Henry VIII Part 21

[Footnote 670: _Ibid._, ii., 4074.]

[Footnote 671: _Ibid._, iii., 929.]

[Footnote 672: _L. and P._, ii., 4082.]

[Footnote 673: _Ibid._, ii., 4074.]

Eleven more years were to roll before the Church was subverted. They were years of Wolsey's supremacy; he alone stood between the Church and its subjection. It was owing, wrote Campeggio, in 1528, to Wolsey's vigilance and solicitude that the Holy See retained its rank and dignity.[674] His ruin would drag down the Church, and the fact was known to Anne Boleyn and her faction, to Campeggio and Clement VII., as well as to Henry VIII.[675] "These Lords intend," wrote Du Bellay, on the eve of Wolsey's fall, "after he is dead or ruined, to impeach the State of the Church, and take all its goods; which it is hardly needful for me to write in cipher, for they proclaim it openly. I expect they will do fine miracles."[676] A few days later he says, "I expect the priests will never have the great seal again; and that in this Parliament they will have terrible alarms. I think Dr. Stephen (Gardiner) will have a good deal to do with the management of affairs, _especially if he will abandon his order_."[677] At Easter, 1529, Lutheran books were circulating in Henry's Court, advocating the (p. 238) confiscation of ecclesiastical property and the restoration of his Church to its primitive simplicity. Campeggio warned the King against them and maintained that it had been determined by councils and theologians that the Church justly held her temporalties. Henry retorted that according to the Lutherans "those decisions were arrived at by ecclesiastics and now it was necessary for the laity to interpose".[678]

In his last interview with Henry, Campeggio "alluded to this Parliament, which is about to be holden, and I earnestly pressed upon him the liberty of the Church. He certainly seemed to me very well disposed to exert his power to the utmost."[679] "Down with the Church" was going to be the Parliament cry. Whether Henry would really "exert his power"

to maintain her liberties remained to be seen, but there never was a flimsier theory than that the divorce of Catherine was the sole cause of the break with Rome. The centrifugal forces were quite independent of the divorce; its historical importance lies in the fact that it alienated from Rome the only power in England which might have kept them in check. So long as Wolsey and the clerical statesmen, with whom he surrounded the King, remained supreme, the Church was comparatively safe. But Wolsey depended entirely on Henry's support; when that was withdrawn, Church and Cardinal fell together.

[Footnote 674: _Ibid._, iv., 4898.]

[Footnote 675: _Ibid._, iv., 5210, 5255, 5581, 5582.]

[Footnote 676: _Ibid._, iv., 6011.]

[Footnote 677: _Ibid._, 6019.]

[Footnote 678: _L. and P._, iv., 5416.]

[Footnote 679: _Ibid._, iv., 5995. Henry VIII. no doubt also had his eye on Gustavus in Sweden where the Vesteras Recess of 1527 had provided that all episcopal, capitular and monastic property which was not absolutely required should be handed over to the King, and conferred upon him an ecclesiastical jurisdiction as extensive as that afterwards conferred upon Henry VIII. (_Cambridge Modern Hist._, ii., 626).]

Wolsey's ruin was, however, due to more causes than his failure (p. 239) to get a divorce for the King. It was at bottom the result of the natural development of Henry's character. Egotism was from the first his most prominent trait; it was inevitably fostered by the extravagant adulation paid to Tudor sovereigns, and was further encouraged by his realisation, first of his own mental powers, and then of the extent to which he could force his will upon others. He could never brook a rival in whatever sphere he wished to excel. In the days of his youth he was absorbed in physical sports, in gorgeous pageantry and ceremonial; he was content with such exhibitions as prancing before the ladies between every course in a tourney, or acting as pilot on board ship, blowing a whistle as loud as a trumpet, and arrayed in trousers of cloth of gold. Gradually, as time wore on, the athletic mania wore off, and pursuits, such as architecture, took the place of physical sports. A generation later, a writer describes Henry as "the only Phoenix of his time for fine and curious masonry".[680]

From his own original designs York House was transformed into Whitehall Palace, Nonsuch Palace was built, and extensive alterations were made at Greenwich and Hampton Court.

[Footnote 680: Harrison, _Description of England_, in Holinshed, ed. 1577, bk. ii., chap. ix.]

