England under the Tudors Part 13

[Sidenote 1: 1540 The Marriage]

[Sidenote 2: Fall of Cromwell]

Early in the year (1540) the bride came to England; bringing disillusionment. Matters had gone too far for the King to draw back, and the marriage was carried out; but his wrath was kindled against its projector. The blow fell not less suddenly than with Wolsey. The Earl of Ess.e.x--such was the t.i.tle recently bestowed on Cromwell--was without warning arrested and attainted of high treason. The instrument he himself had forged and ruthlessly wielded with such terrible effect was turned as ruthlessly against him. He had over-ridden the law. He had countenanced and protected anti-clerical law-breakers. He had spoken in arrogant terms of his own power. As it had availed Wolsey nothing that his breach of praemunire had been countenanced by the King, so it availed Cromwell nothing that the King had seemed to support him. If the King had done so, in each case, it was merely because he in his innocence had been misled by his minister, so that in fact their crime was aggravated. For the merciless minister, there was no mercy. That the process against Ess.e.x was by attainder and not by an ordinary trial is of little moment. His fate would have been the same in any case; nor was he so scrupulous in such matters that he can claim sympathy on that head. No voice but Cranmer's--in lamentation rather than protest--was raised on his behalf. The mighty minister, the most dreaded of all men who have swayed the destinies of England, found himself in a moment as utterly helpless as the feeblest of his victims had been. He was flung into the Tower; his stormy protests were unheeded by the King; on July 28th, his head fell beneath the executioner's axe.

[Sidenote: Nemesis]

Cromwell had learned his ethics and his state-craft in that school whose doctrines are formulated in "The Prince" of Macchiavelli. He had applied those principles with remorseless logic, untinged by the fear of G.o.d or man, to the single end of making his master actually the most complete autocrat that ever sat on the throne of England. His loyalty was as unfailing as it was unscrupulous; his work had been thorough and complete--the King was placed beyond further need of him. His reward was the doom of a traitor. Unpitying he lived, unpitied he died. Regardless of justice, he had swept down each obstacle in the way of his policy: regardless of justice he was in turn struck down. By his own standards he was judged; his end was the end he had compa.s.sed for More and Fisher. History has no more perfect example of Nemesis.

CHAPTER X

HENRY VIII (vi), 1540-47--HENRY'S LAST YEARS

[Sidenote: 1540 Katherine Howard]

The complaisant and very plain lady who had been the cause of Cromwell's downfall had no objection (subject to compensation), to being discarded on technical grounds by her spouse. Before the minister was dead, the marriage had been p.r.o.nounced null: not without compensatory gifts. But her brother the Duke of Cleves was less easily pacified, and all prospect of an alliance with the Protestant League was at an end. A new bride was promptly found for the King in the person of Katharine Howard, a kinswoman of the Duke of Norfolk--a marriage which marked the renewal of the ascendancy of the old n.o.bility in alliance with the reactionary Church party.

[Sidenote: The King his own Minister]

Thirty-one years had pa.s.sed since Henry, in the first flush of a manhood exceptionally rich in promise, but untried and inexperienced, had taken his place on the throne of England as the successor of the most astute sovereign in Europe. For nearly twenty years thereafter Wolsey had served him with such lat.i.tude of action that nearly every one except the Cardinal believed that he dominated the King. After a brief interval, for nearly ten years more the same statement would have applied to Cromwell. While those two great ministers held office, each of them towered immeasurably above all his fellow-subjects: though each knew that the brilliant boy had hardened into a masterful King who could hurl him headlong with a nod. But when Cromwell had fallen, none took his place; there is no statesman who stands out conspicuous. Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, brother of Jane Seymour, showed some military capacity; Paget proved himself an astute diplomatist; Cranmer and Gardiner led the rival Church parties, but neither the parties nor their leaders exercised any semblance of control over the Supreme Head. Abroad, Henry's battle with the Pope was won: at home his autocracy was established alike as temporal and spiritual head of the nation. There was no one left who needed crushing. Cromwell had seen to that before he was dispensed with. After that revolutionary decade, there were no more marked changes. There were incidents in the now slowly moving course of the reformation; there was even an unimportant insurrection; but the chief interest of Henry's closing years is once more to be found mainly in foreign relations, and more especially in those with Scotland.

