he sent for her to make her his wife. When she arrived
he found her anything but good-looking. In =1540= he went through
the marriage ceremony with her, but he divorced her shortly
afterwards. Fortunately for herself, Anne made no objection, and was
allowed to live in England on a good allowance till her death. For a
time Cromwell seemed to be as high as ever in Henry's good opinion,
and was created Earl of Essex. Henry, however, was inwardly annoyed,
and he had always the habit of dropping ministers as soon as their
unpopularity brought discredit on himself. Cromwell was charged with
treason by the Duke of Norfolk. A Bill of attainder[6] was rapidly
passed, and Cromwell was sent to the scaffold without being even
heard in his own defence.

[Footnote 6: A Bill of attainder was brought into one or other of
the Houses of Parliament, and became law, like any other Act of
Parliament, after it had passed both Houses and received the Royal
assent. Its object was condemnation to death, and, as the
legislative powers of Parliament were unlimited, it need not be
supported by the production of evidence, unless Parliament chose to
ask for it. Henry VIII. preferred this mode of getting rid of
ministers with whom he was dissatisfied to the old way of
impeachment; as in an impeachment (see p. 262) there was at least
the semblance of a judicial proceeding, the Commons appearing as
accusers, and the Lords as judges.]

18. =Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. 1540-1543.=--In =1540=
Henry married a fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Norfolk, who was her
uncle, gained the upper hand at court, and was supported by Gardiner
(see p. 382), now Bishop of Winchester, who was strongly opposed to
all further ecclesiastical innovations. Those who denied the king's
supremacy were sent to the gallows, those who denied the doctrine of
transubstantiation to the stake. In =1541= the old Countess of
Salisbury, the mother of Cardinal Pole, and the daughter of the
brother of Edward IV., was executed in the belief that she had
favoured an abortive conspiracy. Before the end of =1540= Henry
discovered that his young wife had, before her marriage, been guilty
of incontinency, and in =1542= she was beheaded. In =1543= Henry
married a sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who actually survived him.

19. =Ireland. 1534.=--Henry's masterful rule had made him many
enemies abroad as well as at home, and he was therefore constantly
exposed to the risk of an attack from the Continent. In the face of
such danger he could no longer allow Ireland to remain as
disorganised as it had been in his father's reign and in the early
years of his own, lest Ireland should become the stepping-stone to
an invasion of England. In Ireland the Celtic chiefs maintained
their independence, carrying on destructive wars with one another,
both they and their followers being inspired with a high spirit of
tribal patriotism, but without the slightest idea of national union.
The Anglo-Norman lords ruling a Celtic population were quite as
quarrelsome and even more oppressive than the Celtic chiefs, whilst
the inhabitants of the English Pale (see p. 265), ruled over by what
was only in name a civilised government, were subjected alike to the
oppressive exactions of the authorities at Dublin and to the
plundering of the so-called 'Irish enemies,' from whom these
authorities were unable to protect them. The most powerful of the
Anglo-Norman lords was still the Earl of Kildare (see p. 347), who,
whenever he bore the title of Lord Deputy, unblushingly used the
king's name in wreaking vengeance on his private enemies.

20. =The Geraldine Rebellion. 1534-1535.=--In =1534= Henry summoned
Kildare to England and threw him into the Tower. On a rumour of
Kildare's death his son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Silken Thomas, as
he was called in Ireland--rose against the king. The Geraldines, as
the Fitzgeralds were sometimes called, had often frightened kings by
rebelling, but this time they failed in their object. In =1535= the
Lord Deputy Skeffington brought heavy guns and battered down the
walls of the great Geraldine castle at Maynooth. One by one all the
males of Kildare's family, with the exception of two boys, were
captured and put to death.

[Illustration: King Henry VIII.: from a picture belonging to the
Earl of Warwick.]

21. =Lord Leonard Grey. 1536-1539.=--Lord Leonard Grey became Lord
Deputy in =1536=. The Irish Parliament which met in that year was
still only a Parliament of the English Pale, but its acts showed
that Henry intended, if possible, to rule all Ireland. On the one
hand the royal supremacy was declared. On the other hand an Act was
passed which showed how little was, in those days, understood of the
difficulties standing in the way of the assimilation of two peoples
at different stages of civilisation. The native Irish were ordered
to be exactly as the English. They were to use the English language,
to adopt the English dress, and to cut their hair after the English
fashion. It was to be in the Church as it was to be in the State. No
one was to receive any ecclesiastical preferment who did not speak
English. Such laws naturally could not be put in force, but they
served as indications of the spirit of the Government. Even more
obnoxious was the conduct of the Archbishop of Dublin, George
Browne, a mere creature of Henry and Cromwell. The assertion of the
royal supremacy, indeed, if it had stood alone, would have made
little difference in the church-life of Ireland. Browne, however,
persisted, in obedience to orders from England, in destroying
relics and images which were regarded by the whole population with
the deepest reverence. The doubting spirit of the Renascence found
no echo in Ireland, because that country was far behind England in
education and culture. It would have been of less consequence if
these unwise proceedings had been confined to the English Pale. Lord
Leonard Grey was, however, a stern warrior, and carried his arms
successfully amongst the Irish tribes. When he left Ireland in
=1539= a large part of the Celtic population had been compelled to
submit to Henry, and that population was even less prepared than
were the inhabitants of the Pale for violent alterations of
religious ceremonial.