But architecture was only a trifle; Henry's uncontrollable activity also broke out in political spheres, and the eruption was fatal to Wolsey's predominance. The King was still in the full vigour of manhood; he had not reached his fortieth year, and his physical graces were the marvel of those who saw him for the first time. Falier, the new Venetian amba.s.sador, who arrived in England in 1529, is as (p. 240) rapturous over the King's personal attractions as Giustinian or Pasqualigo had been. "In this Eighth Henry," he writes, "G.o.d has combined such corporeal and intellectual beauty as not merely to surprise but astound all men.... His face is angelic (nine years before a Frenchman had called it "feminine"), rather than handsome; his head imperial and bold; and he wears a beard, contrary to the English custom. Who would not be amazed, when contemplating such singular beauty of person, coupled with such bold address, adapting itself with the greatest ease to every manly exercise?"[681] But Henry's physique was no longer proof against every ailment; frequent mention is made about this time of headaches[682] which incapacitated him from business, and it was not long before there appeared on his leg the fistula which racked him with pain till the end of his life, and eventually caused his death.

[Footnote 681: _Ven. Cal._, iv., 184, 185, 293.]

[Footnote 682: _L. and P._, iv., 4546. Henry had had small-pox in February, 1514 (_ibid._, i., 4831), without any serious consequences, but apart from that he had had no great illness.]

The divorce and the insuperable obstacles, which he discovered in attaining the end he thought easy at first, did more to harden Henry's temper than any bodily ills. He became a really serious man, and developed that extraordinary power of self-control which stood him in good stead in his later years. Naturally a man of violent pa.s.sions, he could never have steered clear of the dangers that beset him without unusual capacity for curbing his temper, concealing his intentions, and keeping his own counsel. Ministers might flatter themselves that they could read his mind and calculate his actions, but it is quite certain that henceforth no minister read so clearly his master's (p. 241) mind as the master did his minister's. "Three may keep counsel," said the King in 1530,[683] "if two be away; and if I thought that my cap knew my counsel, I would cast it into the fire and burn it." "Never,"

comments a modern writer,[684] "had the King spoken a truer word, or described himself more accurately. Few would have thought that, under so careless and splendid an exterior--the very ideal of bluff, open-hearted good-humour and frankness--there lay a watchful and secret eye, that marked what was going on, without appearing to mark it; kept its own counsel until it was time to strike, and then struck, as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey. It was strange to witness so much subtlety, combined with so much strength."

[Footnote 683: Cavendish, _Life of Wolsey_, p.

397.]

[Footnote 684: Brewer, Introd. to _L. and P._, iv., p. dcxxi.]

In spite of his remorseless blows and arbitrary temper, Henry was too shrewd and too great a man to despise the counsel of others, or think any worse of an adviser because his advice differed from his own. He loved to meet argument with argument, even when he might command. To the end of his days he valued a councillor who would honestly maintain the opposite of what the King desired. These councillors to whom he gave his confidence were never minions or servile flatterers. Henry had his Court favourites with whom he hunted and shot and diced; with whom he played--always for money--tennis, primero and bowls, and the more mysterious games of Pope July, Imperial and Shovelboard;[685] and to whom he threw many an acre of choice monastic land. But they never influenced his policy. No man was ever advanced to political (p. 242) power in Henry's reign, merely because he pandered to the King's vanity or to his vices. No one was a better judge of conduct in the case of others, or a sterner champion of moral probity, when it did not conflict with his own desires or conscience. In 1528 Anne Boleyn and her friends were anxious to make a relative abbess of Wilton.[686]

But she had been notoriously unchaste. "Wherefore," wrote Henry to Anne herself, "I would not, for all the gold in the world, cloak your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house which is of so unG.o.dly demeanour; nor I trust you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so distain mine honour or conscience." He objected, on similar grounds, to the prioress whom Wolsey wished to nominate; the Cardinal neglected Henry's wishes, and thereby called down upon himself a rebuke remarkable for dignity and delicacy. "The great affection and love I bear you," wrote the King, "causeth me, using the doctrine of my Master, saying _Quem diligo, castigo_, thus plainly, as ensueth, to break to you my mind.... Methink it is not the right train of a trusty loving friend and servant, when the matter is put by the master's consent into his arbitre and judgment (specially in a matter wherein his master hath both royalty and interest), to elect and choose a person which was by him defended (forbidden). And yet another thing, which much displeaseth me more,--that is, to cloak your offence made by ignorance of my pleasure, saying that you expressly knew not my determinate mind in that behalf." Then, after showing how empty were Wolsey's excuses, he continues: "Ah! my Lord, it is a double offence, both to do ill and colour it too; but with (p. 243) men that have wit it cannot be accepted so. Wherefore, good my Lord, use no more that way with me, for there is no man living that more hateth it." He then proceeds to warn the Cardinal against sinister reports with regard to his methods of raising money for his college at Oxford. "They say the college is a cloak for all mischief. I perceive by your letter that you have received money of the exempts for having their old visitors. If your legacy (legatine authority) is a cloak _apud homines_, it is not _apud Deum_. I doubt not, therefore, you will desist." Wolsey had used his legatine authority to extort money from monasteries as the price of their immunity from his visitatorial powers. The monasteries, too, had strenuously opposed the late Amicable Loan to the King; by Wolsey's means they had been released from that obligation; and Henry strongly suspected that they had purchased their exemption from relieving his necessities by lavish contributions to the Cardinal's colleges. "I pray you, my Lord," he concludes, "think not that it is upon any displeasure that I write this unto you. For surely it is for my discharge afore G.o.d, being in the room that I am in; and secondly for the great zeal I bear unto you." Henry possessed in the highest degree not a few of the best of kingly attributes. His words are not the words of a hypocrite without conscience, devoid of the fear of G.o.d and man. For all the strange and violent things that he did, he obtained the sanction of his conscience, but his imperious egotism made conscience his humble slave, and blinded to his own sins a judgment so keen to detect and chastise the failings of others.