[Sidenote: England and the European Powers]

On the continent, the two leading Powers, France and the Empire, were in a chronic state of antagonism only occasionally veiled: while the Pope was in permanent opposition to England. This situation was complicated by the Schmalkaldic League of Protestant German Princes. When Charles was disposed to religious toleration, the League were his very good subjects, the Pope became antagonistic, and a Franco-papal alliance threatened. When Charles leaned to intolerance, the Pope grew favourable to him, and Francis turned a friendly eye on the perturbed Protestant League. Charles, Francis, and the League, would each of them have been pleased to make use of England, but none of them wished to be of service to her: and now Thomas Cromwell's great desire of bringing about a cordial relation between England and the League had been frustrated instead of furthered by the affair of Anne of Cleves. The risk of this alliance had forced Charles into a conciliatory att.i.tude towards Francis; relieved from it, he could now revert to his normal att.i.tude. At the end of 1540, the Emperor and the French King were almost within measurable distance of hostilities, while the relations between the latter and Henry were becoming seriously strained by his neglect to pay the instalments of cash due under past treaties. For the time being, however, there was no immediate likelihood of a breach of the peace.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Beton]

In Scotland, James Beton Archbishop of St. Andrews, the most consistent enemy of England, had died in 1539, and had been succeeded, both in his office and his influence, by his nephew, the still more famous Cardinal, David Beton. The Cardinal was the last of the old school of militant ecclesiastical statesmen; a foe to the English the more deadly because of Henry's anti-clerical policy, as well as on account of traditional views, and of the specific grounds of distrust for which Henry himself had been responsible during twenty years past--including the proposal to let Angus kidnap James Beton [Footnote: _Cf._ p. 81.] under a safe-conduct. He was moreover a zealous persecutor of heretics; which greatly intensified the bitterness with which all the historians of the reforming party treated not only the man himself but the whole policy which he was supposed to have instigated. In Scotland, religious reformers were almost of necessity Anglophiles, since Henry did all he could to encourage their doctrines.

North of the Tweed, English writers have relied so much on the statements of John Knox and Buchanan that the persistent hostility not only of the King and the clergy but also of the Scottish Commons to Henry's overtures is generally represented as mere frowardness. It was in fact due to a distrust sufficiently accounted for by the English King's undeniable complicity in the deliberate fostering of disorder, and more than justified by his re-a.s.sertion in public doc.u.ments of the English claim to suzerainty which had been finally and decisively repudiated at Bannockburn--a repudiation confirmed by treaty [Footnote: It is true that this had not prevented Edward III. from re-a.s.serting the claim.] in 1328.

[Sidenote: Scotland and England, 1541]

In 1541 the attempt was renewed to bring about a conference with the Scots King at York; again it failed, after James had seemed to commit himself. Henry was indignant, and recriminations pa.s.sed on the subject and on that of border raids, which culminated in the following summer in the affair of Haddon Rigg when an English party was very badly handled. It is a curious ill.u.s.tration of Henry's notions of honour that--although the two countries were nominally at peace--Wharton, one of the English Wardens of the Marches, proposed to take advantage of James's 1542 roving propensities and arrange to have him captured and brought prisoner to England; a scheme which Henry apparently approved, but fortunately for his own credit referred to his Council, whose consciences were less adaptable. In October, the English indulged in a week's invasion of Scotland, and the Scottish King would have responded in kind but that his n.o.bles thought better of it.

[Sidenote: Solway Moss (Nov.)]

The counter-invasion however was not long delayed. The popular accounts of it are mainly derived from the narrative of John Knox; according to whom the Scottish army, ill-led and disorderly, was utterly routed with immense slaughter by three or four hundred English yeomen who succeeded in gathering together and smiting them after the a.n.a.logy of Gideon. But the dispatches of Wharton [Footnote: _Hamilton Papers._ Lang, Hist.