22. =Henry VIII. King of Ireland. 1541.=--In =1541= a Parliament at
Dublin acknowledged Henry to be king of Ireland. Hitherto he had
been but Lord of Ireland. As that title had been granted by Pope
Adrian IV. to Henry II. (see p. 152), Henry VIII. wished to have a
new one which should mark his complete independence of Rome. This
Parliament was the first attended by the native chiefs, and the
assumption of the new title therefore indicated a new stage in Irish
history. Unfortunately Henry bent himself to conciliate the chiefs
rather than their tribes. He gave to the chiefs English titles--the
O'Neill, for instance, becoming Earl of Tyrone, and O'Brien, Earl of
Thomond--whilst he hoped to win their support by dissolving the
monasteries, and by giving them a share in the plunder. All this
Henry did in the hope that the chiefs would use their influence to
spread English habits and English law amongst a people who were
attached to their own ways. For the time he gained what he wanted.
As long as the plunder of the abbeys was to be had the chiefs kept
quiet. When that had been absorbed both chiefs and people would
revolt against a Government which wanted to bring about, in a few
years, a complete change in their mode of life. It is indeed useless
to regret that Henry did not content himself with forcing the tribes
to keep peace with one another, whilst allowing them gradually to
grow in civilisation in their own fashion. There are often things
which it would be well to do, but which no government can do. In the
first place Henry had not money enough to enforce peace, the whole
revenue of Ireland at that time being no more than 5,000_l._ a year.
In the second place he was roused to futile efforts to convert
Irishmen into Englishmen because he was in constant dread of the
intervention in Ireland of his Continental enemies.

23. =Solway Moss. 1542.=--Henry was probably the more distrustful of
a possibly independent Ireland because an actually independent
Scotland gave him so much trouble. In Scotland there had been no
Wars of the Roses, and the warlike nobility still resembled petty
kings in their own districts. James V., the son of Henry's sister
Margaret, strove to depress the nobles by allying himself with the
Church and the Commons. Scotland was always ready to come to blows
with England, and the clergy urged James to break with a king of
England who had broken with the Pope. From =1532= to =1534= there
had been actual war between the kingdoms. Even after peace was
restored James's attitude was constantly menacing. In =1542= war
broke out again, and the Duke of Norfolk crossed the Tweed and
wasted the border counties of Scotland. Then James launched an army
across the Border into Cumberland. His distrust of the nobles,
however, made him place at the head of it a mere court favourite,
Oliver Sinclair. The Scottish army was harassed by the horsemen of
the English border, and as night was drawing on was suddenly
assailed by a small English party. Having no confidence in Sinclair,
the whole multitude fled in a panic, to be slain or captured in
Solway Moss. James's health broke down under the evil tidings. As he
lay sick, news was brought to him that his wife had given birth to a
child. Hearing that the child was a girl, and remembering how the
heiress of the Bruces had brought the crown to the House of Stuart
(see p. 295), he was saddened by the thought that the Stuart name
also would come to an end. "It came with a lass," he murmured, "and
it will go with a lass." In a few days he died, and his infant
daughter, the Queen of Scots, received the name of Mary.[7]

[Footnote 7: James's foreboding was not realised, because Mary
married a Stuart.]

[Illustration: Angel of Henry VIII. 1543.]

[Illustration: Part of the encampment at Marquison, 1544, showing
military equipment in the time of Henry VIII.: from an engraving
made by Vertue for the Society of Antiquaries from the now destroyed
painting at Cowdray House.]

[Illustration: Part of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII., 1544,
showing military operations: from an engraving made by Vertue for
the Society of Antiquaries from the now destroyed painting at
Cowdray House.][2 Illustrations.]

24. =War with Scotland and France. 1542-1546.=--Henry, anxious to
disarm Scottish hostility, proposed a marriage between his son
Edward and the young queen. The proposal was rejected, and an
alliance formed between Scotland and France. In =1544= Henry, having
formed an alliance with Charles V., who was now at war with France,
invaded France and took Boulogne after a long siege--thus enlarging
the English possessions in the neighbourhood of Calais--whilst
Charles concluded a peace with Francis at Crêpy and left his ally in
the lurch. In the same year Henry sent Lord Hertford, Jane
Seymour's brother, to invade Scotland. Hertford burnt every house
and cottage between Berwick and Edinburgh, took Edinburgh itself,
and burnt the town. In =1546= peace was made between England and
France, in which Scotland was included. The war had been expensive,
and in =1544= Parliament had come to Henry's help by enacting that
he need not repay a loan which he had gathered, yet even then Henry
had had recourse to the desperate remedy of debasing the coinage.

[Illustration: Armour as worn in the reign of Henry VIII.: from the
brass of John Lymsey, 1545, in Hackney Church.]

[Illustration: Margaret, wife of John Lymsey: from her brass in
Hackney Church, showing the costume of a lady _circa_ 1545.]

25. =The Litany and the Primer. 1544-1545.=--In =1544=, when Henry
was besieging Boulogne, Cranmer ordered prayers to be offered for
his success. In the true spirit of the Renascence he wished these
prayers to be intelligible, and directed that they should be in
English. In the same year he composed the English Litany, intended
to be recited by priests and people going in procession. This
Litany was the foundation-stone of the future Book of Common Prayer.
It was issued in =1544= together with a Primer, or book of private
prayer, also in English. In the public services the Creed, the
Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments were to be in English, the
remainder being left in Latin as before.

[Illustration: Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, 1473(?)--1554:
from the picture by Holbein at Windsor Castle.]

26. =The Last Days of Henry VIII. 1545-1547.=--When once inquiring
intelligence is let loose on an antiquated system, it is hard to say
where the desire of making alterations will stop, and there are
reasons to believe that Henry was contemplating further changes.
There were two parties at court, the one anxious to resist further
change, headed, amongst the temporal lords, by the Duke of Norfolk
and his son, the Earl of Surrey, and amongst the bishops by
Gardiner; the other, desiring doctrinal innovations, especially if
money was to be got by them, headed by the Earl of Hertford. In
=1545= an Act had been passed for the dissolution of chantries,
hospitals, and free chapels. The chantries had been founded for the
maintenance of priests to say mass for the souls of the founders,
and it was convenient for those who sought to divert this
maintenance to their own use to believe that it was wrong to pray
for the dead. In the end of =1546= Henry was taken ill, and, feeling
himself to be dying, ordered the arrest of Norfolk and Surrey on
charges of treason. It is probable that Henry turned against Norfolk
and Surrey because he thought Hertford, as the uncle of the young
Prince of Wales, more likely to be faithful to the future king. On
January 27, =1547=, Surrey was executed. His father was to have
suffered on the 28th. Before he reached the scaffold, Henry died,
and he was conducted back to prison. Henry, before his death, had
done something to provide against the danger of a disputed
succession. An Act of Parliament, passed in =1544=, had given back
to Mary and Elizabeth the places in the line of inheritance to which
they would have been entitled if no doubt had ever been cast on the
legitimacy of their birth,[8] and had authorised Henry to provide by
will for the future occupancy of the throne in case of the failure
of his own descendants. In accordance with this Act he left the
crown, in case of such failure, to the descendants of his younger
sister Mary, leaving out those of his elder sister Margaret, with
whose son, James V., he had had so much reason to be displeased.