[Footnote 685: See various entries in Privy Purse Expenses, _L. and P._, v., 747-62.]

[Footnote 686: _L. and P._, iv., 4477, 4488, 4507, 4509.]

These incidents, of more than a year before the Cardinal's fall, (p. 244) ill.u.s.trate the change in the respective positions of monarch and minister. There was no doubt now which was the master; there was no king but one. Henry was already taking, as Du Bellay said, "the management of everything".[687] Wolsey himself knew that he had lost the King's confidence. He began to talk of retirement. He told Du Bellay, in or before August, 1528, that when he had established a firm amity between France and England, extinguished the hatred between the two nations, reformed the laws and customs of England, and settled the succession, he would retire and serve G.o.d to the end of his days.[688]

The Frenchman thought this was merely to represent as voluntary a loss of power which he saw would soon be inevitable; but the conversation is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the difference between Henry and Wolsey, and helps to explain why Wolsey accomplished so little that lasted, while Henry accomplished so much. The Cardinal seems to have been entirely devoid of that keen perception of the distinction between what was, and what was not, practicable, which was Henry's saving characteristic. In the evening of his days, after sixteen years of almost unlimited power, he was speaking of plans, which might have taxed the energies of a life-time, as preliminaries to a speedy withdrawal from the cares of State. He had enjoyed an unequalled opportunity of effecting these reforms, but what were the results of his administration? The real greatness and splendour of Henry's reign are said to have departed with Wolsey's fall.[689] The gilt and the tinsel were indeed stripped off, but the permanent results of (p. 245) Henry's reign were due to its later course. Had he died when Wolsey fell, what would have been his place in history? A brilliant figure, no doubt, who might have been thought capable of much, had he not failed to achieve anything. He had made wars from which England derived no visible profit; not an acre of territory had been acquired; the wealth, ama.s.sed by Henry VII., had been squandered, and Henry VIII., in 1529, was reduced to searching for gold mines in England.[690] The loss of his subjects' blood and treasure had been followed by the loss of their affections. The exuberant loyalty of 1509 had been turned into the wintry discontent of 1527. England had been raised to a high place in the councils of Europe by 1521, but her fall was quite as rapid, and in 1525 she counted for less than she had done in 1513. At home the results were equally barren; the English hold on Ireland was said, in 1528, to be weaker than it had been since the conquest;[691] and the English statute-book between 1509 and 1529 may be searched in vain for an act of importance, while the statute-book between 1529 and 1547 contains a list of acts which have never been equalled for their supreme importance in the subsequent history of England.

[Footnote 687: _L. and P._, iv., 5983; _cf._ iv., 3992, where Henry has an interview (March, 1528) with a Scots amba.s.sador and tells no one about it.]

[Footnote 688: _Ibid._, iv., 4649.]

[Footnote 689: Brewer, _Ibid._, iv., Introd., p.

dcxxii.]

[Footnote 690: _L. and P._, iv., 5209. One Hochstetter was imported from Germany in connection with "the gold mines that the King was seeking for"

(Du Bellay to Montmorenci, 25th January, 1529).]

[Footnote 691: _Ibid._, iv., 4933.]

Wolsey's policy was, indeed, a brilliant fiasco; with a pre-eminent genius for diplomacy, he thought he could make England, by diplomacy alone, arbiter of Europe. Its position in 1521 was artificial; it had not the means to support a grandeur which was only built on the wealth left by Henry VII. and on Wolsey's skill. England owed her advance (p. 246) in repute to the fact that Wolsey made her the paymaster of Europe.