Scot., i., 455. Froude, iv., 190 (Ed. 1864), follows Knox picturesquely.], the Warden of the Marches, show that, acting on some days' information, he had ready a force of from 2,000 to 3,000 men, with whom, having watched his opportunity, he fell upon the very badly organised Scottish levies and entangled them in the mora.s.s called Solway Moss. The completeness of the disaster has not been over-rated; but it was an intelligible operation of war, not a miracle. James was prostrated by the blow. In three weeks time (December 14th, 1542) he was dead, and his week-old daughter Mary inherited the woful burden of the Scottish crown.

[Sidenote: Intervening events]

In the meantime, there had been a futile insurrection in the North, headed by Sir John Neville, in the Spring of 1541; which led to the execution not only of Neville himself, but of the old Countess of Salisbury--niece of Edward IV., mother of the Poles, and grandchild of the "King-maker". Not long after this, the Norfolk interest suffered a severe shock at Henry's court from the discovery of flagrant and confessed misconduct on the part of the monarch's fifth spouse, Katharine Howard; she was attainted and beheaded, in February, 1542, and succeeded by Katharine Parr; who was fortunate enough to outlive her husband.

[Sidenote: 1543 Henry's Scottish policy]

Solway Moss inspired Henry with a fresh determination to invade and chastise Scotland; but James's death suggested a simpler method. For the moment, Beton was in the hands of his enemies. Henry proposed that the baby Mary should be betrothed to his own son Edward, that the government of Scotland should be vested in a Council which he could control, and that sundry English garrisons should be planted in the country. The Scots lords captured at Solway Moss were quite ready to promise support to his plans as the price of returning home: they were also ready to break faith with the English King when they got there; and did so. As soon as the lords were out of Henry's reach, the Scots Estates demanded modifications in the proposed treaty which would have made it nugatory from the English point of view. A Scottish Prince might have been allowed to wed an English Princess; but Scotland would not take her King from England. It was not long before the Cardinal recovered his ascendancy, and, acting in conjunction with the queen-mother, Mary of Guise, sought the aid and alliance of France.

[Sidenote: Alliance with Charles]

The French King was already at war with Charles, and his relations with England were exceedingly strained; whilst he was openly declaring his determination to support Scotland, and French ships were playing the pirate in the Channel. The Emperor on the other hand had quieted the Protestant league by his tolerant att.i.tude at the Diet of Ratisbon (1541); but the Duke of Cleves, Henry's enemy, was defying him. Hence the whole conditions pointed to an anti-French _rapprochement_ between Charles and Henry; which took the form of a treaty of alliance early in 1543. If the territories of either Power were invaded, the other was to render a.s.sistance: and thereafter neither was to make peace unless his ally was satisfied also. The French King attempted to detach England by offering to meet the bulk of her separate requirements; and considering the prevailing standard of bad faith, it is to Henry's credit that he refused these overtures.

[Sidenote: War with France]

In the early summer Francis invaded Flanders, and an English force, not numerous but in good trim, entered Picardy. The Imperial troops however awaited the arrival of Charles himself from the South, and it was not till August that he took the field, having gathered his army, largely composed of Spanish soldiery, at Spires. But his first objective proved to be not France but Cleves which he brought to rapid submission and treated with great severity. In October he began to concert operations with the English, and a scheme was prepared, to be given effect in the following summer: when the English were to invade France by way of Calais, and the Emperor by way of the Upper Rhine, the two armies converging on Paris.

[Sidenote: 1544 Domestic Affairs]

Though the French campaign was thus deferred, the early months of 1544 were not uneventful. In the realm of domestic affairs, we observe that the King was now resorting with vigour to the worst expedient of bad financiers, a monstrous debas.e.m.e.nt [Footnote: See _infra_ p. 180] of the currency. Also he had recently raised a considerable forced loan, pending the collection of subsidies already voted by Parliament but not yet due. An act was now pa.s.sed in effect converting the loan into a gift, by reason of the necessities of the war--a measure not practically different from the voting of an additional subsidy. Parliament also had the satisfaction of being invited to lay down the succession to the throne in accordance with Henry's wishes, although he had already been empowered to fix it without appeal--an apt ill.u.s.tration of his preference for following Const.i.tutional forms whenever there was no risk of his objects being interfered with.