[Footnote 8: Genealogy of the children of Henry VIII.:--

(1) Catharine = HENRY VIII. =(2) Anne =(3) Jane Seymour =(4) Anne of
of Aragon | | Boleyn | Cleves
| | | =(5) Catherine
MARY ELIZABETH EDWARD VI. Howard
(1553-1558) (1558-1603) (1547-1553) =(6) Catherine
Parr]

CHAPTER XXVII

EDWARD VI. AND MARY

EDWARD VI., 1547-1553. MARY, 1553-1558.

LEADING DATES

Somerset's Protectorate 1547
First Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1549
Fall of Somerset 1549
Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1552
Death of Edward VI. and accession of Mary 1553
Mary's marriage with Philip 1554
Submission to Rome and re-enactment of the heresy laws 1554
Beginning of the persecution 1555
War with France 1557
Loss of Calais and death of Mary 1558

1. =Somerset becomes Protector. 1547.=--The new king, Edward VI.,
was but a boy, and Henry had directed that England should be
governed during his son's minority by a body composed of the
executors of his will and other councillors, in which neither the
partisans of change nor the partisans of the existing order should
be strong enough to have their own way. The leading innovators,
pretending to be anxious to carry out his wishes, asserted that he
had been heard to express a desire that they should be made peers or
advanced in the peerage, and should receive large estates out of the
abbey lands. After gaining their object, they set aside Henry's real
plan for the government of the realm, and declared Hertford (who now
became Duke of Somerset) to be Protector. A council was formed, from
which Gardiner and the Lord Chancellor Wriothesley were excluded as
likely to take part against them.

2. =The Scotch War. 1547-1548.=--Somerset was as greedy of Church
property as the greediest, but he was covetous also of popularity,
and had none of that moderating influence which Henry, with all his
faults, possessed. He had always too many irons in the fire, and had
no sense of the line which divides the possible from the impossible.
His first thought was to intervene in Scotland. For some time past
Protestant missionaries had been attempting to convert the Scottish
people, but most of them had been caught and burnt. Cardinal
Beaton, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, had lately burnt George
Wishart, a noted Protestant. In =1546= the Cardinal was murdered in
revenge by a party of Protestants, who seized on the castle of St.
Andrews. A French fleet, however, recaptured the castle, and
Somerset, who had sent no help to the Protestants in St. Andrews,
marched into Scotland in the hope of putting an end to all future
troubles between the kingdoms by marrying the young Queen of Scots
to Edward. He carried with him a body of foreign mercenaries armed
with the improved weapons of Continental warfare, and with their
help he defeated and slaughtered the Scotch army at Pinkie Cleugh,
burnt Holyrood and Leith, and carried destruction far and wide. Such
rough wooing exasperated the Scots, and in =1548= they formed a
close alliance with Henry II., who had succeeded Francis I. as king
of France, and sent their young queen across the sea, where she was
married to Henry's eldest son, the Dauphin Francis. Somerset had
gained nothing by his violence.

3. =Cranmer's Position in the Church of England. 1547.=--Somerset's
ecclesiastical reforms were as rash as his political enterprises.
Cranmer had none of that moral strength which would have made some
men spurn an alliance with the unscrupulous politicians of the time.
He was a learned student, and through long study had adopted the
principle that where Scripture was hard to understand it was to be
interpreted by the consent of the writers of the first ages of
Christianity. As he had also convinced himself that the writers of
the first six centuries had known nothing of the doctrine of
transubstantiation, he was now prepared to reject it--though he had
formerly not only believed it, but had taken part in burning men who
denied it. It is quite possible that if Henry had been still alive
Cranmer would have been too much overawed to announce that he had
changed his opinion. His exact shade of belief at this time is of
less importance than the method by which he reached it. In accepting
the doctrines and practices of the existing Church till they were
tested and found wanting by a combination of human reason and
historical study of the scriptures, interpreted in doubtful points
by the teaching of the writers of the early Church, Cranmer more
than any one else preserved the continuity of the Church of England,
and laid down the lines on which it was afterwards to develop
itself. There was, therefore, a great gulf between Cranmer and the
advanced Protestants, who, however much they might differ from one
another, agreed in drawing inferences from the Scripture itself,
without troubling themselves whether these inferences conformed in
any way to the earlier teaching. This gulf was constantly widening
as time went on, and eventually split English Protestantism into
fractions.

[Illustration: Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556:
from a painting dated 1547, at Jesus College, Cambridge.]

4. =Ecclesiastical Reforms. 1547-1548.=--In =1547= a fresh blow was
struck at the devotions of the people. In the churches--by the order
of the Government--there was much smashing of images and of painted
glass bright with the figures of saints and angels. Gardiner, who
protested that the Government had no authority to alter religion
till the king was of age, was sent to prison as the easiest mode of
confuting him. As Parliaments were usually packed in those days, it
does not follow that the nation was eager for changes because
Parliament ordered them. There was, however, no difficulty in
filling the benches of the House of Commons with men who profited
by the plunder of the Church, and when Parliament met, it showed
itself innovating enough. It repealed all the statutes giving
special powers to Henry VIII. and all laws against heresy. It also
passed an Act vesting in the reigning king the whole of the
chantries and other like foundations which Henry had been permitted
to take, but which he had left untouched. Cranmer, indeed, would
have been glad if the money had been devoted to the relief of the
poorer clergy, but the grasping spirit of the laymen was too strong
for him. So violent was the race for wealth that the Act decreed the
confiscation even of the endowments of lay corporations, such as
trading companies and guilds, on the excuse that part of their funds
was applied to religious purposes. It was soon, however, found that
an attempt to enforce this part of the Act would cause resistance,
and it was therefore abandoned. In =1548= the Government issued
orders abolishing a great variety of Church practices, and, in
consequence of the opposition offered by the clergy to these sudden
measures ordered that no sermons should be preached except by a few
licensed preachers.