"The reputation of England for wealth," said an English diplomatist in 1522, "is a great cause of the esteem in which it is held."[692] But, by 1523, that wealth had failed; Parliament refused to levy more taxes, and Wolsey's pretensions collapsed like a pack of cards. He played no part in the peace of Cambrai, which settled for the time the conditions of Europe. When rumours of the clandestine negotiations between France and Spain reached England, Wolsey staked his head to the King that they were pure invention.[693] He could not believe that peace was possible, unless it were made by him. But the rumours were true, and Henry exacted the penalty. The positive results of the Cardinal's policy were nil; the chief negative result was that he had staved off for many years the ruin of the Church, but he only did it by plunging England in the maelstrom of foreign intrigue and of futile wars.

[Footnote 692: _L. and P._, iii., 1978.]

[Footnote 693: _Ibid._, iv., 5231.]

The end was not long delayed. "I see clearly," writes Du Bellay on 4th October, 1529, "that by this Parliament Wolsey will completely lose his influence; I see no chance to the contrary."[694] Henry antic.i.p.ated the temper of Parliament. A bill of indictment was preferred against him in the Court of King's Bench, and on the 22nd of October he acknowledged his liability to the penalties of _praemunire_.[695] The Great Seal was taken from him by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk. In November the House of Lords pa.s.sed a bill of attainder against him, but the Commons were persuaded by Cromwell, acting with Henry's (p. 247) connivance, to throw it out. "The King," wrote Chapuys, "is thought to bear the Cardinal no ill-will;" and Campeggio thought that he would "not go to extremes, but act considerately in this matter, as he is accustomed to do in all his actions."[696] Wolsey was allowed to retain the Archbishopric of York, a sum in money and goods equivalent to at least 70,000, and a pension of 1,000 marks from the See of Winchester.[697] In the following spring he set out to spend his last days in his northern see; six months he devoted to his archiepiscopal duties, confirming thousands of children, arranging disputes among neighbours, and winning such hold on the hearts of the people as he had never known in the days of his pride. Crowds in London had flocked to gloat over the sight of the broken man; now crowds in Yorkshire came to implore his blessing.

[Footnote 694: _Ibid._, iv., 5983.]

[Footnote 695: _Ibid._, iv., 6017.]

[Footnote 696: _L. and P._, iv., 6199, 6050; _cf._ iv., 6295, where Henry orders Dacre to treat Wolsey as became his rank; _Ven. Cal._, 1529, p. 237.]

[Footnote 697: _Ibid._, iv., 6220.]

He prepared for his installation at York on 7th November, 1530; on the 4th he was arrested for treason. His Italian physician, Agostini, had betrayed him; he was accused of having asked Francis I. to intercede with Henry on his behalf, which was true;[698] and he seems also to have sought the mediation of Charles V. But Agostini further declared that Wolsey had written to Clement, urging him to excommunicate Henry and raise an insurrection, by which the Cardinal might recover his power.[699] By Pontefract, Doncaster, Nottingham, with feeble (p. 248) steps and slow, the once-proud prelate, broken in spirit and shattered in health, returned to meet his doom. His gaol was to be the cell in the Tower, which had served for the Duke of Buckingham.[700] But a kindlier fate than a traitor's death was in store. "I am come," he said to the monks of Leicester Abbey, "I am come to leave my bones among you." He died there at eight o'clock on St. Andrew's morning, and there, on the following day, he was simply and quietly buried.

"If," he exclaimed in his last hour, "I had served G.o.d as diligently as I have done the King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs." That cry, wrung from Wolsey, echoed throughout the Tudor times.[701] Men paid _le nouveau Messie_ a devotion they owed to the old; they rendered unto Caesar the things that were G.o.d's. They reaped their reward in riches and pomp and power, but they won no peace of mind. The favour of princes is fickle, and "the wrath of the King is death". So thought Wolsey and Warham and Norfolk. "Is that all?" said More, with prophetic soul, to Norfolk; "then in good faith between your grace and me is but this, that I shall die to-day and you shall die to-morrow."[702]

[Footnote 698: _Ibid._, iv., 6018, 6199, 6273, 6738.]

[Footnote 699: De Vaux writes on 8th November, 1530, to Montmorenci, that the King had told him "where and how" Wolsey had intrigued against him, but he does not repeat the information (_ibid._, iv., 6720), though Bryan's remark (_ibid._, iv., 6733) that "De Vaux has done well in disclosing the misdemeanour of the Cardinal" suggests that De Vaux knew more than he says.]

[Footnote 700: So Chapuys reports (iv., 6738); that Wolsey had used Agostini to sound Chapuys is obvious from the latter's remark, "were the physician to say all that pa.s.sed between us, he could not do anything to impugn me".]

[Footnote 701: _Cf._ Buckingham's remark in _L. and P._, iii., 1356: "An he had not offended no more unto G.o.d than he had done to the Crown, he should die as true a man as ever was in the world".]

[Footnote 702: _D.N.B._, x.x.xviii., 437.]

CHAPTER X. (p. 249)