After Prince Edward and his heirs, Mary was to succeed, and after her Elizabeth. Beyond Henry's own offspring, the claims of the Stewarts through Margaret Tudor were postponed to those of the descendants of the younger sister Mary.

[Sidenote: Intrigues in Scotland]

In Scotland, Beton was in power, carrying out a drastic policy of religious persecution; the n.o.bility were in their normal condition of kaleidoscopic flux, taking sides for or against Henry, the Cardinal, and each other, as the moment's interests might suggest. The Anglicising party made a pact with England to repudiate the French alliance, hand over the baby Queen if they could, and accept Henry's control. Scotland was to be invaded. Certain zealous spirits proposed to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Cardinal if they could do so under Henry's aegis, but the opportunity pa.s.sed before he replied to their overtures--to the effect that the scheme was eminently laudable, but that he could not openly move in the matter. The a.s.sa.s.sination of a tyrant was not looked on as an act deserving of severe moral condemnation; many zealots would have accounted it a virtuous deed, to risk their lives for such an end. But a King [Footnote: Froude, iv., 319 (Ed. 1864), apparently defends Henry on the ground that he regarded Beton as a traitor; and saw "no reason to discourage the despatch of a public enemy".] who encouraged even while declining to hire a.s.sa.s.sins stands in a different category from such persons.

[Sidenote: Edinburgh Sacked]

In the beginning of May, Edinburgh was startled by the appearance in the Forth of a great English fleet. The idea of an invasion in this form had never presented itself. There was no army to give battle. The Cardinal and his friends fled. The English landed and sacked Leith. Edinburgh was in no condition for defence; the resistance of the citizens, though stubborn, was easily overwhelmed. The city was pillaged; the county for miles round was laid waste; and then, satisfied with his work of simple destruction, Hertford, the English commander, withdrew. Scotland was leaderless and powerless to strike: for months to come, the English Wardens of the Marches were free to carry out a series of devastating raids with practical immunity. Under these circ.u.mstances, Henry dismissed the idea of organising a subordinate government: anarchy in Scotland suited him equally well, without involving responsibilities or taxing his resources. His serious attention was given to the Continent.

[Sidenote: The French War]

During May, separate overtures were made on behalf of France both to Charles and Henry with a view to severing their alliance; each however declined entirely to treat apart from the other. More-over, at the Diet of Spires, Charles took a strong line in favour of the maintenance of the ordinances of Ratisbon and generally of deferring all religious differences till the war with France should be over. With the Pope supporting France and advocating alliance with the Turk as a less dangerous enemy to Christianity than the ecclesiastical rebel of England, Charles was not disposed to show favour to the Catholic princes of the Empire.

[Sidenote: Charles makes peace at Crepy (Sept.)]

The time was now at hand for the campaign to commence: and Henry proposed a modification of the original scheme. According to his view, it would be better for the two armies to concentrate in force on the frontiers while a single detachment penetrated as far into France as might seem wise. Charles however insisted on his plan of two separate invasions. Henry could not refuse, but pointed out that his own march on Paris was conditioned by the thorough reduction of the country as he advanced; notably of Boulogne and Montreuil which would otherwise perpetually threaten his communications. The English proceeded to lay siege to these two places, and the Emperor attacked St. Dizier. Until these strongholds were captured, the two armies were respectively unable to advance. With August, Francis renewed his scheme of making separate overtures accompanied by suggestions to each monarch that his ally was trying to make terms for himself. Each again refused to treat apart from the other. At last St. Dizier fell, and Charles advanced into France, pa.s.sing by Chalons and a considerable French army which was enabled to act on his line of communications. Hence he very soon found himself in grave difficulties. Thereupon he informed Henry that unless the English marched straight upon Paris, regardless of Boulogne and Montreuil, (which he knew to be strategically impossible) he would have to accept for himself the terms offered by Francis. Boulogne was taken (September 14th) three days after the message was received, but Montreuil held out. Henry had honourably refused to make terms for himself; but on September 19th Charles signed the peace of Crepy--amounting to a simple desertion of his ally.