5. =The First Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1549.=--In =1549= Parliament
authorised the issue of a Prayer Book in English, now known as the
First Prayer Book of Edward VI. The same Parliament also passed an
Act permitting the marriage of the clergy.

6. =The Insurrection in the West. 1549.=--Somerset's own brother,
Lord Seymour of Sudley, was sent to the block by this Parliament. He
had spoken rashly against the Protector's government, but it has
been thought by some that his main fault was his strong language
against the rapacity with which Church property was being divided
amongst the rich. That rapacity was now reaching its height. The
Protector had set an evil example in order to raise the palace
which, though it has since been rebuilt, still bears the name of
Somerset House. He had not only seized on a vast amount of
ecclesiastical property, but had pulled down a parish church and had
carted off the bones of the dead from their graves. The Reformers
themselves, men of the study as most of them were, had gone much
farther than the mass of the people were prepared to follow. In
=1549= an insurrection burst out in Devon and Cornwall for the
restoration of the old religion, which was only suppressed with
difficulty.

7. =Ket's Rebellion. 1549.=--Another rising took place in Norfolk,
headed by Ket, a tanner. Ket's rebellion was directed not so much
against ecclesiastical reforms, as against civil oppression. The
gentry, who had been enriching themselves at the expense of the
clergy, had also been enriching themselves at the expense of the
poor. The inclosures against which More had testified were
multiplied, and the poor man's claims were treated with contempt.
Ket gathered his followers under a tree, which he called the Oak of
Reformation, on Mousehold Hill, outside Norwich, and sent them to
pull down the palings of the inclosures. The Earl of Warwick--the
son of that Dudley who, together with Empson, had been the object of
popular hatred in the reign of Henry VII. (see p. 357)--dispersed
the insurgents with great slaughter; but it was noted that both here
and in the West the Government was driven to use the bands of German
and Italian mercenaries which Somerset had gathered for the war in
Scotland. It was the first time since the days of John (see p. 182)
that foreign troops had been used to crush an English rising.

8. =The Fall of Somerset. 1549.=--Somerset no longer pleased any
single party. His invasion of Scotland had led to a war with France,
and to carry on that war he had found it necessary to debase the
coinage still further than it had been debased by Henry VIII. All
the disturbance of trade, as well as the disturbance of religion,
was laid to his door. At the same time he was too soft-hearted to
satisfy his colleagues in the Council, and had shown himself
favourable to the outcry against inclosures. Accordingly, before the
end of =1549= his colleagues rose against him, and thrust him into
the Tower. The Protectorate was abolished. Henceforth the Council
was to govern, but the leading man in the Council was Warwick.

9. =Warwick and the Advanced Reformers. 1549.=--Religion was a
matter to which Warwick was supremely indifferent. It was an open
question when he rose to power whether he would protect the men of
the old religion or the advanced reformers. He chose to protect the
advanced reformers. Even before Somerset's fall Cranmer had been
pushing his inquiries still farther, and was trying to find some
common ground with Zwinglian (see p. 399) and other reformers, who
went far beyond Luther. Foreign preachers, such as Bucer and Peter
Martyr, were introduced to teach religion to the English, as foreign
soldiers had been introduced to teach them obedience. Bishops were
now appointed by the king's letters-patent, without any form of
election. Gardiner and Bonner, refusing to accept the new state of
things, were deprived of their sees of Winchester and London, and
Ponet and Ridley set in their places. Ridley's moral character was
as distinguished as Ponet's was contemptible. Hooper was made Bishop
of Gloucester. For some time he hung back, refusing to wear the
episcopal vestments as being a mark of Antichrist, but at last he
allowed himself to be consecrated in them, though he cast them off
as soon as the ceremony was over.

[Illustration: Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, 1550-1553: from
the National Portrait Gallery.]

10. =Latimer's Sermons. 1548-1550.=--Latimer had refused to return
to the bishopric from which he had been thrust by Henry VIII., but
he lashed from the pulpit the vices of the age, speaking plainly in
the presence of the court of its greed and oppression. It was not
enough, he said, for sinners to repent: let them make restitution of
their ill-gotten gains. In =1550= the courtiers became tired of his
reproofs, and he was no longer allowed to preach before the king.

11. =Warwick and Somerset. 1550-1552.=--In =1550= Warwick was
compelled to make a peace with France, and gave up Boulogne as its
price. In =1551= he was very nearly drawn into war with the Emperor
on account of his refusal to allow mass to be celebrated in the
household of the king's sister, Mary. Finally, however, he gave way,
and peace was maintained. There was a fresh issue of base money, and
a sharp rise of prices in consequence. Now that there were no
monasteries left to plunder, bishoprics were stripped of their
revenues, or compelled to surrender their lands. Hooper was given
the ecclesiastical charge of the see of Worcester in addition to
that of Gloucester, but he was driven to surrender all the income of
the bishopric of Gloucester. The see of Durham was not filled up,
and before the end of the reign it was suppressed by Act of
Parliament, and ceased to have a legal existence till it was
restored by Edward's successor. So unpopular did Warwick become that
Somerset began to talk as though he might supplant his supplanter.
His rash words were carried to the young king, who had for some time
shown an interest in public affairs, and who now took the part of
Warwick, whom he created Duke of Northumberland, against his own
uncle. Somerset was arrested, and in =1552= was tried and beheaded.

12. =The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1552.=--In =1552=
Parliament authorised the issue of a revised Prayer Book, known as
the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. The first book had been framed
by the modification of the old worship under the influence of
Lutheranism. The second book was composed under the influence of the
Swiss Reformers. The tendency of the two books may be gathered from
the words ordered to be employed in the administration of the bread
in the Communion. In the first Prayer Book they had been: "The Body
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy
body and soul unto everlasting life." In the second they were: "Take
and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on
Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving." There were some who
urged that the Communion should no longer be received kneeling. It
was significant that their leaders were foreigners--John Alasco, a
Pole, and John Knox, a Scot, who was hereafter to be the father of a
Scottish reformation more drastic than that of England. Cranmer
withstood them successfully. The dispute marked the point beyond
which the spirit of the Renascence refused to go. In the midst of
his innovations Cranmer preserved not only a reverent spirit, but an
admiration for the devotional style of the prayers of the medieval
Church, which he therefore maintained even in the midst of the great
changes made, mainly at least by himself, in the second Prayer Book.
Happily, amidst these disputations, there was one point on which
both parties could combine--namely, on the encouragement of
education. The reign of Edward VI. is marked by the foundation of
grammar-schools--too scantily carried out, but yet in such a measure
as to mark the tendencies of an age which was beginning to replace
the mainly ecclesiastic education of the monasteries by the more
secular education of modern times.

[Illustration: King Edward VI.: from a picture belonging to H. Hucks
Gibbs, Esq.]

13. =The Forty-two Articles. 1553.=--Edward was now a precocious
youth, taught by much adulation to be confident in his own powers.
He had learnt to regard all defection from Protestant orthodoxy as a
crime. The statute which repealed the heresy laws did not altogether
stop the burning of heretics, as the lawyers discovered that heresy
was punishable by the common law. In =1550= Joan Bocher was burnt
for denying the Incarnation, and in =1551= Van Parris, a Fleming,
was burnt on the same charge. The persecution, however, was much
more restricted than in the preceding reign. Few persons were
punished, and that only for opinions of an abnormal character. In
=1553= forty-two articles of faith, afterwards, in the reign of
Elizabeth, converted into thirty-nine, were set forth as a standard
of the Church's belief by the authority of the king. So completely
did the reforming clergy recognise their entire dependence on the
king, that by a slip of the pen Hooper once wrote of 'the king's
majesty's diocese of Worcester and Gloucester.'

14. =Northumberland's Conspiracy. 1553.=--A religious system built
up solely on the will of the king, was hardly likely to survive him.
By this time it was known that Edward was smitten with consumption,
and could not live. Northumberland cared little for religion, but he
cared much for himself. He knew that Mary was, by Henry's will
sanctioned by Act of Parliament, the heiress of the throne, and that
if Mary became queen he was hardly likely to escape the scaffold. He
was daring as well as unscrupulous, and he persuaded Edward to leave
the crown by will to Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Mary,
Duchess of Suffolk, the younger sister of Henry VIII. He secured (as
he hoped) Lady Jane's devotion by marrying her to his own son, Lord
Guilford Dudley. As Lady Jane was a convinced Protestant, Edward at
once consented. His father, he thought, had left the crown by will
in the case of the failure of his own heirs (see p. 411), and why
should not he? He had been taught to think so highly of the kingship
that he did not remember that his father had been authorised by Act
of Parliament to will away the crown in the case of his children's
death without heirs, whereas no such authority had been given by
Parliament to himself. He forced--by commands and entreaties--the
councillors and the judges to sign the will. Cranmer was the last to
sign, and was only moved to do so by the sad aspect of his suffering
pupil. Then Edward died, assured that he had provided best for the
Church and nation.

15. =Lady Jane Grey. 1553.=--On July 10 Lady Jane Grey, a
pure-minded, intelligent girl of sixteen, was proclaimed queen in
London. She was a fervent Protestant, and there were many
Protestants in London. Yet, so hated was Northumberland, that even
Protestants would have nothing to say to one who had been advanced
by him. Lady Jane passed through the streets amidst a dead silence.
All England thought as London. In a few days Mary was at the head of
30,000 men. Northumberland led against her what troops he could
gather, but his own soldiers threw their caps in the air and
shouted for Queen Mary. On the 19th Mary was proclaimed queen in
London, and the unfortunate Jane passed from a throne to a
prison.[9]

[Footnote 9: Genealogy of the Greys:--

16. =Mary restores the Mass. 1553=.--Mary, strong in her popularity,
was inclined to be merciful. Amongst those who had combined against
her only Northumberland and two others were executed--the miserable
Northumberland declaring that he died in the old faith. Mary made
Gardiner her Chancellor. Some of the leading Protestants were
arrested, and many fled to the Continent. The bishops who had been
deprived in Edward's reign were reinstated, and the mass was
everywhere restored. The queen allowed herself to be called Supreme
Head of the Church, and at first it seemed as though she would be
content to restore the religious system of the last year of Henry's
reign, and to maintain the ecclesiastical independence of the
country.

[Illustration: Queen Mary Tudor: from a painting by Lucas de Herre,
dated 1554, belonging to the Society of Antiquaries.]

17. =Mary's First Parliament. 1553=.--By taking this course Mary
would probably have contented the great majority of her subjects,
who were tired of the villainies which had been cloaked under the
name of Protestantism, and who were still warmly attached to the
religion of their fathers. She was, however, anxious to restore the
authority of the Pope, and also to marry Philip, the eldest son of
her cousin, the Emperor Charles V. It was natural that it should be
so. Her mother's life and her own youth had been made wretched, not
by Protestants, but by those who, without being Protestants, had
wrought the separation from Rome in the days of Henry, at a time
when only the Pope's adherents had maintained the legitimacy of her
own birth and of her mother's marriage. In subsequent times of
trouble Charles V. had sympathised with her and it was by her
intervention that she had been allowed to continue her mass in her
brother's reign. Mary also wished to restore to the Church its
lands. On the other hand, when Parliament met it appeared that her
subjects wished neither to submit to Rome, nor to surrender the
property of which they had deprived the Church, though they were
delighted to restore the worship and practices which had prevailed
before the death of Henry VIII. Parliament, therefore, authorised
the re-establishment of the mass, and repealed the Act allowing the
clergy to marry, but it presented a petition against a foreign
marriage. Although the hatred of Spain which grew up a few years
later was not yet felt, Englishmen did not wish their country to
become a dependent province on any foreign monarchy whatever. Mary
dissolved Parliament rather than take its advice.