Boulogne was lost to the French, and though they were now free to concentrate their forces against the English, all attempts to re-capture it were repulsed. Henry felt no disposition to abate his own terms or to resign Boulogne: Francis required him to do both. Charles politely repudiated any obligation to armed intervention, despite the efforts of Gardiner to persuade him--much to the bishop's disappointment, since the Lutheran Princes, alarmed by the Emperor's conduct, were again making overtures to England.

[Sidenote: 1545 Ancram Moor]

In Scotland, the policy of destruction adopted by the English throughout 1544 had driven the country to a temporary rally, and a severe reverse was inflicted on the Southron, beguiled into an ambuscade, at Ancram Moor in February 1545; whereby Francis was encouraged to maintain, and Charles to a.s.sume, hostility to Henry: who in turn unsuccessfully sought the Lutheran alliance--a failure due to the persistent distrust of the German Princes, who could never make up their minds whether the promises of the King or the Emperor were the less to be relied on. To the quarrel over the desertion of England by Charles at the peace of Crepy, was added a quarrel over the seizure by the English of Flemish ships carrying what would now be called contraband of war, and the arrest in retaliation of English subjects in Flanders.

[Sidenote: A French Invasion]

The isolation of England was complete: and Francis now looked to effect a successful invasion; to which end a great fleet was collected. But there was now a respectable English navy, supplemented by ships from every port on the southern coast. The threat of invasion raised the whole country in arms. In the latter part of July, the French armada was off the Solent, and a landing was accomplished in the Isle of Wight; but though there were various demonstrations and a few skirmishes, there was no general engagement. The French could not get into the Solent: the English would not come out in force, so long as the lack of a sufficient breeze gave the fighting advantage to the enemy's oar-driven galleys. Finally, plague broke out in the French fleet which retired about the middle of August. Its dispersion allowed of the relief of Boulogne; which was becoming somewhat straitened, being blockaded on the land side by a large army.

[Sidenote: 1546 Terms of Peace]

Thus when the autumn set in, the offensive operations of the French had resulted in complete failure though there had been no important engagement: and in the meantime, the temporary nature of the reverse at Ancram Moor had been demonstrated by renewed ravages in Scotland directed by Hertford. The altered aspect of affairs made Francis ready to treat, and changed the tone of Charles from hostility to conciliation. Negotiations were set on foot; but in the course of them it became clear not only that Henry was determined to keep Boulogne but that Charles had no intention of letting Milan go. England's readiness to continue the struggle was demonstrated by the strength of the forces she threw onto French soil in the following March, and in May Francis proposed terms. Most of the cash claims were to be paid up; part were to be referred to arbitration; and Boulogne was to remain for eight years in the hands of the English as security. The financial pressure of the war had been terribly heavy, so that the expedient of debasing the coinage had been repeated in order to supplement taxation. Henry accepted the French terms; and almost simultaneously his hands were strengthened by the a.s.sa.s.sination of his most resolute opponent in Scotland, Cardinal Beton (May 29th, 1546). The Peace with France was concluded in June.

[Sidenote: 1532-46 Events in Europe]

Before proceeding with the account of the ecclesiastical movement in England during these six years, and with the narrative of the concluding six months of Henry's reign, we must turn aside to observe certain events on the Continent which have not hitherto fallen under our notice, since they did not at the time exercise a direct effect on English policy, and were not immediately influenced thereby. Yet since the treaty of Nuremberg in 1532--the point down to which, in a previous chapter, we followed the course of the Reformation in Europe--a compromise which served as a _modus vivendi_ between the Protestant League and the Catholic subjects of the Empire, important developments had been taking place, which very materially, if indirectly, affected the subsequent course of events in England as well as on the Continent. The period corresponds roughly with the pontificate of Paul III. which lasted from 1534 to 1549.

[Sidenote: The Lutherans and the Papacy]