18. =Wyatt's Rebellion. 1554.=--The result was an insurrection, the
aim of which was to place Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth, on the
throne. Lady Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, was to raise the
Midlands and Sir Thomas Wyatt to raise Kent. Suffolk failed, but
Wyatt, with a large following, crossed the Thames at Kingston, and
pushed on towards the City. His men, however, were for the most part
cut off in an engagement near Hyde Park corner, and it was with only
three hundred followers that he reached Ludgate--to find the gate
closed against him. 'I have kept touch,' he said, and suffered
himself to be led away a prisoner. Mary was no longer merciful. Not
only Suffolk and Wyatt, but the innocent Lady Jane and her young
husband, Guilford Dudley, were sent to the block. Elizabeth herself
was committed to the Tower. She fully believed that she was to die,
and sat herself down on a wet stone, refusing for some time to
enter. In many ways she had shown that she bore no goodwill to her
sister or her sister's plans, but she had been far too prudent to
commit to writing any words expressing sympathy with Wyatt. Being
far too popular to be safely put to death on any testimony which was
not convincing, Elizabeth was before long removed from the Tower and
placed at Woodstock, under the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield, but
was after a few months allowed to retire to Hatfield.

19. =The Queen's Marriage.=--A Parliament which met in April =1554=
gave its consent to Mary's marriage, but it would not pass Bills to
restore the old statutes for the persecution of heretics. Though it
was now settled that the queen was to marry Philip, yet never was a
wooer so laggard. For some weeks he would not even write to his
betrothed. The fact was that she was twelve years older than
himself, and was neither healthy nor good-looking. Philip, however,
loved the English crown better than he loved its wearer, and in July
he crossed the sea and was married at Winchester to the queen of
England. Philip received the title of king, and the names of Philip
and Mary appeared together in all official documents and their
heads on the coins.

20. =The Submission to Rome. 1554.=--After the marriage a new
Parliament was called, more subservient than the last. In most
things it complied with Mary's wishes. It re-enacted the statutes
for the burning of heretics and agreed to the reconciliation of the
Church of England to the see of Rome, but it would not surrender the
abbey lands. Only after their possession had been confirmed did it
give its consent to the acknowledgment of the Pope's authority. Then
Cardinal Pole (see p. 399), who had been sent to England as the
Pope's legate, was allowed to receive the submission of England. The
queen, the king, and both Houses knelt before him, confessed their
sin of breaking away from the Roman see, and received absolution
from his mouth. To Mary the moment was one of inexpressible joy. She
had grieved over the separation from Rome as a sin burdening her own
conscience, and she believed with all her heart that the one path to
happiness, temporal and eternal, for herself and her realm, was to
root out heresy, in the only way in which it seemed possible, by
rooting out the heretics.

21. =The Beginning of the Persecution. 1555.=--It was not only Mary
who thought it meet that heretics should be burnt. John Rogers, who
was the first to suffer, had in the days of Edward pleaded for the
death of Joan Bocher (see p. 419). He was followed to the stake by
Bishop Hooper, who was carried to Gloucester, that he might die at
the one of his two sees which he had stripped of its property to
enrich the Crown (see p. 418). He and many another died bravely for
their faith, as More and Forest had died for theirs (see pp. 394,
398). Rowland Taylor, for instance (a Suffolk clergyman), was
condemned in London to be burnt, and sent to his own county to die.
As he left his prison in the dark of the early morning he found his
wife and children waiting for him in the street. He was allowed to
stop for a moment, and knelt down on the stones, repeating the
Lord's Prayer with his family. "Farewell, my dear wife," he said, as
soon as he had risen from his knees; "be of good comfort, for I am
quiet in my conscience. God shall stir up a father for my children."
"Thanked be God," he exclaimed when he at last reached the village
where his voice had once been heard in the pulpit, and where now the
stake rose up amidst the faggots which were to consume him, "I am
even at home!" After he had been tied to the stake a wretch threw a
faggot at his face. "O friend," he said gently, "I have harm enough:
what needed that?" The flames blazed up around his suffering body,
and Rowland Taylor entered into his rest. Ridley and Latimer were
burnt at Oxford, in the town ditch, in front of Balliol College. "Be
of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man," cried Latimer,
when the fire was lighted at his feet. "We shall this day light such
a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put
out."

[Illustration: Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, 1535-39, burnt
1555: from the National Portrait Gallery.]

22. =Death of Cranmer. 1556.=--Cranmer would have accompanied Ridley
and Latimer to the stake, but as he alone of the three had been
consecrated a bishop in the days when the Pope's authority was
accepted in England, it was thought right to await the Pope's
authority for the execution of his sentence. In =1556= that
authority arrived. Cranmer's heart was as weak as his head was
strong, and he six times recanted, hoping to save his life. Mary
specially detested him, as having sat in judgment on her mother (see
p. 389), and she was resolved that he should die. Finding his
recantation useless, he recovered his better mind, and renounced
his recantation. "I have written," he said, "many things untrue; and
forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my
hand therefore shall be the first burnt." He was hurried to the
stake, and when the flames leapt up around him held his right hand
steadily in the midst of them, that it might be 'the first burnt.'

23. =Continuance of the Persecution. 1556-1558.=--Immediately after
Cranmer's death Pole became Archbishop of Canterbury. The
persecution lasted for two years more. The number of those who
suffered has been reckoned at 277. Almost all of these were burnt in
the eastern and south-eastern parts of England. It was there that
the Protestants were the thickest. New opinions always flourish more
in towns than in the country, and on this side of England were those
trading towns, from which communication with the Protestants of the
Continent was most easy. Sympathy with the sufferers made these
parts of the kingdom more strongly Protestant than they had been
before.

24. =The Queen's Disappointment. 1555-1556.=--Mary was a sorrowful
woman. Not only did Protestantism flourish all the more for the
means which she took to suppress it, but her own domestic life was
clouded. She had longed for an heir to carry on the work which she
believed to be the work of God, and she had even imagined herself to
be with child. It was long before she abandoned hope, and she then
learnt also that her husband--to whom she was passionately
attached--did not love her, and had never loved anything in England
but her crown. In =1555= Philip left her. He had indeed cause to go
abroad. His father, Charles V., was broken in health, and, his
schemes for making himself master of Germany having ended in
failure, he had resolved to abdicate. Charles was obliged to leave
his Austrian possessions to his brother Ferdinand; and the German
electors, who detested Philip and his Spanish ways, insisted on
having Ferdinand as Emperor. Charles could, however, leave his
western possessions to his son, and in =1556= he completed the
surrender of them. Mary's husband then became Philip II. of Spain,
ruling also over large territories in Italy, over Franche Comté, and
the whole of the Netherlands, as well as over vast tracts in
America, rich in mines of silver and gold, which had been
appropriated by the hardihood, the cruelty, and the greed of Spanish
adventurers. No prince in Europe had at his command so warlike an
army, so powerful a fleet, and such an abounding revenue as Philip
had at his disposal. Philip's increase of power produced a strong
increase of the anti-Spanish feeling in England, and conspiracies
were formed against Mary who was believed to be ready to welcome a
Spanish invading army.

25. =War with France and the Loss of Calais. 1557-1558.=--In =1557=
Philip was at war with France, and, to please a husband who loved
her not, Mary declared war against Philip's enemy. She sent an
English army to her husband's support, but though Philip gained a
crushing victory over the French at St. Quentin, the English troops
gained no credit, as they did not arrive in time to take part in the
battle. In the winter, Francis, Duke of Guise, an able French
warrior, threatened Calais. Mary, who, after wringing a forced loan
from her subjects in the summer, had spent it all, had little power
to help the governor, Lord Wentworth, and persuaded herself that the
place was in no danger. Guise, however, laid siege to the town. The
walls were in disrepair and the garrison too small for defence. On
January 6, =1558=, Guise stormed Calais, and when, a few days
afterwards, he also stormed the outlying post of Guisnes, the last
port held by the English in France fell back into the hands of the
French. Calais was now again a French town, after having been in the
hands of strangers for 211 years.

26. =Death of Mary. 1558.=--The loss of Calais was no real
misfortune to England, but it was felt as a deep mortification both
by the queen and by her people. The people distrusted Mary too much
to support her in the prosecution of the war. They were afraid of
making Philip more powerful. Mary, hoping that Heaven might yet be
gracious to her, pushed on the persecution, and sent Protestants in
large numbers to the stake. Philip had visited her the year before,
in order to persuade her to join him against France, and she again
fancied herself to be with child. Her husband had once more deserted
her, and she now knew that she was suffering--without hope--from
dropsy. On November 17 she died, sad and lonely, wondering why all
that she had done, as she believed on God's behalf, had been
followed by failure on every side--by the desertion of her husband
and the hatred of her subjects. Happily for himself, Pole too died
two days afterwards.[10]

[Footnote 10: The 19th is the date of Machyn's contemporary diary;
but other authorities make it the 17th or 18th.]

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT IN CHURCH AND STATE

1558-1570

LEADING DATES

Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603

Accession of Elizabeth 1558
The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity 1559
The Treaty of Edinburgh 1560
Mary Stuart lands in Scotland 1561
End of the Council of Trent 1563
Marriage of Mary and Darnley 1565
Murder of Darnley 1567
Escape of Mary into England 1568
The rising in the North 1569
Papal excommunication of Elizabeth 1570

1. =Elizabeth's Difficulties. 1558.=--Elizabeth, when she received
the news of her sister's death, was sitting under an oak in Hatfield
Park (see p. 423). "This," she exclaimed, "is the Lord's doing, and
it is marvellous in our eyes." Her life's work was to throw down all
that Mary had attempted to build up, and to build up all that Mary
had thrown down. It was no easy task that she had undertaken. The
great majority of her subjects would have been well pleased with a
return to the system of Henry VIII.--that is to say, with the
retention of the mass, together with its accompanying system of
doctrine, under the protection of the royal supremacy, in complete
disregard of the threats or warnings of the Pope. Elizabeth was
shrewd enough to see that this could not be. On the one hand, the
Protestants, few as they were, were too active and intelligent to be
suppressed, and, if Mary's burnings had been unavailing, it was not
likely that milder measures would succeed. On the other hand, the
experience of the reign of Edward VI. had shown that immutability in
doctrine and practice could only be secured by dependence upon the
immutable Papacy, and Elizabeth had made up her mind that she would
depend on no one but herself. She would no more place herself under
the Pope than she would place herself under a husband. She cared
nothing for theology, though her inclinations drew her to a more
elaborate ritual than that which the Protestants had to offer. She
was, however, intensely national, and was resolved to govern so that
England might be great and flourishing, especially as her own
greatness would depend upon her success. For this end she must
establish national unity in the Church, a unity which, as she was
well aware, could only be attained if large advances were made in
the direction of Protestantism. There must be as little persecution
as possible, but extreme opinions must be silenced, because there
was a danger lest those who came under their influence would stir up
civil war in order to make their own beliefs predominant. The first
object of Elizabeth's government was internal peace.

2. =The Act of Uniformity and Supremacy. 1559.=--Elizabeth marked
her intentions by choosing for her secretary Sir William Cecil, a
cautious supporter of Protestantism, the best and most faithful of
her advisers. As Convocation refused to hear of any change in the
Church services, she appointed a commission composed of divines of
Protestant tendencies, who recommended the adoption, with certain
alterations,[11] of the second Prayer Book of Edward VI. Elizabeth's
first Parliament, which met in =1559=, passed an Act of Uniformity
forbidding the use of any form of public prayer other than that of
the new Prayer Book. The same Parliament also passed a new Act of
Supremacy, in which the title of Supreme Head of the Church was
abandoned, but all the ancient jurisdiction of the Crown over
ecclesiastical persons was claimed. This Act imposed an oath in
which the queen was acknowledged to be the Supreme Governor of the
Realm 'as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things as
temporal'; but this oath, unlike that imposed by Henry VIII., was
only to be taken by persons holding office or taking a university
degree, whilst a refusal to swear was only followed by loss of
office or degree. The maintenance of the authority of any foreign
prince or prelate was to be followed by penalties increased upon a
repetition of the offence, and reaching to a traitor's death on the
third occasion.

[Footnote 11: The most noteworthy of these alterations was the
amalgamation of the forms used respectively in the two Prayer Books
of Edward VI. at the administration of the Communion (see p. 418).]

3. =The new Bishops and the Ceremonies. 1559-1564.=--All the bishops
except one refusing to accept the new order of things, new ones were
substituted for them, the old system of election by the chapters on
a royal _congé d'élire_ being restored (see pp. 391, 415). Matthew
Parker, a moderate man after Elizabeth's own heart, became
Archbishop of Canterbury. Very few of the old clergy who had said
mass in Mary's reign refused to use the new Prayer Book, and as
Elizabeth prudently winked at cases in which persons of importance
had mass said before them in private, she was able to hope that, by
leaving things to take their course, a new generation would grow up
which would be too strong for the lovers of the old ways. The main
difficulty of the bishops was with the Protestants. Many of those
who had been in exile had returned with a strengthened belief that
it was absolutely unchristian to adopt any vestments or other
ceremonies which had been used in the Papal Church, and which they,
therefore, contumeliously described as rags of Antichrist. A large
number even of the bishops sympathised with them, and opposed them
only on the ground that, though it would have been better if
surplices and square caps had been prohibited, still, as such
matters were indifferent, the queen ought to be obeyed in all things
indifferent. To Elizabeth refusal to wear the surplice was not only
an act of insubordination, but likely to give offence to lukewarm
supporters of the Church system which she had established, and had,
therefore, a tendency to set the nation by the ears. In Parker she
found a tower of strength. He was in every sense the successor of
Cranmer, with all Cranmer's strength but with none of Cranmer's
weakness. He fully grasped the principle that the Church of England
was to test its doctrines and practices by those of the Church of
the first six hundred years of Christianity, and he, therefore,
claimed for it catholicity, which he denied to the Church of Rome;
whilst he had all Cranmer's feeling for the maintenance of external
rites which did not directly imply the existence of beliefs
repudiated by the Church of England.

4. =Calvinism.=--The returning exiles had brought home ideas even
more distasteful to Elizabeth than the rejection of ceremonies. The
weak point of the Lutherans in Germany, and of the reformers in
England, had been their dependence upon the State. This dependence
made them share the blame which fell upon rulers who, like Henry
VIII., were bent on satisfying their passions, or, like
Northumberland, on appropriating the goods of others. Even Elizabeth
thought first of what was convenient for her government, and
secondly, if she thought at all, of the quest after truth and
purity. In Geneva the exiles had found a system in full working
order which appeared to satisfy the cravings of their minds. It had
been founded by a Frenchman, John Calvin, who in =1536= had
published _The Institution of the Christian Religion_, in which he
treated his subject with a logical coherence which impressed itself
on all Protestants who were in need of a definite creed. He had
soon afterwards been summoned to Geneva, to take charge of the
congregation there, and had made it what was extensively believed to
be, a model Church. With Calvin everything was rigid and defined,
and he organised as severely as he taught. He established a
discipline which was even more efficacious than his doctrine. His
Church proclaimed itself, as the Popes had proclaimed themselves, to
be independent of the State, and proposed to uphold truth and right
irrespective of the fancies and prejudices of kings. Bishops there
were to be none, and the ministers were to be elected by the
congregation. The congregation was also to elect lay-elders, whose
duty it was to enforce morality of the strictest kind; card-playing,
singing profane songs, and following after amusements on the
Sunday--or Sabbath as it was called in Geneva--being visited with
excommunication. The magistrates were expected to inflict temporal
penalties upon the offender. This Presbyterian system, as it was
called, spread to other countries, especially to countries like
France, where the Protestant congregations were persecuted by the
Government. In France a final step was taken in the Presbyterian
organisation. The scattered congregations elected representatives to
meet in synods or assemblies, and the French Government, in this
way, found itself confronted by an ecclesiastical representative
republic.

5. =Peace with France. 1559.=--It was this Calvinistic system which
was admired by many of the exiles returning to England, but which
Elizabeth detested as challenging her own authority. Her only chance
of resisting with success lay in her power of appealing to the
national instinct, and of drawing men to think more of unity and
peace at home than of that search after truth which inevitably
divides, because all human conceptions of truth are necessarily
imperfect, and are differently held by different minds. To do this
she must be able to show that she could maintain her independence of
foreign powers. Though her heart was set on the recovery of Calais,
she was obliged in =1559= to make peace with France, obtaining only
a vague promise that it might be restored at a future time. Shortly
afterwards peace was made between France and Spain at Câteau
Cambresis. Elizabeth was aware that, though neither Philip II. of
Spain nor Henry II. loved her, neither of them would allow the other
to interfere to her detriment. She was therefore able to play them
off one against the other. Her diplomacy was the diplomacy of her
time. Elizabeth like her contemporaries, lied whenever it suited her
to lie, and made promises which she never intended to perform. In
this spirit she treated the subject of her marriage. She at once
rejected Philip, who, though he was her brother-in-law, proposed to
marry her immediately after her accession, but when he suggested
other candidates for her hand, she listened without giving a decided
answer. It was convenient not to quarrel with Philip, but it would
be ruinous to accept a husband at his choice.

6. =The Reformation in Scotland. 1559.=--Philip was formidable to
Elizabeth because he might place himself at the head of the English
Catholics. Henry was formidable because the old alliance between
France and Scotland, confirmed by the recent marriage of the Dauphin
with Mary Stuart, made it easy for him to send French troops by way
of Scotland into England. Early in Elizabeth's reign, however,
events occurred in Scotla

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